This is Our Year

a novel by

Diana C. Caporaso

September 1st

Cady

“Well, look at the bright side,” Melody says from the front seat. “At least we’re moving in right before school starts. Imagine moving at the beginning of the summer and spending two months trying to make friends without the advantage of school.” I’m not sure who she’s talking to, exactly. I’m sure, without a doubt, that Mel would have made a ton of friends before the Fourth of July. Of course she acts completely oblivious of that fact. I don’t reply and instead stare out the window, half at my reflection against the glass, half at the red and gold leaves.

“That’s right, Melody,” Mom nods in complete agreement of Mel’s comment. “I’m so glad you always stay optimistic.” It seems like lately, every time my mom says something, she sounds like she’s on the verge of tears. She grips the steering wheel and looks at me through the rearview mirror. I know what she is thinking… but what can I say, it’s hard for me to be anything but pessimistic these days.

We pass by the “Welcome to Belleville” sign, making all of this official. “Look!” Melody points at a three-story brick building. “It’s our new high school! You said it was walking distance, right, Mom?”

Mom nods. “No more taking the bus. Isn’t that great, Cady?”

“Sure,” I mumble. I’ve stopped ignoring my mother completely because it seems too mean at this point in time.

“It’s super!” Melody exclaims. God, I can’t believe she seriously uses words like SUPER. And at the same time gets away with it flawlessly. She’s so fake, and everyone always just eats it up. I sink lower into the leather interior.

We pull up into the driveway. Since our decision to move came so suddenly and Mom’s friend, a realtor, helped us find this place so quickly, Mel and I didn’t even get to see this place before everything was said and done. It’s a two-story green-shuttered freshly painted stereotypical example of suburbia. It’s my first time resting my eyes on the house and I really can’t see myself ever calling it home.

Mom goes around to open up the U-Haul. Since there are only three of us now, we were able to fit everything easily, even with all of Melody’s stuff. She barely gets the thing open before we hear a voice call, “Hello! It’s so nice to meet you!”

A pudgy woman wearing typical housewife garb is crossing her lawn onto ours, waving ferociously. “I’m so glad those old neighbors are out, they were horrible, their dog was always pooping on our lawn, and they were just so unfriendly. I’m Deborah Carson, it’s so nice to meet you!” Mrs. Carson extends her hand out to shake Mom’s.

Mom puts down the suitcase she had been holding and returns the handshake. “Olivia Bradford, nice to meet you too.”

Mrs. Carson is a hardcore handshaker. A huge smile is plastered across her face, ear from ear. The smile doesn’t lessen as she asks, “And where’s Mr. Bradford?”

Something cold and hard explodes in my stomach. My eyes drift towards Mrs. Carson’s house. Looks nice and normal, trim and up kept. You can tell they pay someone to do their gardening.

I think that’s what makes the second floor window closest to the right stand out so much. It’s covered by a thick black curtain that totally clashes with the light, flowery curtains in the other windows. I keep staring at the black curtain as Mom says, “Um, well…”

The smile on Mrs. Carson’s face fades quickly. “Oh, I’m sorry. It was silly of me to assume. Please don’t think less of me.”

“Of course not,” Mom says. “I really appreciate the friendliness, it’s never easy moving to a whole new state…”

Mrs. Carson tries desperately to turn the mood back to cheery again. She turns to look at me and Mel and the huge smile returned. “Hey! Are you two twins?”

“Please,” I mutter. “Melody and I can barely share a room, much less a womb.”

I probably shouldn’t have been so rude. Okay, I definitely shouldn’t have. It’s an easy mistake to make- Mel and I are both five six and slender. We have the same blue eyes and long dirty blond hair. But actually Melody and I are what they call Irish twins- we were born less than a year apart. It just shows how Melody has always been perfect and angelic, even as a newborn, or else my parents never would have found the time to have me.

“They get asked that all the time, but really, they’re just 11 months apart,” Mom replies. “Melody here is going to be a senior at Belleville High, and Cadence is a junior.”

A junior. Ha. I’ve been a junior my entire life, it seems. Melody grins and shakes Mrs. Carson’s hand also. My hands stay firmly in my pockets.

“I’ve got a son going into tenth,” Mrs. Carson informs us. “You should meet him sometime…” Then, a little lower and less cheerily, she adds, “If he ever comes out of his room…”

“Well, Mrs. Carson, thanks again for the greeting, but we have a lot of unpacking to do and I’d like to get most of it done before it gets dark,” Mom says.

Mrs. Carson smiles even more, if that’s possible, says a goodbye, and scuttles back to her house.

“Well, like I said, there are four bedrooms,” Mom says to us, unloading the U-Haul. “I’m getting the master bedroom. I thought Melody would get the next biggest because she’s older, and it’s up to you which one you want out of the other two, Cady. They’re both not too huge, unfortunately.”

I don’t care. I know which room I want. I grab one of the boxes labeled Cady and march into the house and up the stairs.

The room all the way down the hall on the left of the house to the right of the hallway. I’m actually relieved to see that it’s the smallest one. It has two large windows, one facing the street and one facing Mrs. Carson’s house. I glance outside to see the window facing mine, so close I can almost touch it, but not really. I can’t see in because it’s covered by a long black drape, and for a quick second I think I see the drape move, but it could just be my imagination.

September 3rd

Melody

My alarm clock sounds at nine am and I swipe the snooze button with my left hand, barely opening my eyes. A few moments later I sit up and turn the alarm off before it can sound again. I pull open the drawer of my nightstand and fish around until I find what I want: a fresh package of caffeine pills, just purchased yesterday.

I bought them during the break we took from unpacking. Saturday and Sunday were extremely long days. I never knew how much work it takes, to move one’s life completely from one place to another. I could have used my break to go to McDonald’s with Mom and Cady, or to take a nap, or to watch our (so far) cable-less TV. Instead I walked down to Main Street to find the closest drugstore. My previous pack had just run out that morning, and honestly, I can’t function without these things anymore.

It’s Labor Day. School starts in two days. Might as well start breaking into this town. Could there be a more fitting day to start looking for a part-time job at the mall?

Mom lets me borrow the car without a problem. I’ve always been pretty good at getting what I want. Besides, this is vital. I have to check out the “scene” here in Belleville. You know… gotta make sure the cool kids here dress the same as we did in New York. Observe how they talk, how they function. Even if I have to change completely, I’m sure I can break in easily enough.

At my old school, I was set up to be class president and star of the school play my senior year. And I’m not gonna let the fact that we had to move mess that up for me.

I am pleasantly surprised when I find that the local mall is an almost exact replica of the one I used to be a regular at. I try on jeans at Abercrombie and Fitch, I browse the chick lit at B. Dalton, I listen to records at Sam Goody. It’s when I’m waiting online for a diet soda at the food court that I see him.

He’s horsing around with some other football players at a table. I can tell he’s the captain because the cheerleaders are giving him the most attention. There’s a number 5 on the back of his Belleville Bears jersey. He’s tall, has dark eyes and brown hair, and I can see the definition of his muscles. I like what I see. Justin from back home comes to mind. Justin had said that we’d say in touch, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe the most popular guy at school would stay loyal to a girl in another state when he had every girl in a 10 mile radius spreading their legs out to him.

No, Justin must become a memory that I’ll have to accept, like some other things in my life. I get to the front of the line and get my diet soda. I sip it seductively and try to make eye contact with Cute Boy, but I don’t think he sees me. Whatever- I’m sure I’ll see him in school.

I finish my drink on my way to Victoria’s Secret. Make sure to throw it away before I enter- retail people never like people to have food and drinks in their stores. And I want to make a good first impression.

I walk straight up to the front counter, spread a smile across my face, and say, “Are you guys hiring?”

The girl behind the counter is younger than I am. She looks flustered. “Um, let me check,” she says, looking around dumbly. At that point I know I have this job in the bag because if they would hire this girl here, I’d be employee of the month in no time.

The girl finally finds her manager and I’m able to sucker up to her like there’s no tomorrow. It seems like the manager knows that I’m sucking up but she really likes the fact that I’m doing it. She tells me that all her summer girls have just gone back to college and they’re in desperate need of help. She hands me an application, schedules an interview, and then asks with an awkward smile if I can start this weekend.

I go home and tell Mom the good news. “That’s great, honey,” she smiles. Her smiles never seem genuine anymore. It’s like she’s working too many muscles to do something that most people are capable of doing without even thinking.

I spend the rest of the afternoon finishing setting up my room. Then I go out to dinner with Mom and Cady, and by the time we get back I’m completely exhausted.

I try to go to sleep early. I’m so tired my head is hurting out of fatigue. I wait for sleep to come for almost an hour before I give in and pull the sleeping pills out of my nightstand drawer. Just an easy swallow, just an easy solution. Dreamless sleep, here I come…

Gavin

School doesn’t start for another two days, but the football team and I have been practicing together for weeks now already. This is our year, everyone’s been saying over and over. God, I hope it is.

We’ve been meeting weekday mornings and Saturday afternoons. Once school starts, we’ll have practice after school. I can’t wait for the first fall pep rally. And homecoming. And college scouts…

Wait, I’m getting too far ahead of myself. Right now I’m at the mall with my teammates, drinking shakes and eating curly fries while the cheerleaders flirt with us. And I’ve got the respect of all the guys on the team. They’re the ones that made me captain at the end of last year. It’s times like these that I’ve been waiting for since kindergarten, it seems like.

Stacey, the head cheerleader, gives me the pouty face again. She seems convinced that since I’m football captain and she’s head cheerleader, we’re destined to be together, or at least we should be. And maybe she’s right- it’s not like I’ve got my eyes on any other girls. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I keep telling her I have to concentrate on football. I tell her I spend most of my time at practice or at the gym, and once school starts I’ll have to work to keep my grades up so that I won’t get kicked off the team. Still, she’s always expecting me to go with her to parties and stuff. The other guys think I’m crazy. But it’s not like I can tell them the real reason why I don’t want to get to serious with Stacey… It’s not like I can tell anyone. But it doesn’t matter anyway because this is my year to win over the college scouts and next year I’ll be far away from this place and Stacey will be a pom-pom waving memory. For right now, though, I’ll just enjoy the onion rings, the guys laughing at our inside jokes, and the short skirts on the girls.

Seth

The music blocks everything else out.

I play it loud enough to block out the thought that school is starting in two fucking days. I block out the thought that school makes me want to die. I block out the thought that school means social interaction which also makes me want to die. But then, there’s very little which makes me want to live these days.

Mom knocks on my door. “How many times do I have to tell you that you’re gonna be deaf before you’re 30?” she yells over the music.

I don’t respond. I just stay curled up in my little corner, wallowing. Thinking that I don’t care if I’m deaf before I’m 30 because I probably won’t live to see 30 anyway.

“Dammit, Seth!” Mom yells once she realizes that I’m not going to reply once again. “What did we do wrong? Where did we go wrong? When are you going to change?”

Never maybe. That would very well suck.

“You should at least go say hello to those two new girls next door, they’re so pretty, they’d probably love to have a new friend. And you could use some new ones too!”

Please, mother, I think, trying to get deeper into the floor and letting the music surround me. I don’t care about pretty girls.

“Oh, your father’s home,” Mom says next, but I barely hear it because her voice has gotten a lot quieter. I’m alone again, she’s gone to meet him. I hope he’s in a good mood tonight.

The music blocks out the noise of them fighting.