Chapter 1

I have been alone most of my life. When I was six, I met my best friend, Zachary Antonio. He passed away when I was 14. Then, after that event, I had left and moved into a flat, since I didn’t want to put any pressure on my mother or father with me living there. My flat is plain, but it isn’t empty either. I left because of my cat, Mochi. My parents are allergic to cats, but I’m not.

In this messed up world, we’re all going to find our soulmate someday. You either receive an angel or a devil. They’ll disguise themselves as animals until it is your time to match them. Almost everyone in my school has already found theirs while I’m still alone. I don’t have any friends either. I feel like it’ll be my fault they die, too.

When Zach passed, we were at the movies. When we were walking out, I didn’t realize that there was a van coming towards us. Zach, however, noticed the soon to be killing machine, and pushed me out of its path. As the van slammed into him, I lay on the ground, watching in fear. The driver sped away, struggling to get out of the situation. As I held him in my arms, he only smiled at me. No matter how mad I was at him for risking his own life for mine, I hugged him. I visit him every day and tell him about my time. Whenever the flowers die, I replace them.

Once I woke up, Mochi meowed to alert me I had school. After petting him on the head, I walked to my bathroom. My music soon blasted as I took a quick shower, combed and blow dried my hair, cleaned my teeth, got dressed, and cleaned my shoes. Mochi rested on the counter and ate his food as I bit into an apple.

“Bye Mochi . . . I’ll catch you after school!” After waving, I was on my approach to the hell I have to live in every single day. On the move, my ear buds slipped out of my pocket and onto the pavement. I ran into the street without thinking and snatched the case. A truck screeched its tires to stop. The guy sitting in the truck began cursing and yelling at me. The boy in the passenger seat stared out the window and rolled his eyes every second the guy yelled. Pulling my t-shirt, I continued to walk, just struggling to ignore the enraged hedgehog looking fellow. Once I reached my destination, I slumped into my desk and waited for the professor to enter. I’ve never been the earliest girl in my entire time, but today I was the first one to arrive. While my backpack thumped to the floor, my teacher loomed over me, trying to read what I was writing in my hand. Mind you, I never write terrible things about myself. Only quick notes. Sometimes the note will be longer than other but they are never things like ‘stupid’, ‘ugly’, ‘go somewhere else’. He rested his hand on my shoulder and asked if I needed help. He didn’t say what kind of help, he just said ‘help’. I whiffed my head and covered my hand with my sleeve. Kids filed in and then he walked away. Glad he was done with worrying about me, I just read the rest of the homeroom period. After the bell rang, I ran out.

“Hey, are we still hanging out after school?” A kid asked his friend. This kid was wearing a red shirt with white stripes. His friend looked very different from his friend. He didn’t look like he wanted to talk to him at all. I know how to read people . . . this kid was harder to read, though.

“I do not know, are we?”

“That’s what I’m asking you!”

“Sure, I guess.” Once they walked past me, I smiled. It’d be nice to go over that with a friend to see if I was still going over to their house or if they were coming over to mine. Zach used to meet me at the park and we’d swing all the time or we’d talk about how his parents were talking to him more. Zach had anxiety, which caused him to zone out and think about the little things too much. His parents normally were too busy to talk to him, or they were out on business trips. They never fought, though. Truly, they were an amazing family.

As I sat in my chair and the teacher went on about politics, I looked out the window. It wasn’t snowing, or windy, or raining, or even sunny. I just focused on the trees. How I’d love to become one when I die. No matter what someone is talking about, I always seem to bring death into it. Mainly because I do not know what will happen when I die. If I were to talk to a teacher privately, speaking about school matters, I would tell them that if I were to die soon, I would want to be a tree. Standing tall watching kids play at a park or something of the sorts. Most of the time, I get sent down to the office or they tell me that what I said was off-topic. The teacher, Mrs. Calindar, called me back into the world of politics by yelling my name.

“Miss Dexter!” Mrs. Calindar roared.

“I think she’s dead.” Someone said,

“What makes her think that she’s gonna talk to her?” another spoke softly to someone.

My arms and legs felt weak. I looked at her and breathed out. She paused and said nothing. Moments later, I was walking down the hallway to the bathroom. She told me ‘to go cool off’, whatever the heck that meant. Closing a stall door behind me, I sat on the cold floor and turned on my music. The sound was soft enough for only me to hear. Still, I slipped in my earbuds. It was Zach’s favorite song, Lover of Mine, by 5 Seconds of Summer. That was his favorite band, too. I liked them now, only because I wanted to picture Zach telling me “And this was their first song” or “This song makes me wanna cry you know?” or “this song makes me think of you! You’d like it!” All of his stupid brief comments were . . . everything to me. I never said thank you to him for everything he did for me, and I’m too late now.

My phone buzzed. Once I looked, I rolled my eyes instantly.

Let me guess, you’re in the bathroom crying about something?

This was none other than Zach’s older brother, Micha. Micha was a cool guy. Tall, lean, and a football player. Of course, he was the jock that got all the girls going but he kind of checked in on me now and then. I didn’t hate him, but I didn’t like him too much either.

Why do you need to know? I quickly typed back with a sigh.

Well . . . do you know what day it is, doofus?

Monthly check-up, I know. Micha, why do you have to do the monthly check-up? Why can’t . . . Max do it?

Max was Micha’s friend. I liked to say how he was cute and all that just to get Micha fired up. But really, Max wasn’t cute to me at all.

Really? Max is a terrible idea. And since when do you want to talk to Max, of all people?

He’s cute. His hair is perfect and so is his voice and everything is.

Stop.

Make me dummy

Well fine. See you after school. Duck Face.

Bye smoocha

Shut up

With a smile, I slid my phone back into my pocket. At least someone cared that I was alive. Smoocha was his nickname since he kissed a goat when we were kids. Of course, he didn’t mean to, but we were at a petting zoo. A laugh left me as I remembered the funny memory. Soon, I got off of the floor and walked back to class. The day went by slowly after that. For lunch I didn’t eat because I thought it would be stupid to eat since I have P.E. right after. The stupid shorts I had to wear were bothering me like crazy. I never understood why we had to wear shorts. Someone poked my shoulder and whispered to me.

“My dad is being stupid. Sorry, he was yelling at you.” I spun around and brushed the hair out of my eyes. A boy that was taller than me looked down at me. His green eyes and dark brown hair bothered me. I shook out of my trance and gently smiled.

“It’s fine. It was stupid of me to run out onto the road.” With a sigh, I pulled my hair back behind my ears as I stretched. He nodded and then walked away. That was a close way to making a friend, but I guess he didn’t want to be friends with such a loser. As I looked around the gym, I ran, since that is what we were supposed to do. The gym teacher is a gracious lady. She is never mean to someone if they don’t do their laps, but she will get mad if you make fun of the one fat kid in the class. None of us are extremely skinny. Except for Sylvia. I think she has an eating disorder or something. I can always hear her talking about it to her friends. Most of the time she treats it like it’s a good thing so that all the guys can look at her and not have to worry about anything not being the way they don’t want it. The chubby kid, Chance, isn’t the teacher’s son, but she cares about him. I like him. He may try to fit in sometimes, but he doesn’t always care about the girls or anything. He’s actually gay. We used to be friends back in kindergarten and in 5th grade. He told me how girls just aren’t that appealing to him. He wasn’t always so fat, he was pretty skinny when we were kids. I guess he gained a lot of weight because when he got a disease, he had to have a certain type of treatment that caused him to gain weight. Today, he was wearing a bunch of heavy jackets and he was running faster than ever to help him lose weight.

Even though he doesn’t care about what people think about him, he wanted to be skinny so he could do more things. Maybe he was my only friend, but I had changed a lot in the past few years. I had not only dyed my hair, but I also got a piercing. My hair at the moment is half orange, half black. Zach was planning on doing his like mine, too, but he died too early for us to do it together.

After gym, I was ready to die. Math was finally finished and I could go home. For once, my music wasn’t blaring in my ears. I was walking and looking around. Birds were soaring in the sky and dogs were barking in the distance. A smell of something sweet hit me. I smiled at the thought of Zach’s mom’s pastries. She made the best strawberry mini cakes. My legs had finally brought me to my street, then when I was about to take the turn to get onto my street, someone pulled my arm and started messing up my hair.

“Hey, let me go!” I yelled, trying to punch and kick.

“Quit it Duck Face, it’s just me.” Micha said with an evil smile on his face. I pulled away from his grasp. My hand swung, and he grabbed my fist. He looked at me and rolled his eyes. Whenever I tried to punch him back, he caught me. He let go of my wrist and walked to my apartment building. I followed behind him and stayed quiet. He stopped at the door and my finger touched the buzzer. Gary, the doorman, let us in. We walked up the stairs in silence. When I opened my door, Mochi was already sitting there in front of the door, meowing.

“Yep, I’m home.” Mochi jumped onto my shoulder and rubbed against my face. Micha shut the door behind him. Micha looked around and nodded at a few things. He saw a picture of Zach and me when we were kids. I blankly stared at him and went back to taking things out of my backpack. My phone fell out of my pocket and slid under the couch. With a groan, I got onto the floor. Micha realized what had happened and walked over, moving to the couch. Mochi batted my phone, and I snatched it. With a sigh, I hugged my knees. Micha sat down next to me and let out a lung full of breath.

“It’s hard . . .I know . . .But you need to learn to get through it. I’ve been trying, but I know how hard it is. Amy,” he looked at me and nudged my shoulder, “You’ve got this. You can make it through. I know I’m a jerk all the time, but I just want you to know . . .I’m here. Okay?” As Micha said this, tears spilled from my eyes. My eyes were burning from the salty, acid-like water. After this, I didn’t talk back. I just cried.

“Do you want me to bring some of my mom’s pastries?” He closed his eyes and let his head hang backwards. I looked up at him and nodded. He laughed. “You can’t always act tough, Duck Face.” He gave me an evil grin, and I laughed at him. No matter how sad I was whenever he had to talk to me about this stuff, he always had a way of making me laugh. After about 30 minutes, Micha was making a bowl of cereal and scrolling through his Instagram feed. There were tan girls, basketball, baseball, football, and softball players, and sometimes there would be a good meme. He tried to think I didn’t see the memes, but I did. My ramen was cooking on the stove as I continued to lie on the floor. We had moved the couch back and were literally ready to pass out. Micha grabbed his things after washing his bowl and walked by me. My head was resting on the small table that was in the middle of the living room. He held his hand on the top of my head.

“I’m leaving. I’ll be back over the weekend with the pastries. Take care of yourself, Amy.” He said as he made his way to the door. My head lifted, and I smiled at him. Mochi rubbed against his leg as he turned.

“Hey Micha?”

“Mm?”

“Thank you . . .” Another smile spread across my face. Micha rolled his eyes as he returned a smile as he slightly waved then walked out. Mochi huffed and walked over, and plopped onto the table. My hand rubbed his stomach. My eyelids soon became heavy as Mochi purred.

Amy. Sweetie? Are you there? A voice echoed through my head. No matter how badly I wanted to see who it was, my eyes were glued shut and almost as my body was fused to the floor. I couldn’t speak it was like my lips were welded together. I tried screaming, but nothing was working. Tears poured down my face and before I knew it . . . The dark red lights were flashing everywhere. Soon blue lights too. Sirens. I shifted to my side and saw a motionless body lying on the ground with blood surrounding it like a pool.

There was a cry to my left as a scream followed. A truck roared by. Headlights flashed in my eyes, then everything went dark. I’m sorry but. . . we can’t do anything. He’s too far gone. You may see him now if you’d like, but I can’t help you. My legs carried me into a white room with a motionless body in a bed. No more blood, though. They opened their eyes, and I saw him . . .Zach. A hand touched my shoulder as I tried to yell at him. Screaming “I’m sorry”, “it should have been me!”, “don’t leave me!”, and “Please. . .” . Micha hugged me tightly as the door was shut and tears rolled down both of our faces. My tears made his shirt damp, and he tried to comfort me.

I shot up and wheezed. Thunder rolled as I rubbed my knotted head. Just a dream. I thought as I made my way to the bathroom. For a second, I looked at myself as tears continued their journey down my cheeks. My forearm brushed them off as my other hand reached for a hairbrush. I didn’t care what time it was; I was going to skip school if I needed to. Wait, it’s Saturday. I could ever so slightly hear my ringtone from the other room. Making my way towards the dreaded sound, I pulled the phone to my ear and tried to sound as alive as possible.

“Hello. . . “ My voice sounds scratchy and like I’m dying.

“Hey. I wanted to make sure you were okay. You looked really freaking tired when I left your place.” Micha sounded just as tired as I did.

“I’m fine I guess.”

“Are you sure? I mean, you sound like you’re dying.” He laughed, and this caused me to laugh too.

“I had a dream. I’m fine though. Just. . .It hit me I guess.”

We talked the rest of the night until about 6:30 a.m. He had to work, so he hung up and got ready for it while I just lay on my floor with Mochi purring on my chest. I had opened the window for some fresh air after Micha got me crying. He had me talking about the dream for so long it’s pasted in my head and I can’t forget it. Mochi batted at my small buns that had been made in my hair. My eyelids grew heavy, but I wasn’t tired. I walked over to the window and shut it as something dashed inside, ripping through the screen of the window. With a scream, I slammed the window shut and jumped. Mochi hissed toward a small sound. I made my way over to the couch and Mochi jumped behind me.

“Hello?” my voice squeaked as I poked my head above the sofa. There was a small dove crying in pain. I dropped to my knees and pulled the couch away from the wall. After scooping the bird up in my hand, I looked back to the window where three crows were pecking at the glass.

“Oh, you were running from them.” A smile left my face as I stood and shut the blinds. Before I knew it, I was on my bed examining this bird trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Well, it went full speed through a window screen which has to hurt and god knows what those crows did to it. My brain kept swerving from possibility to possibility of what could go wrong.

It had been hours, and I was still trying to figure out what was wrong. I was sitting at my desk with my head on the top. I apologized to the dove and gently stroked its head. My eyes then shut. A loud crash followed, and I jumped back, falling out of my chair, and rubbing my head. There was a guy rubbing his shoulder and then grabbing the closest thing he could to cover himself. His face was beet red as was mine and I smacked my hands onto my face. I rushed to my feet and down the hallway with my phone nearly falling out of my pocket.

“Stay there!” I yelled as my shaky hands dialed the number that I shouldn’t have.