Sweet Chaos - Book 1

Chapter 3

***WARNING*** This chapter contains the mention of suicide. If you or someone you know is in a dark place, or even entertaining the thoughts of suicide, please reach out to the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. You and the people you know are not in this battle alone.

Chapter 3:

"When tragedy strikes, not all is lost." - Momma

Maddie

I woke up with the bright sun shining through my open blinds and pulled back curtains. Squinting I read the clock on the nightstand, seven fifteen a.m. I groaned. One thing that was for certain, I was one hundred percent not a morning person.

"Come on, let's get the day started." I heard my sister Beth say as she patted the bed.

"For the love of everything that's holy, go away and let me sleep." I begged her, pulling the pillow over my eyes.

"Nope, we need to keep busy. We need to get a good healthy meal in, then we need to go to the store, and then who knows what else the day has in store for us." She said as she started going through some of the drawers pulling out clothing for me.

"You know, I can dress myself." I said as I rubbed my eyes and sat up. She made her point, we had promised to keep busy to try to deal with the darkness that always wanted to creep its way into our minds.

"Yeah, well, I used to do it for you when you were younger...habit I guess." She said. My mind remembering those days clearly. She had always picked out my clothes for the day, saying that she didn't want to be embarrassed by me and she didn't want me to get picked on.

"So...who cooked breakfast?" I asked as I started getting up from bed. I could smell something had burnt.

Beth looked at me with a crocked smile. "Apparently, Luke decided that he wanted to try his hand with making a traditional southern breakfast" She said. We looked over at each other and laughed. As much as we appreciated all that Luke has done for us, he was definitely not a cook.

"Hurry up, and let's get a move on it. I want to beat all those Couponers to the register. I will not stand in line that long again." She said as we thought back to last week's grocery store trip. There had been only register opened at that time, and unfortunately it was backed up due to a lady who literally had three binders out and handing out coupons to the cashier. What was supposed to be a short trip had ended up taking at least over an hour. The worse part of it was, we were the next people in the line to the register, we weren't about to leave.

I hustled through my get ready routine, and met Beth and Luke downstairs at the kitchen island. Sure enough it looked like Luke really tried to go all out. There were grits, sausage, bacon, eggs, toast that were completely black, waffles and pancakes that were a hit and miss on the burnt level, and some fried chicken that were a little on the burnt side too. I looked to Beth and then Luke as I sat on the stool.

"Wow, Luke, it um looks great. Thank you so much." I said stuttering as I started fixing my plate with some of everything so I wouldn't hurt his feelings.

"Yep, well I tried. I figured you ladies needed a good hearty breakfast with all the running around you probably have today." He said as he took a bite into the toast. "Just, maybe don't worry about eating the toast." He said and then we all laughed.

"Speaking of running around, how was your day in town yesterday with Noelle?" Beth asked as she ate a lot of the fruit she'd put on her plate.

I had gone into town with our next door neighbor that was just slightly older than me the day before. Honestly, it felt good being able to get out of the house without Beth and Luke, even if Noelle was still my "chaperone". Honestly, I didn't blame them. With how things had been when I first arrived here after being released from the hospital, I was surprised they were letting me go out at all without them.