The End of Innocence: Book 3 of the Kinstone series
Chapter 40: Rosland, TN

I saw myself fighting in a large stone place, surrounded by large buildings in the middle of the night. I saw images of people screaming and explosions of fire all around me. I was in the middle of a sea of…stone trees? What the hell?

I see people dressed in armor, carrying swords and lightning crashing around me. Blood splashes from my arm as something slices into it. I feel cold, like being in the middle of a blizzard. Claws and hands reach for me. Some of the people fighting seem to be on my side.

I’m fighting with a sword and running through those weird stone trees, jumping and flipping off of them like some kind of ninja. Really need to lay off the late-night samurai movie binges. Vampires and werewolves ran around, trying to come after me.

I then see a pink light and out of it steps a woman, a woman whose face is blacked out. She is looking right at me. I watch as she starts to speak. Aria.

“Aria!”

I groan, rolling in my bed.

“Aria!”

I cover my ears with my pillow to drown out the noise. “Shut up!”

“Don’t tell your big sister to shut up. Get your butt out of bed and get dressed. You’re going to be late for school, missy. Don’t make me come up there and drag you down here again. Because you know I will.”

I groan, rolling my eyes and sit up on my bed, “Fine! I’m up. You happy?”

“Not until you’re sitting in the kitchen with me and ready for school.”

I sigh heavily and roll out my bed. I glance over to my bedside table to look at my clock, 7:01. My eyes instantly open.

“Shit,” I exclaim, flinging myself off of the bed and strip, tossing my clothes into the hamper and dash into the bathroom to start the shower.

I scrub my body nearly raw, trying to clean off in a hurry. Even though school didn’t start until 9:00, I still have to ride my bike a couple miles into town and that takes me at least forty minutes.

I feel the hot water weighing down my hair and cling to my skin. Even though it’s ridiculously long, I still love its length. It was my pride and joy, with all the boys at school often wanting to walk up and talk to me.

I hop out of the shower and dry off. It takes me at least ten minutes just to do my hair. I drape my hair over my shoulder to brush it. While I do love my hair, this part always took the longest to deal with. After I finish, I leave the bathroom and head back into my room to get dressed.

I peer out the window to the see what to weather was like. Cloudy, so rain maybe? I turn and haul out some jeans and shirt, thinking that I might snag my jacket on the way out. I throw everything on and slip into my hiking boots. Hey, they’re better than tennis shoes when biking through the hills.

I pull my hair out from my shirt and take a look in the mirror. For a quick moment I think about tying it back. I glance at clock and wince, stuffing my bag with my notebooks and previous night’s homework. I then unplug my phone and headphones and race out the door.

I bound down the stairs and cross over from the living room and into the kitchen. I could smell the bacon sizzling in the skillet as I hop off the final step. If she’s frying up bacon, a grin rose over my face, then we’re having bacon-fried eggs.

I let out soft squeal as it’s my favorite way to have my eggs. I pass by a small cabinet housing several pictures of my sister and me over the years.

I grin at the one of us when she took me to Lake Winnie a couple years ago. She did it as a surprise right before the start of eighth grade and wanted to have one last outing before I got too bogged down with school. It was a great day and I really love driving through Chattanooga, such a beautiful city. I take a quick glance at the other pictures before heading off again.

I round the main couch in the living room. To my left I hear the TV as it sits in the corner, but from the dining room you could easily see it. My sister typically had it on while she either made us food or was working on a project in the living room.

We do have a TV in the kitchen but she doesn’t turn it on unless I decide to hog the living room for myself, which tended to only happen when she was out working late. And no, she doesn’t do that kind of work.

She’s a seamstress in town who has her own little store. So she can be held up from time to time whenever someone either needs a custom dress or last minute alteration. When that happens…the living room is all mine.

I come over the table and drape my bag over the back of my chair and sit down.

“Well looks like sleepy beauty finally decided to grace us mere mortals with presence. I think we should be honored.”

I groan, rolling my eyes, “Oh shut up, Marron.”

My sister grins, sliding my plate in front of me, along with hers and a small plate of toast. I snatch up a slice and slather it with peanut butter and some strawberry jam. She smiles, pouring my cup with fresh coffee, causing me to smile as the aroma wafts up my nose.

She picks up her cup and takes a sip, while also pouring over a few of her designs. I jab my fork into the medium-cooked bacon and stuff it into my mouth, happily chewing on it.

She looks up me, smiling, “It looks like it’s going to rain pretty hard, do you want me to take you school? It’s not too far from the boutique.”

I shake my head, taking a hard swallow of the bacon and downs my cup, “It shouldn’t be that bad heading into town.”

She leans over, raising an eyebrow, “Are you sure it’s not because you don’t want a certain cute boy see you being driven to school?”

I roll my eyes, “No…it’s because I’m not a little kid anymore.”

She grin, ruffling my hair, “Still a baby I see.”

I grunt, pushing her hand away, “Lay off.” She chuckles, returning to her breakfast.

I hold up my phone and scroll through some of the texts my friends sent me during the night. A few contained links to YouTube videos, possibly the latest singles from a couple musicians. I figured I’d listen to them on the way to school, needing something new to hear while riding. I lean back to watch the news on the TV.

There was segment on the sighting of a strange undefined animal seen in near Archville, a town about twenty miles to the southwest of us. The details were scarce on it and the witnesses really aren’t the most reliable as it was often seen at night.

The broadcast then changed to the weather showing a massive front blowing in tonight with chances of rain starting to grow around 8:00 tonight, plenty of time to hang out with the girls after school and still be home before it starts to pour.

Marron scrolls through a couple more designs, “Your chemistry teacher called the shop yesterday after school. He asked about your last few papers, wanting to know if you’re having some trouble with the work.”

I groan, “I did the work as was assigned and even spent an extra day finishing them. So I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

She glances up at me, “Aria…are you lying to me?”

I glare at her, “No, I’m not,” I grab for my bag and pull out the papers, each showing grades in the low to mid-nineties. “See? I don’t know what he’s expecting for me.”

She look them over, “Slipping just a little I see.”

I tilt my head, shoving them back into the bag, “He’s a freaking perfectionist and ridiculously strict. Anything that slips below a ninety-eight he thinks is a failing grade. He’s even held me after class for getting a 95 on the last test. I’m not the only one whose been complaining about him, a couple guys in his third period class talked about him flunking them if they got another 85 on their tests.”

She holds up her hands, “Okay, okay I get it, he’s not popular. Just be sure to have everything done and complete all right.”

I sigh, “Fine.”

She leans back and stares at the clock in the kitchen, “Well speaking of classes, if you don’t want to be late then you better get going now. Traffic shouldn’t be that bad heading into town.”

I glance at my phone cringing, “Crap. Well I can save about ten minutes cutting through the woods along the hiking trails.”

She looks back to me, “Just be careful okay? No deviations you hear me?”

“Got it,” guzzling down the rest of my breakfast, and my second cup of coffee before getting up and grabbing my bag. I throw it onto my back and head for the door.

Marron watches as I step behind her, “What, no ‘goodbye’ kiss for your big sister? I’m crushed.” I roll my eyes, walking back over to her, kissing her cheek. She grins, “Such a good sister.”

I sigh, but pan up at her and smile, “Love you, Marron.”

She leans in and kisses my forehead, “Love you too, Baby Ahri.” I giggle and dash for the door.

I hop down the back porch and walk over the garage. I open the door and wheel out my bike, mounting it and kicking off for one of the trails that opened up near us. I look up through the densely-packed woods which surrounded the house and down the driveway.

I really loved being this far back in the woods and near the mountains. Just the idea of being so far away from anything resembling major civilization is just perfect. Just give me my mountain trails and dense forests and I’m happy.

My ride through the trails was nice and quiet. The main road sat a good few hundred yards downspin, so if any people were driving along it, I’d never hear them due to the literal ocean of trees that separated us. I always loved to riding through the woods.

For a brief few minutes I felt like nothing else in the world existed, that I was truly alone. But hey, that’s part of living in the Smokey Mountains.

I finally exit out of the woods and onto one of the two main roads leading into town. Music blares in my ears from my headphones as I speed along the road.

I should probably introduce myself, since I’m thinking to myself. I’m Aria O’Connor, age fifteen, height five foot flat, and a high school sophomore. I’m originally from Boston, well sort of. I was born in Knoxville but then moved to New Hampshire after I was about four or five. My parents died in a car accident when I was ten.

My big sister Marron drove up for the funeral and decided to take me in and raise me. Up to that point, I hadn’t seen my sister since before kindergarten while she attended school at UT in Knoxville.

She actually fought with our grandparents, who wanted me to move with them to San Francisco. In all honestly I didn’t know I even had grandparents until they introduced themselves to me, also learning that they too didn’t know I existed.

Marron argued as to why I should fly to the other side of the country to live with people I didn’t know, and that I’d go crazy living in California. Eventually they gave up and that’s how I came to live here in Rosland.

We’re about an hour northeast of Chattanooga, and buried deep in the Smokies. The town itself is fairly quaint and most likely what you’d think a small mountain town would be. It used to be a mining town back in the twenties. It was however shut down a decade later, only to restart a couple years afterwards.

A popular activity for high schoolers is to venture into the mines. Some of the boys hope to replace diamonds to impress girls. Stupid boys.

The total population is less than 2,000 and so everyone knows everybody. We do have a downtown with shops and a local hardware store. There are a couple elementary schools here that feed into the junior high. Both lie on opposite ends of town. We were lucky enough to have a small movie theater built a few years ago. It has about seven screens and is a huge draw on weekends for teenagers.

We also have at least one park in town, more like a large green space with a playground, walking track, and a few sports fields. During the summer the town holds soccer leagues. I played during the first two years after I moved here, but stopped before going into seventh grade.

I pass onto Main Street, eyeing the town square. A huge grocery store lies on the other side of the square and is the largest employer in Rosland. They built it shortly before I moved here and at first wasn’t all that well-received. That soon changed after a while.

I turn to my left and draw a smile, seeing my sister’s boutique. Marron acts as one of town’s main seamstresses, and had set it up a year before our parents died.

Before I started high school, I typically would spend the afternoon after school there with her while she worked until we headed for home. That kind of changed once I started riding my bike to and from school or hanging out with my friends.

Since we are so far away from well…everything, the town and surrounding area is extremely peaceful and folks here are really nice to each other. When I turned thirteen, I began riding into town by myself.

I’ve never been afraid when alone, thinking that someone might jump me or snatch me. We’re just too isolated. I love it here, way more than the big city. Even Chattanooga, while technically considered a big city when not really, is now too big for me.

I smile, turning my attention back onto the road in front of me and onward to school.