Ava had been fed up with the school kids bullying here through the close of school year ceremony. Not only had she lost her mother to breast cancer this spring, her father just died in a drunken accident this past month—and she was supposed to move away from her hometown out to some strange relatives’ missionary school in another country right after school ended! The worst part is that the bully at school somehow found out about all of the death stuff and put it in two worst places at school: in the school yearbook as the “Most Likely to become a Grim Reaper” and then in the end of grade slideshow’s pictures— they were altered to include her parents’ death photos. Now everyone at school knew she had nothing at home, and the bullies had a field day picking on her for everything: her dead family, her chubby legs and belly, and her shy attitude.
Ava threw herself through the front door of her family house, then slammed and locked it. Her bully pack was still jeering at her from the sidewalk but Ava tried to ignore the insults, and closed all the curtains to the streets as well.
All the major furniture had been sold off or packed away; all Ava could do was curl on the empty floor and weep for her losses and the ultimate disaster of her life. ‘If only my life could change in some dramatic way; so I could get away from the jeers and misery!’ She sobbed in her head, not really sure what she wanted to change.
She just stayed huddled in the middle of the floor, losing track of time to her woes. Only when the windows were dimming did Ava pick herself up and shuffle to the kitchen. She fixed a frozen meatloaf in the microwave and was glancing out the backyard window. Some big kids were shooting off fireworks and Ava saw lights shooting into the sky and bursting out with colors and smoke. Ava wondered how long this would last as she sat down in her metal folding chair and muddled thru her meal. She didn’t even like the frozen meals, but almost everything but the cereal was cleaned out and she had no way to get more food by herself. The relatives would be coming over tomorrow night to make sure her house was fully packed up, sold off, and then drag her away to that overseas church school.
Ava threw what remained of her meal in the kitchen trash, including the plastic plate and microwave tray from the meal. As she was about to close the kitchen curtains and head upstairs to clean up for bed, she noticed one last bright white light in the backyard. It zipped over the fence, zigged and zagged around the yard, and settled—where?
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