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My father was a good man. 

A business man. He loved my mother very very much and nobody could deny it. She was the apple of his eye, but that phrase never really made sense to me. Deep down, Mum knows that nobody could ever really replace my father, but still she keeps up the charade of finding a new guy, declaring them unfaithful and then moving away to escape the memories. This is silly because memories do not just stay in one place, they follow you forever until you get amnesia or brain damage or simply become senile.

My father's business involved manufacturing computers. He was very good with technology, in fact I don't remember us even having a powercut in our house. He was like a prophet of electricity, technology, whatever. He earned lots of money.

My father is dead.

It was a downward spiral. He loved Mum, Mum loved him, but he still wasn't happy. He was very unhappy since he got made redundant from the company when it went bankrupt and didn't have enough money to pay the workers. I didn't understand this because we always thought he was the best of the best, any company would be lucky to have him. But his job meant a lot to him, and then he lost it. He had Mum. He had me. But soon, we didn't have so much money anymore, and men from the government came to take our furniture away like in the movies. Piece by piece, men in white overalls came into our house, picked up our belongings and hauled them in the truck. I was thirteen. 

Shortly after, my father's mother died unexpectedly of heart failure. This only added to the deep depression my father was sinking into. We had to move into a grotty old flat in the bad parts of New York, where you can't go out after 9.00 because of all the crime that went on. I missed my grandmother, my purple canopy that hung over my queen-sized bed, and having no problems, and not having to think about anyone else's. That's right, nobody else's problems. None. Nada. 

Then my father went away for a little while. His pure green eyes radiated sadness as he looked at me and drew me into a big hug. I vaguely recall his husky whisper, "Goodbye," but I didn't know this last word would be permanent. Mum smiled so wide and white, because she thought he was happy and he was going for a job interview on the other side of town, the nice side of town. This is what he told her.

No.

My father drove to a private place deep in the woods, out of New York, and he shot himself.

I lied when I told Tyler I had been seeing informative visions of people's lives all my life, because I hadn't. I used to be normal. On March 21st, 2007, two days after my father's death which we still had no idea about, I looked into my mother's eyes when I woke up that morning and I saw the dread in her eyes and I saw that she attended Joplin Highschool and that her godmother's name was Tracy and her ancestors were British and she has an irrational fear of earwigs. I couldn't believe my eyes, or hers. The images and the information appeared out of nowhere. I had never seen it before. My first psychic vision, hooray.

And then the phone rang. On the other line, it was Officer McLaren preparing to tell my mother to come down to the station where he would tell her the fate of her missing husband.
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School sucks, I thought, twiddling my thumbs and listening to the Science teacher drone on about carbon monoxide and particles of atoms and whatnot. Aiden listened attentively beside me, adjusting his glasses in awe when the teacher said something remotely interesting. I wished I could be interested in learning again. I was worried about Zac, and whether or not he was kidding the other night. I was worried about Tyler and his brother, and whether or not he had risen from his coma yet so I wouldn't have to do the dirty deed Zac insisted on. I was worried about the nearing date of the gang's ambush on the imposing community meeting.  But Zac also requested I meet him today, and I had a sick feeling in my stomach that it would not be good news. The bell rang, loudly and disruptively. The students forgot what the teacher was talking about and lunged for the door like a pack of wild animals, hungry to get to the waterhole - the cafeteria. Alex was not in school. He hadn't been since the night of the fire, the night of our stupid, idiotic escapade that almost got us killed.