Novel chapter one – It Starts

 It starts and there was a flash. We swam onto land and grew legs, we grew out of our hair and we grew higher. We made fire and eventually building and bridges. We made roads and motorways, and we filled them with vehicles. We filled the roads and vehicles with rules and regulations. All these rules and regulations still didn’t protect her and her green Hyundai being hit on a motorway by a ten ten metre long truck and  this is where we began our story.

The man’s eyes are puffy and bloodshot; he stares at me whilst telling his sob story, all of us in a nice neat circle sobbing about our sad little lives.  About how much we miss our loved ones, or will miss them“Thank you Jeff “the leader Says, the group begins to clap, I join in. The group leader turns to me, “hello, it seems we have a new comer today”. They all look to me, most of them eyes shrink wrapped in tears, they’re waiting for my answer, how do I start these thing?

”hi… um my name is Alex”.  I start.

“Hello Alex” the group respond almost in unison. What will I tell them, I haven’t had a great tragedy in my life, no molesting babysitters or dead idols. My whole reasoning for being here seems so premature. There wide sad eyes waiting for my swan song of pity, “sorry I have to go” I rush out of the room that I have no business being in.

As I walk along the Chicago pavement the autumn leaves crunch under my feet. My thoughts returned to the group. Their relatives were dead or in the last days of their life. My mum is just in a coma, its not a death sentence.  The doctors say she is stable and making a good recovery. My misery seemed relatively underwhelming. There is no guarantee she is going to die, there is no guarantee she isn’t, but I dont like to think about that.

I see my friends walking down the hill, Matt and Diego my two and only real friends in the world. I speak the pleasantries with many more people but these are my real friends and the only two people I’ve told about the accident with. Diego is the self-imposed leader of our three standing musketeer group, he has a lot of the qualities a good leader should have . He is over confident, slightly arrogant and handsome. Diego’s heritage is completely American; his foster parents thought it was a cute name. When we were younger he hated the name as it stood him out from the crowd, he loves it now for that very reason. He states that standing out gives him an advantage, ’If people remember your name and you’re not some boring drone of the consumer driven bullshit that is life, then you stand out, and the crowd of vapid consumers love those that stand out.’ One of Diego’s many speeches he has given Matt and me, advice he likes to call it but most of the time its rambling about bullshit.

Matt, he’s a little more mysterious, where Diego will shout out his inner thoughts, Matt will whisper snippets, chosen extracts. For instance I was trying to flick a bottle caps into a tin can yesterday matt says to me

“you should keep hold of those bottle caps, the bank will be lining their vaults with them soon” I have no idea what this meant but matt made himself laugh. Matt should have a good collection of bottle caps as he is bordering on being an alcoholic, I wonder if you can be classes as an alcoholic if you’re not legally allowed to drink but our group has never had a problem with that as matt looks like a man in his mid-thirties, with his lanky frame and lengthy dark hair and fully formed beard.

As I walk along the grey cement street Diego comes running at me his trademark sly smirk on his face as he shout to me

”hey sperm sack how was the daily depression group?” Ever since Diego found out about my mum’s accident he has tried to lighten my mood at attempts of humour, sometimes it’s irritating but I know he means well so I try to play along.

“Grim and boring as ever “I replied whilst wearing a fake grin. Matt comes walking down the street one hand in his pocket his other hand holding a cigarette to his mouth as he’s taking a drag from it. Diego stops in front of me and takes a quick breath.

“what are you guys doing here?“I question.

 “well we where getting bored waiting for you, so as usual I had a great idea . Why don’t we go down and embarrass the fucker in front of his new dying and dull friends”. Matt stops by the pair of us and looked to me “I was also bored... and curios of how he was going to embarrass you, so I tagged along”

“fair enough“ I replied.

The three of us start walking to the shack, a small wooden shed hidden behind an electric museum, it is cold, wet and smells, but we found it seven years ago. Matt and I met Diego when he was trying to set light to the place and it became the place where we hang out ever since. We have never shown it to or told another soul about it. it hides behind an old almost abandoned electric musuem, under a fallen oak tree its thick branches draping it in leafs hiding it from passers-by.

I enter first. Inside the shack there are two bean backs and an old sofa with a single spring peeking out from the middle cushion. In the middle of the room is a small pool of water probably from last night’s rain. Taking sips from the pool of water is a small squirrel. I clap to scare the rodent and it rushes out through one of the several foot wide holes in the shack walls. Matt and Diego come through the front door.

 I lean on one of the wet walls making a feeble attempt to make paper cranes. Matt and Diego are smoking cigarettes on the lime green sofa debating the pros and cons of rolling cigarettes to buying standard packs. Both of them have smoked for a couple of years now but I have never tried it, no drugs, I eat as healthy as I can and i’ve only drunk alcohol twice in my life and didn’t really like either time.

I like to keep in the best shape possible, it isn’t an image thing.  I’m not one of these vein guys standing tensing in front of mirrors every morning. The reason I keep healthy is that many of my relatives dropped dead when I was young. Out of my mums sister and brother, my dad’s two sisters, their spouses and my grandparents I have exactly three relatives left apart from my parents. The moderal clan (my family) have lost seven of its members between when I was four until now, out of the seven, five was due to bad diet and health problems. Two died of heart disease, another two was due to diabetes and the last was liver disease due to high amounts of drinking and smoking. I remember all of them on their last days I was young but I remember them all being fat and had an odour, a strange mix between vinegar and egg. Their faces long, flabby and red as a tomato or white, like ghost white. That awful constant gasping for air breathing they all had. To me they seemed helpless, desperate and full of self-disgust. I will never be like them, I wish to die proud and not slowly and woefull.

“Why do you smoke” I question Matt and Diego. Diego starts to explain the social image it represents, the devil may care attitude it can portray.

Matt replies with “you know why, I smoke to harm myself, not really a suicide attempt more like an opposition to five a day norm way of thinking. Gte good grades, go to colledge, get a job, pay bills for the rest of your life. Well not for me.” Diego smiles at Matts words

 “nice, you’re becoming less of a sheep every day. I’m a good influence”. He says arrogantly I try to muster up a treat your body like a temple type of counter argument but all I come up with is “chances are you’ll live longer if you stop smoking”.Matt and Diego look at each other for a moment,matt then shakes his head at Diego to stop him from saying something. For some reason it annoys me “What “I ask wanting to know what they feel like they can’t tell me.

“what where you going to say” I continue asking.

 Diego sighs “I was just going to say not necercerily, people can get in accidents”. My anger grows as I realise why they didn’t want to reply “oh I get it, because my mum is in a coma you think I’ll get offended or depressed if you mention anything related.” Diego and matt just look uncomftable when they see my very rare displays of rage.Matt takes a hard drag of his cigerrete as I wait for their response my face red from the flash of rage.

Nearly a minute goes by before Diego chimes in with “sorry is it your time of month already”, Matts face shifts from awkward to a smirk, after a few seconds I let myself smile. I then shyly apologise “sorry, it’s just don’t treat me softly because of my mum, the best thing for me is to be like we always are, She’ll be fine. Please lets just be normal.” The response from Diego was “‘k” and matt just shruggs his shoulders.

Around thirty minutes we are walking along the suburbs on another windy Chicago day. I hadn’t been paying much attention to their conversation, they’ve been chatting about cigarettes for the last thirty minutes and I had gotten bored of it after ten.

So I was figuring out the next object to draw into my fallout sketch, (a name I had given to a large multi object drawing I was working on). I was always good at art; my teachers had told me more than a couple of times that I was gifted, and about a month ago I had gotten an invitation to the Cleveland youth art festival as a presentation of up and coming talent. When my mum had her accident I had started working on my project, my last remaining aunt suggested it as a way to keep my mind of it, and it had been slightly working. My main problem is I don’t know what my piece should be about, I named it fallout simply because I like the word and it sounds deep and meaning full. If I make it halfway decent and present the piece with a speech telling them why it related to my pain or suffering or some crap and they will probably eat my bullshit up. I’ll just use phrases like self-rotting deprivation and social commentry.

Behind us we hear sirens in the background. The three of us turned and watch two fire engines racing by us, their sirens screaming. I turn to Diego to ask him “so set any fires around here recently?” Diego replied with “you know I would have told you about my accomplishments, and this is the suburbs, too much population for me to start a blaze” he jokingly replies.

We follow the fire engines down a couple of streets to arrive at eighty nine Madison Street a small family bungalow, smoke is pouring out of one of the front windows. The streets are scattered with watching neighbours. Firemen are flooding out from the two fire engines that are parked in front of the house. A man in his early twenties is standing on the lawn obviously nervous, he is scratching his stubble vigorously; his eyes are darting to one fire men to the other. He has bleached white hair and he has two piercings on his pale skinned face, one of the piercings is through his nose the other is a hoop through his lip, he has a distinct dirty look about him.

On the side of the lawn is a girl reading an old torn copy of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ as she lays on a sun bed. Her eyes a periwinkle blue and on top of her Scarlett red head sits a ginormous floppy yellow summer hat, she is also wearing a baggy black Runaways t-shirt. She is concentrating on the book and doesn’t seem to take any notice of the firemen or the burning house. Her unflinching bravado and stone cold uncaring expression in notiable cool and several people watching the fire are paying attention to her. Maybe its because she’s perhaps the most beautifull women in the world, of perhaps  people are watching here because all of her worldly possessions could and probably are burning, she doesn’t have a pile of photos or her computer stacked next to her safely away from the fire, and she doesn’t give a shit.

“Who is she?” I ask the others. They look to where im looking and Matt startsh “Ow shit this is Courtney White’s house!” He shouts. Diego had diseapered as soon as we made it to the house.

“Thats the girl who punches Mr Hunter last year and had that breakdown” Matt explains whilst staring at her. “She’s kind of hot, the fact that she might be crazy makes her even more so. But id stay away crazy girls or always trouble” he continues to explain.

So I started walking up to her “Alex what are you doing?” Matt calls after me. He is right what am I doing? I’m not Diego, not the go up and talk to attractive girls for no reason type, so why this girl the apparent violent psychopath. I march past the crowd of nosey soccer mums and old age pensioners to arrive at the smoking houses white picket fence, to stand around six feet away from her

“Hi” I try to make a casual introduction to her. I wait for a couple of seconds for a reply that never comes. The book, the catcher in the rye, she is captivated in the book. I need something big for her to take notice of me. Why I need this to happen right now, I cant really explain. Matt is looking at me with a confused, he mouths the words ’what the hell are you doing?’ to me. I try to think of an explanation but can’t so I just ignore him. A firemen drags Diego out of the house by the collar, he drops him off by the fence and explains he explains to the Fireman“I wasn’t trying to steal anything, I just wanted to see the fire “Diego trying to explain himself.

She had put her book down; The catcher in the rye is no longer distracting her eyes. She’s climbing out of the sunbed and walking over to Diego, what should I do,”hey excuse me” I call to her slightly fast and unclear. “she keeps her head towards Diego and holds a single figure towards me and Says “just a minute”. I notice the kind of melody her voice makes as she walks over to Diego and the disgruntled firemen. Her expression is friendly, her words not so much, “what the hell were you doing in my house? It’s on fire if you didn’t notice!”. “exactly I wanted to see a house on fire”. She begins to smile as she questions Diego “why”, Diego clears his breath and explains “how many chances do we get to see flames ripping apart a building, the magnificent dance of a burning inferno “she begins to laugh, it’s unclear if she is mocking him “Err okay” She says grinning widely. Dammit I’m jealous of Diego.

 Diego looks pleased with him as the he walks away from the wreckage not arrested and stands by me.”It was beautiful” Diego tells me with a grin, “what was? “I ask. HeHeHH looks at the house again “the flames climbing through the house, the heat melting away the constricts of it all”  As I contemplate how much I should worry about my friends sanity, Courtney approaches us, giving Diego a smirk. Diego and I stare at her as she comes closer “hey arsonist “she says to Diego,

“hey”Diego replies with a shit eating wide grin across his face.

 she continues “if you ever want to admire more fire come and meet up with me I’m sure I could help you set some things alight”

she turns to me “hey you can come along too wide eyes”. She notices me, I have a funny  nickname, amazing.

We walk away and Me and Deigo dont speak both a little surprised by the last couple o minutes events. “Are you guys going to take up the phyco’s offer” Matt asks.

“Yer” me and Diego say in unison we give each other glances as we realise how excited another is to spend time with her.

I get home half an hour later and walk in to my home. I expect it to be empty, but then I see him on the sofa asleep. He slumberes on the couch with a bottle of vodka resting on his chest. This isnt the version of my Father that I have ever seen. For the past decade of my life he hasnt been around. He is a celebrity Lawyer, after defending a celebrity who was accused of murdering his wife. The evidence was against him. They basically had the acused red handed, but my brilliant Fathers brilliant defense got him released as innocent. Since then he has become a celebrity in his own right, travelling the globe to represent other high profile cases. A couple fo years ago he even realised his own biography and started a motivation program and charged people out of the arse for the dvd’s. I wonder how many of his customers would get a refund if they saw him. Ever since the accident he’s been fighting the fear of losing my Mother with booze, when he was younger, in his twenties he was an alchaholic. She helped him go sober so I guess its fitting without her he would stumble back to the bottle. He shivered in his sleep so I take the blanket slung over one of the other sofa’s and lay it over him, he might be slightly pathetic right now but I dont want him to freeze.