Stories Left Untold— Chapter One

Instructions

Chapter One The day started out as normally as it could. Mum went away dealing with her no-go business, and Dad stayed away, like he did five years ago. Ellie curled up in her dog bed, whining in a way that made my heart ache, and Caroline tried to make baby Piper go to sleep. “Hi,” she said simply without looking up as I walked out of my bedroom— if you could even call it a bedroom, but I was lucky to be in a flexible house than the apartment with yelling neighbors and scary creaks that Caroline kept talking about. “School tomorrow? Before-school jitters?” She asked abruptly as Piper dozed off, then woke again. “Not really,” I said absentmindedly. “Chris will be as mean as always, but we always have the nicer kids— and maybe I’ll make friends.” Too bad almost none of the kids at my school wanted to be friends with the poor dorky kid that was Chris’s first target— aside from the other Jamie, but he left Rivenshade. Caroline started rocking Piper to sleep and put her next to Ellie, who whimpered and cradled the baby gently. Piper giggled and calmed and Caroline sighed. “Got your school supplies?” “Yeah,” I said. I honestly wasn’t sure what to do. Rivenshade Middle was just an ordinary school with unnecessarily annoying, strict, and misunderstanding teachers who brought misery to lives. Sixth grade at Rivenshade would be no different from fifth grade, or third grade, or second grade at Rivenshade, except for a few new kids and maybe a few new bullies, or just one of Chris’s new cronies (Chris was the meanest, loudest bully at Rivenshade, with a detention record). On the other hand, I felt a little bad for internally complaining. Usually Caroline was the one dealing with the mess when Mum wasn’t here— mostly just dealing with Piper, making breakfast, et cetera. We still had our ordinary sibling rivalry, but we were already going our separate ways. Piper to a random nursery, me to Rivenshade Academy, Caroline to Ashwillow High. Meanwhile Dad was still absent, Mum was working full-time at a tiny pharmacy she pitied, because nobody wanted to work at a place so small, when all the big, flashy places were where everyone wanted to be, and we didn’t have the heart to remind her that Dad had left because she barely scraped a handful of money and he went around to try to get some, too, especially now that a new family member was here, and someone who was six months old could use a fresh start. At least, that’s what he said he was doing. I’m certain he just wants to stay away from Mum after the big fight. “I’m not really in the mood for breakfast,” I admitted as Caroline began rifling through a drawer to see if we had clean silverware ready to use. Caroline stopped and sighed, pushing the drawer back. “That’s what I figured. It’s in the fridge if you need it. Heat it up in the microwave for a minute.” She walked away, pushing her slipping phone back into her pocket. Those three things— fridge, microwave, phone— took months— years, even— to get, and still, the ‘fridge’ we had was a miniature icebox attached to a stainless steel fridge plugged into the battery and it barely worked. The phone was a gift from Dad when Caroline turned fifteen— although she had started stealing Mum’s phone when she was twelve— and the microwave was the only thing that we could all use properly. “Walk Ellie later at two o’clock,” Caroline called as she strolled into her bedroom and shut the door to do who-knows-what. “And call me when Piper gets bored or starts crying.” “Fine,” I called back. “I would call you either way.” I settled down next to Ellie on the floor, listening to the soft hum of the fridge, the quiet cry of the small golden retriever, the soft chirping of birds and the swoosh of the wind that blew through the leaves. I glared at the pretty white clouds that drifted around, spreading cheer on some people’s lives. ‘The keyword there is some,’ I thought bitterly. If there really was a God like Mum told us, why couldn’t he help us, if he loved us so much? Or maybe Mum just wasn’t brave enough to admit she should’ve moved on to a different, bigger shop where she could earn enough money and live in a nice, new, quiet, two-story house and a nice private school where everybody was polite and amazing. My thoughts wandered. I wondered if Caroline thought the same thing, or if she just accepted fate and moved on. For some reason when she used to attend Rivenshade she was teased for her British accent, but now everybody thought it was cool, especially since only she and Dad spoke that way. To her it seemed to be a tradition to uphold Dad’s memory, since he was already long gone. My mind wandered further, distracted. I mean, I suppose she was good-looking, with her sleek black hair and shining brown eyes with tiny, almost unnoticeable gold specks in them, but I couldn’t understand last year when a boy had a huge and obvious crush on her, but she never seemed to care and ditched him immediately. (Continue to notes and credits)