Silver Horizons (Silver Horizons #1)

Silver Horizons | 1

            I had always been closer to my mom than I was my dad. Not because I didn’t love my dad equally, it was just because I hung around my mom more. Dad was a scientist, so he wasn’t home often. Kyle was closer to our mom than our dad also and for the same reason as mine.

            We were driving through a bridge, and on instinct, my eyes flickered toward the clock, tracking our time by each minute. Ever since I fully began to understand my memory, I started paying more attention to the details, deliberately memorizing each one. Because what if there came a day when I needed to remember something, but I had simply forgot to look at it and shove it into the gigantic brain that I called my own? That would really suck, and I would feel bad about myself.

            Therefore, I tried my best to take in my surroundings every chance that I got.

            “Right, kids, so up ahead—“ Dad started to say, but he was cut off as our car jumped. It wasn’t one of those tiny road bumps that occur all the time on the roads. No, it was one of those bumps where you wonder if you’ve killed somebody or not.

            Let’s hope not.

            Instantly, my eyes flew open and they looked out the front window, trying to see what had happened. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make anything out other than the empty road. It was strange, really, that there was no other car on the road with us, but I didn’t question it. What I did question though was the fact that I didn’t notice it earlier that we were alone on the road.

            Come on, Elijah, I silently scolded myself. You need to be paying attention more often. You never know when—

            My inner monologue was cut short when Dad’s car door opened. At first, I thought that somebody was trying to get in, but I soon realized that Dad was getting out. He was slowly stepping out of the car and walking toward whatever we had ran into.

            “No, Steve, stop,” Mom called after her husband, but he was out of range, and he couldn’t hear what she was saying to him. “Steve!” she shouted, but Dad seemed hell-bent on walking toward whatever was laying on the road. “Get back in the car!”

            When Dad still failed to turn around and acknowledge Mom, she let out a few words that she would never allow Kyle and I to say and got out of the car as well, the door slamming behind her. But before she left, she said, “’Kay, I have no idea what’s going on, but you kids need to stay in the car, alright? Unless I ask you to come outside, I need you to stay in the car. Do not get out whatsoever. For anybody . . . or anything.” She had said the last part so quietly that I wasn’t sure if she even said it.

             “Elijah,” Kyle said, looking at me with worry in his eyes, “I have a really bad idea about this.”

            I sighed. “I know, Ky. I know.” And that was why I unbuckled my seat belt and began to sit up.

            “You know what Mom said,” Kyle hissed at me, grabbing my arm and holding on tight. “Don’t get out of the car. You heard her, Elijah. You even nodded and said ‘okay, Mom’.”

            “I know, Ky,” I snapped at him, yanking my arm away. “I wasn’t getting out of the car.” I leaned forward a bit over the plastic compartment between the driver and passenger seat, trying to get a better view of the road and our parents. “I was just . . . trying to see . . . what was . . . going . . . on.”

            “Whatever,” Kyle huffed, crossing his arms and falling back against the seat. “Don’t get mad at me when Mom and Dad get—“