Chapter One

The day started as it usually did. Groggily, Jess leaned over to hit the snooze button on my alarm clock. He was so tired because he had been doing thirty hours a week at work lately and he wasn’t sleeping well because of his home life. Add in school and the homework that came along with it and it was midnight or later by the time he got to bed. “Who invented these things anyway?” ,he thought as he climbed out of bed.

Showered and dressed, he went downstairs to get some breakfast. “Hi Jess”, his brother and sister said to him, almost in unison. “Hi”, he replied back. After eating breakfast, he went back upstairs to brush his teeth. Then he came downstairs again and went to see his mother. Jess always went to his mother’s room and said “good morning” to her before leaving for school. Why he still did, he wasn’t sure. He had become so distant, there was no real connection left. “Probably just out of habit”, he told himself. He kissed his mother goodbye and then left with his brother for school.

In the car, he and his brother didn’t talk much. It wasn’t that they didn’t like each other, but Jess and Luke had very little in common these days.