If I Die

One

It was early December on Thatcher Road as Adriana Kingsley stared out her bedroom window.

Snow was steadily falling and piling up on her window sill. The sky was gray, but the kind of gray you only see during a snowstorm in Ridgeview, Connecticut. It was six-thirty in the morning and she really needed to get ready for school. But instead of jumping into the shower like she typically would this time of morning, she just stood at her window, somewhat in a trance by the snow.

She needed to calm down before she did anything right now. If she tried to put her makeup on or fix her hair while she was feeling like this, it would surely be a disaster.

It had been exactly two weeks since it started. The dream. The exact same dream every night.

Dark circles had become present under her eyes in the last week and she was sick of it. She could hardly get concealer to cover them at this point. She was also nodding off in class, upsetting the teachers that usually respected her.

But what could she do about it at this point? She had already tried sneaking her moms sleeping pills. That actually made it worse. The dream seemed more intense the night she took the pills.

The door to her room suddenly opened up, causing Adriana to jump. She turned her head around quickly, expecting to see her older sister, Ansleigh, standing in her doorway ready to tear into her like she usually did in the morning. Instead of her, she sees her mother standing there in her robe holding a cup of coffee.

"Why aren't you in the shower yet, Adri?" She asks and takes a sip of her drink.

Turning away from the window completely, she faces her mom. Her mom was younger than most of her friends moms she went to school with. While other moms were in their forties, some even in their fifties, Adriana's mom was only thirty-seven. She had gotten pregnant with her older sister, Ansleigh, at seventeen by a boy she thought she was in love with at the time. Ruby, her mother, had went to marry him with the consent of  their parents, only to find that he had ran off a week before the ceremony was planned to take place. She was crushed, but only two years later she met Richard Kingsley, Adriana's father, who adopted Ansleigh as his own soon after their marriage.

Adriana sighs. "Nothing, mother. Just looking at the snow." Rolling her eyes, she stomps past her mom, down the hall, and into the bathroom.

Closing the door behind her, she presses her back against it and breathes in and out deeply. After taking a moment to calm her nerves she turns the water on to the shower. Taking her phone out of their pajama bottoms pocket, she looks at the time. 6:45.

Shit. Ella is gonna kill me.

Quickly undressing, not waiting for the water the heat up like she normally does, she jumps in the shower. She regrets that decision immediately when the cool water hits her skin. The cool water wouldn't be so bad if the rest of her house was at all warm.

As soon as the time of year rolled around when the temperatures dropped below fifty degrees outside, her father, instead of turning on the heat, keeps it off. Wanting to keep the electric bill down, he starts up the fire place. Which wouldn't be bad if it kept the entire house warm. But unfortunately the only room in their two story home it kept warm was the living room where the fire place sat.

And that is not ideal when it's consistently below freezing in their little town. The only time Adriana's father used the heat was in an emergency. Part of her wishes the temperatures would drop to the negatives so he would turn it on. She doesn't even understand why her dad worries about the electric bill. He owns one of the most successful restaurants in the state. Money was definitely not an issue. Most nights her electric blanket is the only reason she hasn't caught hypothermia yet.