An Open Sky

Chapter One ~Alexa~

I woke up to a car door slamming. When did I fall asleep? I rubbed my eyes and glanced out the window. The sun was just starting to come up in a striking arrangement of red, orange, and purple. I flopped my head back on the seat and felt a sharp pain ring through my right ear. My hand went up to it immediately, and I found my ear bud still lodged in it. I pulled it out, relieving the pain, and reached down onto the seat, groping along the creases until my fingers made contact with the smooth, cool surface of my iPod. I hit the home button. Nothing. Great. This just keeps getting better.

                I hopped out of the car and numbly walked up the driveway dragging the soles of my shoes down the small sidewalk that lead to our front door. The door was large. It’s dark paint loomed far above my head, beckoning me to step closer, like a stranger luring someone to their death.

 My eyes caught the door to be already ajar. I was stepping through it before I’d had a chance to consider fleeing. I groped along the wall until I found a light switch and flicked it on. The sudden burst of yellow light made me flinch and I had to squint until my eyes adjusted to it. When the room finally came into focus, I realized I was in a hallway, kind of.

There was an empty hallway just to the right of some old wooden stairs that were directly in front of me, and a small room on my left that was currently closed off by a fancy-looking wooden door. The gold-plated wooden door looked so out of place to the rest of the home. It was as if there were to be renovations, and whoever replaced the door forgot about the rest of the house before abandoning it all together. I slowly walked down the hallway, my shoes squeaking on the floor, until I found a door to my left. I opened it and, with the hallway light slightly illuminating the path before me, I found some stairs that led directly to the basement.

The darkness seemed to come up at me. As a child, I’d always been scared of the dark. My mother would sit in my room until I slept, talking to me, saying how there was nothing in the dark that could hurt me…and I believed her. My body shuttered as the cool air traveled up the basement stairs to greet me. I quickly closed the door, taunting the darkness to find me through the door. I walked away before it could.  

                I kept going down the hallway. A few feet from the door, the hallway opened up into a large, wooden-floored dining room and kitchen. There was a moderate-sized sliding glass door and as I got closer, I realized it was unlocked. As I reached forward to push the lock down, there was a voice behind me. “I’m glad to see you’re up. There’ll be time to explore later, help me move the last final boxes into the house.” I spun around, leaning forward to rest my hands on my knees. My breath came out heavy, in gasps. “Sorry, did I scare you?”

                “Um yeah! You kind of did!” I spat, “Wait. The last final boxes?” At the moment I said it, I glanced to my right and found a huge pile of boxes that were partially hidden behind a doorframe. I guessed that the moving truck got to the house before we did. I ignored his answer and walked into a cozy little living room that, ignoring all the boxes, was already equipped with a couch, two comfortable-looking chairs, and a large game cabinet with a TV sitting on top.

The carpet squished under my toes as I slipped my shoes off. I grinned, remembering the similar white carpet that lined the halls in our home in Melrose. I used to pretend that they were clouds as a child, jumping back and forth…My eyes locked on another closed door across from me that led to the same room as the golden-plated door. I wondered what kind of a room the doors held captive inside. My legs grew weak; even after hours of sleep in the car, my body was exhausted. I bent down and grabbed my shoes, retracing my steps back out to the car. I grabbed the lightest of the remaining boxes that were piled in the backseat. I took them to the living room to stack them on all the other identical boxes that hid all of our possessions behind a thin, brown, wall.