My Angel, My Devil (unfinished) by Tamara L. Garcia (books to read for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

thinking I would return to a crap load of homework and loud music coming from my two sister’s cheerleading practice. I expected to come home and see the brightly lit yet elegant house I’ve grew up in. This… I shouldn’t have come home to this. No more color anywhere, anymore. The house was burned down so bad the grass and flowers around it were nonexistent. It looked like nothing would ever grow there again.
An officer pushed me back as a huge crack sounded. The hose the firefighters were using was shut off and everybody was backing up. Just then the roof collapsed under itself and as soon as soon as some of it hit the third floor, a blinding flash blinded me. I felt a crushing pressure, and afterwards followed a noise so loud it could only be compared to an explosion (I’ve never heard an explosion, but I’m guessing it would be this loud). Afterwards, the darkness came.

• • • •

“Chris, you okay? Chris?” the voice was mocking, and that of a child’s. “Chris, open your eyes.” My lids fluttered, and I opened my eyes. Everything was dark. “I said, open your eyes.” The child’s voice was now irritable.
“I already opened them,” my voice was a soft echo, and it sounded off like a sweet memory.
“No, your real eyes,” the child voice said. “Not those eyes. I’m talking about the eyes that have not been open in millennia. Wake up, Chris. Wake up,” the child’s voice floated of into oblivion.
“Wake up, damn it!” I felt a sharp pain on my cheeks. My hand reflectively balled itself up and shot upwards, and I heard a grunt then a thump. My eyes shot open and were in pain. I’ve never had eye pain before. My body hurt like hell, but I got up anyway.
Before me, a sea of fire angrily swayed and pushed at each other’s flames. Darkness swayed in front of my eyes, and everything after that was a swirling of the fire’s light and a dark figure. Something made me want to reach out to the dark figure and be swallowed up by it. Then it hit-hard.
My mother was dead.
My father was dead.
Mei and Rein was dead.
I had lost pieces of me; and they were gone for good, for forever.
I would never be able to see or hear their annoying lectures, or the laughter that set all my nerves at ease. I would never be able to hear mom’s comforting and sweet words, never be able to see her lively self in the best way possible: in person. I won’t be able to see my dad’s face stiffen with his nervousness whenever I joked about mom liking another guy; I will never be able to hear his protective reaction to boys. I will never be able to see Rein and Mei annoyingly finishing each other’s sentences and eat their love-filled but nasty-tasting cooking.
That’s just too much for me. I love these people, and unlike many others, we weren’t dysfunctional. We loved each other, and teased each other, and we watched out for one another. How could they leave us? Why?
The inner pain was like the outside pain rolled up into one times ten for everything I remembered. It hurt so bad I couldn’t even cry. Waves of pain sliced through me, and all I could do was whimper in the darkness’ embrace with one last look of all of my happiness burning down. My body was getting so cold, and I couldn’t tell there was physical pain at all. I might be dying.
Do I really care? No.


Chapter 3
The disgusting smell of medication in the air told me where I was. My body felt heavy and my head felt light. I could feel about three people in the room. I tried to open my eyes, but they just wouldn’t budge. “Will you stop that? It’s irritating me.” Someone sounds pissed. My chest felt heavy as I tried to breathe.
“I can’t help it.” That was definitely Seth. Seth is the oldest, and my big brother. “She’s just lying there with tubes sticking out of her. It feels like she’s going to go under cardiac arrest any moment.” He was worried about me. I tried to say ‘I’m sorry’ but nothing came out of my mouth.
“Chris… I really can’t believe she’s lying there. She looks so frail. She never looks frail. But right now, it looks as if you touch her, and she’ll break,” said Damien. Damien’s the second oldest, and he’s always honest believe it or not. Hearing him say this, I must look really bad. I’m never the fragile kind, and hearing them say that makes me uneasy.
I don’t want to leave them alone. Four of us are gone; I’m not about to make it five. I opened my eyes, and everything was blurry. I saw three splotches stir and move uneasily. “Chris? Chris, are you okay?” Seth sounded more worried now that I’ve opened my eyes.
“Calm down, you sound like you’re going to piss yourself,” I said. It came out weak and barely audible, but the place was quiet and they were listening.
“She should be fine if she can joke like that. She’s had plenty of rest.” it was Mystery voice. I remember that voice from the guy earlier who gave me a ride on his bike. Now he seemed familiar, like I’ve seen him before, but not exactly.
“What happened to the house? Dad… what in the hell happened?” my voice was still weak, but the demand was still there.
“Dad… dad died in an accident when he heard about mom and Mei and Rein. His driver was sick, so he drove himself to work instead of hiring another one. When he got a call about what happened, the person over the phone told me he sounded dazed and in shock. He told us it was normal, but he didn’t suspect that he would lose control and drive into the wrong lane. He was in a crash collision with a truck,” Seth’s voice sounded choked. I couldn’t stand it.
He’s unhappy and I can’t do much about it. I closed my eyes, wishing that when I opened them, they’d be up to the job. I opened them, and I saw everything clearly. Seth was sitting in a chair with his hands folded, looking at me with sorrowful eyes. Damien was kneeling at the bedside looking sad and a lot like a puppy, except for less hairy. The guy from before was leaning against the wall looking at me with the same bored and pissed face on him. His eyes were expectant.
I lifted my hand and ruffled Damien’s inky black hair. His usually pink stained cheeks were wet with tears, and his blue eyes looked up at me with open worry. He was always so honest it was embarrassing. He was the only one of us that was tan, but that’s only because he surfs and is a sports maniac. I’ve never seen him this dejected. I’ve also never seen him wear black. He was always in colors, jumping around and tying to cheer me up. I sent him an ‘I’m okay’ message through my eyes, and some of his worry went away.
I’m always good to my promises, he knows that. I looked over at Seth. His curly light brown hair was longer, and it was in his face as his winter blue eyes stared at me with open worry as well. That’s always a bad sign when it comes to Seth. When he’s down, he never lets anyone know, not even his girlfriends.
But I can always tell, so I make him a bowl of his favorite Udon noodles, and watch him eat. I just sit there and watch. I never have a smile on my face when I watch him; I purposely look determined. I want to let him know there is no problem he can’t solve over a bowl of Udon with me, because I believe in him and I take that sort of thing very seriously and selectively.
“Chris, get some rest. You’ve slept for a long time, but you need plenty of rest to recover. We’re going to make preparations.” His eyes told me what for. He got up and ran his pale fingers through his hair, and walked over to me. He bent and kissed my forehead. “I’ll see you later,” was all he said.
“Chika-chan, please rest well,” he looked at me expectantly. Chika-chan is his nickname for me because he thinks I’m already manly enough. I gave him the okay and he smiled and kissed my cheek. While he was on his way out following Seth, he turned back and said, “I’ll come back every day, ne?”
He was the most avid Japanese speaker aside from me. “Yeah, o daiji ni.” After telling my brothers to take care, I turned to the stranger. “Are you going to follow them out?”
He looked at me silently as if I didn’t say anything. His features turned calm. He slowly walked over to my bed, bringing a chair with him. I’ll take that as a no. he placed the chair by my bedside, and I sat up, bringing up the bed with the remote. He removed his coat and threw it over the chair, revealing a black short sleeve DEATH TO DEATH shirt, tight around his muscle ridden arms. He had intricate tattoos that swirled and flowed, but some were repeated and it looked as if they were placed in an organized order. It now looked like something was written there, in an ancient language even the gods have forgotten.
As I stared in intrigue at his tattoos he snapped a few times. He sat down and looked at me for a long time, and I saw a sparkle of something in his eyes. I took a good look at him. His hair was darker than Damien’s and it had a major contrast with the single white streak pouring down from his roots, and its length reached his shoulders. His eyes were hazel, and the most dominant color right now was some gold taking a peek at me.
He was pale, but not an unattractive pasty pale. It looked balanced, and he was toned in a good way-not in a muscle head way. His lips were a beautiful pink, and he truly looked like something out of an artist’s imagination. His voice was deep, like a lost melody in the forest searching for something, anything to cradle and call home. He looked mysterious, which is what a lot of girls go for nowadays. He looked like the kind of person that, when he smiled, he would look like a little boy.
The more my eyes explored him, the more I made guesses and wanted to stick around to see if they were right. His usual mix of bored and pissed was gone. Before, he looked older, but now that his features have smoothed over, he was… handsome. Beautiful. Hot with a capital ‘H’.
Uh-oh. That’s not good.
I’ve never thought of anyone as handsome, beside my brothers and my father.