The Unchosen Ones

Chapter 1

Gabby Drive was a long street with a narrow two-lane road braced by towering pine, spruce, and fir trees on either side. What made the neighborhood that Gabby Drive ran through unique was the age of the homes. The youngest block was fifty years old, and though its owner had two Ferraris in his garage, he refused to replace the old Victorian-era windows of his house. The same went for nearly every person living on Gabby Drive; young people, old houses. Most houses on Gabby Drive were built during the Victorian Era, so many had that Victorian architecture look to them—the homes that weren’t brick were painted in pastel or jewel tones, and the homes had ornate features and details decorating the window frames and lining the rain gutters. The homes were mostly all tall and thin and had ancient trees growing all around them, making Gabby Drive a very shaded street.

The house with the address 7 Gabby Drive was made of red brick and had an old maple tree towering over the front yard. The house, built in 1904, had four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a kitchen with a separate dining room, and a living room. Only two of the bedrooms were in use—one by the owners, Gerald and Emma Hunter, and the other by Kire, their seventeen-year-old son. One of the other bedrooms was made into a guest room which rarely saw any guests, and the other bedroom was an exercise room, which was also rarely used.

Gerald Hunter, the father of the house, was very set in his ways. He was a stubborn man with old-fashioned values. Growing up, Gerald’s family was poor; they always had just enough to eat, but not enough to spare for collection at their church on Sundays nor to put their ambitious child Gerald through college. Gerald’s father dismissed his son’s ambitions as a waste of time and encouraged him to work in his jewelry business. Upon graduating from high school, Gerald started his career as a jewelry salesman at his father’s store. Abandoning his ambition to succeed academically as a child, Gerald, like his father taught him, now viewed higher education as a waste of time, as can be observed in his apparent success in the jewelry business. He was a tall, big man with blond hair, pale skin, and light eyes, and his face was usually scrunched up into a scowl.

Emma Hunter, the mother of the house, was as different from Gerald Hunter as an apple was from a cup of milk. She had tanned skin, dark eyes, dark hair, and a small smile with thin lips. She was a college graduate with a master’s degree who was employed at the mercy of the economy, against the wishes of Gerald who wished she would stay home instead. She was kind and sweet and was the glue holding the tumultuous family together.

It was an unusually bright morning in the typically dark and cold Montgomery. The birds had risen and were chirping noisily from one tree to the next. The sun was up, warm and yellow-white, eager to make up for all the days it left the city dark and wet. Kire was in his bedroom, stretched lazily in his bed with the blankets over his head to shade himself from the intruding sunlight to which he wasn’t accustomed. He was basking in the sweet bliss of ignorance of what was to come.

His big brown eyes were wide open under his blanket and his ears tingled hot with the expectation for what was to…

“Kire! I know you’re awake! If you don’t get out of bed, I’ll be calling your father!”

…come.

That got him—it always did. He kicked off his blanket angrily and got out of bed. He made straight for his door, opened it, and then slammed it hard so his mother could hear downstairs; he was similar to his father in this way, his aggressive way of telling his mother that he was out of bed now. Kire’s father insisted he communicated using more ‘manly means’ which is just what he chose to do—his mother hated it.

“I don’t need that from you, young man!” shouted Emma.

Groaning and rolling his eyes, he got ready for school: brushed his teeth, took a cold shower, and got dressed before going downstairs. “Good morning, Mother,” Kire said, planting a kiss on Emma’s forehead.

“Did you even try to use a comb today?” She flashed a look at his messy brown hair that had the tendency to stick up straight and sideways and refused to sit neatly atop his head. Even if he cut it shorter, which is how he had it as a young boy, it would still look stupid.

Kire settled into a seat at the dining table. “I did use my comb, but my hair refuses to stay where the comb tells it to.”

did“You’re more like your father every day,” Emma said, handing Kire a piece of toast slathered with raspberry jam.

“Cool,” Kire said dully.

“Just eat so you can be on your way already.”

“School is just a waste of my time; can’t I stay home? Mr. Fischer doesn’t even know the seventh number in the Fibonacci series, and I’m supposed to believe he’s a genius?”

“Kire, you being exceptional doesn’t make everyone else less human. Now quit messing around and eat so you won’t miss your bus.”

As a rule, the school bus never waited for him; it had done so every day for three weeks, with Kire still in bed each time. The bus driver had called Kire aside one day on the bus ride home from school and assured him through gritted teeth that the bus would no longer do as much as take a drive down Gabby Drive again, an agreement that suited Kire just as well.