The Promise

chapter 1

On the morning of Troy's seventh birthday he has the same dream again. The same girl with ash white skin, red eyes, and a dress as black as coal. The only difference is in this dream instead of chasing her and never reaching her she stops and looks back at him. The girls mouth starts to move but no sound comes from her lips. "What are you saying, I can't hear you." The girl shakes her head and gives troy the most beautiful smile that he has ever seen. This time when she opens her mouth Troy tries his hardest to read her lips. "Help me... you will soon have a chance to save me take it. Please I'm tired of being here." As she finishes her words the outline of a door forms behind her. "Damnit dad you never let me have any fun" The door forms and the girls steps inside of the door. Before she fully goes in the door, she turns and reaches her hand out. "My name is Angel." As she says her name she grabs his left hand and looks into his eyes. The bright red pupils that seem as if they are dripping blood, within her eyes all he saw was endless torment. From Angel's point of view Troy's deep dark eyes held endless forgiveness and purity. "Troy find me." Before troy can say a response she disappears in the door and his alarm goes off.

"TROY WAKE UP YOUR GOING TO BE LATE TO SCHOOL." His mother yelled from downstairs. Danni who is now seven years older is used to being a mother. Troy hears his mother and gets up. Meanwhile outside his house his child hood friend Leah is outside. Leah walks up to the front door and rings the doorbell. When his mother hears the doorbell a smile couldn't help but form on her face. "Troy look your little wife is here waiting on you." Upon hearing his mother say little wife troy jumps out of bed embarrassed. "She's not my wife." Troy mumbles to himself Leah also heard this and a little smile formed on her face. For as long as she remembers troy has been by her side. Love is not something a little girl knows about. It's just that a little part of her has a memory she can't understand. In that memory fragment there is an emotion so deep and so raw that it hurts to look at. From the part of her memory Leah could understand, love and sadness ran side by side. The only scene that continues to reappear is the image of a man's back as he looks down upon something else. Before Leah can speak up the man spoke first "I'm not strong enough to love more than my creations." As the words came from his mouth his body disappeared in a bright gold light.

Before Leah can come back to herself the front door opens. "Good morning Leah." "Good morning Mrs. Howard" as both women greet each other Leah walks into the house. As Troy hears people talking downstairs he gets out of the bathroom and starts to get dressed. Roughly fifteen minutes later as he finishes getting dressed Troy starts to think about the dream he had this morning. "Who was that girl? Why do I feel like I know her?" While thinking about the girl named Angel, Troy's left hand starts to ache. When Troy finally makes it downstairs the women are already sitting at the table waiting for him. At one end of the table there sits an empty chair. Seeing Troy look at the empty chair his mother sighs and speaks up. 'Troy I know that you wish your father was here; so do I. He has a valid reason for not being here even if we don't know what that reason is." Troy has heard this same speech exactly seven times now. Every time his birthday comes around Troy's mother tries to justify the fact that his father is not here. In the mind of the seven-year-old boy there was no good will towards his father at all. To him there is no reason for a man to leave his family. Little did Troy know but soon he would come to understand his father's reasoning's like they were his own.

Breakfast went by fast as the two kids have to leave for school. Troy and Leah grabs their bags from by the front door and leave for school. Halfway down the block Troy turns around to look at his mother in the doorway. Looking at the woman who has raised him on her own for seven years. Troy swears that he will do any and everything in his power to make his mother happy. After seeing her son turn and look at her Danni waves at him. Troy waves back then turns around and proceeds to walk to school.

Leah wonders what's on the mind of the boy next to her. His usual bright personality seems off somehow. To distract Troy from his troubles Leah starts to talk about the event that's happening ing at school today. "So Troy what do you think about our school hosting this martial arts tournament?" "Huh? Martial arts tournament when was this announced?" Upon hearing his words Leah stops dead in her tracks and stares at her childhood friend. Noticing the Leah stopped Troy turns his head to look at her. For some reason when he looks at Leah the girl from his dream comes to his mind. For the first time troy really looks at this girl who has been by his side for as long as he can remember. Leah has honey brown skin, stands three feet and three inches in height which is tall for girls her age. Her eyes which seem as if they can see through all are dark shade of brown as if they have been drained of some type of color. Her lips happened to be pressed into a thin line which showed off how full they truly are. She has straight black hair that falls to the middle of her back. Wearing black shorts, a white t-shirt with a sun on it, and a jean jacket. Overall Troy can see why the boys in his class all seem to like her.

Leah and Troy stand there staring at each other. From Leah's point of view Troy is like the most perfect guy she has ever seen. If he would only show more confidence and stop being some loner others would see it too. Troy is Roughly four feet and three inches tall, with broad shoulders, and a lean frame. For a child which just turned seven Troy is a lot taller than other boys his age. When gazing at Troy the most eye catching part of him has to be his eyes. He has Heterochromia and this makes it so that his left and right eyes are different colors. The left eye is red while his right eye is gold. This strange event started a couple years ago. He asked his mother about them, but she didn't know ether. For some strange reason when he was younger they changed into the way they are today. The thing that Troy really found weird was that in his baby pictures both his eyes are the same color. At some point in time between the day he was born and his seventh birthday something happened to change them into that way. With his mother not having any idea of how his eyes became the way they did. Growing up with two different colored eyes has caused endless trouble for Troy. Leah is the only person that has never made fun of him because of them. Not being like the other kids has made troy develop a type of introversive personality. Sweatpants and the same old hoodie that he always wears, are the clothes he has on today as well. The only people who really understand Troy are his mother and Leah.

When Troy and Leah finally realize that they were both staring at each other for an extended period of time Troy turns around to continue walking to school. For the first block no one says a word. While Leah is walking behind Troy she stares at the ground while a blush slowly starts to climb up her face. Troy on the other hand, is still pondering what Leah said to him earlier. "A martial arts tournament doesn't sound too bad. I wonder how the people who actually fight in the competition feels? Could that ever be me on the stage with hundreds of people watching my every move? Not at all, no wonder I forgot about the whole thing in the first place." When Troy comes to this conclusion he says to Leah. "So yea about the competition of whatever I'm not going." This statement brings Leah back into focus. "Why do you always do that to yourself? The reason that people call you a loner is because you do stuff like this."

Almost as if on cue three boys from Troy's school walk around the corner. "It must be my lucky day I get to run into the Beauty and the Beast." The tall boy leading the other two spoke out upon seeing Leah and Troy talking. Leah looks over to see who just spoke and responds with a frown on her face. "Anthony how many times to I have to tell you to leave us alone." When Troy heard Anthony (or Ant as he calls himself) talk he didn't even look his way or respond to what he had just said. "Leah come on if we end up being late to school my mother will kill us." Troy grabs Leah's hand and starts to pull her down the block. Ant watches them leave and says to his two companions James and Mike "Why is it that a freak like him gets to be with a girl like her?" Mike the shorter of the two people was the first to respond. "Ant you are the best fighter in the fifth grade that loser has nothing on you." James nods his head in agreement to the words mike said.

Ant stares at Leah and Troy walking down the street together and mutters under his breath. "If it wasn't for him she would be with me. What does he have that I don't? A freak like him doesn't deserve to be with her. No wonder his father left his mother she's probably a freak as well." The moment those words came out of Ant's mouth the expression on Troy's face sank. Within the two different colored eyes a spark of anger started to form. Leah felt the grip on her hand tighten and subconsciously looked up at the face of the boy she loves. When Leah noticed the look in his eyes she shivered. Before Ant can realize what's happened he sees Troy let go of Leah's hand and turn to rush at him. The look on Ant's face was as if he was looking at an ant that could be crushed at any moment. "Does he really think that rushing at me like that will do anything." A small smile starts to form on Ant's face. That is until he felt Troy's eyes lock on to him. Ant felt as if death itself was gazing at him. When Ant finally looked into the eyes of Troy what he saw made him freeze up on the spot. The right eye of Troy which is usually gold has now turned red. With the change of his right eye the shade of both eyes starts to deepen. The usually dull red is now a bright shade of crimson. A crimson so deep that it looks like he is about to cry blood.