My name is Connor, Connor Norman. I am 14, and my whole family is gone. I have no friends; they all died on Friday, September 13th. I’m not into the whole superstition thing, but now I couldn’t believe any stronger. For now on, any Friday the 13th I will hide under the cot in my orphanage. This is my story.

All of my friends and family live in a tightly packed apartment building. We are not the richest family in the world. Our apartment building is right next door to a nuclear testing center. My grandma has this crazy idea that living in the same building shares positive energy and, oh I’m exactly sure what is going through her mind. She’s crazy! Anyways, I’m a very shy person, so I don’t have a lot of friends. Mostly they are my cousins. I have three best friends; their names are Sasha, Raven, and Carson. Carson and Raven are my cousins. We all have a lot of fun together and have almost every class together at school. It works out great.

Friday September 13th started out as any ordinary day; wake up at 5:30, get ready, meet Carson and Raven in Sasha’s room, then start the 10 minute walk to school. School was pretty boring as usual, and we had no homework, not as usual. So, it was turning out to be a pretty good day. After the last bell of the day rings, we meet at my locker, and get our stuff packed and start walking home. After we got home, we went inside my room and got a snack. After that, we all decided that it was pretty nice outside for a September afternoon, so we decided to go outside and play hide and seek. Fun game right? Sasha has counted to 200 and we had all hidden. I was on the other side of out apartment building, in the hurricane room, keep in mind that we live in Florida. I had heard Sasha’s high pitched voice scream when she found Carson. He’s the jokester, always messing around. About two minutes later I had heard Raven arguing with Carson about giving away her hiding space, typical cousins’ right? I was feeling pretty good by this time, it has been about five minutes and I still haven’t been found. I must have had a pretty nice hiding place. I never would have guessed how important this hiding spot would soon become.

BOOOOOOOOM, CRAAAAAAASHH, SSSSSSPLAT, are just a few or the horrifying sounds that I had heard. I looked up to find a huge mushroom shaped ball of fire in the air. Screaming was the second most horrifying sound to pass through my ears. All of the sudden this random girl comes up to me says the nuclear center next door had an unexpected explosion and the apartment building was going to crash down on the ground any minute now. I frantically ran down the street as far as I could, until I fell and cut up me knee pretty bad. I ended up about 12 blocks down the street, and could still see the cloud of gas and smoke.

I looked down at my knee to see the horrible blob of blood. I was scared to death of what I saw. I took out my cell phone and frantically called Sasha, no answer, the same to all of my other friends. This feeling in my stomach is unexplainable. I kept walking trying to figure out what just happened. I ended up about 45 blocks away from home. That night, I slept under a tree. I slept horrible.

The next day was spent walking, crying, and trying to get back home. When I got there, I suddenly wished that I had never came back home. I got there to the owner of the apartment just standing there. She explained to me that she was picking her kids up from school and when she got home, this is what she came to. This was horrible. Sasha, Raven, Carson, Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Lauren, Uncle Jason, Aunt Julie, Uncle Mike, and many more were all dead. I got sent to orphanage, and I am not spending my nights and days mourning over my lost friends and family.

When I went back to the burned down building, I found a piece of wood, I turned it over and it had said Norman family floor. This was one thing that was passed around the family for years; this single piece of wood is the only thing I have to remember my family and friends. I took it with me, and as I got back to the orphanage, I wrote on it, “IN MEMORY OF SASHA, RAVEN, CARSON, AND THE NORMAN FAMILY”. That sign went in the ground by the burned down apartment building.

I went to visit it one day and a little boy and his mother walked by it, and the little boy said, “Who are the kids on the wooden sign?” I replied, “My life."