Well, let me say this definitely is not my first piece of fiction, I've written twenty thousand times before this. I never seem to finish a story and the story I loved the most was lost somewhere on my old flash drive, so even though I was planning to finish it, I can't anymore. So I had a brilliant idea and decided to write darker than I have written before-the most angst ridden thing I've written was a Harry Potter fan fiction in which Hermione was taken advantage of by Draco. And mind you, I was twelve when I wrote that. And it was pretty dark.
Tell me your honest opinion on this-I've written up to chapter two so far and this is just my introduction.
Here goes.
The Start of It All
“Your mother…she’s…died, in battle. I…I’m very sorry, Miss Romano.”
I could feel the phone sliding from my hand as if it was happening all over again. The words of Colonel Elroy still hit me like a rock in an erupting volcano.
Everything outside the window of my dad’s car reminded me of my mother. The blue sky and her song about it when I was young. The road, and whenever she saw road kill, she’d claim it needed a proper burial and beg my dad to stop the car so we could have one…every little thing…so many memories. Too many memories. I had to leave my hometown, and thoughts of her, behind.
I was eleven when my mom, Bethany Jean Carson-Romano, announced to our dinner table that she had enlisted herself in the United States Navy. She had been in the navy in her earlier years as an adult and she felt she had to serve her country once more, she told us. It was hardly a year after the World Trade Centers collapsed, almost in front of our eyes-from the top of my old New Jersey home, you could see the New York City skyline…hardly a year.
Four days after my twelfth birthday in July of 2002, we got the fateful call that sent my mother away from her happy days of summer gardening, visiting the ever-beautiful city, and walking the dogs with her only daughter. My mom was being drafted into the War in Iraq.
From then on, things were different, but that was expected. My brother, Dakota, who was ten at the time, still didn’t know exactly what mom was doing, where she was going. She was in the troop that came back every winter for a month; December, and every summer for two weeks; luckily, it was July. After a couple of years, when Dakota realized what was going on, he would always cry when he saw her, not talk to her for a week, and then come back and end up watching a Christmas movie on the couch with her as if he was little once again.
It was in September of this year, 2005, after my sixteenth birthday, that the home phone was ringing when I got into the house. I picked it up and let it fall out of my hands after I heard the words. A stab to my heart…
“Indiana. Indiana!”
I was jerked out of my thoughts by my father. Apparently, he had stopped the recently bought pickup truck at a gas station and I could see fourteen-year-old Dakota coming out of the small square building, holding two sodas.
“We’ve stopped. You’ve been sleeping since we got on the road three hours ago.”
“What time is it?” I glanced at the clock on the dashboard-almost nine a.m. Had I really been sleeping?
“Yep, almost nine. You wanna drive?”
Dad leaned into my open passenger window-just then I noticed the keys dangling in front of my face. “You want me to?” Dad nodded at me and tossed the keys in my lap. I transferred myself to the driver’s side and watched my solemn dad walk into the stop-and-go store to use the bathroom and Dakota climbed up into the passenger seat.
“What’s up with you, kid?” I asked Dakota, ruffling his mangy head of jet-black hair that matched mine.
“Nothin’. It’s weird leaving Jersey behind…” He looked out the window gloomily as dad opened the backseat door and got in.
“Making me stay back here?! Not enough leg room. Damn kids,” dad joked from the leather backseat. “Just kidding. Drive safe there, Indi, I’m going to attempt to sleep. And buckle up, kid.”
Dakota, or Kody, obeyed dad and the seatbelt clicked as I revved up the truck and drove out of the parking lot. After a few minutes of driving in silence, we could hear dad begin to snore. Kody reached over and tuned the radio to a pop station and rested his head back on the seat. When I could hear Dakota’s breath even out and I assumed he was asleep, I changed the radio with one hand to whatever station I could find that didn’t have a shrill beat in it and sighed in contentment once I reached the toll to get onto the freeway.
“License?” asked the toll attendant, looking bored with herself. I reached over into the cup holder to where my shiny New Jersey license was sitting and showed it to her. She nodded and I handed over a dollar, finally feeling good about speeding down the freeway, my little used Audi that mom and dad got me for my sixteenth birthday being towed behind us.
When I passed the sign that read “You are now leaving New Jersey” an hour later, I had to do all I could to not cry.
