Behind Walls of Ice-Chapter One
A story isn't a story if it's about a perfect family with faultless kids and a beautiful house. Where the worst things that could happen to a family is tea spilt on the pool table or the dog crapped on the expensive thousand dollar couch. Even then, they could replace it by tomorrow.
Stories like that are just not as interesting. Although people don't want to read it, I would agree that most of the world would want to live it. Even if it's middle-class, they have food on the table every night, two parents, and Netflix. More than my brother, my sister, and I could dream of. They have loving people that tell them, "Yes you may go hang out with Todd," or "No you may not hang out with Will, he's a bad influence," because they care. My Godfather didn't give a rat's ass about me. He was what he called "toughening us up" when all he really wanted to do was find a way to punch me in the face. My older brother, Dale, started to do the same and I was so afraid I would too.
My real father had wavy brown hair, a long nose, was pale as a ghost, and very thin. When I was born, my parents knew I would grow up to be just like him, Dale always told me that. My sister, Lena, was my Godfather's daughter. We always just considered her more like us than him. Dale was great at first, and then he became angry. He had nothing else to take it out on but me and her. One day he just up and left us and that was fine by me. With Lena though, I always wished the old Dale would knock on the door again and hug her the way he used to.
My mother left my father when I was three. I didn't remember her, but Dale did. That always was a sore subject, so I never pried on who she was. My father started to get sick staying up all night waiting for her to return. He wouldn't eat, didn't sleep, and when he did he cried in the bed alone. That went on until I was eight when he died of pneumonia. He was anorexic, all he did was cough all day, and we had been waiting for the day to come home and he was gone. The afternoon after the funeral, my Godfather was already making us pack. It would be the last time I would have a room to myself. I left a lot of things with it, but the one I seemed to miss, was my big bed and warm covers. I always recall the last moving day:
I was still in my black suit and tie. I keep it from last year when my great grandmother died. It was a little small, but I was told to suck it up so I did. I only had one memory of great grandmother and that was her on the porch and me finding eggs Eater Sunday. I had a backpack filled as fat as it could be with action figures, comic books, and my best friend, Mr. Superman. He was a royal blue and red cat, with a white patch on his stomach. Dale drew an "S" on the front with a sharpie so that he somewhat looked like my hero. Dale was nine, and his contents in his backpack didn't differ than much from mine except he didn't have a hero. His died a couple days ago. I turned around for one last look. When I did, I noticed all the things I was leaving. My Godfather owned the house now. What he was going to do with it I didn't know; probably sell it later when he needed the money. My bed was still there, my covers I took with me though. They wouldn't be the same in a different house. He might as well have bought me brand new everything, because I knew as I stepped into that house of his, they would all be foreign. Nothing would ever be the same again, nothing would ever go right. My bookshelf screwed into my wall was drained of all its picture books of my beloved story characters like Sloth B. Bear and Cat in the Hat. I paced to my closet; all my clothes were packed away in boxes. I saw on the ground my lucky baseball cap. I took out my backpack and shoved it in. I wouldn't dare leave that behind, even though deep down my eight year old self knew it wasn't really lucky. It gave me hope, and that was good enough. I went out the door, letting it click behind me. Dale followed me coming out of his room. At this time, he might as well have had angel wings attached. He acted just like a god. Leader-like, protective, with a bit of his own humor. I missed that about him. His smile fades in my memory as the anger rises up. When we got in the moving truck, I was squished between my new father and my older brother. Lena was back at the house with the neighbor. She wasn't allowed to come to the funeral, her father's orders. He barked a lot of orders on that twenty minute drive. Things like where our rooms were and after 10 pm we can't leave them. No midnight snacks, something our real dad was fond of a long time ago. We do our homework as soon as we get home and we take showers at night because Lena's for some reason uses all the hot water in the morning. I remember looking at Dale beside me. We both had a mental signal to each other- "This will be a long ride,"
First Chapter- let me know what you think