DISCLAIMER: I do not own Aria, Ezra or any of Aria's family. These characters and their personalities belong to ABC Family and Sara Shepard!
January 2011
"I have colon cancer." As soon as Aria heard the words out of her father's mouth, that frigid Minnesota January morning got a hell of a lot colder. She knew it was going to be hard. She knew her life was going to change. The thing she didn't expect was that she'd have to be the strong one and where putting her life back together would take her.
August 2011
It was two weeks after the day she buried the man who had shaped her whole world. Aria was always close with her father, as he was head of the English department at their local college, and she was a writer herself. She remembered the afternoons they'd spend together at their local bookstore, Books n' Things. She could still smell the wood that lined the walls and ceiling of the community theatre where they watched plays together on Saturday mornings. It was cedar, just like the wood that composed her dad's desk. It was where she sat this morning, trying not to cry as she'd already done her makeup. But how could she not cry? How could she be so strong, when her own mom couldn't even get out of bed? She'd never dreamt that on the morning of her first day as a senior at Collins High School that she'd double as the person in charge of getting her brother Mike up and ready for his 8th grade year. Wasn't that her mom's job?
"Aria, I'm going to be late." Mike said, interrupting her thoughts. "Is Mom up yet?" Aria could sense a hint of worry in his voice, but it was mostly masked with frustration. Mike, at 13 years old, had just lost his one male role model. His mom, rather than taking on both roles, faded more into the background, leaving Aria to pick up the slack. As a self-proclaimed 'fixer,' she'd give everything she had to be everything that mike needed. After all, he was her brother.
"I don't know mike. How about I take you today? Just let me grab my stuff." Aria got up from her dad's desk and left to grab her bag out of her room. Two minutes later, she came down the stairs with a twinkle in her eye, a mere change from her demeanor in her dad's den. "Let's get going." Despite how the past two weeks had been, she was excited to get to school and find what her senior year would have to offer her.
Aria and Mike got into her silver Grand Am parked on the street. She turned the key over and they took off down the twisted cul-de-sac. The street was lined with trees that over-hung like a canopy. When she thought of that street and the blanket of leaves that covered it, Aria thought of her father and the two weeks he spent teaching her how to ride without training wheels down the sidewalk that outlined that very street. The pure look of pride in his eyes when she finally rode on her own was a look she never wanted to see fade. She had only wanted to make him proud his whole life, and that's all she wanted to see now as well. Maybe that's why she was trying so hard to keep this family together. He couldn't be proud if it fell apart.
Aria pulled up in front of Collins Middle School giving Mike just five minutes to spare, which meant in order to make it the seven blocks to the high school and park, she would be walking into first period late. She'd hoped her teacher wouldn't mind. She tried to remember the schedule she had gotten in the mail earlier that week to think of who she would be pissing off on this glorious morning. Was it Mrs. Anderson and her over powering uni-brow? Or Mr. Gowalaski, the senior aged, history teacher whom she was sure would seat her in the front of the room for his own guilty pleasure? She'd have to remember not to wear a skirt. She then remembered with just two blocks to spare that it was a Mr. Fitz, her new English teacher to be exact. She hadn't met him before as it was his first year, so she assumed he must be young. At any rate, English was her favorite subject, and she'd hate to disappoint her new English teacher. As she pulled into the lot, she adjusted her cream camisole, so it was positioned perfectly under her short, leather jacket, for the very purpose of making a good impression on Collins' latest addition to the staff.
