Give Love a Chance~ Chapter 1

I was born and raised in a summer haze on Mississippi mud in a town called Nullepart. Nullepart, a town that was too small for a map, where everyone knew exactly who to call to get you grounded, and a secret was a foreign concept. Barely anything happened there. Babies were born, kids went to school, teenagers got in trouble, and adults got married, grew old, and died. That’s all that ever happened. Yet, no one ever left Nullepart. Occasionally people would come live there, but these people were considered outsiders for their first twenty-five years of life there at least.

My family had been living in Nullepart for over a hundred years, and thanks solely to my brothers, would probably still be living in the same house a hundred years from now. By then I would be long gone.

In Nullepart, despite the fact it was the twenty-first century, all women did was cook, clean, gossip, go to United Methodist Women’s Council meetings, and maybe teach. The only woman in town with a real career, Ms. Williams, was ridiculed and outcast from the rest of Nullepart woman’s society. That’s why I had always wanted to get out. I wanted to travel the world, write poetry, and actually live. Not raise kids, go to boring meetings, and gossip with elderly people.

I often wondered why I had to have been born in this place and time. I would have been much better off in the renaissance, when my creativity would have been appreciated, not hidden from the Women’s Council. But the day I met him, I realized why I was living here and now, and why things were the way they were. That day everything changed.

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The first day of school was a hot day in August, as usual. Usually I would have complained, but this year I was starting high school, which meant I got to leave Nullepart eight hours a day, five days a week because Nullepart only had an elementary and middle school. For high school we had to go to the neighboring town of Bonne, which was about half an hour from Nullepart and an hour outside of Jackson.

It was the first morning in months when all eleven people in my family were in the kitchen for breakfast together. At the head of the table was my father with my younger brother, Jordan, beside him in a high chair. On the right side of the table were Chase, Gabe, Max, and Sam, who ranged in age from three to nine. On the other side was Will, Edward, Bobby, and myself, we ranged from eleven to seventeen. My mother was by the stove cooking enough pancakes to feed the whole United States army.

“Megan, come bring these to the table and make sure your brothers don’t kill each other trying to get them.” Mom said.

“Yes, mom,” I said. I grabbed the plate and slid back into my seat, grabbing three for myself because once they touched the table; they were at the mercy of the boys.

Sure enough, three seconds later, there was one pancake remaining on the plate and Max and Gabe were going to war over it.

“I should get it! I’m better than you!” Max yelled.

“No you’re not!” Gabe spat back.

“Yes I am!”

“No you’re not!”

“Well I'm older! I should get it!”

“No, since you are older I should get it because I have had pancakes less than you have!” Gabe reasoned. He was quite the negotiator, even at five years old.

“Actually, I'm the oldest so I should get it.” Will said, as he grabbed the last pancake, dunked it in syrup, and shoved it into his mouth.

Max and Gabe watched, stunned, as their precious pancake was stolen from them, then broke into tears. “Mama! Will took our food!” they screamed in unison.

“William Martin! What have I told you about taking things from your younger brothers?”

“Mom! I'm 17; I am not going to sing the song.” Will groaned as Max and Gabe started a chorus of the sharing song.

“It’s always more fun, to share with everyone. It’s always more fun to share with everyone.” They chanted endlessly.

“Just get to school. You too, Megan. You do not want to be late for your first day of high school.” My mother said over Max and Gabe’s song, which the rest of my brothers under age 13 had joined in on.

“Yes ma’am.” We said at the same time. We grabbed our old backpacks from the living room and headed to the bus stop.

The bus stop was a few miles from our house. Everyone we past stopped us and said hello and asked about mother and father. By the time we made it to the bus stop, it was 8 o’clock.

There were several kids waiting there. Will automatically went join his friends, leaving me in the dust. I knew better than to try to talk to him so I went find April Knight, my best friend.

April and I were total opposites. She was the perfect Nullepart girl; blonde, tan, sophisticated, positive, talkative, know it all, with the voice of an angel. That was how I had met her, I write songs for her to sing in the seasonal concerts. While she was the Women’s Council’s definition of amazing, I was their definition of a lost cause. I was quiet, head in the clouds, blunt, and stubborn. I would never be perfect in their eyes. Then again, I didn’t want to be.

As usual, April made me look totally underdressed. She was in a pink sundress with her blonde hair in bouncy curls and more sparkly makeup than they used in a movie, while I was in ripped jeans, a tight fitting gray tee with Mickey mouse on it, and sneakers with my hair in my face and only mascara and eye liner on. She looked like a ray of sunshine while I looked dark and dreary. Not emo or Goth or anything like that, just dark.

“Meg!” April called, walking over quickly and trying not to lose her balance in the new heels she had on.

“Hey April,” I replied, my voice much less enthusiastic than hers.

 “Are you excited for high school? I know I am! I have always wanted to go to Bonne. I heard they have a real inside mall there! Like our strip mall is nice, but I have always wanted to go to a real mall! Do you want to go after school? There is a bus that goes back at five if you want to…” April began and didn’t finish until the bus came.

When I got on the bus, I felt like I was in first or sixth grade again because April and I were shoved into a seat on the front row. As usual, we would have to work our way back to the seats where people who mattered sat. Honestly, I didn’t care where we sat, as long as I got a window seat.

I cracked a smile for the first time that day as we drove down Main Street. Just knowing I was getting away from it all made me smile. I wouldn’t have to see the tiny old strip mall, the dusty old church, or the grease covered dinner for a full 10 hours, a freedom I had been dreaming of forever.

I had never left Nullepart, not even on vacation. My parents always talked about going to Disney World or something, but they always had another kid before we could. So the thought of leaving didn’t make me sad at all, the thought of returning did.

As soon as we got on the highway, April started babbling again. Since we had been friends since we were ten, I had the art of tuning her out mastered. Instead, I stared out the window and looked at the little white crosses along the side of the road.

I didn’t count them or anything like that, I already knew how many there were; too many. Instead I liked to look at the flowers and decorations, and guess things about the person. Like if they had a lover, or if they were a child, or if someone just put a cross there and forgot about the cross and the person. I looked at the names too, just to see if I recognized any of them. Whether I recognized them or not, I still bowed my head and said a silent prayer for the person. It didn’t matter to me if it was their fault or not. Either way, the person was too young to die. Everyone is too young to die.

“Megan! Look! Look! Look! Look!” April said, violently shaking me out of the clouds.

“What!” I said, probably too loudly.

“You can see Bonne!”

Sure enough, when I turned back to the window, there was a sign that said ‘Welcome to Bonne, Mississippi’. We drove into a town that made me wait for someone to yell “April fools!” It looked exactly like Nullepart. They had a small family owned grocery store, a hodge podge of family owned businesses, and a McDonalds. They did have an indoor mall, like April said, but not really anything else.

Yet, every freshman in the bus was acting like we had just driven into New York. They were screaming and cheering. I pitied them. This was probably the farthest they would ever get from Nullepart.

We drove until we reached a cluster of red brick buildings with a sign that said ‘Bonne Public High School’ out front. There were several yellow buses like ours, each spilling out kids. It was easy to tell which kids were freshmen. They were the only excited ones. Everyone else only seemed closed to as excited when they saw their friends they hadn’t seen all summer.

As soon as I got off the bus, I made sure to lose April in the crowd. I carefully weaved my way out of the crowd and then found my way into the closest building to the bus, just to get away from the reuniting seniors and crazy younger classmen.

When I got into my homeroom class, Mrs. Kosh’s class, I saw I wasn’t the only one with that idea. The room was crowded with freshmen introducing each other, forming clichés, and doing the other thing normal happy teen things. I, being the non-happy teen I was, I went go sit in the back of the room by myself.

Not surprisingly no one came talk to me. I simply sat alone in the back of the classroom for 15 minutes until the bell rang. During that time I noticed everything about the room. There were 13 kids in there, including myself, from Nullepart. The other 12 were from Bonne. The classroom was covered in plants and cheesy posters all about writing and grammar, making it obvious that this was a English classroom.

When the bell finally rang, everyone flopped down into a seat, yet still I had no one on either side of me and no one from Nullepart was within 3 rows from me. It was obvious that high school would be exactly like life in Nullepart, I was an outcast and that would never change.

Mrs. Kosh was a strict middle aged woman who looked like it was her goal in life to kill each and every one of us. She harshly told us the rules and spent her time going into the details of the punishment for breaking each of them.

By the time she finished, I had my head on my desk and was half asleep. She began to call roll when the door creaked open and I heard a simultaneous gasp from the class.