Spoiler
I know this is a long chapter, but I would really appreciate it if you read and reviewed this! I've been working on this book for over a year now and finished it, and I want to hear the public response to it! 
Also, this first part in italics is a letter.
Also, this first part in italics is a letter.May 1
Jonah—
It’s official. I’m going to die of cancer. I know it’s depressing, but it’s the truth, and avoiding it won’t make it untrue. Besides, you know I’m not one for sugar-coating. I give you the facts, plain and straight.
Most parents would take this chance to comfort their kid, but I don’t see why ‘cause I know you can take it. That’s the way I raised you.
So instead, I’m going to ask you a favor.
My life was kind of bust. As a teenager, I made some pretty bad choices—drugs, cutting class, you name it. However, it was only after I had you, got a job, and started supporting myself that I made the biggest mistake.
Sometime after you were born, I got it into my head that I didn’t have time for fun as a single mother. The thought settled into my subconscious and stayed there from age eighteen up until I was diagnosed six months ago. It was only then that I realized what I had missed. I should have saved up and gone sky-diving or parasailing or snorkeling. I should have lived life to its fullest.
But since I didn’t, I want you to.
Live life, Jonah, if not for yourself than for me. Go bungee-jumping, travel the world, hell; maybe even go up into space. Whatever you do though, don’t live safely. The safe people are always the ones with regrets.
I get that this is a lot to ask for, so I’m gonna write you some guidelines. If you follow these, I guarantee you’ll have some wild times to look back on later.
Live Ten
1.) Break some rules (I don’t mean break the law, Jonah. I’m not telling you to murder someone)
2.) Do something unexpected
3.) Do something again
4.) Do something that’s never been done before
5.) Do something brave (Not stupid Jonah)
6.) Do something from the past
7.) Do something crazy (Again, not stupid)
8.) Do something unpopular
9.) Help someone else
10.) Try something new
Well, that’s about all I can think of. If I were more creative, I would probably come up with thirteen ideas, considering that you’re thirteen years old. But I’m not, and you’re probably going to be overwhelmed as it is. So get up, get started, and don’t be an idiot. There’s a fine line between daring and just plain stupid.
—Mom
P.S. - Even though I haven’t exactly followed the parenting book, I hope you know that I love you just as much as any other parent this goddamn Earth has to offer.
Three Months Later…
Chapter One: Do Something from the Past
I remembered the city, with cars honking and people shouting and the electric pulse of music late at night. I remembered skateboarding through traffic, the sound of Mom’s laughter ringing through our apartment, and the blare of the radio up so loud the neighbors banged on the walls. I remembered the feeling of being really and truly alive.
Now, I might as well have been dead.
Dallas was gone, and Runny Brook was here. Only, not really. If you looked at any Texas state map, it didn’t even show up. With its population drying up with the rain, it was on its last legs. Although no one liked to say so, it was inevitable that in fifty years, Runny Brooke would be just another ghost town.
“Jonah!”
My thoughts screeched to a halt, and I looked up from my cereal bowl. “Huh?”
Forcefully, Aunt Elaine twisted her lips into the sappy smile she always used around me. “Jonah, I’ve asked you three times, have you finished packing your stuff for school tomorrow?”
I almost swore. I’d been ignoring the upcoming school year for weeks, and now it had finally caught up with me. Elaine must have seen the look on my face, because she suddenly became very interested in wiping invisible crumbs off the breakfast table. She always did that when she was trying to compose herself and keep that stupid smile on her face. Sure enough, when she finally looked up, the smile was as bright and plastic as ever. I cringed.
“Well that’s just fine, Jonah. You can get ready tonight. I bought all of your school supplies a good month ago.”
I nodded, knowingly. That was Elaine in a nutshell—overly eager and optimistic. In this house I felt like I was on some old sitcom where the whole family got along swimmingly. And just like that sitcom, everything we did was an act.
Itching to get outside, I shoveled down the rest of my Rice Krispies and toast. As I drained my bowl, Elaine slowly sipped her coffee and pretended not to notice my rush.
“I’m going skateboarding,” I announced, pushing my chair back from the table.
“Okay. Have fun!”
After dropping my dishes in the sink, I ran upstairs, took a shower, and got dressed. As I slipped on my sneakers, I caught a look at myself in the bathroom mirror and felt a sudden pang of remorse.
My face looked a lot like Mom’s. I’d inherited her brown hair, small nose, and the dimples people were always razzing me about. It was weird to think that even though she was gone, her features were still here. Even though she was gone, I was still here.
My throat tightened.
Because no matter how Elaine acted, things weren’t alright. Mom was dead, gone, passed, on the other side, pushing up daisies. I shuddered as I remembered Mom lying in the cancer ward, just waiting for the inevitable. Instantly, I blocked out the memory and made for the stairs. There was no use thinking about that stuff now.
Once outside, I leapt onto my skateboard and relaxed. Skateboarding had become an escape for me ever since I left Dallas. When I was on it, it was almost easy to believe that nothing had changed.
Yeah right.
Over the course of six months, my life had turned upside down. One day Mom was normal—burning food, blasting music, having shouting matches with the neighbors over the burning food and blasting music—and the next day she was dead. My dad ran off before I was even born, so I had to move to Runny Brook with only Mom’s letter to guide me.
Guilt resurfaced at the thought of the letter, and my skateboard suddenly felt unsteady beneath my feet. I’d been postponing that Live Ten list the whole summer, postponing Mom’s last favor. Now, whenever I thought about it, I felt so bad I immediately blocked it from my mind. And the procrastination continued.
“Crap!”
My skateboard suddenly jammed and I was thrown off balance. My back hit the asphalt hard, followed by my head. Thunk. A gasp flew from my lips as pain radiated through my body.
Groaning, I gazed fuzzily at the spinning wheels of my upturned skateboard. I felt like someone had whacked me on the head with a tomahawk. Too tired to move, I lay on the ground until I noticed that I wasn’t alone.
A girl—a hot girl— with black hair and blue eyes lay on the road beside me. I watched dumbly as she slowly sat up, breathing hard.
Suddenly, it all made sense.
“Hey, why’d you trip me?” I asked. She flushed red with what I first thought was embarrassment, but later realized was indignation.
“Trip you?! You pushed me!” She spat a piece of hair out of her mouth and stood up, towering above me. Man, this girl was intimidating!
“Jeez, don’t flip out,” I said, propping myself up on one arm. “I must have ran into you. Sorry.”
I kept trying to catch her eyes but they seemed fixated above my head. I turned around to see what she was looking at. The road was empty. What the heck…?
“How could you possibly miss a girl right in the middle of the road?” the girl shrieked, ignoring my apology. “What were you thinking? I mean—wait, oh my god, did you do it on purpose?!”
“No!“ I protested.
“Don’t lie to me! I bet you thought, Oh look, it’s the blind girl. Why not run her down in the middle of the road? It’s not like she’ll recognize me or anything…”
I was opening my mouth to defend myself, when the meaning of her words sunk in. “B-blind girl?”
“Yes, blind girl!” she spat. “Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean I won’t find out who you are though! I’m just as capable as anyone!”
With that, the blind girl reached down, sweeping her arms far and wide. Eventually, her fingers curled around her walking stick and she stood up triumphantly.
“Not so helpless now, am I?” she smirked. “And I’ll find out who you are. I always do.”
I watched, stunned, as the blind girl cautiously hobbled away. I could hardly believe what had just happened. In fact, if it weren’t for my injuries, I probably wouldn’t have.
Speaking of which…
My eyes slid from the girl’s back to my arms. Beads of blood had collected around a scrape on my elbow, and my palms were practically raw. Wincing, I stood up, flipped over my skateboard, and started skating home. I didn’t want to go back to that phony cesspool at all, but what could I do? The lump under my hair was starting to look like a second head.
As I skated, I replayed the whole frenzied scene over and over in my mind. What was that girl’s problem? I thought. She was so…scary. And paranoid. It was almost like she thought I was out to get her.
I had so many questions and just about zero answers. Annoyed, I pushed the entire conversation from my mind. It was just too much to think about.
Finally, I reached Elaine’s house. As I pulled into the familiar driveway, my muscles tensed up. Someone, or something, was watching me. Slowly, I turned to the right…
“Oh. Hey, Travis.”
At first, only his eyes were visible through his tangle of hair, but then a Cheshire cat grin appeared through his scraggly beard and a skinny arm waved in greeting.
The first time I’d met Travis, I got a bit freaked out. I thought he was a homeless person stowing away in our neighbor’s front yard. Turns out, he was our neighbor, and he lived in the house, not the yard.
Travis climbed up over the fence and walked toward me. It was a miracle he didn’t trip; I think more than half of him is just legs.
“Jonah,” he grinned, staring down at me. “How’s it going?”
Suddenly his smile disappeared under his beard and his eyebrows furrowed. “Hey, what happened to you?”
I realized he was talking about my injuries. “Um, yeah, I was skateboarding and I ran into this…uh…telephone pole.”
That was about half true. I ran into something, but it definitely wasn’t a telephone pole.
Travis huffed. “Well, telephones are useless things anyway. Why pay to talk into a hunk of plastic when you can talk to someone in person?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Come to think of it, I never knew what to say to Travis. He’s very opinionated. Or crazy. It really depends on who you ask.
I didn’t care though. I liked Travis; he was the only person who was cool about Mom’s death. When most people heard about Mom, they filtered all their words to make sure they didn’t trigger something to make me depressed. Sometimes, I could practically read their minds: Should I mention his mother? No, what if he gets upset? That would be really awkward… What about school? But he might be mad about having to start at a new one…
That whole filtering business left us with basically nothing to talk about, so it was nice to listen to Travis rant about global warming or something. Well, at least it was different, anyway.
“Sorry Travis, but I have to get back,” I said, glancing towards the house. “That, um, telephone pole really did some damage.”
“Sure, sure,” he said, waving me away with his hand. “See you around, kid.” Then he leapt over his fence and disappeared into the overgrowth of his front yard.
I sighed, picked up my skateboard, and crossed the lawn to Elaine’s front door. Elaine mustered up a sickly sweet smile as I walked into the kitchen, and I smiled back weakly.
“Did you have a good time?” she asked, way too brightly. “How was—o h my goodness! You’re hurt!”
I looked down at my shoes.“Yeah, uh, this telephone pole…”
My voice trailed away to nothing, and somehow I just knew Elaine knew I was lying. Her permanent smile dipped with hurt, but I didn’t say anything. I just walked into the bathroom.
As I grabbed the first-aid kit—a precaution Mom never bothered to take—I wondered how two people so completely different could possibly be sisters. Maybe Mom was switched at birth, I mused, remembering her crazy ways. I smiled in memory.
Only now when I looked up, it was Elaine smiling back at me.
* * *
Today was the first day of school.
I was supposed to get up at seven o’clock, but I found out too late that my alarm clock was messed up.
“Crud,” I muttered, staring blearily at the time. “Seven forty-five…I only have ten minutes!”
I jumped out of bed and threw on some jeans and a t-shirt. That’s pretty much my basic ensemble. Black jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. I glanced at the clock again. There was no time to eat. Mom always used to be really serious about breakfast. To her, not eating in the morning was some kind of sin.
“Well Mom, deal with it,” I said before sticking my toothbrush in my mouth. Elaine had already left for work over an hour ago, so I didn’t have anyone to drive me in if I missed the bus. I brushed even more furiously.
I rinsed in the sink and stared at the bathroom mirror. It was my first day at this new school, and I hated to admit it, but I was nervous. I tried not to show it though. I’m pretty good at that.
Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I sprinted for the door. I had just slammed it shut when reality hit me—the bus was pulling away!
“Wait! Stop!” I yelled, but it was over and done with. The bus had already pulled around the corner, and the sound of the engine was growing fainter by the second.
I looked back towards the house. Elaine was long gone, and there was no way I was catching up with that bus now. I sighed. Here I was on the first day of school with no ride. Shoot.
Defeated, I sank down onto the curb. School was too far away to walk and it wasn’t like I could call a friend to drive me in. I was completely and totally stuck.
“Hey!” I heard a shout from behind me. “Hey, Jonah!”
I turned around meekly and saw Travis ambling towards me. He must have seen my expression because he suddenly stopped short and sucked in a deep breath.
“Man, what’s wrong with you?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “You look like the world is coming to an end.”
“It is,” I sighed. “I missed the bus.”
Travis looked at me in stunned bewilderment. Then he began to laugh.
“Jeez, Jonah,” he gasped between bursts of laughter. “Just have Elaine drive you in.”
“She’s at work,” I stated flatly.
“Oh.” Travis thought for a second. “Hey wait…I could drive you in.”
I perked up at that last bit of news. I hadn’t known Travis had a car. Or drove, for that matter.
“Really?” I exclaimed. “I thought you were for bike riding and all that. You know, to save the earth or whatever.”
Travis was stroking his beard like some ancient philosopher. “Well,” he mused, “I think we can make an exception. I mean, you did miss the bus.”
I sprung up from the curb. Maybe the world wasn’t ending after all. “Thank you thank you thank you!” I felt like hugging the guy.
Travis instinctively took a step back. “S’okay. Here, let’s just see if the van will start up.”
With a flying leap, Travis cleared the front fence and landed in his yard. I followed suit. Travis’s yard was practically a jungle with all the overgrown brush. A lawnmower would never stand a chance.
After running into a couple branches and tripping over some roots, I finally caught up with Travis. I was just catching my breath when I saw my ride. And I knew I was in deep trouble.
Travis’s head was jutting out the window of an old, rusty hippie van and he was grinning from ear to ear. I, however, wasn’t. I was riding to school in a genuine hippie van, complete with flowers, peace signs, and messages “spreading the love”. Oh god.
“Believe it or not,” Travis yelled over the roar of the engine, “this hunk of metal still runs. I had it converted it to corn oil a few years back. It’s a lot better for the environment and handy when you’ve got some taters to fry!”
Oh god, I was riding to school in a corn-chugging, deep-frying hippie van.
“I think it’ll hold out till we get to school,” Travis continued, oblivious to my panic. “Hurry up and get in. You’re probably already late.”
I sighed and climbed in. It wasn’t as if I had other options, and I couldn’t turn Travis down. He had already started the engine and was singing something about the answer blowing in the wind.
I reached for the seatbelt, but there wasn’t one. Vibrating from the monstrous engine, I settled into the seat as best as I could. This was going to be a long ride.
Suddenly, I realized that Travis didn’t have a driveway. Or if he did have one, it’d been completely suffocated by dead weeds and brush.
I turned to Travis. “Um, how are we going to get out of your yard?”
His eyes were set in a fierce determination I had never seen before. “Well, Jonah,” he said gruffly. “We drive.”
And with that, Travis stomped down on the accelerator, mowing down all the plants in his path. The plants were tall, but they were thin and easy to trample. I was just about to relax, when I suddenly remembered: Travis had a front fence.
* * *
We crashed through the fence. I am not kidding. Travis didn’t even try to slow down, if anything, he pressed down harder on the accelerator. We skidded onto the road and turned a three-sixty. Then we headed towards school.
My eyes were wide; I could hardly believe what had just happened. Slowly, I craned my neck around and glanced out the back window. Half of Travis’s fence was in splinters. I turned back around and stared blankly through the windshield. This day just kept getting weirder and weirder.
Travis seemed to be having the opposite reaction. He was smiling broadly, and his shoulders were shaking in silent laughter. This guy really was a nut job.
We sat there in silence, one of us crazed and the other one stunned. Then Travis let out a yelp that nearly made me jump out of my skin.
“YAAAHHHOOO!” he howled, throwing his head back. Then he just exploded in laughter. I couldn’t help it—soon I was laughing just as hard. We swerved a couple cars and just kept on laughing. Then Travis planted his hand on the horn and let it blare. I didn’t jump that time; somehow, I was expecting it.
After a few long minutes, we recovered. Travis wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and spluttered. “I never really liked that fence to begin with. Too confining.”
“Yeah,” I replied weakly. That was all I could manage. I didn’t want to lose it again.
Travis made a sharp turn and slowly pulled up in front of a building that read RUNNY BROOK MIDDLE SCHOOL above the double doors. It was my new school, and I was in a hippie van. Needless to say, I wasn’t laughing anymore.
I shot a glance out the window and immediately wished I hadn’t. Kids were gathering in the parking lot and some of them had caught sight of the van. By the way they were sneering, I knew I was in for a hard time.
I sat up straighter in my seat, frowning. At first I had been nervous, but now I was mad. Who cared if I was in a hippie van? I had just driven through a fence! I would’ve bet my life that none of them had ever done that.
Travis pulled up to the curb and I slung my backpack over my shoulder. “Hey, thanks for the ride Travis. I mean it. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t shown up.”
Travis nodded to me, his lips quivering. I knew he was going to start laughing again, so I got out of there quick. Laughter is contagious, and I didn’t want to get out of the hippie van laughing like a crazy person. That would have been too much.
I started towards the building, ignoring the growing swell of snickers and whispers. However, it was kind of hard to ignore what happened next.
“Hey, flower child!” some moron shouted. “Nice ride!”
Laughter. I felt the color draining from my face but I wasn’t backing down.
“Do I look like a flower child to you?” I asked sarcastically. It was true; I didn’t look anything like a flower child. Well, I was pretty sure at least. I’d never actually seen one before.
“Well, no,” he admitted. “But your car…. are your parents hippies or something?”
Now it was my turn to laugh. Mom…a hippie? I pushed my way through the crowd and reached the front door. “Well, you can believe what you want to believe.”
“Wait—!”
The door slammed shut behind me.
* * *
I picked up my schedule and scrambled through the building, looking for my locker and my first period class. The rows of lockers seemed endless and all the hallways looked identical. I was beginning to think I was going in circles when the tardy bell rang. Great.
After ten more minutes of this, I finally found the classroom. I didn’t plan on leaving it to look for my locker in case I couldn’t find it again.
As I walked in, the entire class turned to stare at me, including the teacher. Well, the teacher wasn’t exactly staring, more like glaring. I got the feeling that she was one of those teachers who really hates kids.
Eventually, the teacher cleared her throat. “Class this is Jonah Woods, “she said coldly, still glowering at me. “He just moved here from Dallas and apparently thinks he’s better than us all. If he didn’t, he would have respected our rules and been here on time. Jonah, you may now take a seat.”
I stared at the teacher in disbelief. Was this lady for real? Reddening, I picked up my backpack and walked towards an empty desk. I hadn’t even sat down yet when she cleared her throat again.
“Jonah,” she said smugly. “I suggest that you read over the school rules before you leave the building today. If you weren’t so ignorant, you would know that all backpacks should be kept in lockers.”
Everyone turned around in their seats to look at me again. I could feel the back of my neck burning. Why couldn’t this teacher just leave me alone?
I was about to tell her that I had spent fifteen minutes looking for my locker, but didn’t. Anything I said would lead to scorn. So instead, I just nodded and slouched in my seat, more embarrassed than ever.
I didn’t learn anything that class period.
Well, actually, I did learn something. See, right before the bell rang, I felt something in my pocket. It was the letter Mom wrote to me just a week before she passed away.
Again, the familiar feeling of guilt began to bubble in the pit of my stomach. As I read over the Live Ten list, the emotion grew stronger and stronger until I made a connection.
Today, I had missed the bus and Travis drove me to school. In a hippie van. An old hippie van. An old hippie van from the sixties.
By some crazy coincidence, I had finished one of the things on the Live Ten list. Without even meaning to, I had done something from the past.
I'm sorry but I'm not. Doesn't mean your story is bad though.......it's actually well-written. Keep writing.
Other than that, I really liked it!! I can't wait to see more!