Across the Bridge

Across the Bridge - Prolouge

Prologue

I never had a problem with where I was from. When I was young, I didn't know the difference. My elementary school was in a low income and bad part town and I had a single Mom who was doing her best to keep my little brother and I fed and happy. I never held it against her. It was just he way it was.

  I didn't have many friends growing up. I only had one friend when I was in the eighth grade, Callie Brown, and she was staying in Williamsburg to go to High School. I knew the other kids thought I was weird, because from a very young age I had to stay home and take care of Asa, my brother who was two years younger than me. I was probably eight, him six, when it started. We weren't allowed to tell people we stayed home alone then, sometimes for entire days. So the kids I went to school with thought I was just a weird kid who never wanted to have play dates or go to birthday parties.  My Mom tried to work mostly when we were in school, but she had to get a second job, when the diner started cutting back her shifts. Truthfully, I raised Asa on my own. And I lost out on my childhood because of it.

  For high school, my mom decided to register me at a community high school in the East Village, across the bridge. The high schools in Williamsburg were either expensive or very sketchy. Starting high school was the first time I realized there was big difference in what I was used to and how other families existed.  I wasn't sure about leaving Williamsburg for high school. I wasn't sure about leaving Asa behind. But I didn't have a choice.

  Thankfully, meeting Alex Lee on the first day of ninth grade made up for most of that. He had just moved to the city with his family that summer. I thought I was practically invisible that day, in a new place, at a new school with all new faces, but Alex saw me. He plopped down beside me in homeroom and told me his name. And that's how we became friends.

  "I'm Alex, you can call me Lex," he said, this goofy smile on his face.

  He was half Asian and he was just so cute, in a fourteen year old boy sort of way. He had big brown eyes and his hair was too long, flopping over his forehead.

  "I'm Penelope," I said, awkwardly smiling back.

  "That's a big name," he said, surprised.

  "I guess," I shrugged.

  "Well, I'll call you Pen," he decided.

  I quickly realized there was no way to avoid it, though I wouldn't have wanted to. Alex was outgoing and funny and everyone liked him, for different reasons. Even though he was just as new to High School and to the Easy Village as I was, he was just so likeable and outgoing. We stuck together like magnets, sitting together in the classes we had together and eating lunch together, at his locker or in the cafeteria. It was so easy, so comfortable, becoming good friends with him over the next few months.

  We had a lot in common, but only the small stuff like the type of music we liked and that we were both born in January. But I wasn't good at anything, had no interest in sports or extra curriculars, and Lex was, well, he was good at everything he did. Also, his family was middle to higher class, he said; he had two working parents, his Dad being a realtor who made a lot of money. He had an older sister, who was  pretty much perfect. He told me all of this within the first week of us meeting.

  I took a lot longer to tell him anything about myself. For months, we only saw each other at school. I didn't tell him about my family or even that I lived in Brooklyn. I didn't want to risk my friendship with him. By the end of the school year, I had finally told him where I lived and that my Mom worked two jobs, and that I had a younger brother. He had invited me to a party that I couldn't go to, so I had to have a reason. The truth came out, that day as we sat on a park bench after school.