Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Fault ❯ Prologue ( Chapter 1 )

I am nothing special. I've led a common life doing common things with common people. At least it's common to me. Several people would beg to differ, but I believe that they are wrong. My face doesn't stand out in the crowd and if it weren't for this story, my tale would never be told. I'm just a name with a past, present, and future who has wanted nothing more than to be remembered.

My name is Amanda Joy Star, more commonly referred to as AJ than anything else. Though before I can move on and tell you my story and have you fully understand, I think you need to know about my family.

My mother, Tabea Fulke, was one out of a set of triplets born in Viersen, Germany on May 16th, 1958. The other two, my aunts, were named Verena and Elfi and they had no other siblings. My mother always told me stories of how they spent every waking second with each other, even when they moved to London when they were 15. "We grew distant once we started attending the universities," she would say in her strange accent: German with a soft edge of British. She told me how she was in her first year when my father was in his last.

My father, Cáel Star, was born in Waterford, Ireland on September 7th, 1948. His parents wanted him to be able to attend a good university, though money was scarce due to the fact they had 11 other children besides him. After years of work, they were finally able to send him three years after he should have attended his first.

My parents seemed like a match from heaven, at least that's what everybody said. Both were studying to become lawyers and they met during a break in the West Courtyard. They hit it off and got married as soon as my mother was out of school. Figuring they didn't need a big house, they moved into a small flat outside of the central area and both got a job at a local law firm. Not even 5 months after they got married, my mother was pregnant with my oldest brother.

Jason Star was born on August 25th, 1983. He had dark brown hair, like both of my parents, and inherited my mother’s blue eyes as opposed to my father’s green.

On January 3rd, 1985, my brother Matt Star was added to the slowly increasing family. Unlike my eldest brother and the rest of my family, Matt had a shock of white blonde hair. Also unlike my brother, but very much like my father, he inherited green eyes.

In the year 1987, a historical moment in the family took place on June 12th. Bestowed upon our family was a set of twin boys by the names of Drake and Josh. Identical in both looks and personality, they would prove to be a handful in the years to come. Auburn hair and hazel eyes were their strange features, strange because nobody in our family had those certain genes.

In the midst of all of this chaos, in the year 1990, my story began. Like my mother, I was born in a set of triplets on July 4th. My sisters, Chloe and Rachael, were identical while I looked nothing like them. Both had brown hair and blue eyes, while I had blonde and green.

As you can imagine, having 7 children in a tiny flat wasn’t the most agreeable choice of lifestyle. It was decided a few months after we were born that we needed to move, the only question was where. Neither one of my parents desired to remain in London nor return to Ireland or Germany. They came to a decision, the US our next destination.

Around November, we moved out of our little house, though we still owned it for visiting purposes. Considering that we hadn’t decided where exactly we wanted to move in the US, we retreated to Germany and moved in with my grandparents, Oma and Opa. Now, my Opa is one of the sweetest people I have ever met and how he puts up with Oma I will never understand. She was a very disagreeable woman, her beauty deceiving.

We would spend Christmas and Easter in our German household, choosing a place to move in late spring. We were to move into a large Victorian house located in Mobile Bay, Alabama, at the end of the summer. And so our 1st birthday passed and a month later, we were off to the place that would change us for the rest of our lives.

Our little town of hardly 12,000 people was quaint and charming with a safe feeling to it. The air constantly smelled of salt and sweet grass, the occasional waft of smoke from a passing coal train mixing in. These smells would become common to me, more so the smell of the train than anything else. For years I can remember waking up in the morning with my window agape, stumbling out of bed to peer out the window at the distant train with its smoke curling up into the air. It was my peace. It was my haven. It was my life.

I think that this place had a lot to do with the person I turned out to be today. Granted, I’m nowhere near perfect. Perfection was never one of my focuses; I’d only be trying for something I’d never achieve. It was in this place though, that I found the best people on the face of this earth.

My best friends since the age of two were three girls by the names of Elizabeth Hillen, Jaiden Sinclair and Mandalyn Reeves; more commonly known as Lizzie, Jade and Mandy. Lizzie and Mandy were both natives to our little town. Although Jade, like me, had moved to our little town from another country. She was from Sydney, Australia, both of her parents as well as her older brother having lived there their whole lives. What possessed her family to move to this miniscule place of insignificance is just as much a mystery as the reason my own family decided to move there.

“Opportunities,” my father would say to me when I’d question him a few years later. “For ye and ye brothers and sister.”

The oddest part about my friendship with those three was not the fact that we were so diverse in attitudes and interests. No, it was our birthday that made us special. Yes birthday not birthdays. The three of them as well as me and my sisters shared the birthday of July 4th, 1990. Odd isn’t it? We always thought so. Though, it also made sense to us as well. We had always acted and behaved like sisters and we might as well have been with our birthdays.

The next year passed with endless excitement: visits to the beach, living in that crowded yet cozy house. I was forced to share a bedroom with Chloe and Rachael, something that none of us had a problem with. On the other hand, Drake and Josh were also forced to share a room, causing a fight to break out nearly every night around 10:00 pm. Matt and Jason shared a room as well and even though they weren’t exactly fond of the arrangement, they never resulted to fighting. But because they all had to share rooms, the race for the most wanted of all rooms began. The greatest room in the house. The BIGGEST room in the whole house. The roomiest room in the whole house.

The attic.

Our house was old, as I said before, coming with a large attic hidden behind a door that appeared to be a closet. It overlooked the ocean and was the only room in the whole house that did so. Considering I was too young to really care, I simply watched with my sisters as the brothers fought; constantly turned down by our parents.

In this year of adjustment, we discovered that my mother was pregnant. Again. Only this time, she was going to have only one child; a baby girl. Chloe, Rachael and I were absolutely thrilled at the thought while our brothers merely looked at it as another annoying sister they’d have to deal with. And so began the shopping that never seemed to end, not that we were exactly in need of baby things after seven kids. Not only did we have to restock our baby supplies, but we also had to pick out a name.

Mum and dad wanted to name her Emily Claire. Chloe, Rachael and I wanted to name her stoplight. Needless to say we didn’t get our wish. And on February 22, 1993, Emily Claire Star joined our ‘clan’. She resembled Jason with brown hair and blue eyes.

Nothing exciting happened that year or the next, only the never ending visits from Weezer.

Lord help us all. Mrs. Maudie Weezer was the absolute worst person I had ever met in my short life. She had mousy gray hair, sharp and stormy eyes, and always appeared to have a thorn permanently lodged in her rear end. She always had something to say about us.

Most every morning in the summer time, she would bang down the front door of our house, hootin’ and hollerin’ the whole time. My father would calmly open up the door and smile at the old bat.

“G’mornin’ Miss Maudie,” he’d say most every time. “What can I do for ye on this lovely day?”

The day was always lovely. Lovely wind. Lovely sunshine. Lovely clouds. Lovely rain. And look! A lovely hurricane! Sarcasm runs in the family, it’s a curse we all have to deal with.

Weezer would sneer up at him with deep loathing upon her face. It was quite a humorous sight to see really: my dad all calm and collected as he stared down upon her with his 6 ft height. Weezer, on the other hand, was a measly 4’10 in height and looked about ready to spontaneously combust.


“Cáel,” she’d say in her Alabama drawl. “I’ve ‘bout had enough of them kids of yours! If you don’t do somethin’ ‘bout them then I will!”

My father would brush a hand through his peppery hair, brows furrowing and meeting in the center like a fuzzy caterpillar.

“Kid’s!” he’d shout over his shoulder, his deep and soothing voice sounding across the whole house. Several responses of yes would come from all over, to which my father would reply “Miss Maudie’s here.”

Instantly we would spring to our feet and bound down the stairs or out of the kitchen and onto the porch as quickly as humanly possible. Weezer would always give a shriek as we piled out and would stumbled back down the few steps so that she was standing on the gravel walk. We would line up from oldest to youngest for now apparent reason, wedging our feet between the white painted spindles and resting our elbows against the railing so that we could lean over it and smile at her.

“Mornin’ Weezer,” we’d say in unison, smiled bright and eyes twinkling as she let out a growl of frustration.

“You see?!” she’d say as she turned to look back at my father. “You see how they’re sassin’ me?”

Calmly my father would smile his brilliant smile, his white teeth a great contrast to his tanned skin. “I think they were just wishing you a good morning ma’am,” he’d respond with a slight nod. “Weren’t you kids?”

“Oh yes father,” we’d say.

Smoke would be billowing out of her ears by this time, horns poking out of the top of that square head of hers. Then would come the complaints….

“Those heathens were climbing my maple tree!”

Or so and so “was playing on my porch this morning!”

“They were eating apples off of my apple tree!”

“Those girls were playing dolls in my vegetable garden!”

“Those boys were playing baseball and using my potted plants as bases!”

Or my absolute favorite, “They’re makin’ Sam’s hair fall out!”

Sam was Weezer’s old St. Bernard. According to Weezer, we were the reason he was ‘stressed out’ all of the time. Had she ever thought that maybe anybody or anything that was within her range of sight automatically became stressed out after .00012385 seconds? Obviously she hadn’t. Sam was a sweet dog, though his hair was falling out. He barked more than any dog I’d ever seen! But the truth was that we’d never even done anything to the dog! Pet him once or twice, yeah maybe, but we didn’t dare get close enough to anything Weezer actually seemed to care about, and Sam was one of them.

After her little tyrant, my father would fold his arms across his chest and lean against the door frame. “Are ye sure that those are my kids ye are talking about ma’am?” he asked, head quirked to the side. “They never to cause much trouble at home.”

Such a terrible lie and an insult to us, we caused lots of trouble at home and we were proud of it! It was degrading to hear such things said about us, but it was better than Weezer’s wrath being unleashed. Upon us, that is.

Weezer’s nostrils would flare dangerously and an infuriated sound somewhere between a groan and a screech would pass through her lips. She then would proceed to smack my father upon his head with whatever happened to be in her hand. Most of the time, it was an umbrella with sickly yellow polka dots. That woman carried that thing everywhere, rain or shine. You can “never be too careful” apparently.

Weezer would storm off, yelling things back at my father as he chuckled, green eyes dancing with amusement.

We usually had done something or another to Weezer, but dad never asked. He’d simply turned to look at us and say “Whatever ye did, don’t do it again.” And we didn’t do it again…. At least not in ways that we would get caught.



This was my life until 1995; normal. Or, as normal as it was every going to be. For you see, after my 5th birthday, the unthinkable happened. We were fine through the end of the summer, and my sisters and I were unbelievably excited about starting Kindergarten. We were in a class of 30 kids and it was filled with the usual glue eaters, paint lickers and stuff-things-in-nosers and we loved every single moment of it.

We never would have thought that it was all about to end.

Schools all over the county were out for Fall Break, most families out of town. It left the beaches practically deserted for us and we spent all day Saturday there. Chloe, Rachael and I had wandered off a little from the rest of the family. It wasn’t a big deal or anything; our little town hadn’t seen a crime in years. We raced down the boardwalk in an attempt to scare away all the gulls that sat on the wooden planks and as soon as we succeeded, we ran back as fast as we could.

There was a short wall, tall for us at the time considering that we were only 5 that cut the beach off from the sidewalk that ran along side the road. We never broke stride as we headed towards it, Chloe and I leaping upon it and heaving ourselves to the top with practiced ease. Rachael, on the other hand, did not.

She had jumped too late, the concrete edge stabbing sharply into her chest and eliciting a soft cry from her. Rachael dropped down to the ground for a moment and Chloe and I slipped off the wall to join her. She claimed that she was alright, it just hurt a little. We took her word for it and continued on as if nothing had ever happened.

One of the worst mistakes of my life to this day.

That night we were changing into our pajamas and Rachael’s torso was bruised with rainbow colors of deep shades. Purples and blue and blacks fringed with greens and yellows covered her everywhere. We said that she should to tell mom, a suggestion she immediately cast aside. Our mother was overprotective and for good reason. We were always getting hurt. She said that she was fine and, once again, we stayed quiet. We said our goodnights and crawled into bed, Rachael a little bit slower than Chloe and I.

You are probably thinking to yourself, “Why didn’t they go tell?!” You must understand that we were merely 5 years old and did not understand the severity of her injury or what the worst outcome could be and was.

I vaguely remember waking up to the sound of her coughing that night, but never stayed conscious long enough to investigate and find out if she was okay. But the next morning, I would find that Rachael wasn’t okay and never would be again.

The morning automatically struck me as odd; Rachael was usually up first, not Chloe. I slipped out of bed alongside my sister and stumbled lethargically to Rachael’s bed. We told her to get up so we could take a bath and go to church and that if she didn’t hurry, we would be late and therefore give Weezer something else to complain about. No response, and with her back towards us, we couldn’t tell if she was awake or not.

I nudged her on the back a couple of times, saying her name and finding that she was oddly still. Chloe got fed up and grasped Rachael’s left arm and rolled her over, jumping back a moment later as a scream tore through her throat. I yelped and stumbled back, the side of Chloe’s bed connecting with the back of my thighs and keeping me from falling.

Rachael wasn’t awake and never was going to wake. Her body was limp and pale with blood covering her mouth and cheek. Crimson spilled across her pillow and sheets, a sight that I will never forget even if a live a thousand years more.

By this time, the rest of the house had awakened and come to investigate, only to be met with the same sight we were.

Rachael was dead.

We’d later find out from the doctor that when she hit that wall, it broke three of her ribs, two on the left and one on the right. Two of those managed to puncture her lungs and, somehow or another, blood pooled and suffocated her. The coughing I heard was Rachael trying to cough up the blood, the stains on her sheets proof.

Nobody blamed us for not telling, we didn’t know any better. It didn’t make us feel good though, we knew that it was wrong and from that point on, we let mom know every time we go so much a paper cut.

I found it odd when we went to the funeral; my whole family seated at the front with the rest of town sprinkled through the rest of our Catholic church. It wasn’t the priest speaking about my sister that I found odd, or the fact that Rachael was a few feet away in a black casket with an unnaturally pale pallor. No, it was the fact that I spotted my father crying that I had found odd.

At that time, I thought that only little boys could cry. Men and people the age of my brother’s couldn’t. But there sat my dad, brows furrowed in a scowl as he stared blankly ahead, silent tears slipping past his green eyes. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, my black dress unbearably itching, and turned my gaze to my right. My brothers looked exactly as my father, expressions hard as stone as they cried silently.

I realized in that moment that Rachael wasn’t coming back, that things were going to be different. And I cried. I cried for my sister that would never live to see so many great things. I cried for Chloe who felt as guilty as I. I cried for my parents and their loss. I cried for my brothers and father who were clearly suffering. But I never cried for myself. I never do.