Chapter 1: Memories
September 12th, year 2005
“...ey… Ale…” I barely heard a voice calling out to me, as I felt extremely sleepy. “Alex! Wake ....”
As I struggled with opening my heavy eyelids, the voice grew clearer, pulling me out of my deep sleep. 'What time is it?' Finally, I was able to crack my eyes open and peek and was slightly blinded by the light. Adjusting to the brightness over a few minutes, I had seen the clock at 6:15 in the morning. 'What? Why…? Oh, right! First day at the new school…'
I saw my mother standing at the door, “If you’re awake, then go get ready. I have some pancakes being made for celebration”
Hearing that I mumbled, “You don’t have to celebrate the first day of school.”
Apparently she heard that and glared at me. She unhappily replied with, “I’m not celebrating that, I’m celebrating that I’ll finally be able to have afternoons to myself! Alright, now go get ready!” Upon saying that, she turned around and headed back downstairs. She was quite upset, as I heard her footsteps loudly stomping on the stairs, fading into the kitchen.
Before getting out of bed, I reached over to check my phone, noticing a few notifications for recent channels I subscribed to and one for an app I mainly used to read books on. Ignoring them, I opened the weather app to see it was going to be 45 degrees. Groaning about the cold, I rolled out of bed and groggily stripped off the clothes from last night before walking to my closet. I picked out a pair of black jeans, with a slightly large red t-shirt and a thin, black, polyester, long-sleeve undershirt. After getting some socks and underwear from the dresser, I move to go take a shower.
Stolen novel; please report.
As the bathroom was right next to my room through the hallway, I had formed a habit during the summer to go commando and sneak by when no one was around. It saved a few extra seconds not having to pick up the dirty clothes after a shower. Unfortunately I forgot one major point; It was no longer summer break where I would wake up at two in the afternoon.
Just as I left my room, another person popped out from the room across the hall… It was the foreign exchange student from Japan that went by the name Lily. She was a few months older than me, turning 15 over the summer, while I was 14 for just a couple more days. She had long black hair that was slightly messy since it was still morning. Her green eyes had a tint of grey in them, but they still shined clearly at everything. Although her spoken english was a little broken, she understood it when you talked to her.
Of course, now wasn’t the time to actually think about those things as, currently, I was in a pinch. It would’ve been fine if it was one of my family members, but she only got her a week ago. Let alone the embarrassment as a 14 year old upon being seen naked by a girl about the same age.
The sleepiness immediately left my body, as I barely managed to squeak out a “Sorry!” before quickly dashing into the bathroom like a rabbit. She didn’t even move an inch, as if petrified, while her thoughts were unknown.
After entering the bathroom, I leaned back on the shut door. I felt like I could hear my heart pounding fast. Upon catching my breath, I looked over to the mirror on the left and saw my face was a light shade of pink. “Ugh”, I groaned, as I picked myself up off the door, heading to the bathtub. “That was embarrassing...” I mumbled while starting the shower.
Waiting a minute for the water to heat up, I recollected my thoughts and tried to forget about what had happened… I noticed the water was warm enough, so I hopped in, thinking about topics to chat with my new classmates.
“I only hope nobody recognizes me from the last school,” I muttered as the warm water flowed onto my face and down my body. I closed my eyes and immersed myself in the warmth of the water. Slowly, time seemed to stop. I heard a few noises drowned out from outside my head, but I ignored them. I seemed to have lost all sense of touch. I tried opening my eyes, and couldn’t, while the feeling of suffocation enveloped me.
The last thought I had was 'Am I dead?' before everything turned white.