I start stories by charters first. Jenica and Kyle were two people I came up with a long time ago and I've put them in various stories to see what works best for them. This is one of my failed attempts. Please comment because I'm using this as a guide for my next attempt.
It took all of Jenica's will power not to throw up as the plane descended. Her mother and father sat on either side of her. Her father pressed himself against the window as much as he could in case Jenica lost it completely. Her mother was a little bit more understanding about the situation, she handed Jenica a barf bag and gently rubbed her back.
“Why couldn’t we just follow the movers here,” her father opened the window flap and looked out as the clouds passed by.
“You know perfectly well why, Jenica wouldn’t be able to handle being in the car for that length of time,” her mother said.
“I thought that crack pot doctor fixed her,” he huffed out so angry he for-got to cling to the window to avoid Jenica’s possible sickness.
“She’s not a faucet you don’t just fix it.” Her mom gave her father one of those looks that she gave to her kindergarten class when they misbehaved.
Normally Jenica would have been irritated by them talking about her as if she weren’t there but she was too nauseous to care at this point. The couple across from them probably on their honeymoon looked over as if they thought they were crazy.
“I paid that women for three months of service and all she can do is pre-scribe her medicine. I could have just bough her something from Wal-Mart. `
“She’s a licensed doctor don’t belittle her like that,” Her mother said with irritation.
They had never fought before Jessica’s accident, now everything got them fussing about something, which just increased Jessica’s anxiety. She had enough to worry about as it was. Now she had to add the failure of her parent’s marriage.
Jenica pulled a piece of gum from her purse and chewed on it fiercely as her ears began to pop. Of course it didn’t work but it got her mind off of her feuding parents.
“Mom how far is the new house from the airport.” She interrupted by offering them both pieces of gum.
“Oh not long at all thirty minutes at most, do you think you can last that long.” Her mother took the gum and put it in her purse she never had a prob-lem with airplanes and ear popping.
“I guess so,” she sighed and began to chew faster as she thought about the car that she would soon be in. For three months Doctor Sars had put her though extensive therapies to weaken her fear of cars. A fear she ad gained after a twenty car pile up claimed the life of her boyfriend best friend and brother. Out of twenty-nine people she was the sole survivor. The therapy had helped she didn’t go into shock when ever she saw a car anymore, but she still couldn’t be in one for too long. And she did have the occasional bad dream. Al-though she had never actually seen a Justin’s body she pictured his body burning calling out for her, the image increased her sickness and she heaved into the bag.
“We’re like two minutes from landing couldn’t you have held that,” her father said pulling back into his corner.
When the plane landed Jenica got up as quickly as possible grabbing her stuff and moving for the door, her parents dawdling behind.
After they retrieved the rest of their bags they went to the rent desk. The lady there had a People magazine in front of her face.
“Can we rent a car preferably a big one like a SUV or something?” Jenica’s mom had very little patients for people that took their job lightly. She was the kind of person that judged people and their lives based on how she saw them at work.
The women took her information and then gave them a set of keys. “This goes to the red SUV in parking space fourteen.” She returned to her magazine before they had even left the counter, and Jenica’s mother mumbled about it until they found the car.
Jenica got in the backseat carefully fighting off her memories of that night as best as she could. When she was buckled in she maneuvered her long black hair so it covered her face so she didn’t have to look out the window, and like Doctor Sars had taught her she counted. She reached 4,444 when the car finely came to a stop.
We’re here,” her mother shook to see if she was asleep, which was silly because there was no way Jenica could ever be calm enough to fall asleep in a car.
Jenica got out as carefully as she got in breathing in deeply. She helped her father bring stuff in to the new house. It was smaller then their old house. Her mother was a teacher and her father was an engineer for NASA. So they had lived in a mansion sized house. This one was a small ranch style home, with a white picket fence and a wrap around porch, it looked like something the cast of little house on the prairie would live in. She didn’t really care a home was a home to her. It was her brother that was the spoiled one. The house was already filled with their stuff and her moms blue Honda parked in the driveway. All their boxes were lined up at the front doors.
“I put labels on them so they could put them in their respective rooms, her mother said with a scowl. She kicked the boxes aside so they could get in through the blocked door.
Jenica grabbed her few boxes and searched for her room. There were three rooms the biggest one was her parents leaving her to decide between the two remaining rooms. The first had no window and a small closet but the room itself was bigger and had its own private bathroom. The other was smaller had a window and a walk in closet that had enough room to put in a sitting area, but had to go down the hall for the bathroom. She decided on the room without the window so she wouldn’t have to look down on the street and its passing cars. She unpacked her boxes and set up everything, arranging her books on their shelves making her bed. Filing her closet and setting up her computer and TV. She did this all in forty minutes and decided to help her parents out and empty the other boxes downstairs. She flattened her empty boxes and went downstairs to unpack the other stuff. This house was much smaller then their previous house so she had to pick and choose what se was going to unpack.
“What would I do without my little worker bee, her mother kissed her forehead as she took her luggage up the master bedroom.
“Yeah could you walk down to the supermarket and get us some food,” Her father ruffled her hair.
“Of course.” Jenica tossed a snow globe of New York into the trash not wanting to remember the awful place that took away her life.
Jenica was pleasantly surprised to find that everything was in walking distance, he school the store were not to far from each other. She made her way to the Food Lion crossing the street as fast as she could, not caring if she J walked or not. She got to the store and seized the last cart hoping no one needed more then she did. She went down each isle and put things in the cart she thought her family would enjoy, which was hard because her family was picky. She got a lot of different things so they could have a choice and went to the counter.
The cashier looked to be about her age his hair was died green and gelled into spikes with an earring in his left ear.
“You’re new to town,” it wasn’t a question.
“Yes how did you know”, she asked pulling out her money from her purse
“Charlottesville Virginia is a small town, I know everyone by face and name.” He rang up her stuff while still looking at her. “My name’s Max, what’s yours, he offered his hand for her to shake.
“Jenica, it’s weird I know.”
“My name is short for Maxamoff and my last name is Wilds. Who am I to judge? Mine sounds like a comic book villain’s name.
Jenica laughed a sound she hadn’t heard in months. It scared her for a second. She handed him the money. He paused as the receipt printed out. “So where are you going to school.
“The one just up the road, what is it called.” She bit her lip trying to re-member her conversation with her mother when she first told them they were going to move, but she was to out of it back then to pay attention.
“Monticello High school that’s where I go,” Max said.
“Really is it any good.” Jenica looked at her bags in horror as she realized she had bought too much for her to take home in one trip.
“Well as good as a school gets.” He seemed to notice her distraction. “Is there a problem, he asked.
“I walked here there’s no way I can carry all this stuff back.”
“Do you want me to drive you to your house?”
“No.” She surprised him with her cry of protest. “I mean I need to walk, so could you walk me.”
“If that’s what you want,” he picked up more then half the bags and she got the rest. “I’m taking my break,” he yelled to the other cashiers.
“Not to pry, but why do you have to walk,” he asked raising his eye-brows.
“Well I have appoxaphobia, a fear of cars, sometimes I even have panic attacks when I’m in a car,” she said truthfully.
He scrutinized her as if trying to decide if she was joking, when he realized she wasn’t he huffed. “Well that sucks.”
“Yeah it does,” she again crossed the rode quickly not waiting for the walk sign to change. Max had to jog to catch up.
“I’ve taken Psychology these things aren’t genetic some kind of dramatic experience must have happened to do that to you. Again not to pry, but what was it.”
“I was the sole survivor of a twenty car pile up,” she said in a matter of fact way.
He looked surprised but continued to question. “Did you lose anyone close to you?”
“I lost my brother, boyfriend, and my best friend.”
“I’m sorry, that puts my Maxamof issues into perspective, he joked.”
Again she laughed. “Thank you for the sorry and the laugh.” She came to her door unlocked it and put her bags down taking the ones from him and put them down.
“Well the sorry was free but you’re going to owe me for that laugh.” He put his hands in his pocket. “Don’t worry you’ll like it here, the people here are nice, I’ll introduce you to my friends tomorrow. You’ll probably like my girlfriend Star. She’ll take you under her wing and show you the ropes much better then I could.”
She smiled “Really thank you for everything and I guess I’ll see you to-morrow.” She closed the door as he left waving.
He was a little nosey, but overall a nice guy she was lucky to meet a friend before a school even started. She shivered at the word. She remembered what the people had said to her after her accident.
“You were so lucky.”
There was nothing lucky about what happened to her she thought, nothing lucky at all. But she did wonder how she survived, she had watched the video tape of the accident and had pinpointed where she was tossed from the car and she couldn’t understand how it was possible that she had survived. All laws of physics and anatomy were against it. She pushed these thoughts from her head as the fear of that night began to creep up on her.
