Michael and Aine #1a

Chapter One - Never meet them, never irritate them

There are places, in which you should never find yourself. On the windowpane of a skyscraper. Preferably the highest story. There are things, which you should never do. Play around with knives, for instance. Or perhaps matches. Well, you get my point.

And then there are people, whom you should never meet. Nor irritate. Never, ever irritate them. Simple, yes? Well, not really

For some people, it seems, these three golden rules are meaningless. They appear to think that they are above them, that the restrictions do not apply to them. They are wrong.

Take my friend, Kayla. Wonderful person, really, but with the stupidest ideas. She used to like dares. She would do everything what someone dared her too. Within reason, of course. But Kayla’s reason was a bit different than that of a normal person.

One sunny afternoon, she was dared to take a walk in the old construction site at the outskirts of the city. They say that there was supposed to be a mall built there, but it was stopped at a dead end due to lack of funds. Now, such sites are highly dangerous, aren’t they? In case you didn’t know, they are.

But who cares. Kayla, who went there in alone, left it in an ambulance - someone had enough sense to call the emergency service after she was found unconscious in a pool of blood. Apparently, something fell on her head. Something heavy. Probably a few loose bricks.

She won, of course, but the people who dared her could tell her that only five days later, when the doctors announced that it was okay to visit her.

But that is beside the point. Kayla survived, learned her lesson. Some never had the chance do to do so. My parents, for example.

I was told that they died in a car crash. And, well, they did. I think it was my dad who was the driver. Or was it mom? I don’t know - I think I sort of erased what everyone told me from my mind. Well, almost everything.

They hit a tree.

On smooth, straight road, they hit a tree. It wasn’t even dark. No, it was a warm, sunny afternoon. The police was baffled until it turned out that they were driving almost three times faster than they should. Then the bafflement eased.

I remember being called out from class to the principal’s office. If you knew short, pudgy-faced Mr. White, you would know why I was more than a little nervous when I entered his office. What had I done this time? Even if I wasn’t a straight A student, I still managed to get passable grades. My behavior wasn’t that bad either, so what could he want? The answer knocked me off my feet. Literarily.

So we - my brother and I, that is - came to live with our aunt. Sweet person, truly, but when it came to take care of one handful of a five year old and his grief-stricken thirteen year old sister, she was clueless. I don’t think we helped her much, either. Poor dear.

With our parents we lived in Colorado. Aunt live in Arizona. As by that time Michael and I had developed a panic fear of anything that had four wheels, we flew. I remember that it was a horrible flight, with visions of the airplane crashing to the ground every few seconds or so. It didn’t; somehow we landed safely in Arizona. Tough luck.

Aunt Claire was almost twenty five when he took us in. I have no idea who gave her custody. Out of his or her mind, the person was, I think. Because who was Claire? Our closest family relative, yes, being my grandmother’s sister’s daughter, but also a carefree, full of energy young person who did not need a set of children to take all the light-heartedness away from her.

But, as I said, Auntie tried. Tried to make us feel like at home far more harder than, if truth to be said, I would. Then, after a month or two, she gave up. I would too, with Michael refusing to eat and me staring blankly at the walls.

People, however, get over tragedies. They stand up, For some it takes longer, others recover quicker. While I was of the first kind, Michael was of the second. Soon he couldn’t even recall the color of mom’s eyes. Admittedly, I couldn’t remember them either, but that’s what pictures are for. I would stare at them for hour, whereas Michael would only see two strangers of no interest.

Life went on, time passed.

But you’re wondering, of course, what this has to do with the three golden rules. Kayla broke the first, my parents the second. What of the third?

Claire broke it. She broke all three, if one thinks about a bit longer,

----

Okay, so this, apparently, is what Iolayne reads. This is kind of new to me, because I normally write stiff in the medieval ages, etc. You get the picture.