Trenagas
an excerpt

Chapter One
Jessi ran up to the office. How could her phone have rung during school? Everyone knew better than to call her during the day. Why did she even carry a phone, for that matter? She knew she never used it. Now she had to get the thing from the office, grab her saxophone from the band room, and still make the bus.
When she finally got on the bus, she opened the stupid phone and saw “New Voice Mail” flash across the screen. She entered her voice mail password and heard a familiar voice in her ear. Her grandfather said, “Jessi, I’m back from my recent…business trip. I need to talk to you. I’ll wait for you after school. Your mother knows I’m going to pick you up. I’ll understand if you don’t want to see me.”
Jessi muttered under her breath, “Of course I don’t want to see you.” She settled into her seat with her knees pressed against the leather before her. By the time the bus had pulled out of the school parking lot, Jessi was buried deep inside the world of JRR Tolkien. She totally forgot about all the sudden strong feelings of hate that had risen so easily and unexpected by her grandfather’s phone call.
Half way through the ride, she put down the book and pulled on a pair of head phones. “How could you? How could you? How could you hate me when all I ever wanted to be was you? How could you? How could you? How could you love me when all you ever gave me were open wounds?” She hummed along with the music, ignoring the looks people were giving her. Reading and listening to her favorite band, Skillet, were her only two escapes from a world where she clearly didn’t belong. Just like in the song, she felt like everywhere she turned the world was teasing her. One minute it said, “Jessi, I hate you. You’re the dirt of the Earth. I wish you were never there.” The next, “How could I possibly say such things about you? You’re my child. And, I love you.”
“Yeah right,” Jessi thought, “I’m so different from everyone. All this world ever gave me was a dad that doesn’t care, a mom that cares too much, and a grandfather that’s never there. I don’t even have one friend.” As Jessi sunk deeper and deeper into her music, she sulked about how horrible her life was, about how she wished she could just die. She also wondered why this world wasn’t more like the perfection of middle earth. Why was there no action? Why did people reject others so easily? Why couldn’t everyone have a friend as true and dear as Sam was to Frodo?