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    Chapter 1
    Cold Winter Air



    “I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.”

    Bill Watterson



    Every year my family went to the cabin we had in the Rocky Mountains. The cabin was small, I had to share a room with my two sisters, and the heater was always broken. One year we got snowed in, and I had to stay in that cabin with those two annoying girls, my sisters, for two weeks. Every minute they had a new complaint. We got low on food, and they were hungry.

    I gave up my share, just to keep them quiet.

    When we got home, Sara and Alexis, my sisters, both went to the hospital for pneumonia. I visited them because I was forced to, but they looked just fine. They'd get better. They would annoy me again in a few days.

    Three months later they were still in the hospital, in intensive care. The doctors said they had caught the pneumonia too late to save them. They were small. So were their lungs. The doctors said that anything they tried to do would damage their lungs entirely. My parents mourned the death of their still living daughters when the doctor told them that there would be no saving them. They blamed themselves, and apologized to me, because they couldn’t break the news to them. I’m so sorry, Justin. Could you just keep it a secret?

    Sara liked having me by her bedside. She always got me to read her new series aloud to her. Of course it was the Twilight series, and she owned all of them. My parents had always given them whatever they wanted. Now it became their “dying wish”. So if they said “read” it was “read now”.

    I didn’t mind. I was their brother. I had to love them.

    It killed me. I had to sit in the room, watching them disintegrate, watching them struggle to breathe. They looked so fragile, so breakable. Mom and dad touched their hair, their faces, their skin- reassuring them. I couldn’t. I was afraid too. What if I hurt them? Mom and Dad would hate me.

    Alexis died first. She was the youngest of the twins. Sara never knew. Mom and dad convinced her that Alexis had gotten just better enough to lie around at home. This satisfied her, and it also disappointed her. She told me later that she wanted to be the stronger one. Then I leaned closer to her bed.

    “You are.” I kissed her on the forehead. The only time I ever touched her after they got sick.

    She died a year after entering the hospital. Mom and dad didn’t have enough time to mourn their double losses. They had to work hard to earn money to pay off the hospital bills. When I asked why they kept them in the hospital when the hospital didn’t do anything for them, they called me hard and bitter.

    Perhaps, I was. Maybe, I still am.

    A year passed, and I entered my sophomore year of high school. My friends pitied me, and I hated them. I didn’t want their looks of pity. Pity meant they felt sorry for it, and trust me, they didn’t feel sorry enough. They didn’t understand that pain. Some days, I wish that they had.

    My parents were never home, and when they were, they treated me like a stranger. Just a stranger in a spare bedroom, the missing food in the fridge, the running shower in the evening.

    They didn’t mean to do it. It wasn’t their fault. I disappeared with their daughters, and now I was the apparition reminding them of their loss.

    I didn’t care. At least I told myself not to care, and put up a nice façade. They only talked to me to ask what we needed from the store, or nonchalantly ask if report cards came in. They always believed me when I said ‘no’. Or maybe they just stopped caring after a while.

    When I dyed my hair and pierced my lip, they only glanced at me and shook their heads disapprovingly. I think I heard Mom say something about “going gothic” to my Dad once, but I can’t be sure it was about me. It was never about me.

    I found myself hanging with what they would call “the wrong crowd,” but the wrong crowd knew how I felt. They understood, and they realized that I existed.

    Seth, Josh, Priscilla, Shawn, and Paul made up the group. Josh was dating Priscilla, and Paul was gay. Seth and I were best friends. We did everything together.

    “Want a smoke?”

    Seth tossed me a side glance, while pulling his own Camel from the pack.

    “When don’t I?” I smiled quickly.

    He tossed me the pack, and I lit up. I started smoking three months ago. It still stung the back of my throat during my first puff, but not enough to make me cough. I didn’t smoke because it tasted good. It certainly didn’t. But I wasn’t doing it to punish myself, either. I just smoked to smoke.

    I tried cigars before, but the taste and smell were so overwhelming it caused me to vomit. The sickness lasted for three hours, and I couldn’t get the smell off of me for three days.

    “Life sucks, dude.” Seth proclaimed.

    Seth had lost his mom in a car accident, and there was no more hope of keeping him from his abusive father. I offered to call it in, but he said “They don’t care if it’s a kid being abused. Do it to an animal, and they’ll freak. But do it to a teenager, and it’s life.”

    I nodded in response to Seth’s announcement.

    “Mrs. Batillo was freaking out on me in Chemistry first period. Said they’d keep me in 10th grade if I didn’t ‘straighten up.’”

    “What a b***h!” I scoffed. Seth liked it better when I agreed with him, and I liked it better when we were on good terms. Win-win.

    “So is Whitney still screwin’ around with Paul?”

    I shrugged.

    “Doesn’t she know he’s gay. I mean it’s so obvious. Then again who’d be attracted to Whitney,anyway?”

    “Yeah. God, have you seen her teeth? They look like a sharks. It’s disgusting.”

    We puffed on our cigarettes in silence.

    The fourth period bell rang.

    “I’m gonna go to class,” I decided aloud.

    “You do that.” Seth joked. “Just give me that cigarette so you don’t waste it.”

    He smudged the end of the burning cigarette into the brick wall, and grinned.

    “It’ll be waiting for you, you pansy.”

    I smiled back at him. “I’ll be back at lunch.”

    I walked into Mr. Harper’s class five minutes late, with my head angled towards the floor, hoping he wouldn’t mention my tardiness. No luck.

    “Where were you, Justin, that it took you over five minutes to make it here?”

    I slid into my desk.

    “I was in the bathroom.”

    It was only half a lie. I had stopped by the bathroom to ‘freshen up.’

    “Well, despite your tardiness, we have already introduced our new student.”

    It’s always a new student. Why couldn’t kids just stay in their own damn schools.

    “And since you’re tardy, I’m partnering you two together.”

    a*****e.

    “Partnering for what? This is a freaking English class.”

    He leered at me, mentally cussing me out. I smirked a little. I loved when teachers couldn’t keep their composure.

    “For the drama section, you are going to write and perform a two person play. It’s worth four test grades, so I suggest that you do not skip it.”

    I scowled. I never skipped work, and he knew it. I always turned everything in at the last minute, but still managed to get a decent grade. I had nothing better to do at home than study. My X-Box 360 broke two months ago, and I still hadn’t earned enough money at my part-time job to fix it. He was just agitated that I wasn’t “working up to my potential.”

    “Alright, class. Move to desk closest to your partner, and get to work.” He clapped his hands together, almost like a dictator. Hell, he was a dictator.

    Someone slipped into the desk beside mine. It was a chubby boy, with thick rimmed glasses, and greasy hair. Is THIS my partner? God, no.

    Thankfully, he turned to his left, and talked to his actual partner, a girl with pigtails and thick eyeliner. Poor, poor girl, I thought as she leaned subconsciously away from the stench.

    Someone tapped my shoulder. It was Mr. Harper himself. In his opposite hand, he had a student’s arm.

    “Let me introduce you to our newest addition, since you were very rudely tardy. Justin, this is Haley. Haley, this is your new partner Justin. Good luck dealing with him.”

    He forced her into the desk beside me, and left, as if he had just connected the two of us through matrimony. I shifted in my desk, causing the chains on my Tripp pants to clang against the metal legs of the desk. I took a quick side glance at her.

    She had a pretty nice body- thin and all. Her eyes were all lit up, and ready for learning, in their deep green color. Her brown hair was straight and glossy, and floated to her collar bone. She looked sort of like a doll with her heart shaped face, and perfectly proportioned facial features. She looked different than all of the other girls here, but was strangely plain. There was nothing to separate her from the others, except, perhaps, the fact she wasn’t from here to start with.

    Our contrasting styles were noticed by many, and ignored by few. She wore a blue plaid summer dress with white sandals, and accessorized with a white pearl necklace. One tiny braid separated from the rest of her hair on the left side, and she twirled it between her fingers while a wrinkle formed in her forehead. She tried to figure out why I was what she thought I was- a suicidal, gothic freak. How typical of her.

    “Wh-” she began to ask the orthodox question, but the teacher saved her my aggravated answer.

    “Now that we’re all acquainted, I suggest you take out a piece of paper and a pencil, and I’ll go over the rules.”

    High school sucks.