Old Strings Broken

Old Strings Broken [Part 1]

As for I, Cassandra Walsh is a fatherless; mother was driven to suicide by a man turned out to be not my real father when I was barely even five, which explains to me why I got all these faint burn marks from cigarettes and scars. Even now that I’m all ground up at the age of seventeen, these painful memories felt like it was just yesterday. Then no long after the ordeal was over, I lived with June, my aunt from my mother’s side and her Tom and that’s when I met the young Jace, the boy who lives across the road.

If someone asks me what I thought of Jace and I had the confidence to say, I would tell them that Jace was made out of goodness while I was made out of bad fortune. When I first officially met him was in the middle of prep year when I was pulled out of my old primary to go to another that was close to June’s place. The mothers were doing what they were good at, talking and making things up behind my backs which had gotten into the children and often they’ll say horrible things about me, calling me names such as “murder” and “killer”. Day by day the rumors gets worse and once a spikey brown haired boy with rosy cheeks stood up for me, pushing away the bullies and ended up being kept after school for a meeting with his parents. I stayed with him feeling upset that it was my fault that he had gotten trouble and kept apologizing for pulling him into my mess. Jace just smiled at me, the most radiant smile anyone had given just to me for the first time in my life and told me I looked silly when I cry. And since then we were inseparable and invincible.

Then when I look at Jace now, my heart is filled with warmness. In my eyes he is wonderful and have a lean surfer like build but more graceful as a leopard than rough like a wolf. He has bright blue eyes that can light up the room and the once spiked up chestnut brown hair was left shaggy flopping all over his sharp face. Besides all of those Greek god-like features, his outside matches his insides.

“Jace...Let’s take the train together today,” I said.

Jace turned around from his locker and smirked at me. “Do you even need to ask? We’ve been taking the train together since year seven and even till now you still ask.”

I nodded and Jace had landed a palm on my head ruffling my dull brown unbound hair. I could help smiling as I watched him laugh all the way home telling me how his day went.

*****

Valentine’s Day came sooner than I expected. The ValD team was caught in frenzy in the morning of an exhilarating day. Orders came flying in one after another, flooding the inboxes and burying us in an avalanche of forms. Five hundred of each red and yellow roses were freshly loaded from Tom’s early this morning and already six dozens of both red and yellow flowers were gone which was a great hit because any leftover roses will just end up in the compost.

The first, third, fourth and fifth periods were gone in the blink of an eye and finally the bell for lunchtime rang throughout the school waking up bored and restless students. I stood in the hallway with a bucket full of roses in one hand, a list of names and lockers numbers in another and a rag sack filled with decorative tapes, small gift cards and other little things were thrown over my neck. How could I possibly lose the paper-scissors-rock to the other people in the team and ended up doing deliveries, the worst possible job ever.

“Anna Douglas…Anna Douglas of 9A,” I mumbled to myself as I searched for the right locker with the help of the list of locker numbers and the names of people who own it.

“Need help?”

I jumped. Jace suddenly appared beside me and reached for the bucket.

“Thanks,” I said as he took the bucket and list off me.

“Timid as always and if I didn’t know you since kids, I swear you’re a weresheep. Or are you?” He peered at me with suspicious eyes.

I giggled and swung the rag sack at him. “Weresheep? Never heard of it, is it some new legend made up by Jason Maurice Powell?”