Prelude

Life can be a funny thing, and not always in a good way. Take my life for example. Name's Phillip Cambridge. I'm just your typical 18 year old high school senior. I've got a few friends, but for the most part I'm just your typical loner. I don't belong on any sports team. I don't have friends in the school elite. I don't belong to any clubs or cliques. Hell, I don't even have a girlfriend. For all intents and purposes I'm just your standard garden variety loner. But looks can be deceiving.

I actually work after school six hours a day, five days a week at a little grocery mart just a few blocks down the way from the East Nine subway station. I don't work because I want to or because I want the money. I work because I have to. That's right, I have to.

You see, my dad, was a National Guardsman, who died in Iraq two years ago from a roadside car bomb. His death emotionally crippled my mom. I mean, I knew they were closer than a lot of husbands and wives are nowadays, but this really destroyed her. She basically shut down inside. All she would do was sit on the couch and cry and cry for hours, then make a little food, eat and go to bed. I was pretty broke up inside myself. My dad and I had been best friends besides father and son. When he died I locked myself away in my room and cried by myself. After three days of this I felt like I was empty inside and ready to move on with life I came out of my room to a disaster zone.

I mean the house was a MESS.

You couldn't walk five feet without stepping on dirty clothes or trash. I mean how do you mess up a house that bad in just three days?! When I found mom she was a shattered mess, and my twin sis, Mandy, wasn't much better. I didn't know what to do, but I knew that things couldn't stay like this. So I told mom and sis to clean themselves up and to take a nap. I started cleaning house then. It wasn't easy but it had to be done. I stopped long enough to make dinner for the family and get the girls up. We ate that night and things seemed to change. Mom was still broken up inside and sis was still weepy but they both seemed to be ready to continue living.

From that night on I was the man of the house, for lack of a better term. I cleaned everything myself, did all the laundry, cooked all the meals, and started to manage the household income. Without dad's income I soon realized I had to get a job as mom's job as a charge nurse at the local area hospital wasn't enough to cover the bills. That's when I got the job at the grocery. All this meant to me, was I also had to drop most of my friends and pretty much all of my social life to manage everything. I also had to learn to take care of myself. I couldn't go to mom for help anymore as she was still dead inside, and although Mandy was my twin she was distant from me and everyone else after dad's death, so she was out too. But all things considered, it could have been worse.

I mean I didn't have to spend all my income on bills. I was able to save a little here or there and buy a few things for myself. Like some decent clothes that I liked or stuff for the strategy games I played. I even managed to save up enough to buy an old banged up '67 Mustang. She wasn't the prettiest thing to look at but her motor purred like a kitten.

But all that aside, I spent two years as a pretty straightforward loner. I went to school, I worked, I kept the house, and managed my family. That was pretty much my life.

Little did I realize how much my life was going to change yet again...

Edited by SneakySis

Chapter 1 »