Outside || Luke Hemmings

Chapter 1

I stood in front of my door nervously. I had spent the last 3 days alone because my parents went out for some groceries, but they never came back.
I knew something is wrong and I felt I’d only find out what happened if I went outside.
So that’s what I had been trying to do for the last 2 days.
All I had to do was open the door, take one step forward and I would be outside. I took a deep breath and put my shaking hand on the doorknob.
I turned it around so the door opened and slowly pushed it open a tiny little bit. ‘Okay, I can do this,’ I told myself ‘what can possibly go wrong.’ I took another deep breath, closed my eyes and pushed the door open as far as it could, so I wouldn’t be able to close it again.
I stood there for a short moment. With my eyes closed and my fists clenched by my sides. Waiting for some kind of danger to come and get me, but nothing happened.
I slowly opened my eyes and looked outside. The first thing I saw where the little lights around the porch. My dad had to put them up there when I was 8 years old, because I thought our porch was boring, and until 3 days ago, I made sure they were on every night.
I looked up to a beautiful blue sky, the sun was nowhere to be seen.
It was almost time for dinner again so it didn’t surprise me. The sun always seemed to be on the other side of the house around this time.
‘Come on, it’s not that hard Ivy. You need to get out of here’ I told myself. My breathing was already going faster than it was minutes ago and I could feel my heart beat against my chest.
I was getting more and more excited about going outside now. So I decided to stop wasting my time and quickly step outside. Once I was outside I turned around to face our door.
I smiled, not sure whether to actually believe this or not. I grabbed my bag from inside. It was standing right beside the door so luckily I didn’t have to go back inside anymore. I sighed once more, closed the door and turned back around only to bump into someone. ‘I’m sorry’ I apologized.
The old lady looked at me suspiciously. ‘What where you doing at that house?’ she asked.
‘Ehm…well…I live there and my parents didn’t come back from grocery shopping a couple days ago, so I’m going to see if I can find them anywhere’ I answered.
The lady looked at me with a shocked expression on her face. ‘you are the daughter of Mary and Greg Davis?’ she asked.
I nodded confused. ‘Oh darling,’ the women said and put her hand in front of her mouth, her eyes slowly started to fill with tears as she mumbled something to herself.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘Darling…your parents,’ the lady stopped for a minute to put herself together. ‘They got in a very bad car accident.’ She said.
‘What? Are they okay? What happened? Where are they? I need to see them’ I panicked.
‘They passed away. From what I’ve heard, they got hit by another car and they didn’t survive. I’m so sorry sweetheart, if there is anything I can do for you just let me know alright? Would you like some tea?’
I shook my head in shock and looked around.
‘No thank you,’ I said quietly. My mom always forbid me to drink tea because it could be dangerous, it was the same with coffee or any other hot drink.
‘I think I just need some time alone’ the old lady nodded and walked away, reminding me that she lives in the house next to mine and that I could always stop by if I needed anything. I mindlessly walked around for what felt like hours. Until my feet were  tired and I wanted to sit down.
When I walked past a bench I sat down on it, wiping away the almost completely dried up tears. I looked around to see it was already sort of dark and I realized I had absolutely no clue where I was. But all I could really worry about was not ever being able to see my parents again.