Ash’s POV

Planes. They were like my second home. Ever since I was a little baby my family had traveled a lot. I had been on every continent, in countless of countries. My family was just privileged to have that luxury, or really any luxury we wanted. Which was why I was in America, Baltimore to be exact.

Before I get into all this, I’ll give you some back story. I’ll start with my family. It was just me, my dad, and my three younger brothers. My dad was had started his own company years before, and it was doing very well. This caused us to move to Germany was I was 4 years old and none of my brothers were even born yet. When I was 10 years old, and my youngers brother was just a mere 1 year old, my mom died. Coronary Artery Disease, in case you were wondering. it would only have been logical for me to have to take care for all my brothers, but somehow my dad managed to make it work without taking my or my brothers’ childhood away. Of course we did mourn for sometime, but we realised that being in a constant sad state wasn’t going to help us. My dad went to work everyday, but he was always there to bring us to school, to pick us up from school, and to play with us. He didn’t seem stressed at all. I guess we were just really lucky.

Now, why was I in Baltimore? Well, my school in Germany had an exchange program, and me being me decided to sign up. We had to write a motivation letter about why we wanted to go, and I did just that. The school board like my letter and I was allowed to go, just like several other students who had applied for other countries. At first I was skeptical to go, but my dad encouraged me to go. He told me it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and that I would regret it if I didn’t go. I didn’t want to leave my dad alone, but he kept insisting. So, the next day I went to school and handed in my final decision. I was going to go.

I just realised I totally forgot to tell you who I am. My name is Ash Collins, I’m 17 years old and originally British (I only have a slight accent that comes back after I have spent a lot of time with my dad). I’m fluent in English and German and love to play the piano. My hair is pretty long, straight, and a boring brown color. I’m just your average girl. To say the least, I’m pretty boring.

Now, here I was, with four suitcases, which my dad made me pack, in a strange airport, only knowing my guest family from an email that was sent to me with a photograph and their names. Apparently they had a son who was the same age as me, which was going to be pretty eventful. I never had a boyfriend, nor even came close to being asked out for that matter. My intention was to keep it that way while I was here. I was here for just a couple of months. The only guys I needed in my life were my brothers and my dad.

I walked out of the sliding doors and looked around the many faces, hoping to recognise one. My eyes settled on a family, they looked like the one from the email, so I walked up to them. The mom looked back at me and waved, letting me know I was heading the right way. She immediately went for a hug, which I was totally not accustomed to. Everything in Germany was so formal.

“You must be Ash,” she grinned, “I’m Isobel, this is Peter, and that’s Alex.”

She pointed at the father and a boy with long brown hair that covered his entire forehead. To top it off, he was wearing a beany. He had a completely different style to mine; skinny jeans, a shirt that looked like it belonged to some band, and some sneakers. Let’s just say I was a goody two shoes and a daddy’s girl. Sure, I didn’t look at my best right now, but I only wore neat things. This guy looked like he didn’t care about school or anything at all, while I cared about my grades and had already been asked to join Juilliard without auditioning. He was the complete opposite of me.

“Umm, yeah, that’s me,” I awkwardly said and didn’t know where to look. The weird fast food place on the other side looked pretty interesting to look at.

“Would you like some help with your bags?” Peter asked my and already reached out for the largest one.

“Sure, if you don’t mind. I originally only had two suitcases that weren’t completely filled, but my dad walked in and somehow insisted I brought all this.”

“It’s ok, we can all take one, right, Alex?”

“Uh, yeah, whatever,” he took also one of my bags and flipped his hair. My assumptions were right. He didn’t care about jack shit- Oh my god. I just said a swear word. It was just in my head, it was fine.

We started walking to where I guessed they parked the car. Alex trailed back with me, “I’m sorry about my parents, they are kind of lame…”

I shrugged and looked at the couple, “I like them so far.”

“Wait ‘til we have dinner, they will bore the fucking shit out of you.”

I cringed as his language choice, “please don’t say that.”

“Say what?” He smirked, “fucking shit?”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking shit, fucking shit, fucking shit, fucking shit. Fucking. Shit. Fucking. Shit. Shit, fuck, shitting fuck.”

I certainly didn’t like this guy at all. He annoyed me worse than my brothers could, and I had only known him for a couple of minutes. How was I ever going to survive four months sharing a house with him? Something about him told me he wasn’t going to leave me alone anytime soon.

----

I had helped Isobel with making dinner. An hour or so after we had arrived at the nice suburban house, three guys came over and they disappeared somewhere with Alex. I honestly didn’t care, it just meant I didn’t have to listen to him come into the room they had gracefully given me, and hear as he always said a couple of swear words.

I got the table ready for seven people. Isobel had told me that the other three guys were staying over for dinner, so we had to make enough food for them as well. I only had one teenage brother, but I knew how much he could eat, I could only imagine how much four boys in their late teenage years could eat.

“Oh, honey, you didn’t have to do that,” Isobel put a hand on my shoulder as I filled the last glass with water, “I could have done it. You’ve done so much already.”

“It’s no problem,” I told her as I placed the jug at one end of the table, “I always do it at home, it’s not extra work for me. I actually enjoy doing it.”

“Well, would you mind calling the boys while I put the food on the table?”

“No problem.”

I went down to the basement and heard loud music playing and people talking. This was totally different from my family, with exception for the occasional sounds of my brothers playing games, the house was completely quiet. I knocked on the door a couple of times before opening it. The four guys were sitting on an old couch, playing video games.

I cleared my throat and opened the door a little more, “Umm, hey. Alex, your mom asked me to call you for dinner.”

All their heads turned to me and stared. They all looked and didn’t say anything. It was starting to creep me out. A guy with long black hair and weird blonde streaks that were placed at random intervals, looked right in my eyes and his mouth drooped open. The other two didn’t stare at me as intently, but still didn’t take their eyes off me until Alex responded.

“Ok,” he nodded, but didn’t move and looked at his friends.

“So, umm, yeah…” Only when I started walking did they follow me.

We all went upstairs together and I waited until everybody took their seat before I sat down. I didn’t want to sit in somebody else’s place; I knew how protective my brothers could be about the chair they always sat on, I didn’t want to see how these guys would react to it.

They all put heaps of spaghetti on their plates and covered it with sauce, making me feel like throwing up. I couldn’t even eat half of what they ate, and I ate normal portions. As soon as one of them started eating, so did the others. They didn’t even wait ‘til Isobel and Peter had food on their plates. This family was so weird, we always waited until everybody had food before digging in.

“Oh my god, this is so fucking good,” a guy with short hair, nearly shaved bald, groaned.

“I agree, Rian,” the boy with the skunk hair said and stood up to high five the kid whose name I now knew was Rian.

“This really is good,” the buff one of the group said a lot more politely and looked at Alex’s mom.

“Oh, don’t look at me,” Isobel chuckled, “Ash, here, made the food. You have to thank her.”

“Can we keep her?” Alex asked with a mouth full of food, making me wince.

“I’m supposed to stay for four months, so you’re lucky,” I told him as civilized as possible while he stuffed his mouth even more.

“Who taught you to cook so well?” Peter asked after taking a sip of water.

“My mum did. She was half Italian, so she taught me a lot from a very young age. I cook three times a week at home, my dad takes the other four days. I enjoy doing it,” I explained.

“What about your mom? When does she cook?” Alex scooped more spaghetti onto his fork and watched it with a drooling mouth.

“Umm, she died seven years ago, so my dad and I do everything.”

Alex froze and looked up at me, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t-”

“It’s ok,” I waved it off, “I don’t let it affect me too much. We were sad for a while, but she had a good life, now we have to continue ours.”

The whole table stayed quiet for a while after that. All of the boys seemed a bit taken back after I said that my mom had died, as if they were afraid to hurt me by saying anything else. Why did people always think it was a difficult and hard subject for me? I honestly didn’t mind talking about it. Rather than being upset about her death, my family always celebrated her life. Mourning forever wasn’t going to do any good.

Isobel suddenly broke the silence I was enjoying so much, “so, Ash, what are your plans for the future?”

“Umm, I’d like to go to Juilliard,” I nodded at her.

“Juilliard! That’s like impossible to get in. Good luck with that!” Alex exclaimed. He certainly wasn’t sorry for what he said before anymore.

“Alex!” Isobel scolded and glared at him.

“They have been following me since I was seven years old. I already got accepted without applying,” I tried to tell them without sounding too annoyed.

Alex choked on his food, making me feel satisfied. I didn’t care if it was because he was shocked or because he honestly choked, it was nice to see him suffer. I really didn’t like him so far.

After another silence, Rian spoke up, “Is Ash short for Ashley?”

I shook my head, having already finished my dinner while the others were still eating, “no, it’s just Ash. It’s on my birth certificate, passport, and ID. Teachers always have this urge to call me Ashley, which get’s me pretty annoyed. I’m definitely not an Ashley.”

They all nodded and I took this chance to get to know all their names, “I don’t even know your names.”

“I’m Jack, and you’re hot,” weird highlights boy said bluntly. I gave him a weird look, but shook it off.

“Rian,” the guy whose name I already knew introduced before pointing at the last boy, “and that’s Zack.”

“I could have introduced myself, but thanks,” Zack rolled his eyes.

These guys were really weird. I wasn’t sure if I was going to survive a full semester with them. This was not going to go well.

“I just remembered that I forgot to tell my dad that I’m here, do you mind if I text him real quick?” I asked, remembering how my dad kept telling me to call or text him when I landed.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Isobel excused me, “Alex often text during dinner, even though we tell him to stop and try to take the phone away from him.”

“Not true!” Alex argued.

“Very true,” Rian countered, causing Alex to sigh and slouch in his seat.

I quickly texted my dad before getting a facetime call back. What was he doing up? I looked at Isobel, “do you mind if I answer?”

“No, go ahead,” she told me, “would you like some privacy?”

“It’s fine.”

I answered the call and saw my youngest brother’s face appear in the darkness, “Hey, Ash.”

“Are you out looking for ghosts again, Charley? You know you should be in bed, right?”

“I know, but look at this.”

He turned the camera to show the big grandfather’s clock we had in the hall.

“It’s the clock, so what?”

“No! Look at that!” He pointed at a tiny scratch that I could only faintly see with all the noise going on in the image.

“It’s a scratch-”

“Made by a ghost!”

I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose, looking up to see everybody snickering.

“No, Charley, that’s from when Jaxon stole Kayden’s chair and ran into the clock,” I said thinking about the time my oldest brother was running around the house to annoy my second oldest brother.

“Ugh, fine,” he walked over to something before stopping and putting the phone down.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, what’s this? La Valse by a guy called Maurice Ravel?”

“Don’t you dare, you’re going to wake everybody up-”

He started banging on all the piano keys ‘trying’ to play the 12 minute long piano piece. It sounded horrible and I was afraid he was going the break the grand piano my parents had gotten me when I just started playing.

The light turned on and Charley froze before I heard my dad’s voice, “if you’re going to play the piano at 1 am, make sure you play something creepy that will scare everyone.”

“I’m sorry, Ash, I have to go,” he hung up before I could reply.

“That was not my fault,” I put my phone away.

“That was totally your fault,” Alex smirked.

I just wanted to punch him right there and then.

Notes

So, first chapter to a new story! Yay. I'm pretty excited to write this one. How do you guys like the characters and plot so far? Will it be worth continuing?

I'm going to write this in several POVs unlike my other story. I don't know exactly how I want the plot to go, so any suggestions are welcome. Hopefully this story won't end up much like Hospital Beds and Memories, but for what I have sort of planned, I don't think it will. I really do need suggestions, though. I don't know how to build up to the one thing I want to happen.