Tati
Here's the second chapter. It's not finished.
Family
What is family? Is it a mom and dad, maybe siblings? Is it blood? Or is it something much greater? My whole childhood, my parents told me that I was adopted. It was no secret. They’d say that they chose me - that they saved me on the last day of the Destruction, that they would always be my parents. Blood didn’t matter.
My mom had this saying: Blood isn’t family, connections are. As I stood in the middle of the streets, dazed by the events that had just transpired, I repeated that saying to myself as if it could clear the confusion and anger and most of all, the hatred. It didn’t work.
They said they loved me. They said I was their son and no one else’s. So, who was I, who was I really? Did they steal me away? Was Alex really my birth mother, or was she just some lunatic? A small voice told me it was probably both. Did she give me up? What did she want from me?
A horn blared behind me, breaking me out of my reverie. I scrambled to a side and off the street. What was I going to do? No one was going to take in a thirteen-year-old orphan boy.
I kept running as fast as my legs could carry me until I ran straight into a door. It was tall and wooden. When I pushed it, the door creaked open. It was dark in the house, dust covered every surface. Light poured in through the broken windows. I opened the fridge. Empty.
“Damn,” I whispered. The streets of Aspen County were littered with the homeless. Someone must’ve looked here already. The shadows shifted behind me. I turned around to find Alex sitting on a rickety dining room chair, her legs crossed, a half-eaten apple in her hand. Candles filled the table behind her. In the glow of the candlelight, Alex looked like a ghost, a shadow in the darkness.
“Looking for food?” she asked.
“Leave me alone,” I grumbled.
“I could help you, ya know,”
“I don’t need your help.”
She raised an eyebrow, “Really? You have no home, no friends, no food. How do you expect to live all by yourself, your barely thirteen?”
“I’ll manage,” I said, not quite believing it myself. I turned around and headed to the door.