Untitled Novel Chapter 1

So, I've recently had to take a break from fantasy, due to erm circumstances. So, that means that I had to start a new novel, since the one I was writing was fantasy. This one is untitled and realistic fiction.

The smell of the greasy kitchen filled my nose and the loud curses from the teenagers I was eyeing so intently two tables over echoed in my ears. The table I was standing over wasn’t getting very clean, since rags don’t just clean tables on their own. The Louisiana summer heat wafted in through the doorway and made the occupants of the small pizza parlor sweat even more.

The conversation I was straining to hear was nearly unintelligible, except for the constant f-bombs, s words, and any other word that could be a curse word.

Those idiots.

I was seething with anger because the teens were making a huge mess. They’d ordered 5 pizzas, 2 of them were gone, another one was out of the box and on the floor and the other two were still being consumed. The girls were all tan and our worlds definition of beautiful. The guys were preppy as ever, their shirts hugging their well toned torsos. At least they had pants that actually fit.

At my school, I seem to be the only person who gives a crap about making a successful life in the world , and restoring adult’s faith in our generation. Although after all my studying of other teens, I doubt that will happen: this generation is doomed to be unemployed, orange spray tanned, pants on the ground, brain washed adults.

I shook my head and tore my gaze from the happy group. I gave the table a quick wipe down, then headed back towards the front counter.

“Took you long enough Margie!” My brother taunted me with the name I hated more than anything.

“Shut up Addie!” I shot back and his freckled face twisted into a frown.

I threw the rag at him and continued on my way.

When I entered the kitchen I was blasted with a wave of dry heat coming from the pizza oven.

“Heads up!” A voice said right as a floury apron hit me square in the face.

I wiped flour out of my eyes to see Channing doubled over with laughter. I glared at him.

“The obnoxious teenagers are still there. And one of their pizza’s is dying a slow death on the ground.” I took off my name tag and stuffed it in the drawer by the back door.

He had a look of exasperation on his face. “Well, you’ll defiantly have fun cleaning up their mess.”

I laughed, “Ha! No, you can leave that job for Addison. My shifts over, and I have better things to do.”

I strolled out the back door and across the yard to our small house, it’s porch drooping sadly, weeds over growing in the yard, along with the destroyed crawfish holes. The grass was yellowing and dry, but that wasn’t anything new with all this heat. The awning above our porch was also droopy, it’s ratted ends flapping in the breeze that was just as hot as the pizza oven.

Our house had gotten to looking quite sad, because with the resturaunt to run, we didn’t have much time to weed the garden, repaint the house, or anything like that. It was supposed to be my job to do all those things, but I now worked 2 different jobs, and the time in between was spent at school, doing homework, or writing star wars fan fiction.

Nobody stopped me. Both my brothers knew keeping busy was my way of dealing with grief. My parents had been dead nearly 3 years, and yet I still wasn’t over it. I’m afraid that if I stop doing things that I’ll have a break down again.

Our huge black lab bounded up to greet me, getting dry dirt all over my white shirt. I rubbed him behind the ears and continued across the yard absent mindedly.

Inside the house was better than the outside. It was homey, full of antiques I had spent my money on, or collected from my Grandma, and always, for some reason, smelling like pine trees. I had tried to find out /why/ on earth it smelled like that when we lived in Louisiana. Channing says it’s because of the time when we left our Christmas tree up until it was so dead that all the needles were brown.

That was the same time of year our parents died. We didn’t have the heart to celebrate, or take down the decorations. Or clean for that matter. We lived in a pig sty until Channing officially decided he was the man of the family and he got the house back in working order as well as the resturaunt.

It’s hard, as you can imagine, 3 kids running the place themselves. Channing was only 19 that day three years ago when it was reopened after being closed for months on end. I’m pretty sure the town rejoiced when it opened again. We were the only really authentic place to get pizza, without having to go to Baton Rouge.

Our dad was Italian, and our mom a pure blood Cajun. It’s an very odd mix, but somehow it worked well. Dad opened this pizza place a year after Addison was born, and it’s been running smoothly ever since.

Up in my room, which was small and so messy that you could even see the floor, I flopped down on the bed.  

Something hard jabbed me in the back and I sat up. “Dang it!” Rubbing my lower back I looked to see that I had just lay down on Qui-Gon Jinn and his lightsaber had poked me.

I picked him up gingerly and placed him with all the other figures part of my collection. I had every Star Wars character from the prequels available (which meant I had around 50 Padme/Queen Amidala figures), and was working on getting the originals. So far I had all the Luke figures, two Hans, and Darth Sidious.

I sat down at my desk and stared at the array of binders, text books, and loose leaf paper. School started tomorrow, and I was still in the process of getting my binders organized.

Absent mindedly, I began sorting through them, stacking paper and getting rid of homework sheets from last year.

I then took a very long and very hot shower. When I stepped out and into the cold bathroom (the air conditioning was on full blast), I shivered. With a towel wrapped around myself I studied the girl I saw in the mirror.

I have black, which was wildly curly when dry and very hard to tame. My skin was olive toned and I almost never got a zit, much to the envy of Addison. I wasn’t skinny, but I wasn’t fat. Let’s just say that I have some hips on me.

I slipped on my pjs and fell into bed. Soon, I was sound asleep.