Saving Home

[miss. s k i p]

A lil' story I'ma writin' called Saving Home.

Link to Cover Picture [was bored]

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CHAPTER ONE

Kendall May slowly turned over in her bed. No bright rays of warm morning sunshine were peeking through her window yet, and the gray darkness of the AM hours was lurking there instead. The girl lie on her back, staring up at the shadows that danced across her ceiling, and wondering about the odd dream she had woken from. She pressed against the walls of her memory, trying to recall what had happened, but getting only bits and snags of the story her vivid subconscious mind had dug up to show her last night.

Suddenly her whole body jolted upright into sitting position, her long dark brown hair set into motion in the form of a soft ripple as a loud, repetitive beeping bit through the quiet air. She quickly located the source of the noise and hastily turned off her alarm clock with a quick swat of her hand.

The annoying beeping rang in her ear for a whole minute after it had been silenced and the room had been returned to its originally peaceful atmosphere. The girl despised that alarm clock. She had always been woken up by her mother’s sweet, caressing voice, and Kendall hadn’t yet become accustomed to being rudely awoken by the sound of mechanical trills screaming in her ear.

She knew that sounded like she led repulsively sheltered life, but that was not true. Her mother had simply got up early and had just taken it upon herself to wake her children up every morning.

Climbing out of bed, Kendall snatched a pair of wrinkled jeans off the floor and quickly pulled them on, and shoved her arms through her favorite black Columbia jacket. She hurriedly stuffed her thin, slightly bony feet into a pair of socks, eager to put a distance between her bare skin and the cold tile floor. Casting another glance in the direction of her alarm clock, she read the neon green numbers it showed, and dashed down the steps and into the kitchen. It was almost six o’clock, and the horses would be waiting for their breakfast, and so would her little brother Izzy pretty soon, when he woke up.

Giving the front door a little push, Kendall stepped outside. Within a second she had leapt down the two cinder stairs that separated the front porch from the ground, and set foot into the grass. It was a cool, elegant spring morning on the countryside on which Kendall lived, as always. The bright yellow sun just was beginning to peek out over the horizon, cutting through the shady gray of the morning’s veil like knives. Steam and fog and mist hovered atop the sparkling grass as the heat of the rising sun began to burn off the dew.

She loved this time of day, when everything was magically switched from a dull black obscurity to the brightly colored world in which she inhabited. Grass turned bright green, flowers taking hues of vibrant yellows, blues and violets. Rays of sunlight began their journey across the land and meandered it’s way through the tree’s branches and mingled with the leaves, illuminating everything in it’s path. It was simply breathtakingly beautiful.

Kendall walked right through the fog and mist. The exteriors of her worn, chocolate colored leather boots quickly going from dry to moist, moist to damp, damp to drenched as she made her way through the wet, dewy, green grass, only a little bit of the moisture leeching in and wetting her sock. But she was used to it, and it didn’t bother her at all. She had other things on her mind, and the wetness made her think even more of them.

Her parents. They had thought about putting in a gravel path to the barn. But that was before they had died a week and a half ago. She knew the exact date. Kendall swiftly tucked the thought away in the back of her head, already feeling tears springing into her eyes.

She didn’t want to cry. Not now.

Kendall forced her mind to focus on other, more trivial things that didn’t need thinking about. Why do birds fly? Why do dogs bark? She changed happy, yet dumb topics quickly and suddenly in her head, not letting herself think about the tragedy. Soon enough, her short walk to the barn was over. She put one gloved hand to the metal handle of the light brown barn door and pulled it back. It slid away with only modest reluctance. Kendall stepped inside the barn, inhaling deeply. She loved the comforting scents of the barn. A delightful mix of hay, bedding, grain, and yes, of course, the ever-present manure all mingled together to form the perfect aroma to calm her frayed nerves.

Kendall was welcomed by four large, beautiful heads. Her families wonderful horses. Ever since she was little they had owned horses, and she was extremely passionate about them. She loved to ride, as did Izzy. They bobbed their heads, greeting her. They nodded impatiently, knocking their hooves rudely against the threshold of their stalls, overeager for their breakfast. The noise was hollow and loud, like someone banging on a door. Knock knock knock…

“Hey guys.” Kendall said to the horses, speaking to all at once. Her voice sounded glum. She decided to try again. “Hey guys!” She repeated, her voice sounding a bit more positive. That’s better, she told herself, ignoring the fact that it had sounded on the verge of false. The horses tossed their heads eagerly, anxious for their food.

Kendall decided that if she kept them waiting any longer or they might break down their doors and storm the feed room. She got to work and walked into the feed and tack room to distribute their grain. As she walked, she let her fingers trace along the wood of the wall, remembering how her mother used to let her fingers run along the walls occasionally of anywhere she thought was special. Her mother would say she was remembering the place, how it felt under her hand.

“It’s like taking a photo, but with your fingers.” She had responded when Kendall, curious, had asked her to explain.

Kendall missed her mother. She knew Izzy did too. Sometimes she could hear him crying in his room, and more then once did she wake up to have him snuggled in her bed with her, clutching TumTum. She never brought it up to him though, for she knew he would never admit it. He tended to hide his emotions, but occasionally he would throw in a, “I miss Mom, or an I miss Dad.” They missed their father as well, with his bad jokes and odd sense of adventure.

“Here we go…” Kendall mumbled out loud. She was thinking about her parents involuntarily. Again.

Kendall sighed. She saw no more point in trying to avoid thinking about them, and the incident itself for that matter, as it seemed to just keep bringing itself to the top of her priority list labeled, “Important Things to Think About.”

So that’s what she did.

One and a half weeks ago, her mother and father had decided to go mountain climbing on a real mountain over the weekend. They were sick of practicing on those fake cliff side mountain climbing courses at the gym, and as her father had put it with an enthusiastic grin, “We want the real deal!” Her mother gave a small chuckle and shook her head at her husband’s qwerky personality. They decided to leave fifteen year old Kendall in charge of her six year old little brother Izzy while they were gone. They said they would only be gone one day, leaving in the early morning, before dawn broke, and would arrive home late in the middle of the night.

Her father had spent no time hesitating and headed for the store to buy supplies and gear, and also invested in buying long distance walkie-talkies that worked up to 20 miles apart. This way, they could communicate with Izzy and Kendall during their climb, as the mountain they would be climbing was only located 14 miles away. “Now I can tell you about our little trip and tell you about every lizard or critter I see and we can chat while your mom and I climb! Isn’t that neat?” Her father had said to Izzy, his usual over-exuberant excitement creeping into his voice.

And with that, their parents packed a days worth of gear and set off on their adventure.

Izzy and Kendall had chatted along with their father using the ever so handy long-distance walkie-talkies, and they listened intently as he rambled on about how much fun they were having on their “mini expedition” (as he called it) and how they would have to take the two of them to rock climb when they were both a bit older. After ten minutes of listening to his father’s droning, Izzy wandered off and soon fell asleep in the living room on the couch with his stuffed bear, whom he had fondly named “TumTums.”

Kendall however, kept the handheld communication device in her palm, staying to listen and talk with her father. One half of her was enjoying listening to his voice as he made more of his usual bad jokes and made bad attempts at different accents, and the other half was just staying on the walkie-talkie to please her father, as she knew he would be rather disappointed if they didn’t use them.

Her father would barely let her get a word in edgewise, and Kendall could occasionally hear her mom in the background telling him to, “Let the girl talk too!” and “Using those walkie-talkies are only fun for one party right now, and that party is you! Let the Kendall talk too or else she’ll get bored and leave, dear…” and so on and so forth. She laughed and accepted her dad’s quick apologies for not letting her speak, and then took up listening again as her father seemed to quickly forget why he just apologized and start up his incessant babbling.

Kendall heard a pause as he took a breath and she quickly spoke before her father could start up again. She told him about how Izzy was mumbling in his sleep, how his foot kept twitching, and then she scolded him for hogging the walkie-talkie and not letting her mother talk to her at all, even though she knew her mom was more quiet and would rather listen to her husband and daughter’s conversations then try to have one herself. They all chortled with laughter and her father took the lead soon after, continuing with his endless speech as he came up with playful pranks for Kendall to play on her sleeping brother. They laughed some more.

But then something happened. The laughter stopped. Everything from then on seemed as if it were in slow motion for Kendall. First, she heard their mother scream in the background and her father yell something that she couldn’t understand. The walkie-talkies were cutting in and out, as if their father was hitting the “talk” button then releasing, hitting the button, releasing, only allowing Kendall to hear bits and pieces of what was going on, no matter how tightly she had the speaker crushed against her ear. She heard what sounded like a lot of static, and more screaming and yelling.

Then, there was quiet. “Dad? Dad!” Kendall remembered yelling into the walkie-talkie. No response. She tried for hours to get a hold of her father or mother on the walkie-talkie, but there was nothing but dead silence on the other end.

Izzy had awoken soon after he had heard Kendall yelling for her parents into the army green walkie-talkie, and she dismissed him quickly, trying to sound calm. “Izzy, why don’t you go watch TV or something? You can go brush the horses if you want.” She told him, speaking in a rushed voice. He left without questioning his sister’s odd mood, and headed out to the barn.

Kendall stayed knelt on the kitchen floor clutching the walkie-talkie in a state of shock and fear. She didn’t know what to do, or what had happened to her parents. Her mind played up a bunch of optional stories of what might have occurred at the mountain’s face, but they all seemed to terrible to be real. Were her parents fooling around? Were they playing some kind of mean joke on her that something really horrible had happened to them? Her heart sank, knowing that they wouldn’t do something like that to her, and definitely wouldn’t take a joke this far.

She had already started to jump to conclusions, words like serious injury, accident, paralyzed, and death swarming around her mind like a hord of angry bees. She feebly tried to push the thoughts away, but they wouldn’t leave. She felt like her arms and legs had turned to mush, and her stomach had been hollowed out. Kendall sat, staring at the grains on the kitchen cabinet but not really seeing anything at all.

Fifteen minutes later Izzy had arrived back in the house and had turned on the television. Soon he was tugging on her shirt, but not yet jolting her out of her trance. “Ken!” He said, his cute little six year old voice sounding urgent as he called her by his nickname for her when she was non-responsive to his tugging. “Ken, come on! Mom and Dad are on TV!” He tugged at her shirt again, and this time she was shook out of her daze and she cocked her head to look questioningly at him. Kendall, confused, rose to her feet and let her little brother lead her to the television.

Sure enough, there was her mother and father. They were pretty far away, but close enough for Kendall and Izzy to recognize them as their parents. They were dead. She knew it. She was absolutely positive. Her eyelids shut swiftly to block out the image. She had seen more then enough.

“Ken, why are they sleeping on the rocks?” Izzy asked her, utterly confused. “If they were tired…why didn’t they come home to go to sleep?” He blinked his big brown eyes at her, his eyebrows pushed up into a furrow as he tried to sort things out for himself.

She couldn’t answer him. She ignored him and stared blankly at the wall. She could hear the television and stole another look, seeing her parent’s lifeless bodies being checked on by paramedics, and she listened carefully to what the news spokesperson was saying.

“Two people, a man and a women were found dead today at Harrison’s Peak. It seems the cause of their death was a rock slide that occurred while the couple where mountain climbing…”

The rest of the news mans words faded and everything became silent around her. She could see her brother’s mouth moving out of the corner of her eye, asking her more questions that she probably couldn’t bear to answer, but heard nothing. Finally, Kendall heard two words in her head. Found dead. They repeated themselves like a broken record. Found dead. Found dead. Found dead.

At that point her mind felt like it had just been erased. Reduced to a piece of pink rubber. She couldn’t seem to remember anything. Well, there was one exception, one thing she did know, unfortunately.

Her parents were dead, and there was nothing she could do about it.