We're the Broken Ones

Chapter One

The first few notes of Nutshell by Alice in Chains drifts softly through the gritty stereo system of my sister's old Jeep Jeepster. The two-toned, characteristically box-shaped car was my sister Decembers pride and joy. She'd had it for a year and a half and ordinarily gave it a vigorous scrub down at least once a week. The car was probably the dirtiest it had been since she first "rescued" it off of Craigslist. There are crumpled brown bags of greasy fast-food nestled at out feet, and the usually immaculate windshield was plastered with the entrails of unfortunate insects.

Embers eyes keep flickering off the road and drifting into the densely forested area surrounding us. We're driving on a smooth, straight stretch of road that seems to go endlessly onwards through a mass of monstrous Pine trees. Looking into the forest, I glance countless trails winding deeper into the wild, and my legs itch to run. Ember and I have been cooped up in this small blue and white car for five days, and I can feel the carefully constructed sanity I mustered up for this car journey slipping slowly away.

Layne Staley's haunting voice filters gently through to me, and I smile at the sound. I can see Em murmuring the words from the driver's seat beside of me. My sister and I don't get along remarkably well, I always say, I think that the only thing that helps us to get along his our music taste, but even that isn't always aligned.

Ember was usually to be found in her room, playing piano or studying, and she rarely did anything against the many rules and regulations set in place by our school — or our parents, for that matter— However, when she did make mistakes, they would often blow up rather spectacularly in our faces. She usually had her hair pulled tight to her skull in a severe ponytail, and was often found wearing at least three items from Abercrombie & Fitch at a time. Today, she had on a pair of yellow toned khaki shorts and a stripy maroon T-shirt with navy converse. She's looking decidedly unhappy with the world. Her thin upper lip seems permanently curled up into a beer. She stands starkly out from me, and Ember has always been extremely aware of that fact. I have shoulder-length blonde hair, that I'd recently dyed parts of black, and I have an ever-present, though admittedly forced grin.

I sometimes find it hard to believe that the accident was only a few short months ago. It feels as though time turned against me during the short and agonizing seasoned between then and now. Our mom and Dad brides all the pain by forcing us to keep busy and push away the memories. It didn't work. December stopped eating and I had gone quite. In the flash of an instant and the red of oncoming traffic, our once paradisiacal home life vanished. It had taken me months to get back in a car after the accident. Every time I set foot in the gray interior of a vehicle I saw Jason's laughing face and twinkling eyes, the expression on his face when he realized we were crashing. The raw, unfiltered horror that flashed in his blue eyes before they went disturbingly blank. I wish the body had been mangled beyond recognition or burned to only marbled flesh and bones. I wish I hadn't seen the bank, unmarred face of my twin in a casket. Then maybe I could pretend all of this away. I could accept the consequence of his choice to drive me home from Noel Eaton's can, but not understand them. I could put a stop to the immense amount of pain that stayed lodged in my chest, always. A constant reminder of my missing piece.

Ember and I completed the remainder of the car journey in silence, and with an hour of driving, we pulled into a clean, neat neighborhood on a steeply sloping hill. The house which correlated with the number mom and dad sent us, along with the directions on how to get to the house, is a modest craftsman-style painted a deep, royal blue shade. It's charming, and the dark exterior makes me feel somehow better about the overwhelming newness of all of this.

...

"Vi..." My mom's falsely cheerful voice echoes through the perpetually empty house to my new bedroom. "Time for a school darling, I made breakfast!" She calls hopefully up at me. I really do detest mornings, I think as I rub blearily at me swelling eyelids. Mornings, in my esteemed opinion, are tricky deceiving little time periods in which your brain doesn't work properly, and coffee is the only possible way of braving the outside of one's comforter. Without fail, every morning since the accident I've woken up completely oblivious to at the all-consuming pain that envelops me like a blanket the minute my brain wakes up enough to register any emotion other than disgruntlement at the sound of my alarm clock. I've worked up expecting Jason's gentle voice to greet me, peeking through the crack in my door and coaxing me downstairs with a warm cocoa, or mug of tea or coffee. It's like he dies all over again over time I wake up; I lose him again every single day when the first cringes of morning creep into the windowsill.

Ember's face is instead the first I see, she's popped her head in to make sure I'm "up and moving" for school. I'm glad mom and dad are having Em and I go straight back to school. Hate having time to think. My thoughts scare me too much to be left alone with. Even if I am alone, or left in silence, I have to listen to music. I need to soothe the darkness with Chalkline blasting through my Sony headphones, or Greenday turned to full volume on my small Bose speaker. I grope sleepily at the floor next to my mattress until coming across my phone, which is lying lopsided on the carpeted floor. Squinting at the brightly lit surface, I climb grading to my feet and plod to the bathroom, while choosing the morning's playlist.

Ben Howard's Blessings washes over me while I get slowly, and routinely ready. And then I grab my headphones from the half assembled dresser in the center of my room and trudge gloomily down the wooden stairs.

When I finish breakfast and make my way into the car, Ember looks disapprovingly at me, or rather my boat decked feet. The offending body parts are currently propped casually on her Jeep's dash. I'm picking absentmindedly at a thread peaking out of my floral dress, listening to the lyrics of Bad Religions Anxiety with a practiced ear. I had heard the song a few thousand times, given my entire family's obsession with the band. The irony of Ember's song choice is palpable, as my heart feels like it's sitting uncomfortably on my windpipes, making it quite impossible to breathe properly. My hands are shaking too, and I'm focusing all of the energy I have not to throw myself out of the car and run until my legs give way. The combination of being in a moving vehicle, coupled with facing the endless, terrifying possibility of a new beginning is making me feel like I'm about to pass out.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

A/N:

Hi, Hey, Hello Wattpad.

I'm kind of new to this so just bare with me... I've been writing for forever but I've never had a good outlet, so this is basically my fictitious (Woah, big word...) journal! Anyhow, please enjoy my crazy thoughts, I'm going to try and update a few times a week. 

Okay, it's late, and I'm sleep deprived!