New Beginnings

By Anastasia Elena S.M.

Lola Shaws lives in a small, filthy apartment together with her dad. They are exceedingly poor, barely getting along.

However, things didnt always stand like that.

Lolas mom left when her brother mysteriously disappeared, and she hasnt heard from her since.

Can Lola cope with her miserable life?

Does she have the courage to seek out her mom?

Is she brave enough to find new beginnings for her life?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Feb 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543488852

Anastasia Elena S.M.

Anastasia is a very young writer. At the age of 11 only, she is offering children of her age the product of her imagination and of months of constant dedicated work. This is her first fiction novel, actually following a number of childrens stories which were not published at the time of their writing. Anastasia already has her next story in mind, and is eager to start it and get to the moment of sharing it to the public.

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Copyright © 2018 by Anastasia Elena S.M..

Library of Congress Control Number:     2018901535

ISBN:               Hardcover               978-1-5434-8887-6

                          Softcover                 978-1-5434-8886-9

                          eBook                       978-1-5434-8885-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/21/2018

Xlibris

800-056-3182

www.Xlibrispublishing.co.uk

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

The Accident

Chapter 1     Four years later…

Chapter 2     An orange dwarf and a naked grizzly bear

Chapter 3     Almost there

Chapter 4     Bye, Dad

Chapter 5     The residents of Lavender House

Chapter 6     Hi, Philippe!

Chapter 7     Holly’s ‘old man’

Chapter 8     Holly and her sisters

Chapter 9     We gotta go again

Chapter 10   Whoa!

Chapter 11   School ain’t cool

Chapter 12   Hi friend

Chapter 13   The end

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank first of all my mom, who helped me a great deal to tie up all of my loose ends, not to say all the endless advice and support, and the rest of my family for encouraging me non-stop; thanks, guys!

Also thanks to all of my teachers at Watermill Primary School, Birmingham. They are the ones who made me believe in my talent, starting in Year 3 (thank you so much, Miss Joyce!) up to now, in Year 6, when I am constantly supported to improve my writing skills.

Last but definitely not least, I would like to thank the reader. Not many authors thank the reader, but I will. I mean, the reader is like the judge, telling the performer or whatever how good their…well, performance was.

I hope you will enjoy reading my story.

Thank%20You.jpg

THE ACCIDENT

A n African woman, wearing only her nightclothes and clearly just woken, is crying. Her husband, a frown on his face, is walking up and down the living room, glancing at the window every few seconds. He keeps muttering anxiously to himself. Both jump up, startled, as a loud siren is heard, and rush outside.

My son, Officer; he is gone! shouts the man, who is frustrated by seeing the police so calm. A smartly uniformed woman simply replies that they shall check the whole neighbourhood and do their best to find him. They ask for his details; appearance, age, height, weight. Then they leave in their noisy car, abandoning the poor couple to drown in grief and frustration. The next morning, they are both exhausted as they eat their breakfast cereal, and do not speak of the night’s events. Their seven-year-old daughter, having slept through the chaos, knows nothing, and silently presumes her elder brother is at school already. Her parents take advantage of this and choose not to tell her the truth; not yet. Besides, it is only morning, and a bad start to the day means a whole, bad day. She would know, but not just yet.

Two weeks later, while the girl is at school, the police phones, asking to come over. And so they do, and say that they have found a boy with a matching description to their son. They are right, it is their son. He had been injured, the parents think, covered in bruises and scratches. The poor people are still worried, but eager now, too. So what if he’s a bit battered? They would give him as many plasters as he wants! They wait for the news to come, the news that their son is going to be alright, but it doesn’t come.

The police just look at them gravely and glance at one another, as if to say: "What are we going to do? They haven’t cracked on…shall we just tell them?"

The woman stares at them in disbelief, then screams in despair and starts sobbing miserably into her husband’s shoulder as realization seeps into her. How, how is she ever going to get over this? How, how is she going to tell her daughter what has happened to the boy?

CHAPTER ONE

Four years later…

H i, my name is Lola Shaws. I’ve got a dark brown afro and caramel coloured skin (basically, I look like a giant brown, eleven-year-old lollipop,) and my favourite colour is purple, mostly because it’s not so… dramatic; unlike my life. There are only two people in my family: my dad and I, but it didn’t use to be like that. My mom walked out on us, and my brother, Luke, Dad says he left too, but I’m not so sure. When we were little, we’d play for hours; we were really close. When we’re older, he’d say to me dreamily, when we’re older, we’ll live in a small cottage by the sea. We can catch fish to eat, so that we won’t have to spend loads of money – just the two of us… I believed him, of course. What else could a toddler have done?

Yet, the only things I have left from him are memories, a few books and Dusty, a small, filthy little toy dog he kept since I was baby; we always said that if we ever had a dog, it would be called Dusty. When I’m sad, or lonely, or just down in the dumps, I, well, hold him tight and whisper to him. This also applies to pains, mostly headaches; he always made me smile when I had one. He’d say that Headache has woken up. I imagined Headache as a huge, grey-white, skinny monster, with alien eyes and a cup-shaped head, banging away at my skull. Eventually, Headache would fall back asleep.

I really, really loved my brother (he loved me even more) and I still do, because when he should have been hanging out with his mates, or doing what other teenage boys do, he took the time to play with me. Luke taught me how to read and write, not my meaning-well-but-overdoing-it teachers, who all spoke too quickly, and thought that if one person can do it, everyone can! He was the best bro anyone could ever ask for; until he started staying out late, coming back angry, red in the face, injured, or just helplessly drunk. Mom threatened to slap him, Dad rambled on and on about the consequences to bad behaviour, and all in all, I was the only one who wanted him around anymore. Most people think that it all just got too much for him, so he left, but they don’t blame Mom and Dad, or not out loud anyway. Shortly after, my mom left too, (leaving us the money to buy the crumbling remains of the filthy apartment we’re in now) as I said, and yeah. Now it’s just me and Dad, trying to manage all by ourselves. The only good thing that was in my life after Mom and Luke disappeared was my Aunt and Uncle, plus my cousins. They’d take me to their house, so I could have a bit of fun. Not anymore; that was a few months ago. I loved it, whenever I came round, my aunt would make something special for dinner, not to mention the secret chocolate snacks from my uncle. Sometimes it was pizza, other times burgers… Every night now, at home, we have beans on toast, but we’re already in debt despite Dad’s efforts, because being an only parent, you just can’t seem to earn that much money; so I can’t say that he’s not trying and I can’t complain either, because he really is trying hard to start a new life on our own. The problem is that the only things he says to me now are ‘good morning’ when I wake up and ‘sleep well’ when I’m in bed, if that, and I can see that he’s in pain, I really can, but I just wish he’d at least try to give me more hope! I’m really worried about him, though, he’s getting so skinny and his back is all hunched over, he hasn’t shaved in weeks either. All this working to pay off our debt has really tired his body out, I guess. More recently, when he coughs, his whole body shakes and trembles. It’s scary to have a dad like that. It really is. But then, it’s scary living with no mom, no sign of actual life going on in our house. I do pretty much all of the house-work, all the cooking and the washing up and vacuuming, because Dad comes home at about ten every night, and leaves at about five thirty each morning, so when he finally drags himself back home, he’s just…tired out. I wish he’d just lighten up. Although, I must admit, I’m not much better than him. I used to have loads of friends, but when I started my heavy depression, they probably sensed it and cleared off. Even the teachers hate me; they all pick on me for no reason! I suppose I’ve grown to hate school as much as home. My life is quite awful, even if I say so myself.

… So, yeah, that’s about it, I guess. That’s the story of my life.

I quickly grab some bread and shove it in the toaster as I hear Dad coming through the front door, back from work.

Hey, Dad! I call. I barely hear his grunt of a reply as I place the toast on a clean plate and heat the baked beans. When they’re ready, I spread them on the toast, grab two brown bananas for dessert and rush into the living room.

Had a good day today? I ask him, sitting down next to him on our small, grubby sofa. How come you came home so late? I add. His reply, once again, is a short, almost inaudible grunt. I sigh, wait for him to finish eating and then take both of our plates into the kitchen.