oppenheimer series

Chapter 1

Grandpa came to live with us on a hot December night. Everyone thought it would be just another flash Christmas visit, but fate had its plans.

“Thanks for illuminating the street in my honor,” he said as he crossed the hallway and climbed the stairs to the second floor.
Sofia gave me her I-don’t-get it look, and I shrugged. Whatever.

We understood his joke an hour later. It was el día de las velitas, the day of the candles, and the neighbors had lit long rows of candles on the sidewalk all around the block.

“Abuelo is very funny, don’t you think?” my sister said.

I didn’t answer. I was hypnotized by the little light orbs all over the street. Not funny; he was kind of weird, actually.

Abuelo Alfredo was as mysterious as you could get. He didn’t wear old-guy clothes, but jeans and black turtleneck t-shirts, like Steve Jobs. His face seemed to be made out of rock; his wrinkles never moved. And his accent… well, you couldn’t really tell where he was from.

Sofi and I were on the balcony that joined our bedrooms from the outside, escaping the boredom of the house during our month-long Christmas break. We always got all of December and part of January off.

I actually missed school. The thing was that my school was different. I wasn’t forced to study any boring subjects but got to work on the stuff I liked: robotics and programming.

There was nothing I loved more than technology. Well, except for superhero movies.

My sister was the opposite. She was an art freak. Always had more paintbrushes than dolls, and the ones she did have ended up with their faces painted all the colors possible. And she got to do that at school as well.

That was why we hated school breaks. They were tedious and boring.

Little did we know that the arrival of our grandpa would turn our school break upside down and mark the rest of our lives like an asteroid crashing into a city.