So There's This Boy...

Chapter 1│The Arrival

S O  T H E R E ' S 

T H I S  B O Y. . .

C H A P T E R 1

Today was the day. Today was the day that I, Adelaide Aldaine, was moving. Well, more like fleeing. Sometimes I felt more overjoyed than anything that I was being sent to boarding school. It was some type of escape in my book, the chance to go somewhere else--anywhere else--but here, where everything around me was just a constant reminder of the horrible and never ending emotion that humans call grieving. 

Grieving. What an ugly word. 

I jam the last box shut with a grunt. Dark hair strays from my ponytail and I end up I pushing it back several times, irritated at even this slight thing. Turning around, I survey what's left of my baby blue colored room. Four suitcases are scattered and the sheet-less bed squeaks when I lazily lay down onto it, exhausted from a day full of packing--the most action I've had in a little over three weeks.

"Ready to start loading the truck?" My aunt peeks her head around my door frame, all too cheery considering the circumstances. I sigh.

"Yeah, I guess so." I stand up and grab a large, black suitcase. 

After loading everything I packed into the car, I climb into the passenger seat. It wasn't until the wheels started rolling and the scenery around me was a blur that I started to realize. This was real. I was doing this. I was being carted off to a boarding school, alone. 

But even that seemed better than my previous circumstances. Being alone, I mean. 

Well I wasn't completely alone, fortunately. Not technically. Although it felt like I was, they weren't much company. I have my aunt and uncle, who I could visit on breaks and holidays...but they very obviously did not want a ridden teenager like myself to invade on their quiet lifestyle. Although I thought my aunt acted more like a ridden teenager than I did. She dressed like one, she talked like one, she stayed out all night and came home stinking of alcohol...very unlike myself who stayed in bed, aloof and in mourning. So here I am. My for once sober aunt driving me off to Vermont.

My life changed so dramatically in such little time. When they first told me of the accident, I felt as if the breath in my lungs was stolen. As if some heavy weight pushed all the air out of me. Only about a month ago, I felt what true tragedy was. It was so much different from watching it on movies or reading about it in books. It felt so...so real. At first, I was nothing but stricken. For that first month, all I did was lay around and stare unseeingly at the things around me. I ate very little, until I was on the point of starving myself, they tried to forcefully feed it to me through a tube. That was when my shock disappeared and reality gripped me like a vice:

I was alone.

For three weeks all I did was weep. My aunt tried to comfort me awkwardly, maybe even shedding a few tears herself, but I shooed her away. All I wanted was to be alone. All I wanted was for my family to be with me again, alive and healthy. But I knew it was impossible, and after I cried so much I felt like I could never cry again, something inside me twisted. I no longer felt like I was suffering, I felt something else entirely: I felt hollow. I felt as if someone reached inside me and scooped all the emotion a human should feel and emptied it. This was the way the universe was making peace with me. It was better than before, at least.

My aunt and uncle told me that sending me away would be for the best. They said they "weren't fit" to take care of a teenager anymore, because apparently being in your late fifties rids you of that ability. They said that this is a place of new experiences, that here I would find my true identity. They said here I might even forget the deceased! As in my family.