~Sage~

             My life had been going great thus far, I had a loving family, and a couple of good friends. My life seemed to be one without suffering and pain. It seems like it should end on a happy note right? Well it's funny you think that, because that is as far from the truth as it gets. This is the point of no return, where my life crashes and burns before my eyes.

             Let's just take it back to yesterday, and how my Monday morning began. It was pretty normal, waking up to my little brother Jett, complaining that my little sister Kora stole the last eggo waffle from the fridge. Which to be fair, is completely out of my control so I don't understand why I'm always the deciding factor in these dumb arguments. So I then proceeded to do what I always do to resolve these fights...walk away and let them fight for themselves, it's not my problem. Actually, I realize how bad of a brother that makes me sound like. I promise I do actually care, most of the time anyways. But going back to the topic of my morning, after avoiding such argument, I normally continue on with the daily routine, y'know, brush my hair and teeth; you get the point. The day truly started to get a little off balance near about 7:30 this morning. My younger siblings normally took the bus to school, but I always walked with my friend Xavier, or X as I called him (because Xavier was way too long for my liking). But today was strange, he wasn't there when I walked by our usual meet-up spot, the Ferndale county sign. And you may say that it could just be because he was sick or running late, but if you knew X, he'd always tell me if he wasn't going to be able to make it to our meet-up spot. This kid was never, and I mean NEVER late. In fact, he's almost always super early to everything. To say I was shocked was an understatement. I wanted to walk to his house to make sure everything was okay, but I still had school, so there went that option. So as I headed to school I decided I'd call him instead. And I waited...and waited...to finally hear...the voicemail auto-response. He didn't answer, another red flag went off in my mind. At this point I was just a bit nervous, he's never done this before, but again, I couldn't just skip school. So I decided that after school today I'd head towards his house to check in on him.

                  After what seemed like years, the final bell had run letting us know we could finally be free. Seriously, my last hour is as close as you could get to prison. It's a bland white room, no windows, and half of the ceiling lights probably haven't been functioning since the place was built. At this point, there wouldn't be any difference if they barred up the door. It felt like an even worse hour than it normally is because X wasn't there to help pull me through the day. We'd usually joke around until our teacher would get pissed off and then mumble to himself, after that we always stopped. Our goal was just to annoy him a bit, just enough to where it would be a little entertaining, but we'd always stop before his temper boiled over. We were trying to have fun, not get put into detention. But without X here, the day just seemed to get worse. Our teacher looked a little too happy to see my friend gone. In my opinion, if the school went up in flames, he'd pry just sit back, eat popcorn, and watch. That man can be scary sometimes.

                But before I put too much thought into my teacher's attitude change, I started off to X's house, right down Varixe Avenue, two streets down from mine. For some reason on this street, the houses are all identical, it's almost like they're fake. There's no difference to any of the houses, but only on this street. My street and every other in this neighborhood have houses that are completely different from each other, but for some reason this street has the same design for each house. It's almost unsettling, but I guess they all have the same design taste, I'm not one to question that, but it sure does make it kinda hard to know who's house is who's. Luckily for me I've known my friend long enough to remember his house is the third to last one. It also helps that the front window hasn't been replaced since X and I accidentally hit a baseball through it. The giant broken window kinda helps me find the house easier. To be fair, X had offered to help me train for the baseball season, so if it was anyone's fault, it was X's as he underestimated how fast my pitching was. I also underestimated how bad of a catcher he was. Which in his defense makes sense, he's never played a sport in his life.

             As I stepped up to his door I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding in, to be honest, I don't know why I was this stressed, for all I know it could just be some misunderstanding. I tend to overthink things more often than I should, but I just couldn't shake this bad feeling off of me. I broke out into a nervous sweat as I reached towards door, but I wasn't just going to sit there like an idiot with my hand hovering mid-air, so I knocked. After about 5 minutes I heard the door getting unlocked from the other side. I sat there silently hoping X would open the door, smiling like always to give me some form of reassurance. As the door creaked open, I looked to see Mrs. Reif standing in the doorway. Not exactly who I wanted to see, but she'd know where he is for sure if he isn't here already.

            "Oh hello Sage! What brings you here?" she exclaimed. Her tone sounded a bit wary, confusing me a bit, what could she be worried about?

               "Hi Mrs. Reif, I was just uh, wondering if X was home? He wasn't at school and he didn't let me know what had happened, it was just unusual for him." I hesitantly responded.

               "Oh Xavier? He just left the house with his father a few minutes ago, he was actually headed over to your house to explain himself! Isn't that funny? I could give you a ride over there if you'd like?" There it is again, the wariness, it's kind of concerning. It's especially concerning because of that fake plastered smile painted on her face. Maybe she's just stressed out, I don't want to trouble her. 

            "No thanks Mrs. Reif, It's alright, I don't live that far from here anyways." I shrugged off her weird behavior as she smiled and waved me off, and began walking home, but I couldn't help but notice the faint smell of firewood. I turned the corner of the street and realized that the closer I got to home, the stronger the smell. My eyes widened and in a panic I started sprinting down the center of the street, not caring about cars, I just needed to get home. Sweat started beading down my face as I heard nothing but the faint shouts of neighbors warning me to stay off the road and the wind rushing through my ears. I was getting closer to my street, and I finally urged myself to look in the air. Blue, the sky was blue, until you looked a bit farther, then you'd see smoke, the darkest smoke I've seen. All of it, billowing out of the same spot, non-stop smoke started flooding the sky. I held my breath to keep from coughing but it took only minutes for the smoke to enter my system. I finally turned the corner onto my street. Families flooded the street, all trying to move away from the fire, the fire that had consumed my home. I frantically looked for my family, pushing through crowds of panicked people. I had almost given up hope of finding my family members until I heard cries from the street. They were definitely from my sister.

               "Kora!" I screamed, voice cracking halfway through. I didn't care, I needed to see that my little sister was safe. She had heard me and was scrambling through the mobs dragging my little brother Jett behind her. I quickly grabbed hold of them, afraid they'd slip away from me. It took me longer than it should have to realize my parents weren't with them. I couldn't let them see me a mess, so I kept my composure enough to talk to my younger brother. "Jett, where's mom and dad." Jett, was at a loss for words, tears stained his cheeks, solemnly pointing towards the house. I looked around to see no firefighters, police, anyone that could help. So I did what I thought was right. I ran back into the house for my parents. I turned back as I was running towards the house door to see my siblings crying out for me. I wanted to say so much to them, to reassure them, to keep them calm, but I had no time. I aimlessly fumbled around the house opening every door in search of my parents. I had no luck with every door. Except for the upstairs bedroom, their bedroom was still closed. I opened the door to see both my mom and dad lying unconscious. I blinked back tears, as I tried to pick them both up and drag them through the halls to the front door. I heard footsteps pound in through the front door, and as I turned to face the noise, I realized it was the firefighters that had come through. Two of them took my parents safely out of harm's way and the other one assisted me on my way out. As we were brought back outside I took in a deep breath of the clean air and then proceeded to fall to the ground. My siblings rushed to me worried but I didn't have the energy to move or speak, I was utterly drained. All I could do was listen, listen to the nurses in the ambulance announce my parents were dead. A mysterious sudden surge of force shot through my body, I felt like my body was burning from the inside out. My world then began to fade to black, but not before I witnessed X and his father walking away from my burning home, X holding a pack of matches. I tried to tell someone, but by then my vision had gone black, and I lost all feeling in my body. I had only one thought...Was I dead?

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A/N Ew I hate this, my writing sounds really bad. And copying and pasting it from my google docs is making the actual layout really funky. Not much I can do, OH WELL. Enjoy the cringe fest.