"I'm in no man's land.
The punishment sometimes don't seem to fit the crime."
-Aerosmith, hole in my sole
Moving Day, Again
It was a scorching hot July afternoon as my Father drove along the endless stretch of highway towards our new home. Unfortunately, he hadn't got around to fixing the air conditioning in the car, so the heat was oppressive and the sweat was causing my ass to stick to the seat. The only bit of relief came from the dry, hot air blown in from the open windows. At least the noise from the open windows made conversation almost impossible.
Moving was nothing new to me, but this time we were headed to what I considered the middle of nowhere—Whitby. I'd never even heard of this city, well more of a town, really. Located in Southern Ontario, along the shores of Lake Ontario, sits the unknown town of Whitby. Sandwiched between Oshawa, vying hard for the title of drug capital of Ontario, and the great city of Toronto. Why my parents choose to live in this bumbling town rather than the big city is beyond me. Apparently it's a lovely little town, full of new facilities, good influences, and a chance to make new friends. That's great for my little sister, who was barely 4, but for me it seemed like the end of my life. I didn't want new friends; I loved my friends back home. And what about my boyfriend? Well, technically my ex-boyfriend since he had decided that he wasn't into long distance relationships. Typical.
"Violet. Violet, Gillian give your older sister a poke for me please."
"Oww, What was that for" I whined as I rubbed my arm and took out my ear buds. I started to get on my annoying sister's case. "What was that for?"
"Mommy told me to do it" she murmured, scared by my instant annoyance. I calmed myself, and turned to look at my mother.
"What?" I asked.
"First, your music is too loud..."
Oh great, here she goes again, listing everything I did wrong before she gets to why she was disturbing me in the first place.
"... second, don't talk to your little sister that way. Third, don't give me that face, and eh! What did I tell you about rolling your eyes when I talk to you? I am hoping that problem is only a teen-age thing, and I'm hoping you plan to grow out of ..." Blah Blah Blah, wow she can really go on for hours. Sometimes I wish she wouldn't waste my time, and would just get to the point.
"Anyway, I just wanted to let you know we are almost there, and we plan to stop for something to eat. There are some nice little places coming up after the off ramp, or if you're starving, we could stop before and go to Tim Hortons, or MacDonalds."
"Ewww Mom, you know I'm trying to watch my eating, and I can't go to MacDonalds without getting fries. It's totally not fair to make me go there"
"Hmm, should have seen that coming" she said, as she rolled her eyes.
Hey, what happened to her saying not to do that, and that I needed to grow out of it? So much for that. Such a freaking hypocrite. But I wasn't ready to start another pointless argument with my mom. Our relationship was a funny thing—we either got along like best friends, or we fought until my father finally got feed up and put a stop to it. Dad's more like the referee of the family, and our relationship is strictly on a need to know basis. If there's something he doesn't need to know, then he doesn't want to hear it. I can respect that; most fathers are like that, when it comes to puberty, boobs, boys and sex, he's always like "ask your Mom". I guess he's lucky that he doesn't have a son, because if he did he'd be on point duty for those fun subjects for sure.
I don't look much like my parents; sometimes I wonder if I was adopted. Actually, wish I was adopted would be more accurate. It would certainly explain a lot. My mother is short and petite, with long, curly, black hair, and dark chestnut brown eyes. My father is average sized, with a bit of a beer belly. He tries to claim that it's all muscle, albeit un-toned, but really who's he kidding? He's got sky blue eyes with just a touch of grey, like a soft stormy day. He did have a full head of reddish-blonde hair, back in the day, but now he's balding and slightly grey.
On the other hand, my little sister looks a lot like my father; and happens to be the one who got good qualities from both sides of the family, with her beautiful peach rosy skin, her short curly blonde hair, and midnight blue eyes. And her megawatt smile would make anyone stop in their tracks and take notice. Me - most people like to avoid. I have chalky white skin, I look like a ghost. I have eyes the colour of a Granny Smith apple, with a hint of brown in them. My hair, while blonde, is far from perfect. It used to be thick, before I started to dye it. Now it's just dead and thin. I'm naturally blonde, but dirty blonde, not the pretty blonde that everyone wants. Currently it's dark brown with fading blue streaks. Unfortunately, as they fade they seem to resemble my eye colour more and more. Oh joy, green hair! I'll have to make an appointment to have it resuscitated when we finally settle in. I am not starting a new school looking all trashy. I need to at least attempt to make new friends.
"We're here" My mother shouted excitedly.
"Where would you two like to stop to eat?" my Father asked.
"Not MacDonalds," I moaned "maybe Timmy's? I haven't eaten there in forever."
"I could do with a doughnut" my Father said as he rubbed his stomach and licked his lips.
For some reason he reminded me of Homer Simpson, except for the difference in skin colour, clearly my father wasn't yellow. We pulled into the Timmy's drive through right off of Brock Street from the 401. We had to be fast since the movers would be at the new house soon, though it looked to me it would be faster going in, judging by how long the line was. As we finally made it to the order speaker, we all got our usual, me a turkey BLT, on white with a juice, my dad ordered my doughnut, since I wasn't going to eat it, and he wanted two. After picking up our orders we headed off towards our new home. The rest of the drive only added to the hicksville theme I was feeling. Everything was so far away from a city (any city); apparently we were moving to the middle of nowhere. The houses were so far apart; our closest neighbours looked to be about five kilometers away.
Okay, maybe that was an overstatement, but we were moving to the country, some place off of Baldwin St. I really wished my parents could have decided to live somewhere just a bit closer to civilization. The closest high school that would accept me at the last minute was called Henry St. High School. Least it's not a uniformed Catholic school—that I couldn't live with.
By now it was starting to get dark, the sun began to set behind the houses. Soon all I could see was forest, and ever so often a house here and there. The house we were moving to was once a working farm, but now it's just a large mass of land. I wasn't too sure what the house was supposed to look like, but it's not like I had any high expectations. As we continued on the long stretch of road, there wasn't much to distract me from the long boring darkness, so I began to feel tired. Though I knew we were almost there, I couldn't help but close my eyes.
"Violet, Gillian. Girls wake up!" my Mother shouted back to us excitedly.
"Whahhh," I rubbed my tired eyes, wondering how long I slept, according to the clock on the dash it was only 10 minutes, but it felt like forever."What is it Mom?"
"We're here! Look ahead silly, up the drive, there's the house." As I followed her pointed finger, I saw a small porch light on. I could barely see past it, but on first glance it seemed as if we were moving into the three bears' cottage. Oh great, I guess I did have some expectations after all.
The moving truck was already waiting for us, so we drove the rest of the way up the drive to the house. My Father put the car into park, and pulled out the key.
"Let me just have a word with the movers, and suggest that they come back in the morning." He said. "It's too late to move anything in tonight." He removed his seatbelt, and got out of the car. We watched as he walked over to the movers; shortly they got into some sort of argument. It didn't look to good either, judging by my dad's hand signals, and I could just tell he was swearing at the guy. He took a deep breath to calm himself down before he returned to us. He casually came back to the car and motioned for my mother to roll down her window. He popped his head into the car, and looked back at us, than addressed my mother.
"Looks like we're staying in a motel tonight, the movers won't come back in the morning, and they will be banging around so much tonight that we won't get any sleep, and the movers feel that we would just get in the way."
"All right," said Mom. "I guess we have no choice then. Let's find some place to stay the night, because I am not sleeping on our driveway in this car. What would the neigbours think?"
"Mom, what neighbours?" I asked sarcastically. She swiveled in her seat and gave me the not impressed look.
My Father got back into the car and reversed out of the long driveway. The drive was so long you could have named it a street. We decided to head back towards Whitby because my father remembered passing a motel on Brock Street. I didn't really care where we stayed, I was just sick of being in the car. My eyes started drooping again. I was so bored; I think I'd already listened to about 1,000 songs on my iPhone. I decided to search through my music again to kill time. I scrolled past Green Day, listening to them way to much I thought as I scrolled past, came across Metro Station, Already listened to them like five times today, finally came across my favorite band, Three Days Grace, as I started playing them, Eventually I noticed that we seemed to be arriving back into civilization. finally houses that were side by side, no longer divided by mass acres of forest.
My Father started to slow down the car; I sat up to see his left turn signal flashing. As he made the turn I noticed a tiny, house-like structure. It was an incredibly small motel; I was used to staying in more, well, tasteful, places. But I guess this would do for one night. By the looks of my parents, I thought they would agree.
We parked the car just outside of the check in office, and waited in the car again as my dad got out to check us in. As he came back, he motioned for us to get out of the car. I opened my door, unbelting myself and my sister. We both unfolded ourselves out of the car. As I stood up, I stretched my sore, tired muscles. Wow it really had been a long day trip in the car. I felt as if I'd forgotten how to walk. After stretching and gaining the feeling back in my feet and legs, I moved around to the trunk to grab my backpack.
I was so used to moving that I could predict the need for extra clothes and toiletries for long trips, having stayed overnight at motels on many other moves. I opened the trunk and heaved my heavy backpack out and over my shoulder. My mother picked up my sleepy little sister, and my dad grabbed their overnight bag out of the trunk.
We all dragged ourselves towards our room. Since I was the only one with a free hand, I took the key from my dad's mouth, shudder, and opened the door to #17. I let the door swing open, and I stepped in first. The room wasn't as unpleasant as I'd feared it would be. It was small, but it had a pretty big bathroom, colour television, and air conditioning, thank God. There were also a small desk and a dresser near the sliding glass door which I assumed lead out to the garden.
I figured I'd be setting up camp on the floor, since all my Father could get on short notice was a 1 Queen size bedroom, but it would do, and I was glad that there was enough room on the floor for someone to sleep on. From all the traveling that we'd done over the past seventeen years of my life, I was used to sleeping on the floor.
I must say this move is one of the worst for me, because we had to move on my birthday. Things were so hectic; I didn't get a chance to have any friends over to celebrate it at all. My parents promised me a party at the beginning of the school year as a way to get to know some of the kids at my new school. But I really wish I could have spent it with my friends at home. especially my best friend. I had been lucky to have her since middle school, despite all of the moves. We had never moved this far away from any of my friends. When I was little, I didn't really care, because it was easy to make friends. But now I started to think of what it was going to be like starting at a new high school in a strange new town. Not that I'm really nervous or anything, since I'm so used to this sort of thing. Just a bit curious. Wondering what type of people I'd want to become friends with. Thinking whether or not to go with a brand new style for a brand new town where nobody knew me. At least that's one benefit of moving. You can pretty much change your identity and become whoever you want. It was a chance to reinvent myself.
I was growing sleepy, and soon enough my thoughts of the first day of school turned into endless dreams of fantasy. My dreams were always like little stories I created for myself. I've always enjoyed the supernatural; reading was a huge part of my life, obviously second to music and movies. My favorite books were about vampires and werewolves. I'd always fancied becoming a vampire, with my pale skin I'd fit right in. As I continued to fantasize about living among the supernatural, my mind finally drifted off into what felt like nothingness.
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