Lisa
Chapter 1
Lisa always hated family
gatherings. Perhaps it was the way that every human in the room
pretended to know you and your undying past. Or it had to do with
the fact that Lisa was one of those subtle teenagers that left
her gum on her keyboard and held her place in a book with
anything she could find next to her. The simplicity of her life
always seemed to be disrupted as she sat around loud aunts and
uncles that pinched children’s cheeks and asked Lisa what
she wanted to do with her life. Being a sixteen year old with
barely much thought into the future it was hard for her to answer
them. Something with books is what she’s always thought,
but who knows.
“An editor.” Lisa would always
answer and they’d make that annoying “oh” face,
like her plan wasn’t really interesting to them but they
pretended it was. Most of the time, especially around Christmas,
Lisa felt like a speck of the dust on her great
grandmother’s photo that just stood in the corner.
Sometimes she’d sit next to the photo and smile at it as if
her gram was still there, telling Lisa stories of how her and her
great grandfather met.
“He was tall, and so handsome.”
She’d say with a school girl grin on her face.
“He returned after the war, and I couldn’t
let him go to waste, so I snatched him
up.” She made a grabbing motion with her
hands as she said "snatched" that made Lisa giggle. Her
gram seemed so at ease and peaceful as she rocked back in forth,
a silver threaded afghan across her frail legs. Lisa and her
grandmother were both very much alike. They both hated family
outings and receiving gifts. During Christmas gram would always
tell her to help her up the stairs before gift time came around.
“I don’t need to hear the screaming kids.
Plus we can go play solitaire on my card table up
there.”
Those memories was something Lisa kept close to her heart. After
gram died the rest of her family seemed to be like a herd of
obnoxious penguins that Lisa could never really step around.
Thank god Jack was usually with her to save her from the madness.
But the tall blue eyed boy was nowhere to be found. She pulled
out her phone with a sigh and texted:
Hey, I know you’re too cool for family gatherings now,
according to Zack, but this sort of sucks without you
here.