Chapter 1
I wake up panting, strands of my red hair glued to my forehead with sweat. Another bad dream. I roll over in bed and sit up. My green t-shirt and jeans are on a wrinkly, smelly pile on the foot of my bed. One more day would be just fine, I think to myself, slipping on the shirt and jeans. I look down at my feet, not washed in such a long time that no one could remember when they were clean. My eyes scan the room for my shoes. I give up looking for them just as my brother, Wilson comes in.
“Hey, skinny bird.” Wilson calls me skinny bird because of my pointy nose and because of how thin I am. I hate it. I picture a wailing, pink, flesh-y baby bird with its ribs visible. It’s not my fault we’re so starving!
“Shut up, Wilson. It’s better than being a goose like you,” I smirk. Wilson is such a pain! Like most fifteen-year-old brothers are.
Wilson leaves the room. He looks more like a skinny bird than me, with his head tilted back and his arms sagging at his sides, mouth open wide. Ice-blond hair, pinkish skin, birthmarks like feathers, and a thinner waist than mine, because he can’t hunt and that’s our food source.
I open a small splintery wooden door that leads to the bathroom. There’s a tub in the middle of the floor, a slate, and a dark scrappy gray washcloth, and that’s it. I take the boiled water from yesterday and dump it in the tub, some of the water leaking through the cracks in the round tub and onto the wooden floor. I put my feet in the water, scrubbing them with the slate that was leaning against the wall. Some yellowish peach flesh appears under the hair and dirt covering my feet. The water is murky now, but my feet are fresh and clean. I take my feet out of the tub and dry them on the gray towel hanging on the side of it. I smooth back my crazy hair with saliva, and I wash the crust from my eyes. I wipe the blood away from my chapped lips.
Good enough for school.
I walk out from the bathroom and see my two brothers, Wilson, age 15, and Jerry, age 18, shelling nuts and washing berries.
“Where’d y’all get those without help from little sis?” I say with a teasing smile.
Jerry shoots me a look and says with disgust and a hint of showing off, “Traded ‘em for some squirrel skin. Made a good pelt for the old woman, Mrs. Shaunella. Don’t ask us how we got it.”
I roll my eyes, knowing that they use the stuff I hunt because they can’t bear it that I can hunt and they can’t. I eye the skin-stripped squirrel corpse on the ground.
“Yeah, I don’t have any hunches,” I say with a smirk to the two numbskulls. I put the squirrel corpse in a greasy paper bag, with some nuts, berries, and an apple. Good lunch.
I spend the next thirty minutes eating squirrel liver and watching TV. The TV programs that they put on there all have rich families. Families with big delicious meals of luxurious food, pounds of money, hot and cold faucets, crystal chandeliers, wardrobes bigger than my whole house, staircases. Wow, a life like that would be so…different.
I finally find my shoes and slip them on. I pull my backpack over one shoulder and head out the front door, ducking the top of the doorframe. I run along the street of tiny, squat, dark houses with the blinds drawn tightly shut and not a sound except a faint crying and a dog howling.
I make my way to the small, red, paint-chipped school building as the school staff gong the schoolbell. Oscar, the janitor, waves to me from the bathroom window. It’s hard to make out because of all of the grime on the small, dusty plastic squares of windows.
I walk through the gray double-doors,
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Lektorat: Ellie Moon
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 16.11.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-6472-4
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Widmung:
This book is to anyone who feels like they just want their old life.
-A.B.