Young Writers Society

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Flawed - Prologue - First Draft
London, Summer

Back home in America every single person that Evelyn Irving knew was enjoying their summer off from the day to day agony that was high school. Back home in America her friends were spending hours talking about ridiculous and frivolous things whilst sipping on lattes at Starbucks by day and going to the movies by night. Things that normal teenagers with normal families did during their summers, but oh not Evelyn Irving.

London is where she spent every summer. Dreary, wet, depressing, London. Where she knew no one and did not particularly care to get to know anyone either. Every year was the same and the only good thing about it was that it was predictable. For months before hand she would mentally prepare herself to be miserable for three months while having to listen to her dear father, precious mother, and warm hearted younger sister all gush and pour their hearts into their summer retreat. It certainly was not Evelyn's summer retreat and she often wondered how it was possible that three people she loved more than anything in the world could love such a horrid place so much.

It completely baffled her.

They would tell her that she just was not opening her eyes. Seeing the beauty around her. What beauty? A burning sunset over an awaiting cool blue ocean after a bright sunny day filled with laughter back home in California was beautiful.

London just made her want to curl up in an over sized arm chair and read for three straight months. At least then she could transport herself to the places she would read about. She liked the characters in the books better than anyone she had ever met in London, as well. Especially that awful boy Aidan who was always attached to her sister Ember's hip all through the summer. Never was their a boy more obnoxious or one that she distrusted as he. She did not like the amount of time that he spent with her sister of merely fourteen. Granted the boy was only 15. A year younger than herself and only a year older than Ember but she knew how much Ember adored him.

Adored him as she knew her mother adored her father. Dangerous.

Evelyn loved her parents dearly but for as long as she had at all been able to understand that her parents had a love for one another that was as alive as any living, breathing, entity she had been plagued by fear because of it. Oh Ember was always telling her to see the beauty in that as well but Evelyn only saw the possibility of disaster. Of the destruction of the two people she loved most in the world. What good was love if you had to always live in fear of losing it? Evelyn could not imagine that it would feel like anything more to her than a ticking clock. Tick, tick, ticking by. Waiting for the opportune moment to strike and rip the heart right out of your chest.

Staring out the car window Evelyn paused in her rather dreary train of thought to watch the drizzles of rain travel across the glass eying one in particular that seemed to moving slower than the others. This was what London did to her. She could almost be certain that it took the vibrant purples and oranges that comprised the colors of her soul and turned them to black as coal and to a ghostly pale white. Much as her skin would look by the time she left.

Leaning forward she pressed her forehead against the cool surface of the glass and closed her eyes.

"Evey..." The soft sound of her little sister's angelic voice made it's way into her bout of self-pity. "Evey..." She said again and then continued this time, "...I would love to see you smile just once this summer. Just one time. For me."

"What is there to smile about around here? It's boring. The places are boring. The people are bori--"

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"What places? What people? You don't go anywhere or talk to anyone when we come here." Ember attempted to reason and Evelyn was hardly surprised by her sister's eloquence or beautiful, insightful thoughts. She had discovered long ago that Ember was simply something extraordinary. A piece of perfection made by her mother and father whom were equally extraordinary. Where she fit in? She was almost positive that she was adopted. Being the perpetual black cloud over their lightness as she always was.

"Why can't you just let me sit and be miserable? I like it that way. I love our home. There is nothing that compares to it. Nothing ever will. Especially not London. We're just different, Ember." Evelyn said, turning her gaze from the window towards her sister.

Sitting together they must look like something out of a whimsical story. Ember the ivory skinned, blue eyed, blonde angel and Evelyn the green eyed, golden flame haired, she devil with hardly a perfect complexion. They were as different as they appeared, as well. Ember was such an old, soft spoken, soul. Evelyn told you exactly what she was thinking when she was thinking it often at the price of being disliked. She hardly cared. While Ember was the eternal peace keeper. The angel on your shoulder. She voice of good. Evelyn often wished she would speak that voice louder and make the world a better place with it, but that just was not Ember. She was timid. Shy. But could bring you to life with a single touch and steal your soul with a single well versed phrase and she always knew exactly what to say. Brilliant at age 14 and at 16 Evelyn admired her yet knew she would never be anything like her. Evelyn was the bull in the china shop. Always would be.

"Or you are just stubborn." Ember said with an edge of a smile tipping up the corner of her mouth. "You should make an effort this summer. I would love for Aidan to see my real sister. He has been calling you the red dragon for years."

Ha. That made Evelyn smile with a short laugh. "The red dragon, huh? Whatever. He runs around like a savage. All bare feet and that crazy hair of his. Does he even wash it? You've even told me yourself that he isn't any good at any subject in school. He does nothing but play that guitar of his and it sounds like pigeons croaking and dying when he plays." Needless to say, Evelyn didn't have the highest opinion of Aidan Hart. Her sister's young heart was something she was fiercely protective of.

Never one to get angry, Ember just shook her head and let out a soft laugh, shaking her head, "You just don't know him." She paused for a moment, then said something that was one of many things she tended to say that always made Evelyn stop and think, "And maybe you never will. You have it in your head what a man should be, apparently. Is dad so perfect?"

"Yes." Evelyn said without hesitation. "What kind of question is that?"

"Just a question." What an infuriating response.

"Ember..."

"Dad is a writer. He was never good at any specific subject either. And he runs around barefoot with us all the time. Is he a savage?"

Little miss point maker was starting to get on Evelyn's nerves. "Dad is dad. He's a grown man and a good man. Aidan Hart is a child. A child that acts like the entire world exists as his playground. Does he ever worry about anything?" It was an honest sort of question. One that took on a very different tone in Evelyn's voice. An almost jealous tone. It was embedded into her genetic makeup that she could simply never be as carefree as an Aidan Hart. Too many thoughts plagued her daily.

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A slow smile crept up onto Ember's lips as she answered proudly, "Yes. He worries about me."

That answer brought almost a growl out of the red head within Evelyn, "Well he does not need to worry about you. I can do that just fine on my own." She ground out between clenched teeth, "In the words of his people here. He can piss off."

"Evelyn!" Her mother's soft, yet reprimanding, voice sounded from the passenger seat in front of them. The look on her face said it all and Evelyn instantly felt horrible. Not because of anything having to do with Aidan Hart but simply because she absolutely could not stand falling short of her mother's expectations.

Evelyn's mother was the sun.

Evelyn's father was the moon.

They defied every rule of nature to be together. They came together and created the stars in the sky. The created the sunsets that she loved so much.

This was how she had always seen them when she was little.

When she had been five in her kindergarten class her teacher had asked her to draw a picture of her parents and she had drawn exactly that. The sun. The moon. The stars. And an eternal sunset that they seemed to forever live within.

It had seemed so much easier back them. Magical. Now. It did not seem like reality. And it wasn't. Because in reality the sun and the moon are never together and could never be. And stars have no magic to them at all. They are just out there. Part of science. They certainly were not created by her parents. What a childish way to think. In fact, Aidan Hart probably would believe her. Hook, line, and sinker.

"Sorry." Evelyn mumbled and then brightened when a soft smile touched her mother's lips before they spoke to her father, driving the car, her accent rich and British, "Does it get further away each year? It seems as if we've been driving for ages." Her mother was the only good thing that had ever come out of London. Evelyn was convinced.

"You say that every year. Chill out, sweetheart." Her dad. Ever the American. "What do you think? That the road grows, or something?" He said with a laugh as her mother's hand swatted playfully at his shoulder. He was always trying to make her laugh and while he was almost never funny, Evelyn still found it impossibly endearing.

Evelyn watched as her mother laughed softly and coiled her arm around her father's and leaned her shoulder against his, their heads angled towards each other as they sat in front of her. "I'm just very tired." Evelyn heard her say and continued to watch as her mother rested the side of her head against the side of her father's.

It was plain to see that they almost seemed to occupy the same breathing space just to be able to breathe properly and while she loved them for it, Evelyn knew that such a kind of love was not what she wanted out of this life. She didn't want her heart and life to rely so completely on a man. Her happiness to be all wrapped up in something that could get taken away or even just walk away. She didn't mind being alone. She preferred it.

Glancing over at Ember it was obvious that she did not agree. Her eyes were glued to the house that they were now passing. Aidan Hart's house. A humble little place. His family was not very well off. At least, not as they were. There was no sign of him, however, and Evelyn could see the trace of disappoint cross over Ember's flawless, child like, features.

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Evelyn let out a long sigh, and shook her head. She was the only sane one. It was official. The only one not wrapped up in romantic gibberish. "Don't look so stricken. It's not like you won't see him tomorrow." Evelyn drawled. "Him and that hair of his."

"His hair is romantic."

"You must be joking." She wasn't, though,

"Hair can be romantic." Ember said, with a little shrug. "Anything can be. London is romantic."

"London is tragic."

"London... is magic."

Evelyn groaned out loud. "Please. Enough. There are only so many rainbows and butterflies that I can take for one car ride." It was the tom boy in her pleading now for a few moments of sanity. She wasn't boyish, by any means, but simply not girlish, either. Unicorns had never appealed to her. Barbi was evil, she was convinced. Hello Kitty, as well. And she absolutely hated Titanic. Rose could have let the poor sap on that floating door with her. Why didn't anyone else see that? It was ridiculous.

"A little magic would be good for you, Evey." Ember said, her gaze drifting out the window as the car swung around the circular drive, a fountain at it's center, directly in front of the huge house that her mother had gown up in. "Oh! It's even more beautiful this year, isn't it Mum?" She gushed, her eyes lighting up like her entire face like a ray of pure sunshine coming through the clouds. She turned to look back at Evelyn, and said, "How do you not see the magic here? Or at least feel it?"

For a moment Evelyn felt a little pang of something. She was not sure what it was, but for the briefest of moments she wished she could feel that magic that lit her little sister up from the inside out. If anything just to better understand the brilliance that was Ember.

Pushing her way out of the door Evelyn instantly shivered and felt the cold already trying to seep into her. It would get warmer. Hopefully. If she was lucky. The weather was so fickle here. Never predictable. She hated that. Never knowing what to expect. It was maddening. However, there was one thing about coming here that she liked. Loved even. Just one solitary thing that made it worth it.

It was this moment.

Standing by the car watching as her dad, mum, and sister all stared up in wonder at the house that seemed like nothing but old, cold, and dusty to her, but utter magic to them. She loved seeing their faces as they hurried up the over sized front steps, eager to be inside. She loved seeing how much they loved it here.

And it was going to be the last summer that she would ever see it....