The Small Things

-1- in the beginning

Copyright © 2015. All Rights Reserved.

CHAPTER ONE: SUMMER BEFORE FIRST GRADE

D A T E : June - August 2002ish

✖ in the beginning... (there was skye) ✖

Before any story starts, there must be a backstory. Before me, there was my mom, my dad, their moms and dads, et cetera. Before this point in time, I thought my backstory was just this: nothing to fall back on but the bad times, the sad times, and the nights filled with salty tears. I tended to fall back on my not-so-redeeming qualities, and the memories stashed away for that period between consciousness and subconsciousness just to batter me back awake with regret.

All those things might just be well and good, since, for the most part, they got me here, but sometimes you have to remember it all. It made me feel better to remember all the happy memories, the joyful memories, the ones filled with friends and family, and inside jokes that made me fall to the floor laughing.

While it's apparent that with every good memory there comes two bad ones behind it, I'd rather not dwell on those ones more than needed, because they'll poison me like they do some people.

My past exhibited a grand total of seventeen years before life smacked me in the face, but even before that, there were loves lost and loves unbeknownst to me all bundled up in a package I liked to call my baggage. The contents of this baggage varies, and contrary to popular belief, not all of it was bad.

In fact, it all started at the tender age of zero the moment I was born, because that's when all our past begins, and all our present exists. I was a summer child, and I earned my first best friend that day, who was just a month older than me and was carried in the arms of my mother's best friend.

And his name was Addison Fynn Walton.

I didn't really know him at the time, and I didn't really know his mom, his dad, or his brother. Hell, I could hardly tell who my mom was, or even my father since he wasn't even there. As far as I knew, my mom was as asexual as they came, and that maybe I sprouted from her head like Athena did from Zeus.

The real question was not what team my mom batted for, but rather where the hell my father came from.

Good question.

He came from up nort' and graduated from the same fancy college my mom and her best friend came from. His part really only mattered in creating me, because, well, after that, he wasn't really around. They had me believing that they were all great friends, and everyone got along, and that Mom still kept in contact with him every once in a while through checks and otherwise, which came around monthly and were always stamped with his name on the return address.

Carlson Eugene Grunsfield. Yuck. No wonder Mom never married him—I'd be Skye Grunsfield if he had any say in the matter, but as of right now, I was just Skye Hemming, proud member of the Hemming family consisting of only one set of grandparents rather than two.

Being raised by a single mom could definitely classify as a downer to some people, but it was never a problem. As far as I knew, I had two moms and a dad the whole time, but I just never realized it. I spent half as much time at home with Mom as I did over at the Walton's residence across the street. Over there, we had one hell of a time burping and blowing bubbles when Mom was at work and Mrs. Walton stayed home to work.

Raising three kids was probably the worst job that I could imagine, since Addison, Parker, and I were rascals to say the least. Of course, Addison strongly disliked being called Addison, so we all just called him by his middle name, Fynn. Parker was just Parker, and he was always slightly more levelheaded than the rest of us considering he was a whopping five-or-so years older than us. Still, everyone always told Fynn that he was the spitting image of Parker when he was younger, and they'd keep saying that up until high school when puberty hit late and he skyrocketed a whole three inches over his brother.