The timer struck one minute. All around me was chaos. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and focused on the red, blue, and green wires in front of me. I honestly had no idea what I was doing, yet I had somehow been stuck with this job instead of a bomb squad. I had to be: they wouldn’t get here in time.
Was it like in the movies? Red wire? I highly doubted that. Would it be wrong to wish I were colourblind so I could make the decision easier on me? Wiping sweat again. My word, this was difficult. The alarm blaring from the bomb as it ticked down wasn’t helping my thought process either. Shut up so I can think! Okay, okay. Green? Green. Definitely green. It had to be. The blue was just too obvious. Right? Twenty seconds. Nineteen. Okay! Okay, okay! Green. Cutting the green. And the alarm was still screaming. Ohhhh, boy… Well, at least we all weren’t blown up. Blue, then? Cutting the blue. Annnnd more screaming. Really? It was the red? With a snap, the red wire frayed, too. And yet, that blasted alarm was still screaming. It made no sense. The timer had frozen at fourteen seconds, so there was no threat there, but why hadn’t the screaming alarm stopped? Abandoning all rational thought (possibly because I was too busy panicking to stay sane) I ripped the bomb from its confines and smashed it on the concrete below me.
From its scattered remains came a continuous blaring.
I turned to the crowd that had gathered around, searching their bewildered faces for an answer, when from a businessman’s mouth belts out in a gruff but most certainly female Cajun drawl, “Get cho butt outta dat bed ‘fore I get da ice.”
Before I could even wonder if this could get any stranger, the screaming of the bomb remains got louder…and closer. “What on God’s green earth—”

But then everything quickly snapped into focus in my murky brain: the screaming alarm pressed to my cheek, held by the businessman who was, in fact, my mother.
“'M up, ‘m up…” I mumbled, slapping lazily in what I thought was probably her general direction.
“Ya betta be, afta all dat screamin’. T’ought I was gon’ hafta drag yeh ta school in yeh jammies. Put sunglasses ova yeh eyes ‘n’ make the ‘scuse yah head was achin’…” Mom rambled on while I slowly sat up, stretched, and pretended to rifle through the stack of clothes on the chest by the foot of my bed. I’d probably just pick up a semi-clean shirt from the floor of my room and rattle through the laundry for a pair of jeans that didn’t reek. C’mon, don’t tell me any other almost-fourteen-year-old wouldn’t do the same. I mean, it’s not like I had anyone to impress. Anyway, I was used to Mom rambling like this. Usually she spoke more proper, but around me, and especially in the mornings, some of the true Cajun within escaped. It only ever fully escaped when she was angry or excited, and then she was near impossible to understand.
Mom was the talkative one in our family. She was the social make-friends-with-everyone one. Dad was average when it came to socializing: talk about the weather, politics, and the latest football game, go to every get-together and certainly every one of my school’s games. My brother tended to stick to his video games and playing games in his room with his overactive imagination, therefore his socializing was actually pretty good considering he didn’t make many friends.
And then there was me. I preferred not to speak at all, and to do so was exhausting. Most kids had some traumatic and sympathy-inducing reason they swore themselves to silence, but my only reason was the opinion that it wasn’t worth wasting my oxygen on. In fact, the only reason I’d spoken a drowsy “I’m up” to my mom was that speaking was so rare for me that it would make her stop. Well, that and the fact that being half-asleep made my resignation from speaking not make much sense at the time. Either way, those were probably the only two words my mom would hear from me today.
Soon, Mom left the room still rambling to herself, which was a usual thing, so I let myself fall back on my bed groaning. School… They never tolerated my vow of silence there. I had to speak when called on, even when I didn’t raise my hand. It was torture! Didn’t they understand I could be saving the precious energy I was exhausting on moving my lips and working my larynx and concentrating my brain on the act of forcing words out of my silent mouth on something more constructive? Regardless, I loved school because I loved learning, so I could tolerate speaking every now and then when I was in danger of ruining my learning if I didn’t. The screaming of my alarm again threw me into action and I narrowly avoided hurling it across the room.

Breakfast was a quiet affair. Well, at least on my part. Mom sat across our oaken table, filling out her crosswords. It was when Mom was quietest. Well, mostly. It didn’t stop her from muttering to herself and commenting now and then on the funnies when she took a “brain break.” I couldn’t hear most of it, though, since I was too busy gulping down my second cup of coffee (black, of course) and crunching strip after strip of bacon.
Still zombie-like, I headed to my room to “pick out” my clothes. Like I said, semi-clean shirt and the least-funky jeans I had. This happened to be a faded yellow sweater and jeans with shredded and muddied cuffs. With a few puffs of a fruity perfume my aunt got me for my birthday they at least smelled presentable. C’mon, you can’t say you never did that, too.
By the time I had brushed my teeth, foregone makeup, and headed into the den, Mom was already waiting (somehow) and ready to drive me to school. This was something she insisted on and, even though it meant withstanding her constant word-storm, it was still time with my mom.
She was barkeep at a shoddy watering hole just out of town, so I guess it was her job to make conversation. The actual owner of the bar was an elderly Creole named Vincent Dupart who’d been a family friend as long as I could remember. His face was weathered and sported long laugh lines since he was always smiling. Atop his head sat a small mess of grey curls with few remnants of his natural black. He seemed like he’d have the kind of voice you’d hear singing “What a Wonderful World;” and if his stories of New Orleans jazz held any truth, it probably did. However, this man was far-too-apparently racing toward his last days. He’d already squared away any qualms about future ownership of the bar: my mom was the only one he felt was worthy of it. But with about the same amount of pay and more work to do, then by herself and grieving, it wouldn’t be much of a promotion.
We reached school a few minutes later, signaled by Mom shaking me from my daydreams and rambling on about focus and promptness. She stifled me in a hug and pushed me out the now-open car door, but not before fixing my hair and fussing over my clothes. Oh, did I mention it was the first day? Of high school, in fact. But I’d endured eight other first days already and it was always the same. This “life-changing moment” had just about as much effect on me as the last few thousand. The car sped off, I readjusted my backpack, and my ratty sock-and-sandal-clad feet led me into the long halls of the next four years of my life.

You probably know how high school goes, so I won’t bore you with the details. Nothing significant happened, I wasn’t bullied, it wasn’t different, and certainly no one new was there that stared at me mysteriously from across the cafeteria. It was the old small town repertoire of “I know everyone; everyone knows me.” And I had no problem with it. It was cozy.
I’ll tell you what was significant, though. A moment when Fate shoved her grubby hands into my lifeline and screwed with everything: Taking out the trash.
Okay, okay, don’t laugh. It’s little insignificant excruciatingly mundane tasks like this that contain some of the unexpected in life. A lot of “life-changing moments” don’t happen in some outrageous off-the-wall way, but play peek-a-boo in your boring moments. At least that’s my theory. But you don’t have to listen to my rambles. I’ll just continue with the story.
It was now, while taking out the trash tonight, that Fate decided to flick the first of many in a line of dominoes. I was struggling with the obviously overloaded black bag (a reminder that I needed to keep up with my chores more often); hair back in a headband, which made me look like Mufasa; no makeup, and wearing, admittedly embarrassing, pink plaid pajama pants and a random '80s band sweatshirt that my mom had passed down. It was halfway in my trek to the too-far trash can that I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. I almost dropped the trash bag. No, it wasn’t because he was gorgeous or I was star struck or anything stupid like that: it was the pure shock and bolt of fear that “What the crap?! There’s a man at the house next door!” The abandoned house, I might add. And not a man, a boy. No one with a face that boyish could be any older than fifteen. And yet, there he was, leaning against the creaky old house with a trail of sickly gray spiraling up from the cigarette between his lips.
Great! He’d caught sight of me. Rather than freeze up like a deer with the old adage of “Make no sudden movements," I hobbled myself over to the trashcan, deposited my burden, and scurried off like a guilty dog into the house before Stranger Danger could even think of waving or uttering the dreaded “hi.”

Notes

Okay, bear with me. The novel gets much more interesting and less Twilighty from here.
I hope Toni's voice isn't too confusing/annoying. She's very difficult to write, but I love a challenge. This novel is being a pain, but I shall stick with it. Don't worry!
Please let me know what you think!

~xoxo Ash

If you want to know what a Cajun accent sounds like: https://www.facebook.com/Miltonpostweekly/videos/456020541243559/