Prologue – Monday

The painful ring of an alarm clock going off too early in the morning. I hit the snooze knowing I was going to have to get up anyway. I thought silently about what I needed to do when my alarm would go off again. 

“Ah, forget it!” I felt for my hair tie and put my hair into a quick bun. My alarm sounded, 6:30 am. I turned it off quickly and made my way to my light switch.

I groaned, flipped on the light, and quickly shut my eyes.

“What an awful Monday morning, what a terrible way to start a week.”

As a 17 year old in high school, mornings were vital to my high school career. Not that I was a popular kid or anything, but I still needed to uphold my image as a normal human. This involved the typical morning routine: shower, doing my hair, adding a little bit of make-up to cover the fact that I was up until 1:15 am finishing a psychology paper that was due the next day. Of course I had 6 weeks to complete it but in typical Jaylee Burke fashion, I waited until the last minute. My mom always said that I was a procrastinator, but my therapist called it ADHD. My dad refused to allow her to put me on medication so here I was, waiting until the last second to do my work. 

My hair was easy to style in the mornings. With fairly straight, fine ginger hair, there isn’t much you can do. I typically let it just dry during the morning and by second period it looked decent enough to put in a simple ponytail or cover it with my black beanie. Some thick black eyeliner, black band tee, ripped jeans, and worn out sneakers. Typical outfit for the day. Due to it being late October in Kansas, a red and black flannel jacket was added too, although I would be cold in 80 degree weather if the breeze hit me just right. As long as I looked like I put in some effort, that’s all that counted.

Breakfast wasn’t really a thing in my house, at least not on school days. I spent most of the morning hiding in the bathroom hoping my mom wouldn’t want to take me to school. Having a mom as a teacher at my high school was embarrassing enough but being dropped off by ‘teacher mommy’, not going to happen. My parents couldn’t afford a car for me, so being forced to ride the bus or show up with the freshman English teacher and humiliated made my morning miserable.

“Mom. I have to go. Are you taking me or not?” I was very impatient with my mom. I crossed my arms and let out a loud audible huff while glancing at the clock on the wall. “Okay mom I am just going to walk to the bus!”

“Alright, have a great day honey, I will lock the door. I love you!” I heard the disappointment in her voice, she had really wanted to take me to school but I didn’t care. I wanted to just be out of the house already. I didn’t even say I loved her back. I just stomped out of the house like a typical 17 year old. 

I got to the street. It wasn’t as cold as I thought it would be for a cloudy October morning. Kansas was always gross this time of year. I looked to the left down the quiet black top road, no cars. I looked to the right, still no cars. I could spot the bus stop down the street ahead of me. The bus wasn’t there quite yet and no one else was standing there. I was early. Standing in the wet dewy grass I shivered. I could hear footsteps behind me; it was probably the boy who lives in the same apartment complex. I turned to look behind me; I saw a blur of color and then everything went black.