"WHAT?!?" I screamed into the mouthpiece of my flip-phone. "You cannot be serious!" It was my mother I was talking to, and she was trying to ruin my life as usual. Except that this time, it was for real. "I'm not doing it!" I yelled again, and slammed the phone shut.

At this point I was only seeing red, and only when my friend Ashley asked me "Kylie, are you okay?" did I remember where I was. I was in the middle of a huge shopping trip with my friends Ashley, Jaime, and Heather, and we were sitting in the food court surrounded by a myriad of shopping bags.

"No, I'm not okay. My mother is ruining my life. She'll be here in five minutes to begin the process." I threw away the garbage from my lunch and began gathering my shopping bags.

As I was doing this, Heather asked me, "How is she ruining it this time?"

I shook my head and felt my shoulder-length blonde hair swish. "I-I don't want to talk about it and get you guys mixed up in another conflict with my mother."

"That's not like you, Kylie," Jaime said with raised eyebrows as she sat relaxed and slipping a slurpee. "You always want to share your problems with us."

"Yeah," Ashley joined in. "That's what we do."

"Not this time," I said. Even as I said it it felt weird of me. "I'll see you guys later," I said over my shoulder as I walked toward the eastern exit where my mother said she'd pick me up.

They must have thought I was far away enough not to hear them, but I distinctly heard Jaime say,

"At-ti-tude," and both Heather and Ashley murmur words of agreement. Why didn't they understand my world was crumbling??

As soon as I walked out of the revolving doors of the upscale mall in Wellington, Florida, I heard the honk of a car horn. I spotted my mother's silver van on the driveway. I put on my best scowl and walked as quickly as I could while weighted down with Abercrombie and Fitch and American Eagle bags. I was determined to change her mind.

I flung open the side door of the van and angrily threw my bags in the back seat. Mother was staring at me from the rear view mirror as she pressed the button that automatically closed the side door. As soon as the door closed she drove away.

"I don't see why you are having such a problem dealing with this, Kylie," she said.

"Mom! There are only a few weeks until school's out! Of course I have a problem with this!"

"Please, Kylie-"

"Mom! What I don't understand is why you're making me do this!"

"It's your father and I. We've decided to get a divorce."

"Surprise, surprise," I muttered sarcastically. She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. "Why do you have to involve me in everything? It's not like I didn't know about Dad cheating on you. And it hasn't affected me at all! Just leave me alone!"

"Kylie, I don't want you to be around your father's influence. I'm just looking out for your well being."

"Well thanks, but I would be a little bit happier if solving this problem did not involve moving out to the middle of Hicksville!"

"Oh, come on. It won't be that bad. You're a friendly girl, you'll make friends in no time."

"That's not the point, Mom! What about my friends here?"

"Well, if they're really your friends, they'll keep in touch."

I sucked my teeth and sunk down into the seat with my arms crossed over my stomach.

At this point, I considered my life to be at an all-time low. A few months ago, things were much different. I was only a sophomore in high school, but I knew that I had reached the prime of popularity. All the guys wanted to date me, and all the girls wanted to be me. I secretly knew that my success had a lot to do with the fact that my mother could not refuse her only child's wishes. So in result of that, I had a cell phone, the coolest clothes in the mall, and a car promised to me when I turned sixteen in a few months.

But then, my boyfriend broke up with me for another girl. In turn I lost some of my following because they thought I had treated him badly, when in fact it was the exact opposite. I was still popular; nonetheless, when my father had the brilliant idea that I shouldn't be awarded with a car, and instead I should learn how to earn my own money to buy things I want.

And that is only one of the reasons why I'm not exactly fond of my father. Moving away from him was not one of the things that bothered me.

My mother's plan was to leave for Maple Ridge, Tennessee in two weeks. We had a house there that my great-great-grandfather had built back in the 1900's or whatever. I had never been there, but my mom said she used to visit her grandparents there when she was a kid. The whole reason her father left when he turned eighteen was so that he could widen his opportunities. And now we were returning back to the place that stifled my grandfather's ambition. Great.

I begged and pleaded with my mom for the next week, trying to persuade her to change her mind. She was obviously going through a mid-life crisis. But why did she have to involve me?!?

At first my friends acted just how I had expected. "Can't you convince your mom?" "Maybe you could live with me until your mom realizes the mistake she's making." But when I only had a week left and chances of convincing my mom were looking slim, their tones of voices changed. "We'll keep in touch." "Maybe we could visit each other every once in a while." Although after I told them that it was about an fifteen-hour drive, even prospects of seeing them ever again seemed impossible.

I decided to give my mother the Silent Treatment. As we packed all of our many belongings, I only spoke when it was necessary. She told me she knew what I was doing, but it still wasn't going to change her mind.

Of course I cried a little on my last day at school. I mean, who wouldn't? I was totally being uprooted from a fantastic life, and being replanted in the middle of Tennessee! The only thing on my mind was planning an escape to my father's house. However, the very next day, I was sent to my father's house to acquire some "quality time" before I left from his life-probably forever, unless my getaway plan worked.

But when I got there, I kind of changed my mind. He really had some nerve to actually let the slut he had been living with sit right there next to him as we talked about mom and the move. The guy really is a jerk, and so is the skank of a girlfriend.

We actually managed to squeeze in about five minutes of "quality time" when the hoe left for a manicure appointment. It was weird being alone with my dad like that; it seemed like he wanted to bond. He brought me up to the attic and pulled out a dusty old trunk. He was rather excited as he opened it up and brought out an old-looking case that he handed to me with an enthusiastic face. Confused, I opened it and found an old camera.

My father used to be a photographer. And now, he was passing on his pursuit to his only child, who was rather nonplussed as to what she should do with it. I smiled for him, so that I wouldn't be remembered as an ungrateful brat, and I heard the car horn honk from the street below. Surprising both of us, I told my dad thanks and gave him a hug.

It was a Friday morning we left for Maple Ridge, Tennessee. My mother and I managed to fit all of our stuff into the van with great difficulty. We didn't have to worry about furniture; the house was already furnished. I spent the entire fifteen-hour drive in a very foul mood in the very back seat with my headphones blasting a bunch of Maroon 5 and The All-American Rejects. Though I hated to admit it, my freedom to listen to whatever music I wanted was one of the growing reasons that I was okay with leaving Wellington. Back home, all my friends listened to rap music, generally 50 Cent and Jay-Z, stuff like that. When they discovered that I actually spent money on a No Doubt CD, they flipped, and I made up that it was a gift for my cousin.

Before we left, I bought at least a dozen of some popular magazines including Cosmo, CosmoGirl!, Vogue, Teen Vogue, People, Teen People...and the like. With all that reading, I had no time to look at scenery. And fifteen exciting hours later of learning how to tweeze eyebrows and match that skirt for every occasion, we had reached Tennessee. My mother announced our arrival to me by turning up the back speakers so loud that I could hear them through my headphones.

"We're in Tennessee!" she said, assuming that I couldn't read the huge sign we had just passed.

I finally removed my headphones and felt a small burning sensation from where the earpieces were lodged. "Thanks for the news...How 'bout the weather?" I muttered. I guess I had finally gotten tired of the magazines and music, and decided to look out the small space of window that wasn't crowded with boxes of junk.

It was dark, about 7:30 at night, but the light from the moon illuminated the open hills of Tennessee. My first and only thought was "boring." Every once in a while we'd pass I guess what you'd call a town, complete with general store, hardware store, and a McDonald's if you were lucky. I couldn't imagine that any patch of land in America could be so...empty. We were probably just taking the back roads.

My mom actually found a pizza place, and so she bought us some dinner to go. Half an hour later I noticed that we kept going up and up around what appeared to be a very large hill, and when we got about three-quarters of the way up, mom pulled into the gravel driveway of a very plain Victorian house with a small stable and an oak tree. I couldn't see it very well, but from what I could decipher, I hated it. I despised it. I loathed it with all of my being. It was, after all, the house that brought the downfall of my popularity.

I made the personal decision to unload all of my belongings right then. I couldn't sleep after hours of doing nothing, and my legs needed stretching from their dormancy. And most importantly, I didn't want to have to do it in the daylight when there was a chance people could be passing by in their cars. I mean, there was absolutely no threat of people seeing me at night. The closest house was like two-thirds of a mile around the bend.

I didn't even bother looking at the first floor of the house. I took my stuff immediately upstairs and searched the bedrooms until I found one that suited me.

I moved the furniture around to my liking and then hung the Blink 182 poster I had been longing to see on my walls but was too chicken to do it back home. Finally, hunger got the best of me and I had to go downstairs to look for the kitchen. Mom asked me what I thought of the house, but I just shrugged and took some pizza upstairs. I started hooking up my computer with every intention of emailing my friends on how awful everything was, but I fell asleep before even trying to turn it on, half-emptied boxes littering my wooden floor.