Beach

a/n: Not the best, very random. Don't know where I'm going with this, but hey, read it and review anyway.

I was the girl everyone knew, the one that has been told how amazing she is, how whenever she walks into a room, the place lights up with a glow that only she can supply. I was the girl with the perfect best friends, the annoying ex-boyfriend that never left her alone after she broke up with him. I was the all-star student, the volleyball team’s best setter, the one who fit into the spandex and tank-top uniform like it was nothing.

Then my dad decided to move to Ohio.

What’s so great about the state of never-ending fields of wheat and corn anyway? Cincinnati and Cleveland, those two I can deal with. Columbus would have even been alright by me. This puny town of about ten thousand people is nothing. A county seat, a puny little speck on the weather map next to a blue blob that was the most disgusting lake on the planet.

I was now going to be the freaky new girl.

The new girl whose brother and mom had died in a car accident.

Great.

The car windows were rolled up, and I was watching the raindrops slide down the smooth glass like Ohio’s little rivers that were splattered in between endless clusters of trees and bushes and tall grass. The endless fields were bare and brown, the dirt wet and running onto the road.

“I don’t like you…” I said to the fields and trees and open space so unlike the little townhouse back in California. My dad looked into his mirror to see me in the back seat.

“What’d you say, sweetie?” He asked, his gaze flickering from the road to me.

“Keep your eyes on the road! I didn’t say anything!”

His blue eyes, so unlike my dark chocolate eyes, turned their undivided attention back to the road and the occasional car flying past. A red semi was cruising along in front of us, rain dripping down the bumper sticker asking if it was driving well. I sighed, my paranoia calming down slightly. Then, yawning, I adjusted my seatbelt and tried to fall asleep, anything to keep me from staring at the horrible landscape surrounding me….

“Hey, Natalie, wake up…”

I jolted awake, jerking against the tight seatbelt uncomfortably. The passenger side door was open, the seat drawn up, and my dad was murmuring gently. He stopped, shocked, and I unfastened the seatbelt.

“You okay, sweets?”

I scowled, shoving him over as I stepped out, “I’m fine.”

We were parked in the gray driveway of a two story house with white siding. The front lawn was green and healthy, orange and pink and red flowers planted in the mulch in front of the cement porch. I swung around and looked at my father in awe. This didn’t feel like a home at all. It felt like a house being sold, perfect and staged and unreal.

“Home sweet home, eh?” Dad had a big, goofy grin painted on his tan face. He swung his book bag over his shoulder and shuffled around in his pockets for this house’s keys as the moving truck pulled up behind him in the driveway. I rolled my eyes and climbed the three steps to the front door. A wooden bench swing was hanging from the awning over the porch. This was definitely something out of Better Homes and Gardens.

“Not at all…” I muttered in disbelief under my breath. He opened the white front door, and stepped into the house. The walls were all off-white and bare, the carpet a similar color. It was bland, from the tile in the bathroom and kitchen to the bedroom that was supposedly going to be mine.

My room was a white prison with no black to set off the brightness of it. Two large windows were at either ends of the room, and my father’s room was directly below mine on the back of the house, making it easier to sneak out.

That is, if I happen to make friends here.

I had lots of friends back in California. We used to sneak out of my house when my dad was sleeping and walk about twelve blocks to the beach where we used to sit with our toes in the water. Beach towels would be stretched out a few yards behind us, and then the gossiping would start. They’d talk about their boyfriends like they were Greek gods, and I’d vent about my ex-boyfriend until the sun would begin peaking from behind the endless blue. We’d scrounge up our stuff, run back to the townhouse, and climb into our sleeping bags in the living room until Dad would wake up and make us pancakes. Eventually we’d make our way to the corny souvenir shops down the street and pay a couple of dollars for dumb t-shirts that stated in bold, hot pink letters “Fun in the Sun”. Now that I think back, it must have all been a dream.

Out of all my friends, I’d have to say I miss Pailie the most. She was a scrawny, blonde hair, blue eye, crazy fifteen year old who loved to run on the beach while picking up sea shells. The two of us used to go to the beach when it was packed with people and skip the sea shells from her massive collection on the waves body surfers tried so desperately to ride. We’d count the kites flying over the sand dunes, eventually kicking off our brightly colored flip-flops and scramble up them in an attempt to catch them. We’d follow the rainbows down the street after a storm. Pailie even went so far as to paint blue flowers on my pink tennis shoes and hide them in her room for me to find on my birthday. I never wore those shoes again, instead cutting off the material that had been painted and framing it.

I removed the very work of “art” from one of my boxes marked “Natty’s Fragiles”, thanks to my vile father who made me move away from the gorgeous beach and my Pailie and everything that made my life so wonderfully perfect. Pailie’s little shoe experiment is now hanging on a plain wall in a plain town that is now part of my plain life. Pailie, hater of everything plain, would have been disgusted.

“DAD!” I lost it. Remembering my friends and all the great times we had, I decided that I would not, could not, EVER IN MY LIFE, live in Ohio.

“Natalie? What’s wrong?” He came storming into the room, swinging the door wide open. I shoved him out of the way, Pailie’s art under my arm, and ran downstairs. Dad followed me frantically, calling my name, trying to sooth me even though he had no idea why I was going crazy. I stopped on the front steps, watching the moving truck starting to unload. I fell to my knees, clutching my cut shoes to my chest, and sobbed uncontrollably. A few moments later, he lifted me to my feet and began questioning me.

“Are you depressed?”

Not until we moved here, you jerk.

“What’s wrong?”

“Where’s the nearest airport?” I cried.

“What?”

“Where is the nearest damn AIRPORT?” Screaming, I plopped myself down on the porch swing. It was wet. Yuck. Not the good, ocean kind of wet.

“Columbus. Why do you need to know, Nats?”

“I’m leaving this state, that’s why! I’m going HOME!” I bolted down the sidewalk and began walking. I was most likely going the wrong way, knowing me.

“THIS IS YOUR HOME NOW, NATALIE!”

I froze. Slowly I turned around and glared at him with more hate than I had ever felt towards any person in my entire life.

“Home? This isn’t home. Home is where you can cry when you feel down. Home is where you can wake up and eat pancakes and laugh and mean it. Home is where you sit with friends and giggle about all the meaningless drama going on in the world. Home is where you feel safe. Home is where you’re happy. Home is where you feel like anything is possible. This… place isn’t home. This place is HELL!”

“Watch you’re mouth!”

“No! I’m going to do whatever I want. I want to go home to CALIFORNIA! To the TOWNHOUSE! To my HIGH SCHOOL! To my BEDROOM! To PAILIE! TO KYLE AND MOM!” My breaths were heavy and threatening to turn into miserable sobs again. Just thinking about my brother and my mom’s graves back in California made me realize how foreign Ohio was.

“KYLE AND REBECCA ARE DEAD, NATALIE! THOSE ARE GRAVES! THEY AREN’T THERE!” Dad was on the verge of crying, I could tell, but no guillt rose up in me. Only more hate.

“THEY’RE STILL AT HOME! DO YOU THINK THEY’D WANT YOU TO RUN AWAY FROM HOME BECAUSE YOU’RE AFRAID? Do you think Kyle would want us to leave behind his friends and mine and April?”

“April?” Dad’s signs of crying disappeared.

“His freaking girlfriend! God, do you realize how ignorant of our lives you are? I doubt you even remember Pailie! I doubt you even remember California! You were so thrilled to be moving that you didn’t even realize how miserable I was! I hate this place! I hate Ohio! I hate moving! I HATE YOU!”

That’s when I decided I wasn’t sticking around to watch my California life fit in this Ohio house.

So I ran.

a/n: Love it? Hate it? Want me to keep going? REVIEW!