Un-Ordinary Girl

Chapter 2

          I've always hated waking up to an empty house. But I soon learned to get over it. Today I was going to have my traditional dinner with the Wong's and their dog Lulu. Since mom wasn't around, they always had me over for dinner. And then when I got older, I started only coming over on Saturday's. I liked to get the house work done myself. Since dinner was at 7 pm, I woke up at 6 am to make sure that I had enough to finish the rest of the chores. I just needed to clean the kitchen and bathroom as well as straighten up my room a little, go grocery shopping, straighten up the living room, and vacuum all the floors.

          Cleaning the bathroom was easy with all of the dirty, well, my dirty laundry out of the way. I wish mom would use the stupid laundry hamper. After the floor in the bathroom was mopped, I pulled out my old radio and turned on some classical music. I worked well with it playing. Now I had to take inventory of what we still had in the kitchen and make a shopping list based on what we did have. That's the reason that I need the music. To help me concentrate better. I got the radio for ten bucks at a garage sale. Told mom I found it in the dumpster out back. It looks old and beat up enough.

          After the list was made, I cleaned the kitchen even harder than I did the bathroom. Sometimes if mom was really drunk enough, she would confuse the kitchen sink for the toilet and piss in it. Luckily that was the worst she had ever done in the kitchen sink. I still have hope that she would come out of her funk over my dad one day. She at least gives me a card on my birthday. That is what fuels my hope.

          I went to grab the bleach that I kept in the kitchen but couldn't find it. I had four separate bleach bottles. One in the hall closet for laundry purposes, one in the bathroom for cleaning the bathroom, one in the kitchen for cleaning the kitchen, and one in my room for back up. I had checked last night to make sure there was enough for me to clean with this morning. But it seems to be missing now. I went to moms room thinking that she might have stopped by last night and probably grabbed it and brought it into her room. It wouldn't have been the first time. I looked throughout her room and couldn't find it.

          I just shrugged it off for now and grabbed my back up bottle. I guess I need to add bleach to my list. Guess that also means I will need to ask Mrs. Wong to drive me. I don't trust taxi's. The drivers are shifty around here. It took me longer than I expected it to take me to clean out the fridge and mop the kitchen floor. It was already 2 in the afternoon! I quickly grabbed my purse and keys and ran down the hall to ask Mrs. Wong to drive me to the grocery store. Luckily it was only 2:09. Mrs. Wong starts cooking at 4. I knocked and Mrs. Wong answered. That must mean Mr. Wong is still at work.

          "Hi Mrs. Wong. Can you drive me to the grocery store? We need more than I thought we would this time around." She smiled at me. Since both her and Mr. Wong grew up in the United States, they spoke proper English.

          "Of course Katelyn dear. Anything you need. Let me just call Bingwen and let him know." I bowed and responded.

          "Of course Mrs. Wong." Her name was Chenguang. She had given me permission to call her by her first name but mom had scolded me on it saying that it was being disrespectful. So I haven't called her by her first name since I was seven. She soon came back out and we promptly left. We both were on a very tight schedule. Getting the groceries wasn't the hard part. At most I would just get weird glances from the cashiers when I would give them hundreds in bills instead of using a card. But I ignored them. As Mrs. Wong and I loaded the groceries into her trunk, she asked me some questions.

          "Why don't you have a card sweet pea? It would be much easier. You make yourself a target to get robbed."

          "If I got a bank card, then mom would know about me getting money. And if she knew that I had money, she would take it all. Then we would really have a problem."

          "You and Sarah need to have a talk. Need to clear some air. You have answers that you need from her. And she has answers she needs from you." I just nodded and change to the topic of dinner. "Yes. I invited the new neighbor over tonight. Some poor 16 year old kid." This got my attention. "Apparently his parents died and he wasn't doing so hot in the foster care system. So they emancipated him."

          "Wow. Really?"

         "Yeah. The last foster home he was in, he nearly killed one of the other kids in the forest on his sixteenth birthday."

          "The forest?" That just sounds peculiar all by itself. She helped me get the groceries in the apartment and then quickly left to go start on dinner. Based on her excitement, the new guy must have said yes to dinner. I quickly put the groceries and my new thing of back up bleach away, burned the shopping list in mom's ashtray and flushed the ashes, and got ready for dinner. I was fixing my hair when I heard a knock at the door. "Come in Mrs. Wong!" I had left the door unlocked because I knew she would come to make sure I was dressed properly. Since I knew everyone in the building and they knew me and my mother, I tended to leave the door unlocked by accident most of the time since everyone in this building kept to themselves and didn't meddle in someone else's business. Well, except the Wong's with me. They always want to know what's going on with me. They care about me a lot.

          "Are you sure that it's wise for a young wolf such as yourself to leave your door open like that?" A deep voice responded. I poked my head out of the bathroom and saw a tan guy with deep gray eyes and short black hair in my hallway.

          "Who are you?"

          "My name is Jackson Stewart. The new tenant. Mrs. Wong sent me to see if you were almost ready." I finished putting my hair in its ponytail.

          "Yeah. I am now. What did you mean by young wolf? Who is a wolf?" I thought that this guy must be crazy. How sad. Super hot but a freaking loony bin. Wait. Did I just think he was hot?

          "I just thought... Well... You smell like... Never mind. Lets just go." He suddenly had an attitude. "She said that she was making your favorite but she never said why." We walked out of my apartment and I locked the door this time. "Do you know why?" I just shrugged.

          "I guess it's because my sixteenth birthday is next week on Friday. I think they'll be out of town though. So there'll probably be cake and two gifts for me." I acted like it was no big deal even though to me, it was everything and I looked forward to it every year. I took a moment to look at him from the corner of my eye and saw that he looked a bit worried. I noticed that he had went rigid at the mention of me turning sixteen soon.

          "Huh. On the first night of the full moon. That's funny. I turned sixteen last month on the first night of the full moon." That was also the same night that he almost killed that kid. Weird. I guess strange things do happen on the night of a full moon.