Fragile

Hope

It was 6:42 AM when the sun rose on Saturday morning.

I didn't see the sun rise, but I heard footsteps shuffling down the sidewalk; one pair was made by running shoes, the other by four paws. Mr. Murphy was out for a morning jog with his golden retriever, Rocky.

I rolled over in bed, facing the useless window. The neighborhood would be coming to life soon. Billy Patterson would ride down the street on his bike, throwing newspapers at front doors. Mr. Winters would drive down to the intersection of Main and Spruce, the engine of his old Buick sputtering loud enough to wake the next town over. And when the sun got high enough in the sky kids would come walking across the street, laughing and spilling their melting ice cream cones as they brought them back from Mr. and Mrs. McHenry's creamery.

I wouldn't see any of this, but I had the familiar sounds of Brier Creek memorized. It had become comforting to wake up to the sounds of life going on beyond the four walls that enclosed me. I was pretty sure that my shrink had mentioned something like this happening, that the longer I stayed inside my house with no contact to the outside world, the more I would begin to feel like the world had stopped spinning completely. Perhaps there were days I did, mostly in the winter when it was too cold for anyone to be jogging down the sidewalk or eating ice-cream cones. On those days it was just me sitting in a house that echoed the morose silence that encompassed our frosty town. I cherished mornings like this, when everyone was going about their day like usual, not a single one of them terrified to step beyond the safety of their front door.

Everyone but me. There was a bitter-sweet irony to it.

"Hope?"

There was a faint knock on my bedroom door even though it was cracked open. I shook the dusty cobwebs of sleep out of my brain and rubbed the last few particles of sand from the corners of my eyes. Before I could even force my mouth to open though, my brother peeked his head into the room.

"Oh, you're up. I wasn't sure if you would be by now."

Jace grimaced and I blinked up at him with sincerity. We both knew that was a bold-faced lie. Thanks to my relentless insomnia I was always up at the crack of dawn, and when I did sleep nightmares tended to plague what should be peaceful slumbers, so I preferred to be awake, at least then I could control what goes on inside my head.

"Gideon is taking me out on his boat today. He wants me to hang out with him and his new girlfriend."

I sighed heavily, not even trying to hide the distaste I had for my brother's best friend. Gideon Sage was the epitome of arrogance and as cocky as they came; since the Sage family was old money and their family history in Brier Creek stretched all the way back to the Revolutionary War there wasn't much in town that the Sage family didn't own, and Gideon never let anyone forget that.

Hence the need for a boat (more like yacht I assumed) to take out on the lake. Nothing said "my family has money rolling out of their sleeves" quite like a yacht did in a town where snow covered the ground 9 months out of the year.

Wait, had Jace said new girlfriend? Once that thought caught up with me I gave my brother a heavy eye roll, relaying my obvious disgust for Gideon's dating habits.

Briar Creek was a small town, small enough to be the kind where everyone knew everyone else's business, and the number of teenagers that attended the local high school where both my brother and Gideon attended was probably less then 400 altogether. Both of these things combined, along with Gideon's solid reputation as a ladies man, just meant that there were two options here: either Gideon was making his rounds again and re-breaking hearts or there was a new girl in town. Neither of these choices boded well for my brother who was Gideon's designated "wing-man" but for his sake I hoped it was the latter. Gideon had already burned enough bridges with the girls that used to be childhood friends-and even with some of the guys that saw Gideon and Jace as the main competition-but a new girl would mean a clean slate for Jace, someone that had yet to be tainted by Gideon's bad intentions or the harsh gossip that circled around Willow Glen High School. 

Jace pushed open my door the rest of the way and sat down on the edge of my bed, weighing down  one side of it with his sturdy frame. 

"Her name is Alexa Morris and she just moved here a few days ago from New York City."

I crinkled my nose. A girl from a big city moving to a rinky-dink town in the middle of Virginia. It sounded like the set up to one of those sappy romantic comedy movies, which I was just about to crack a joke about until I saw the look in my brothers eyes.

I should have seen it right away. My brother's entire face seemed to light up whenever he talked about the big cities; New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, any place that wasn't cooped up with people he had always known. Perhaps at first Jace's dream had merely started as that, a young kids fantasy to take his guitar and go become a rock-star, but I knew that it was more then that now. Jace would never admit it to me, but being the older brother of the town freak weighed heavy on him and it always would unless he found a place where no one knew who he was or what he had left behind in this dismal part of the world. 

I sat up, realizing now that the brisk cold of the late summer morning was beginning to subside and give way to a more comfortable temperature. I rested my hand on top of my brothers and mustered up a meek smile.

"You should go have fun today, Jace."

Jace furrowed his eyebrows and pursed his lips thinly together, the way he always did when he was about to say something that was echoing our once overprotective father.

"Are you sure? I don't want you to be-"

I punched him lightly in the shoulder, though if I had used all my might I doubted I would even make a mark on my brothers toned forearm.  A fly could probably do more damage.

"Go, before I change my mind!"

Jace leaned over and kissed the top of my head before hopping up and the mattress swayed as it began to go back to it's regular form. I watched the foam rise back up, almost like it was sighing in relief to be rid of the excess weight that Jace had added to it.

I listened to the few heavy footsteps in my brothers room that must have been him changing into his swim trunks and threw off my covers, swinging my legs over the bed so that my toes dangled near the wooden floorboards.

Jace peaked his head through my door again, and I looked up to see him grinning.

"Hey kid, I love you to the moon and back."

My stomach made a slight flip-flopping motion but I did my best to ignore it and nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, love you too."

Jace left my door open and went bounding down the stairs, calling back up to me once more before he left to make the short drive up to Sage Manor where I assumed Gideon was waiting for him.

"I'll be back around dinnertime!"

The front door slammed shut, which was my cue to fling myself back onto my bed horizontally, so that I was staring up at the whirring fan that I never turned off no matter how cold I got. 

The house was suddenly quiet, no more sounds of running shoes or sputtering cars came from outside. I stretched out my arms across the bed and closed my eyes for a moment, wondering what it would be like if I was small enough to sit on the edge of that spinning fan and ride it like a kid on a merry-go-round.

I should really get a dog or something.