Status: Please buy the book for Kindle if it does become available. If it becomes available I will likely take down all but the first 12 chapters.
Firestarter
Prologue
Is this thing on?
Hello there. My name is Tom. Boring name, right? Well, everything is boring around here. Boring school. Boring house. Boring age (13…not even an even number, kind of in general a bore.) I live in the small town of Lost Springs.
What? You mean you’ve never heard of it?
A sigh.
It’s in Wyoming. And get this - there are only four people living here. Yeah, I’m not kidding. No, seriously, I’m not kidding. The record high is six – the other two people moved away last year, though. So it’s just been my mom, dad, me, and the crazy lady next door. She’s always going on about “evil spirits” polluting this town and how she’ll get back at her grandkids for sticking her in this place.
Can’t say I blame her. If I were stuck here against my will, I’d hate it too. Oh, wait. I am stuck here against my will. My parents refuse to leave this place, even to the next town over, because it has “unique culture.” Whoop-de-doo, it has four people in it. Let’s take a picture and get on with our lives.
We have to go over to the next city for everything anyways, so why just not move here? Parents make no sense at all. Also, no place will deliver pizza to our house, and the only TV channels we have is basic stuff like ABC and PBS – thanks, parents, for leaving me out of basically everything. I have to go to the library if I ever need the Internet for a school project. Speaking of books, the only ones lying around here are the “classics” like Pride and Prejudice, that Tom Sawyer stuff, the things adults won’t stop nagging you to read. And they’re the only things I’m allowed to read. Anything kids my age would actually enjoy my parents tell me to put back on the shelves, and reading comics will only spark a 4-hour rant on how I’m wasting my life and should be studying.
The only electronic thing I own personally is a scratched up iPod Shuffle I found on the street one day, and all that was on it was Taylor Swift karaoke.
My parents are also allergic to everything good – fun, dairy, cats, gluten…I’m pretty certain they were born with all these allergies on purpose. Their parents must’ve made some kind of deal with the devil or something.
So, what do I do here? Easy. I burn things. From a young age, I’ve loved playing with fire. Give me a match and I’ll give you an entire field of grass up in flames. I’d never hurt anybody with fire – it’s simply a past time. I’m not crazy or anything, no matter what kids at school like to say.
I pretend to walk home from school every weekday, when actually I go around town, just looking for discarded trash I can watch turn black. I’m pretty sure my parents know why it takes me so long to get home, but they’ve never said a thing about it. They don’t really say a thing about anything that goes on with my life.
Unless it’s grades of course, in which, oh boy…
Sometimes I fear I’m going insane from the lack of anything interesting in this town. Sometimes I wonder, am I the insane one or is everyone else crazy? With the voice inside of my head, I’m almost convinced I’m the crazy one...but I’ve also been told that’s just my conscience. My loud, annoying conscience.
Whatever. I’m just going to go through life trapped in this town. Like a mime trapped in a box. Yeah, that’s what I am. A mime. Except this isn’t an act. I’m not going to get any applause for it. I’m just…stuck.
That was what I thought, until I met her.
Hello there. My name is Tom. Boring name, right? Well, everything is boring around here. Boring school. Boring house. Boring age (13…not even an even number, kind of in general a bore.) I live in the small town of Lost Springs.
What? You mean you’ve never heard of it?
A sigh.
It’s in Wyoming. And get this - there are only four people living here. Yeah, I’m not kidding. No, seriously, I’m not kidding. The record high is six – the other two people moved away last year, though. So it’s just been my mom, dad, me, and the crazy lady next door. She’s always going on about “evil spirits” polluting this town and how she’ll get back at her grandkids for sticking her in this place.
Can’t say I blame her. If I were stuck here against my will, I’d hate it too. Oh, wait. I am stuck here against my will. My parents refuse to leave this place, even to the next town over, because it has “unique culture.” Whoop-de-doo, it has four people in it. Let’s take a picture and get on with our lives.
We have to go over to the next city for everything anyways, so why just not move here? Parents make no sense at all. Also, no place will deliver pizza to our house, and the only TV channels we have is basic stuff like ABC and PBS – thanks, parents, for leaving me out of basically everything. I have to go to the library if I ever need the Internet for a school project. Speaking of books, the only ones lying around here are the “classics” like Pride and Prejudice, that Tom Sawyer stuff, the things adults won’t stop nagging you to read. And they’re the only things I’m allowed to read. Anything kids my age would actually enjoy my parents tell me to put back on the shelves, and reading comics will only spark a 4-hour rant on how I’m wasting my life and should be studying.
The only electronic thing I own personally is a scratched up iPod Shuffle I found on the street one day, and all that was on it was Taylor Swift karaoke.
My parents are also allergic to everything good – fun, dairy, cats, gluten…I’m pretty certain they were born with all these allergies on purpose. Their parents must’ve made some kind of deal with the devil or something.
So, what do I do here? Easy. I burn things. From a young age, I’ve loved playing with fire. Give me a match and I’ll give you an entire field of grass up in flames. I’d never hurt anybody with fire – it’s simply a past time. I’m not crazy or anything, no matter what kids at school like to say.
I pretend to walk home from school every weekday, when actually I go around town, just looking for discarded trash I can watch turn black. I’m pretty sure my parents know why it takes me so long to get home, but they’ve never said a thing about it. They don’t really say a thing about anything that goes on with my life.
Unless it’s grades of course, in which, oh boy…
Sometimes I fear I’m going insane from the lack of anything interesting in this town. Sometimes I wonder, am I the insane one or is everyone else crazy? With the voice inside of my head, I’m almost convinced I’m the crazy one...but I’ve also been told that’s just my conscience. My loud, annoying conscience.
Whatever. I’m just going to go through life trapped in this town. Like a mime trapped in a box. Yeah, that’s what I am. A mime. Except this isn’t an act. I’m not going to get any applause for it. I’m just…stuck.
That was what I thought, until I met her.