Chapter 1
It had been somewhere near three months since I had started living in there. My grandmother was taking care of me at the time, but most of the time I had I was spending at the school anyways since I was making friends finally.
I was always with them, the four of us were inseparable. Candy who was always cracking jokes and always trying to make others happy. What she didn’t have in brainpower she held up with her undying will to have fun with everyone around her. John was probably one of the bravest kids I had ever known. He was willing to stand up for the smaller kids even when the bully was over twice his weight. Because of this he became labeled as 'The Saviour' or 'The Hero' from most of the younger kids. Finally, there was Star. She had long dyed red hair and brown eyes that had little sparkles of bright green. She was like John in the way that she would stick up for the younger ones, but she did it in a different way. She would typically leave the bullies with black eyes and bruises all over them. Occasionally she would walk up and just scare the bullies into leaving the others alone. There were a few times when we didn’t get along but most of the time we were all playing around in our school doing stupid things. Everything was fine. I was happy and so were my friends, or so I had thought. At the time, I was too naive to realize that Star would often come to school in the same clothes over and over again, or that Candy would show up to school with bruises and cuts on her body. I was too naive to figure out that John was living with his mother who was a drunk and that he was involved in one of the biggest gangs in Canada. But all of the things I had thought I knew and everything I had grown accustomed to was about to change drastically.
I hear a faint beeping sound like that of an alarm. I shoot up suddenly realizing that the faint beeping sound was none other than my alarm telling me I was almost late for school again. I quickly got dressed and rushed out the door almost forgetting my backpack. I had almost been late for the third time this week alone.
I got to my class just as the bell rang. The teacher walked up to the board and started writing the vocab words that we are supposed to be studying this week on the right side, directly underneath her neatly written name, 'Mrs. Mellia'. She turned around and started to talk right before the door was opened again by another student who was late. It was John. He looked as usual on a Friday morning, hungover. Since his mother was a drunk, he was forced to start earning money for himself about a year before I arrived. 'John, sit down and please don’t be late again.' kindly requested Mrs. Mellia. John walked over to his desk and sat down slowly only to slam his head onto his desk and fall asleep.
Due to him working with the local gangs in order to maintain a constant flow of food to his table, he was often up all night drinking and partying with the members and going to their meetups or races down by Lake Ontario. Mrs. Mellia shook her head and started to speak to us about how important it was that we paid attention in class so that we could become successful in the future like she always did every day. John did this. As usual, I looked over to Candy. Her and Star were having a talk about something probably to do with their cameras. Star loved taking pictures of amazing things. She was a natural photographer who loved doing anything picture related. She would run around setting up perfect pictures using anything and anyone, even if it was random strangers. She didn’t care as long as it looked good.
Candy looked at me and started giggling. I cast quick a glance at Star only to see that she had the same blatantly confused look on her face as I did. When it came time for lunch break so I got up and walked over to them. 'No, don’t tell him!' Candy shrieked as I walked over to them. Star and John started laughing so loud that most of our classmates started turning their heads. 'What’s going on?' I asked as I sit down on the desk next to Star. Star responds 'Don’t worry about it, Jay'. We decided to go out to eat lunch so we all went a few blocks down the road to our favorite cafe that we ate at basically every day. The last few hours of that school day faded into my memory as the last day I would ever live as a regular kid.
When I got home that night I found all my stuff packed and my grandmother had told me that my mother who sent me up to live with my grandmother originally so that she could try to get rid of her problems so I wasn’t affected by them had stopped giving my grandmother money to support me. I was horrified. I called my mother and every time I called I reached the same voice mail, the voice that haunted my dreams for weeks to follow, 'Hi, you reached Vena! Sorry I can’t come to the phone right now but please leave a message after the beep and I will return your call as soon as possible!'. I called her more times than I could count and each time the voicemail I left her was more and more swallowed by the sounds of me crying and sobbing, trying to speak. Finally my grandmother told me I could stay at the house for the night but in the morning I would have to leave. I knew that it wasn’t her fault and I knew that she had to do it so she would be able to live without having to return to work at her old age.
I woke up in the morning about two hours before school and went to my grandmother’s room to say goodbye but when I walked in I saw her asleep in her bed with her home phone in her hand. I had already guessed what she was doing until the early hours of the morning but I had to check the phone just to make sure so I gave the phone a final check before leaving the house. A thirty and three calls out. A thirty-three calls to my mother that were unanswered. Thirty-three times that she had the ability to change her mind and yet, she never did. I pulled the blanket over my grandmother and grabbed my backpack filled with the stuff I needed for school and a few changes of clothing. Finally, I walked into the kitchen and cooked my grandmother eggs, toast, and ham. It was all neatly on a plate with a little note left next to it explaining that I knew it wasn’t her fault and I was thankful to get to be with her for the time I was. Then with a final 'I love you, grandma'. I walked out of the apartment to start a new life, not knowing how long I would survive, or if I even would.
For a few days, I was showing up to school much earlier than I normally would, partially due to the fact that I was sleeping in back alleyways for most of the nights. I arrived at school one day to see Star walk into the girl’s locker room in what looked like a uniform for a restaurant. I waited outside the locker room until she came out. When she finally came out I looked at her and stood up. Her hair was wet. 'Hey, was that a work uniform you were just in?' I asked. 'Uhm, please don’t tell anyone!' she quickly responded. I was confused why she was trying to hide it but simply agreed and left it at that. At lunch that day I asked her what her parents did for a living. 'They aren’t around anymore which is why I have my job at the restaurant,' she responded. I thought for a second and then looked at her and said, 'Who do you live with?'. She looked away from the table and mumbled something I couldn’t hear. Again, I asked 'Who do you live with?'. She finally looked up at me and said, 'I live with no one.' It all made sense now. Why I saw her coming into school wearing a uniform for work. Why I saw her always be the last person to leave school. Why she had the same look on her face that I usually hid behind my fake smiles and fake laughs. I explained my situation to her and asked her if it was ok if I started living with her as long as I helped pay rent. She agreed with a smile on her face that I had never seen before. It was similar to the smiles that she gave when she hung out with John, Candy, and I, but somehow it was different.
After school, we all sat around the lunch tables outside by the tree and talked while being stupid like usual. When it came time to leave, however, something was different. We didn’t have four people looking at each other and giving them hugs like it might be the last time they see each other. Instead, John walked home with Candy and I walked with Star to her house. Little did I know that her house was a one bedroom, one bathroom, tiny little apartment right above a cafe. We got into her house and she said 'Make yourself at home, I have to go get ready for work'. I walked around her little apartment for an hour or two then looked in her pantry for food. She had only instant microwave food and not very much of it. I was assuming she also ate downstairs in the cafe she was working at.
I looked through my things and got took my last twenty dollars out to the store that was six blocks away inside the small store complex we called the Bubble Plaza since there was always bubble machines on at the toy store. I grabbed a pack of pasta and a container of Alfredo, checked out, and walked home. Star still wasn’t back by the time I got upstairs so I started to cook.
It was nine o’clock when I heard the door open and Star walked into the living room to see the crappy wooden table with two neatly set plates on it with two drinks and finally a seven-year-old sitting on the floor next to the table waiting patiently for his best friend to come home from work so that they could eat. 'You could’ve eaten without me,' she said, putting her bag down against the wall in the small living entry hallway. 'I didn’t though cause we are a family and this is our first dinner together' I responded. She looked at me, laughed, and said 'Okay, then let’s eat because I am starving'. We had our amazing home cooked meal which I could tell from her face she hadn’t had anything tasting this good in a while at least. She took a shower as I cleaned up the kitchen and when she was done showering I was finally able to shower in a regular bathroom, not in a locker room. When I got out of the shower I went straight to bed and about an hour later Star came into the room and laid down on the other side of the bed. At about three in the morning, I woke up and she had her arm around me. I turned over and saw her sleeping face. I think that moment was the moment I completely fell in love with her but I knew I could never tell her. At least not while we were still so young.
For the next few weeks, we were living happily and attending school like nothing had happened. Us living together and even being abandoned was our secret. However as fast as things can go good, they can get so much worse. After two weeks I still hadn’t found a job willing to hire me which was a small problem since we were eating twice as much food and using money that should go to rent. I skipped school and searched for two days straight looking for a job. On the last day, I searched I was giving up and I didn’t know how I would be able to go back to her and tell her I still wasn’t able to help her pay. As I walked down the alley that was a shortcut to our little apartment I heard something behind me. Suddenly, a cloth went over my face. I smelt a familiar smell before, Thunk. 'That’s strange… everything is fading… why is everything getting black?' I thought as I felt my body hit the floor slowly fading out of consciousness.
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