Riser (Teen Horror/Science Fiction) (Book #1 in The Riser Saga) ((Volume 1)) Read Free Page A

not to ever compare myself to him again. And that was about all she’d say on the matter, but I suspected there was more to it than that. Vice President Turner must have done something political over the years to piss Mom off. Even though she looked thirty, she was about to have her fiftieth birthday soon, and Geoffrey Turner had been in office for over two hundred years. That was a lot of time to do something that my mom could hold a grudge for.
“Do you want to take the rest of your birthday cake for lunch?” Mom asked me as she was already packing it into my lunch box. I turned eighteen four days ago. I was the oldest in my senior class. It was always annoying starting the school year older than everyone else. By the end of the year everyone had caught up to me, but for some reason a year in high school was the equivalent of ten normal years. So for at least the first few months I’d be getting jokes and the condescending glares from all the seventeen-year-old seniors equating my “old” age to my intelligence or lack thereof according to them. I would say I couldn’t wait to graduate and get out, but I knew if I left, Bruce would be bones and I still didn’t think I could do that to my mother.
Mom handed me my lunch as she kissed the top of my head affectionately. She gave me her usual wink and a smile. Her way of saying she loved me. My mom was pretty gorgeous considering the time she began taking Age-pro. Her hair was brown like mine, but her eyes were light hazel. Her skin was ivory in color with a smattering of freckles across her nose and her body was perfectly thin. She was thirty-one when she started Age-pro so she only had faint lines around her eyes, which I personally loved. Her face lit up when she laughed and the slight crinkles seemed to make her eyes sparkle. I used to think this was the reason my real father fell in love with her. I would sometimes imagine what he was like, what he looked like, what his voice sounded like. He died the day I was born and my mom didn’t have any pictures of him. She said it was too painful a reminder. He was the love of her life and she always said it killed her the day he died. For some reason the way she’d say it always sounded like she meant it literally. Maybe that’s why she ended up with Bruce, she picked the complete opposite of my father so she’d never be reminded of him again.
“Thanks, Mom. I better go. I have to work at the shop after school today. I took a shift for Jenny,” I told her between mouthfuls as I shoveled down a few more bites of Bruce’s eggs. “I’ll see you around seven.” I kissed her cheek and ran out the door.
The flimsy aluminum door slapped shut behind me as I left the trailer.
I made my way to the Hover-Shuttle waiting area just outside the park. The Hover-Shuttle came every five minutes or so and could take you pretty much anywhere in the larger city of Los Angeles. The trailer park was pretty dead at the moment. Most of the people who lived there had blue-collar jobs that required getting up at the crack of dawn. I resigned myself to working at the ice-cream shop for the rest of my life if I didn’t figure out what to do about Bruce. And that could be a very long time, an eternity possibly. An eternity of working retail! I hoped at some point I could be honest with my mom and make her understand what I did and let Bruce rest in peace. Yeah right.
I reached the designated steel bench to wait for the Hover-Shuttle. The waiting area itself was circular like a fifteen-foot bulls-eye made of grey asphalt. A few seconds later, I could hear the whizzing sound of the Hover-Shuttle coming my way. Closer and closer the rectangular metal box buzzed toward me. It was clunky and old, but most things that came to the trailer park were. Society pretty much wanted to pretend we didn’t exist, so when it came to public works and transportation we were last on the list of repairs. That’s what happens when there are twenty-seven billion