Ana stepped up onto the deck chair and watched as her brothers tossed their pillows and backpacks of personal things into their seats in the truck. She turned when her mom walked up to stand beside the chair, both of them smiling at the new foot of difference between their heights because of the chair under her feet.
"It's not too late to change your mind about coming with us," her mom said, raising her eyebrows and looking almost hopeful.
Ana let out a short laugh. "Yeah, sure. You guys are leaving in five minutes and I would have to pack everything in that time and hope I didn't forget anything."
Her mom shrugged, but a frown creased her forehead. She sighed. "Why don't you stay with Grandma and Grandpa?"
Ana rolled her eyes. "Mom, they're right next door!"
Her mom smiled, but it was halfhearted. "Next door is a whole mile away," she said after a moment.
Ana stepped down from the chair, smirking, and then gave her mom a more sincere hug. "I'm sixteen, Mom. I have my license, and a job. I think I can survive alone in the house for a few months. And you know Grandpa will probably be calling every five minutes to be sure I'm still alive and haven't burned the barn down or something." There was a twinkle in her eye when she added, "Besides, think about how clean the house will be when you get back."
Her mom smiled at pulled her in for another hug, nodding. The rest of the family came to give her hugs as well before they all piled into the truck and left. She waved and watched them until they were out of sight down the driveway. After they'd gone, she went back inside the family's mobile home and looked around. They had left the house in a relatively neat state but it was hardly orderly and nowhere near the way she wanted it, so she decided to start in the kitchen.
She grabbed her iPod from her room and brought it back, plugging it into the sound system and enjoying her favorite songs while she cleaned; sweeping, mopping, spraying and shining. As was to be expected, she sang along to the songs while she worked. After about an hour she had finished with the kitchen and the family room and decided to do more work the following day or maybe later in the evening. It was only just after one o'clock in the afternoon and she still had time to do things.
She turned off the music and spent some time sketching her dad's black cat, which was sprawled on the carpet in the sunlight. She would have put him outside had it not been such a warm summer day. When she was finished with the sketch and the cat had left the room, she took her sketchbook to her bedroom and tossed it gently onto her bed, collapsing onto the mattress beside it. She stared up at the ceiling, thinking. She had work every Friday, but that gave her four days before she needed to worry about working and she was actually free of babysitting or cleaning jobs for the next month, which was strange. She had hoped to get some kind of side job that took up plenty of time because her family wasn't around and didn't need her helping them at home with their ranch.
She lit a candle in her room, scrolled through her Facebook and Tumblr on her laptop, and another hour slipped by as she wrote a letter to her best friend even though she would see him that coming Sunday.
She ended up cleaning the rest of the house that evening and making herself a small dinner before spending some time sketching random household items in her book. She reread the first few chapters of her favorite romance novel before blowing out the candle in her room and turning off the light.
The next morning she went out to the barn, taking care of the few chores there and returning inside to make herself breakfast. She cleaned up after herself, meticulous and careful, and decided she would go for a walk before the sun rose too high and the temperature started to climb.
She stepped outside, leaving the two family dogs in the house when they panted up at her, already hot even though they were indoors. It was a cool morning and the sun was hidden behind a ceiling of clouds, which had drifted across the sky in only the short while since Ana had last been outside. She frowned up at the gray above her and wondered if it would rain.
She didn't walk along the road, though she had before. Today she decided on walking around the perimeter of a nearby field. Before she'd even made it very far away from the house, however, a truck pulled up and her grandfather stepped out. She turned and walked back to him, greeting him with a smile, but he was frowning. "Where are you going? I called, but no answer," he said gruffly.
She raised her eyebrows, trying not to roll her eyes in exasperation. "I'm fine. Really. I'm going to go for a walk and then I'll be back in the house, safe and sound."
He shrugged and said, "Why don't you take the road?"
She smiled and shook her head. "I have a thousand acres of fields and pastures for a backyard and you want me to walk on the road?"
He smiled and muttered something about calling if she needed anything before he got back into the truck and drove away. She disliked how paranoid he was about her and thought it silly that he would drive all of the way over to her house just to see why she hadn't answered the phone.
Turning her thoughts back to the strange weather, she walked along the barbed wire fence, smiling at the clouds' reflections on the surface of the nearby pond as she walked around it. If she walked all of the way around the field she would go about a mile, she figured. She turned the corner where the fence did and her attention was drawn away from the pond and upwards to the clouds again. She was staring up into them as she walked, careful not to trip or stumble, when something in the sky caught her eye and she stopped walking to stare.
Something was falling out of the sky and falling very quickly. It was a large, dark object, and didn't appear to be on fire. Wondering if she was witnessing a meteor or space junk falling from space, she heard the crash as the object landed somewhere over the next hill, and she could feel the ground vibrate beneath her when the falling thing and the dirt met. It hit the ground hard enough that dirt and chunks of earth flew into the air where she could see. The thing had crashed into the ground on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, so she promptly climbed over to see what it was.
She moved quickly up the hill and looked down on a crater-like space at the base of the hill, about as large as the pond she had passed on her way around the pasture. She walked down the hill, cautious and scared despite the fact that she could clearly see the large, dark lump that was the object in the midst of the crater. She realized it was about the size of a grown man, probably as large as her own father. She was nervous, having seen one too many sci-fi movies about aliens and horror films about strange creatures. What was the most frightening, though, was that she had in fact just witnessed something falling to the earth that was indeed alive and capable of destruction.
First of all, let me say thank you for reading this! I know it's a very short chapter, but it is only the beginning and the following ones are going to be longer. If you have any corrections or suggestions then please feel free to let me know. I would love to hear what you thought of this chapter and whether or not you liked it. And if you didn't, then I'd like to hear why not. Thanks again for reading! ~Taelr
