Darkest Trilogy: Asleep & Awaken Chapter 1.

CHAPTER 1.

Song : Death and All His Friends-- Coldplay

Harsh sunlight burned down on the state of Nevada, toasting more freckles onto my already spotted skin. I dug my fingers deep into the newly watered dirt, clawing the roots of the lettuce out of the ground.

A football game that Dad had insisted on watching blared from the open windows of the house and out into the crisp garden patch I was working in, tickling my ears before disappearing on the wind.

I tossed the last head of lettuce into the plastic bowl next to me and hopped up from my knees, straitening my tank top and dusting the dirt off my jeans before walking over to the tomato plants and plucking the ruby red ones off their vines.

Dad and Kiki refused to commit to a garden even when I promised to do all the work but since we never got over to the grocery store more than once a month, it was necessary.

“No! Pass it! He’s open!” Dad’s voice echoed out into the empty front yard and I rolled my eyes. His enthusiasm for sports was a favorite topic among our neighbors. Supposedly, you could hear him all the way in Las Vegas.

I checked my watch again--like I had every ten minutes ever since I woke up—and saw that I had about an hour to fix dad lunch and finish packing.

Plucking a few more cherry tomatoes off their vines and placing them in the bowl as well, I ran up the steps of the porch and through the open screen door.

I wasn’t exactly looking were I was going until it was to late and I clipped my side on the edge of couch and spilled some of vegetables. Annie—dad’s brittany—dove out of her bed, munched up the mess, and then looked up at me waiting for more.

“Who moved the couch?” I rubbed my side and scooted passed Annie into the kitchen while eying dad suspiciously. He grunted and pointed to the TV.

“Sorry, what was that?”

He grunted again and put a finger to his lips. Huffing, I dumped my bowl into the sink and turned on the water. Kiki came running down the stairs with half her hair in a pigtail and the other flapping behind her.

“Alex! I can’t put the rest up and Aunt Kelly doesn’t know how to do hair to save her life!” Kiki held up her glittery hairbrush and turned around so I could put the rest of her hair up. I pulled her thin blonde hair into another pigtail and wrapped a rubber band around it. Kiki—Or Carolina which was her real name but to much of a mouth full when she was younger—and I took after either one of parents so much that it was hard to tell we were sisters. Kiki with her silky blonde hair and glowing brown eyes just like “daddy” and me, with my onyx colored hair and sea foam green eyes. I supposed I looked like my mom but she had left when I was to young to remember quite what she looked like.

“So you’re going to leave it in pigtails for the rest of the year?” I handed her back her hairbrush and then started digging through the white washed cabinets for sandwich ingredients.

“No. Just how ever long they stay in.” She rolled her chocolate eyes at me and hopped up on the counter, watching me toss bread and turkey together.

“And then when they fall out I’ll stick in…a headband.” Kiki mumbled almost incoherently. I piled a mountain of cheetos on her plate along side her sandwich and slid it down the cluttered countertop.

“I was going to give you my headbands anyway Kiki, you didn’t have to sneak them out of my room.” She grimaced and looked down at her food, deciding not to say anything. I shrugged, chugging down my own sandwich with a grape soda and then placing two new pieces of bread on the empty plate.

“Dad! Do you want tomatoes?” I called from the kitchen, already slicing one of the bigger ones.

“Yeah!”

“Oh, now you talk.” I could hear dad sigh all the way in the living room and I snickered. Checking my watch again, I threw together another sandwich and ran it to the couch.

“We have to leave in twenty minutes Dad.” I reminded him and I handed him his plate.

“As soon as this quarter is over.”

“Dad! We have to leave before then!”

“Yeah, sure.” He turned his attention back to the TV screen where a commercial for diet coke was buzzing through the speakers.

“Twenty minutes.” I reminded again before running back to the kitchen and up the stairs to my room.

My room had always been pathetically empty for as long as I can remember. A bed and dresser were the only two pieces of furniture that sat on the abused wood floor and I liked it that way. The rest of the house was always so cluttered with ten generations of Orsinger family treasure so it was somewhat of a relief to have a very blank room to sleep in.

Though now, there were dozens of cardboard boxes stacked against the wall with old books and a fair amount of large stuffed animals that could double as pillows popping out from the boxes ripped corners. I couldn’t take any of this with me on the plane so Dad was sending it by snail mail in a couple weeks.

Hopefully I could go a month without Patterson’s Ultimate Guild To Anything as midnight reading material.

Not that I would be staying up until midnight. As far as I knew, boarding schools had curfews. A fact that I was dreading to face when I finally made it to Philadelphia.

It seemed odd—even to me—that I was transferring halfway across the states to go to a school that was no better or had anything more for me to gain than my old school in Nevada.

The only reason Dad happened to pick this school was that it was the cheapest and could take me in the middle of the semester.

Dad had gotten a job up in Reno as a rancher’s assistance which require him to stay the entire cattle herding season up there and since he couldn’t leave his fourteen and nine year old daughter’s alone for that long his solution was to send me to boarding school and Kiki to our Aunt Kelly’s to be home schooled.

My watch started beeping hyperactively, signaling it was time to leave. I speeded across the floor and grabbed my suitcase and a wire cage filled with pine shavings off my bed.

Turning on my heels, I ran out my door and down the stairs, feeling a tad guilty I didn’t stop to say goodbye to the house. I didn’t know if I would ever come back here.

I paused at the dinning room table, looking over Grandma Georgia’s vase collection and the wooden chairs paint spattered from Kiki’s last paint your own mug birthday party. Only now—when I was about to leave—did I realize I had never truly lived in this house. I hadn’t even left a mark! If you looked around you wouldn’t even know I had spent fourteen years in this house.

Dad honked the horn on the truck, sending my heart sputtering. I had to go. Quickly, before Dad could honk the horn again I reached down and scratched an “A” into the table with my fingernail. There, now unless somehow the table caught fire…

The horn blared again and I sprinted outside, practically busting out of the screen door before tossing my suitcase in the back along with Kiki’s boxes and then hopping into the front seat in the cage in my lap.

Kiki was squished in the almost non-existent back seat singing along to the radio station, her hot pink suitcase being used as a drum. Aunt Kelly had promised to bring Kiki back here next summer so she could see her friends so she didn’t have any problem leaving.

Neither did I. I wanted a change of scenery and the independent feeling being away from home would give me. Or at least, I would keep telling myself that.

“You know, for someone who kept nagging me to leave on time you sure were cutting it close.” Dad lectured as he speeded down our driveway.

I hung my arm out the window along with my head and listened to the wind rushing along my eardrums so I wouldn't have to hear the rest of his rant. I took one last look at my used to be home. The faded blue paint of the sagging two-story house with poison ivy crawling up the side that covered my window like spider’s web stuck out the most to me. I would miss this.

“Your just like your mother.” Dad continued to compare me to the woman I had never met but as we turned onto the highway his words were lost to the wind. He was right of course; who else could I be like? But I didn't feel obligated to listen to him today of all days, when I only had a few hours left of freedom and sun.

This was originally one page long so editing really did take a lot out and then add even more in. Tell me what you think! Also, please ignore any c’s that look like they should be a’s. They are supposed to be but my Microsoft word is messed up. I may still edit this a little more and change things up so it’s more grabbing. review!