Eyes of the Fallen

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Forty-five minutes. That's how long we're going to have to wait until we get seated, forty-five minutes that I already know will be absolutely torturous. I sit down and take out my brother's mp3 player, which I took from his pocket earlier without him noticing, hopefully I'll be able to listen to a song or two before he realizes it's gone, but, like always, the battery is dead. Knowing him, he must have been listening to it the whole time that we were walking here.

That's right, walking. We don't have a car because we can't afford one, we can barely afford to keep food on the table for the three of us, mostly because of the fact that my father is almost always without a job now, the money I make from babysitting is for myself, and my older brother Justin, who turns 24 soon is focusing on his final year in college, and he only got into college thanks to his scholarships and financial aid.

I look at him from across the room and find him grinning at me, as if he purposely didn't charge his cheap little mp3 player, which sounds like something he would do, so I give him what I call: "The Death Stare," which is really just me glaring at him, and he quickly looks down and starts counting the panels on the floor.

So here I am, waiting for my name to be called in a restaurant that looks like it just went through World War II. I wonder why so many people even enjoy this place, the walls clearly haven't been painted in decades, and all of the curtains are dirty and ripped so that you could still see the streets outside, except for a clean one which leads to the main room. The floor panels are chipped, some of them completely missing, and basically everything is made from wood and looks like it's all going to fall apart. Perhaps the food is extraordinarily good?

Either way I have to get out of here before I die of boredom, but there's nowhere safe to go in this neighborhood at night, since it's filled with gangs, dead ends, old apartment buildings, and streetlights that barely work. So I stay sitting and wait for a while, but after what feels to me like twenty minutes of waiting I become frustrated at the sound of couples arguing, kids crying, and the hostess trying to calm angry people down.

I get up to ask the hostess, who doesn't seem to be busy anymore, where the bathroom is, mostly to escape the noise that has been bothering me so much, but also because I really do have to use the bathroom, and I'm tired of waiting anyways.

"Um, I don't think you're allowed to use the restrooms unless you're like, already eating and stuff, because, like, the bathroom gets filled up with people who are eating and, I guess any more people would just cause trouble," says the hostess, who according to her name tag her name is Angelica.

"I'm so sorry," she continues. "But you could still, like, go to that fast food restaurant that's around here, I'm pretty sure that all of those have public bathrooms."

Angelica talks and looks like one of those girls from the movies that act like they're the coolest girls in the school. She repeatedly keeps on saying "like" and "um" and talks like she has no idea what's going on, and she slurs on certain words. She looks like she couldn't be any taller than 5'4, unless she wears high heels, and her straight blonde hair is really long and has a feather in it. She wears makeup, eye shadow, and lipstick, and she has a pair of feather earrings on that look nearly identical to the one in her hair, which really bothers me because I hate feather earrings almost as much as I hate nose and tongue piercings, and I really hate nose and tongue piercings.

"Thank you," I force myself to respond, refraining myself from starting an argument with her. "I'll just walk there then." After I give her a light, fake smile, her shoulders slack a bit and she rolls her eyes just as I finish turning around, although I don't know how I managed to catch that.