Frost's Touch (Book One of the Eternal Warmth Trilogy)

I. The Start

                                                                                        I

                                                                                 The Start

                                                                       Eighteen Years Later

    “. . . happy birthday Iana, happy birthday to you!”

    Iana stuffed her face in her arms, embarrassed by the verbal abuse she just got from the popular girls that have always teased her. This morning when she had to walk to school because her Dad couldn’t driver her to school, she though that the day couldn’t get worse. But in fact it did.

    “So happy that you could be here today when we don’t want you to be,” Gracie said. The head of the group and the cheerleading captain, Gracie started the teasing on Iana when she was announced the best poem writer in second grade. From that minute forward, Gracie was set on ruining Iana’s life.

    Not that it didn’t bother her, it did. That’s why after Gracie and her friends came by to congratulate her on her regretted day of birth, Iana ran out of the cafeteria in tears.

    Every year on her birthday, they would do this to her.

    She wished that she was never born. The only family she had was her father and he didn’t even really count since he was always gone either working or drinking himself out.

    She had but one friend, Sam, and she wasn’t an actual friend to Iana. Since Sam only hung out with Iana when all her other friends were busy doing something else. And it was rare that they hung out.

    Quickly opening her locker, Iana grabbed her worn out black leather jacket that her Dad gave her on those rare occasions he remembered to give her a present months after her birthday. He had found it at a thrift store on sale for a great price.

    Iana quickly retreated from the school looking down every hallway to make sure no one saw her leave school. She already had enough absences and school skips as it is. The only reason the school didn’t take her to court was because she had straight A’s and always turned her stuff in with extra credit.

    She had begged her Dad to let her homeschool, but he had refused, and said that she needed to deal with life the way it was given to her.

     Just as she exited the school’s front doors, she breathed a sigh of relief. Nobody caught her, though none ever did.  The kids at her school had never liked her, never talked to her other than to taunt her. She was the pariah, in every way. Though she like it, she wished she wasn’t lonely.

    The storm that took Wyandotte County this morning was still in the sky but at full blast. Iana didn’t want to walk home through it, but it was either that or be bullied by Gracie and her group.

    She picked the latter.

    Her house wasn’t far, though it was in a wooded area that was also a part of why she was bullied. All the other kids lived in rich or nice neighborhoods with pampered lawns and new paint. She lived surrounded by trees with a house that needed a new coat of white paint.

    Five minutes later she was at the backdoor soaking wet and shivering. She picked up the key from the pot with dead leaves and cigarette butts from her dad. She had asked him to stop smoking, that it hurt her to watch him slowly die.

    “Worry about your own damn business and I’ll worry about mine,” he said every time with smoke coming out of his mouth. After the fifth or sixth time, she quit asking and soon altogether, quit talking to him.

     She sometimes cried for her dead mother, the mother that sacrificed her life for Iana’s. She wished that it was her life taken and not her mom’s. Over the years Iana had stolen pictures of her mom from her Fathers box in the back of the closet. Some had just her mom, and others had her father in it too. They had looked so happy, so in love, and she would cry looking at them and told herself that she regretted being born.

     If her mom were alive now, they would almost be twins but with an age difference.

     Iana trudged up the stairs, her old black converse squeaking on the wood panels. Nothing that she owned was fairly new but her leather jacket. Her father worked at a bottle cap company and didn’t get a lot of money. Iana tried to find work, but without a car or bike, she couldn’t get to where she needed to be.

     But once she graduated senior year in two months, she would be on the next train to Berkeley University. She hadn’t told her dad that she had gotten a scholarship, nor would she tell him, because he wouldn’t care in the least bit.

     As Iana waited for her shower to heat up, she remembered the song her Dad used to sing to her when she was little and was about to go to sleep.

    “Look at the sky, and close your eyes. Take a breath and watch the night. Leave yourself for the dreams, think of love’s, white sweet seams.  Think of what, you see the most, don’t go to bed feeling ghosts. Close your eyes, and say goodnight. I love you, forever and nigh.”  Iana’s voice echoed off the walls of her room, leaving a lonely feeling deep in her heart.

     She shivered, knowing nobody listened but wished someone did. Wished someone could understand the pain she was in. Wished that somewhere out in the world, there was someone that could warm her lonely and empty heart.

    Iana sighed and pushed herself off the bed. Heading to the shower, she knew that her dad would come home and not even bother to say hi. She knew that tomorrow was a whole new day for the taunting she Gracie was going to give her. She knew that right now she was alone, and that she may always be alone.

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Hiya my readers, just wanted to let you know that the picture of Iana is in the info bar. Comment if you agree that it fits her. I don't care if some of you comment that it doesn't, so you'll be more than welcome to tell me other people that you think fit the description more precisely.

Anyway...

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