Chapter One

The day started as it usually did. Groggily, Jess leaned over to hit the snooze button on my alarm clock. He was so bore because he had been doing xxx 60 minutes a calendar week at piece of work lately and he was n't sleeping well because of his home life. Add in school and the homework that came along with it and it was midnight or later by the prison term he got to bed."Who invented these things anyway ? ”, he thought as he climbed out of bed.

Showered and dressed, he went downstairs to get some breakfast."Hi Jess ”, his comrade and sister said to him, almost in unison."Hi ”, he replied back. After eating breakfast, he went back up the stairs to sweep his teeth. Then he came downstairs again and went to see his mother. Jess always went to his mother 's room and said"ripe daybreak"to her before leaving for schoolhouse. Why he still did, he was n't certainly. He had become so distant, there was no actual joining left."Probably just out of riding habit ”, he told himself. He kissed his female parent good-by and then left with his blood brother for school.

In the car, he and his brother did n't spill much. It was n't that they did n't like each other, but Jess and Luke had very trivial in common these days. They had different Quaker, St. Luke being more of a mixer butterfly ; different tastes in medicine, Jess listened to more heavy metal and stone, while Luke was more into the pop medicine scenery ; etc ... Once they got to school, that was it. The car ride there was the most fourth dimension they spent with each other in a day and whichever one was n't driving that day just stared at their telephone the entire ride.

Everyday he dreaded going to school. High School had never been"as advertised"to Jess. He was a lone hand, an outcast. He had not even a handful of friends, everyone knew everyone, but that was about it. Recently he had been feeling more and more dispirit, his thoughts sometimes turning to suicide. Home living was ... well it was n't a home anymore ...

"goodness break of day Mr. Knight ”, said his homeroom teacher, Mr. Toer."Morning ”, Jess replied back. He took his seat and started on the homework he did n't finish finale nighttime. Math was a particularly firmly subject for Jess. He was just one bad grade away from failing the content for the semester, but at this point that was the last thing on his mind. Staring at the blank canvas of theme in movement of him, his nous started to wander."What am I even doing here ? I have no aim, no desire, no happiness. If I decided to just run away today, will anyone guardianship ? Will my parents notice if I 'm not there ?"The bell for the end of homeroom rang, jolting him back into cognizance."damn it ”, he thought, realizing he had n't done a single problem.

When the buzzer rang at 3:05, he was already driving away from school ( his brother was in ROTC and stayed for after-school activities ), his foot to the floor and the receiving set blaring. Music had become Jess'only reprieve from his biography and he was retreating into it more and more, barely paying attention to anything else. Music made him sense brawny, made him feel like he had a reason to live. It seemed that the lyrics of the song on the radio spoke directly to him, lifting him up, making him experience felicitous that individual, somewhere understood what he felt.

When he got home, Jess went straight to his room. As he was changing into his body of work uniform, he took a look at himself in the mirror. He was 16, had long, sinister brown haircloth, electric blue oculus, was about six feet tall, and had slim body. The someone staring back at him looked so far away, it looked like him, but it was n't him. The heart of the somebody in the mirror looked so waste and empty it was shocking. Sighing to himself, he turned off the light and headed to work.

At oeuvre that night, he just floated aimlessly through the evening, barely engaging the client, just wanting the Nox to end so that he could go home and slumber. eternal rest, the one thing and one fourth dimension of the day when he did n't feel hole, lifeless. When did n't sense anything but heartsease. The side by side day was Sat and he did n't have to go to work or school so he could sleep all through the night and well into the morning.

Opening the door to his business firm after piece of work, Jess got a halfhearted"Hi"from his parents. The kind of"hi"that you say out of politeness, not because you actually meant it. He replied back, asked if anyone had made dinner party that Night, and then went to his room. Turning on his information processing system, he checked his e-mail. As usual, it was just a caboodle of spam, but then Jess saw the e-mail. John Wesley had responded to him ! Jess read the e-mail, then shut off his computer and got into bed. Falling asleep, he smiled to himself, feeling some small good sense of hope.


literary criticism welcome. Like I said, let me know if I should continue .