The Eye of a Hurricane

Prologue

There was a long series of events that led me to where I am right now. Granted, I could have stopped any one of these things and I would have, if I had known that one shit show after another was going to occur. I’m not completely blameless. If I would have just screwed on my head right or opened up my eyes to the bigger picture or anything to stop my constant decay into chaos. All of this or at least some of this could have been prevented. I wouldn’t be sitting on rock bottom right now. I wouldn’t be sleeping almost all hours of the day, skipping class and putting off my assignments. I was barely pulling through, but there is no one else to blame but myself.

Chapter one

Nine Months Earlier

I stepped out of my car into the blistering heat, “Hey, there’s a cornfield!” I sarcastically stated to my mother. We were driving through the very long winded state of Nebraska and the whole way, it was just cornfields beyond what the eye could see.

“Ha, never seen one of those before,” she sarcastically responded. “At least we are almost all the way through it,” my mom pointed out as we opened the door to the little sandwich shop attached to the gas station.

We had been driving for two days now, to some university in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. I’m not really the small town type of girl, but this school was offering me almost a full ride to play on their shitty soccer team so I couldn’t say no to basically free schooling. The last school I attended, I didn’t receive the best of grades so I was running out of options of where to go next.

I took out my phone and checked for any notifications. Nada. I shoved it back into my back pocket with frustration. Braxton, my boyfriend of almost a year, hasn’t sent me a single text or called since he left for his own school three days ago. He has always been bad at using his phone but I thought with both of us leaving our home state he might make more of an actual effort. I thought our relationship was finally improving after the rough patch we had gone through, I’m so confused. I should get out of my head right now, I need to focus on what’s important. I left Washington for a reason and that was to get a fresh start, away from every person I know.

After my mom and I paid for our sandwiches, we headed out the door towards my car. “Logan, do you want me to drive now,” my mom asked.

“Sure, why not,” I answered.

It took us another four long hours of driving and talking about whatever random topics popped into our heads until we made it to our destination. By the time we arrived, the sun had just gone down and we had no motivation to unpack everything from my car.

“Why don’t we unpack everything tomorrow when we have light, just grab the blankets and pillows,” my mom suggested.

“Sounds good to me,” I said as I pulled out my pillow and blanket from the front seat.

We walked up to the two story house, it was simple and quaint. I was going to be living with two other people but they weren’t arriving for two more weeks. My mom grabbed the key from under the mat where the landlord had left it. As soon as we took a step inside, we felt the cool air. In the midwest, everyone had AC. It was a nice change from the stifling heat we had endured all day.

“Well, this is cute, let’s look around,” my mom offered. The first room we entered was the kitchen, and immediately to our left was the staircase leading to the two upstairs bedrooms with a half bathroom between them. On the other side of the staircase, we walked through a small hallway which led into the dining room. Attached to the dining room, we had the living room and if you walked across the living room, you would be standing in front of the third bedroom and a full sized bathroom.

“This place is pretty big, which room do you think you will take,” my mom asked as we finished exploring.

The place was fully furnished already, except for the bedrooms, since this place was typically rented out to the college students every year.

“I’m assuming the other girl and I will be taking the upstairs rooms and the guy will be staying in the room downstairs,” I answered. As a junior, I was going to be the youngest in the house. The other girl, Taylor, was a senior who was also on the soccer team with me. The guy, Will, technically graduated last year but he had one more year of eligibility on the wrestling team.

“That is probably a good plan,” my mom sat down on the couch and took a deep breath. It had been such a long trip, it felt nice to relax finally. I took a seat next to her. It didn’t take long before I faded into sleep.

The next morning, I woke up a little bit confused on where I was at. I looked around and saw my mother, asleep on the floor with all the pillows and a blanket. Oh yeah, we finally made it to my new house, I thought to myself. I took out my phone from my pocket, I didn’t have very good service but at least I had finally received a message from Braxton.

"I hope you had safe travels," the message read.

That's it.

'I hope you had safe travels'. Three days, and that is all he had to say. I was annoyed and quite honestly, I didn't even know how to respond to that.

I took a second to think about it, then opened up the text message. I sent back two words, "You too."