"Life-changing. Universe-altering. I mean, I feel like everything I believe has been suddenly slapped in front of me with a big red X across it, and the truth is shining in my face like one of those little red laser beams at the end of those pens, you know?" My mom grins, "Oh yea? So what happened?" I shrug, "Eh. Not much." She laughs and hands me a plate with a sandwich on it, "Here, take this up to your brother, will you?" I take the plate and trudge up the stares, tossing my backpack through my own open doorway onto my bed before shoving my shoulder hard into my brother's door by way of knocking. The door, like mine, is slightly open already, so this pushes it far enough that I can be seen in the doorway, and he sees the sandwich and jumps up from his bed, crossing over to me. "Turn down the speakers, will you? Some of us are trying to sleep." My brother rolls his eyes, "No, you're not," and takes the sandwich, pushing me back out the doorway and slamming the door in my face. I roll my eyes and walk back to my own room. Two things beckon me from my desk: my lap top, where I had to stop in the middle of making a mix tape last night because my mom found me awake and forced me to stop, and my physics book, which the writing on my palm tells me I have plenty of work to do in tonight. I shove the book right off my desk and open my lap top.
***
It's going to take ages to unpack our house. I mean, it took ages to pack our house. But unpack? We not only have to take a freaking busload of stuff out of boxes, we also have to find places to put all that stuff, and seeing as we don't know this house yet, and my mom is an interior decorator, this is going to be quite a process. The boxes with my name on them are already in my room, and rather than being helpful, I close my door, claiming I have homework, though I plan to use this new-kid excuse for late homework for as long as I can. Instead I nudge the boxes around in my room so that the boxes labeled "clothes" and "shoes" are together in the closet, the box labeled "books" is where my bookcase will be, the the boxes labeled "music" and "technology" are by the bed frame, where my nightstand will be, the box labeled "bedsheets" is on top of the bed frame, and the box labeled "school" is in my bathroom, in the empty cabinet under the sink. Grinning, I open the box labeled "technology" and pull out my old walkman, and then I open the box labeled "music" and pull out and old Nirvana CD. I put the CD in and press play, leaning against my bed frame and trying not to think about how much this new house smells like fish.
My mom forces me to walk to school from now on, claiming that a little exercise
will do me well, so I plug in my headphones and tuck my walkman into the front
pocket of my backpack as I walk down the sidewalk to school. The girl I sort of resent
from my math class runs out of a house about a block away from mine, panting as she
tugs a boot on her left foot, hobbling down her driveway on one foot. She flips her
fifties-style ponytail over her head (I can tell that hair is her signature, now,) and
blinks as she sees me. "Oh," she says, "hey six foo-" she cuts herself off and grins a
little bit, "Patrick." I nod, "Hey, you." She rolls her eyes, "It's Holly."
"Hey, Holly." More because it would be uncomfortable if she didn't that that she
actually wants to, Holly falls into step beside me, so I reluctantly pull my walkman
out of my bag and press pause. Her eyebrows shoot up, "Is that a walkman?" I nod
and add, "iPods are overrated." Holly grins and nods, as if in agreement. She slings
her own backpack in front of her and pulls out a walkman cassette player, and my
face breaks out into a grin as I say, "No way. And I thought I was old school." Holly
laughs and puts the cassette player back in her bag, zipping it up and pulling it onto
her back again as she says, "That's how I met Sean. I was waiting at the school bus
stop for my friend to pick me up, and he was listening to one of those, and I was just
like, wow, that's so cool that there's actually a teenager out there in the world who
still listens to cassettes." I nod, "Sean is...?" She smiles, clearly affectionate, and says,
"My boyfriend." I put two and two together quickly enough and ask, "That guy you
were sitting with yesterday, at lunch?" She glances at me and nods, "Yea. What were
you doing, spying on me?" I laugh, "Hardly. The two of you kind of stick out of the
crowd. No offense, or anything, but..." She nods, "Yea, I know. He doesn't seems like
my type." She shrugs and flicks her ponytail as if to prove a point, "What can I say,
I'm old fashioned. I like a guy who treats me right." I can't help but smile at that and
we walk the rest of the way to school in silence.
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