Double Jinx (Wattys2017)

Chapter 1

It was hot. Hotter than any single day I've ever experienced in my entire life. The sun beat down with no hope of cloud cover, the ground had been reduced to mere dust, and every tree in sight looked more like twigs with bark dryer than a desert.

    This was not how I wanted to spend the end of my senior year.

    Not that I had any other plans. My desires to finish my last semester in high school consisted only of hiding away in my room and talking to the only friend I had. But she was back in Colorado. My time was usually spent reading in solitude, listening to music whenever I had to make an appearance in public so I'd have an excuse not to converse with a single soul, and playing video games with my older brother Jason.

    But Jason wasn't coming down until next week, he had to finish up with work before summer. Which left me in this hellhole, alone, without even one friend to talk to. Though I couldn't imagine talking to them anyway. I didn't talk very much. And when I say that, I mean not at all. I couldn't tell you why because I didn't know myself, I've just always been quiet. Verbally anyways. My mind was a web of thoughts and ideas, a turbine constantly spinning. But those thoughts rarely ever saw the light of day. My speech therapist, Dr. Young, told me my silence was due to some traumatic childhood event which my memory has repressed to save myself from the pain and despair.

    Personally, I thought that was a load of bullhonkey.

    Because I hadn't repressed the memories, I dreamed of them every night and thought of them every day. I could still see the stairs which led to the depths of the basement, I could still feel the cold of the concrete floor I slept on for countless nights, and I could still hear the boy telling me to be quiet or else his dad would hear us.

    Ace Hunt. The boy who gave his life to save me.

    Very few people knew I still remembered what happened, Jason was one of them. Not even my parents had known, though since that night our family has never been the same. After what happened to me when I was eight, my relationship with my parents was always on edge, like they were walking on eggshells around me. They always saw it as their fault but I knew better. There wasn't anything they could have done to stop it. Their guilt was entirely psychological. So they made up for it by burying themselves in their work as photographers.

    They didn't want any other kid to feel as helpless as I had that night when I was told over and over again, you're wrong. So they dedicated their time to taking photographs of natural wonders and donating them to hospitals, foster homes, community libraries, all with the hope that their photos would inspire children and those less fortunate to keep fighting to see the wonder in the world instead of all the bad. My dad had been born into a fortune fit for a king so my parents never worried about making a profit from their work.

    My parents had been good people, they were kind and they fought for the underdog every chance they got. Unfortunately, they were too devoted to their work. Now they're dead, and barely a week later I found myself standing in butt fucking nowhere, two suitcases at my feet, and sweat dripping down my back.

    Did I mention that it was hot?

    I checked my phone again, hoping to see a text from my grandmother, the only other living relative I had. Jason and I were spending the summer with her as we used to do every year when we were kids. But those yearly visits ended after what happened to me. A lot of things ended after that summer. My desire to socialize with other children, my desire to do anything really. After that summer, my thoughts were filled with a single boy who no longer existed. And now my parents didn't exist either.

    The only one I had left was Jason.

    On the contrary, while Jason finished up his work in lovely Colorado where I desperately wanted to return to, I was stuck in a town-sized crater called Barren Valley, Nevada and true to it's name, the town was barren.