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It came the time that we leave Illinois, we left the truck with the men who would be driving it.
I left the only home that I had ever known. The twins were with Summer, Hayden was with Nathen, and I was with Jasmine. My eyes started to tear up because this was the only place I knew as home and now I would be moving into my mother’s old room. Which honestly sounds creepy.
“What kind of music do you want to listen to?” Jasmine asked.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” I answered, watching a page in my book turn.
“Ok then we will listen to this,” Jasmine replied as she changed it to her favorite channel. “We won’t be able to listen to this channel for very long because I don’t know how far it goes out.”
“Oh ok.”
We were driving west toward Missouri. This was where we were booked to stop and eat lunch before the twins got too hungry. Jasmine is a highly organized planner. Summer just likes to roll with it, Jasmine made Summer sit down with her to plan the trip out.
We stopped at a buffet on the side of the highway. It must have been incredibly good because it was almost packed to capacity. There was so much food! I have never been to a buffet before. I am assuming you just fill your plate and eat as much as you can. I read the buffet sign; all you can eat.
So, I did what everyone else did, shoved our faces full of food. So, fast forward to when we were back in the car...
I figured out that Summer and Nathen and Summer had decided that they were going to drive all the way to Kansas before stopping for the night and they assumed we were ok with it. Like, I am not going to be able to sleep anywhere tonight till late. Now that deserves an eye-roll.
“Lilian, it is going to be a long ride,” Well, I definitely believed her, “so you can ride in the back just in case you want to sleep,” Jasmine told me.
“Ok, I probably will sleep, anyway.”
“I will hook up my phone so we can listen to music, but it will probably be around ten o’clock by the time we get to Kansas or maybe later like three.” Ugh.
“Oh, that long I will be able to stay up that late—10 o’clock. But if it is not until three, I will be sleeping.”
“Yeah, but you are in a car so just sleep.”
I listened. So, I sat in the back.
Then it felt like two seconds later when I was abruptly awakened by the stopping of the car. If you cannot tell, I am a light sleeper.
I wondered if we had just stopped because we needed to find a hotel or what, but I just went back to sleep.
The next morning little fingers had woken me up. Those fingers belonged to Carlee and Harley, gladly. I kind of thought that doll hands were clawing my face off.
I guess Summer told them to wake me up so that I could go play with them.
I told the girls, “no,” and they went off and were disappointed but if they are going to try and claw my face off, I am not going to play with them.
Hayden was looking for someone to take a walk with, so I did that instead. It is probably a good idea to stretch your legs before going back to being in the car all day.
He was just as dead tired as me, so we did not talk at all.
“Hey guys,” Nathen called, “We are leaving. So, get in the car!” He yelled from across the parking lot.
We were already walking over there so we just continued.
“Ok Jasmine, we are going to go to the nearest gas station so, yeah. See you there!” Summer said just as Hayden and I had arrived at the car.
“Ok,” She replied.
“To get food?” I asked, “I’m hungry.” And I was, extremely.
“Probably just snacks for the road.” Summer replied.
I hopped in the car with Jasmine, my stomach growling. The nearest gas station was only about five minutes away. We got lucky there, I noticed about two minutes into our trip that I had to pee.
Jasmine pulled into the gas station and I practically teleported from the car to the bathroom.
“Where’d you go?” Jasmine asked after I had peed and was now picking up candy in the candy aisle.
“I really had to pee.”
She laughed at me.
I caught Hayden trying to get a donut, “I thought it was just going to be snacky food?” I asked him sarcastically it was not my money so, I really did not care.
“I have a dollar if Summer doesn’t let me get it.” I love how he refers to his mom as Summer when she makes him mad.
Summer paid for it. He got lucky because the donut was more than what he had in his pocket.
We decided to rearrange the car situation. This time, Hayden and I rode with Summer and one twin with Jasmine, the other with Nathen.
Jasmine did not look incredibly happy. It is so obvious that I am her favorite.
I was still tired, and I had nothing to do so I just slept for most of the trip. That day we were going to try to stop in Colorado or see how far we could make it, Summer and Nathen had a hotel booked in Colorado, but we might not make it there, sadly.
I slept for about an hour, then I saw something that was beautiful out my window. I noticed there were lots of them, there were little prairie dogs all over outside of my window. It was an exhibit to get people to come to the zoo like the windows in stores, sadly. I thought that there were just prairie dogs.
It only lasted a little bit of time so then I fell back asleep and awoke at a restaurant. I was happy to eat something because I was so hungry that I thought that I could eat a whole elephant.
Before long we were out of the restaurant, and ready to get back on the road again.
I was happy to see the scenery in Colorado, it was nearly eight o’clock when we reached that state. We were going to eat again, and I was happy. Summer ordered some pizza this time in the car on Bluetooth. Summer ordered a taco pizza, pepperoni pizza, and a supreme pizza. Yuck, supreme. Olives.
I am proud to say that we got the pizza and made it to the hotel room.
We had about three rooms and almost everyone had a bed, but the twins shared a bed. That night everyone got well sleep because we actually had beds! The other days, we had to sleep in the car. I would not have repeated it if it had not been horrible.
Morning came and we were on the road by seven. Hayden and I still had candy leftover from yesterday so that was breakfast. Nothing important happened that day, we ended up going through all of Utah. We slept in the car that night and would finish the trip by Sunday because we only had to go through Nevada. Summer planned to get to their new house late, extremely late, on Sunday night.
That happened, we arrived late on Sunday. It was probably the time most people are asleep (ten o’clock.)
I was very tired, and I had mixed feelings about seeing my grandparents again. I did arrive at my grandparents, before Summer and her family settled at their new place. My grandparents seemed happy to see me, but I was not. I was excited to see the bed though, but I was not going to say anything.
“Go, Lilian get ready to go to bed. It is almost midnight,” said Nona.
“Ok, I’m not really tired I slept most of the ride up here.” I have no idea why I said that. I was extremely tired even though, I slept most of the ride up here. Maybe it was the tiredness speaking.
“Well, that is ok, but you are going to unpack almost all of the boxes tomorrow.”
“Ok, I will sleep in my mother’s room.”
“That’s fine.”
I walked upstairs into my mother’s room and fell asleep quickly, just to be woken a few hours later to the sound of my reverberating alarm. I noticed that the alarm actually had the real-time seven A.M. I walked downstairs and sat at the kitchen table.
Summer had most of my boxes in Nona’s house which was good, I could unpack and be in school by Tuesday. Tomorrow, Eww.
“Hey Lilian, look at what you get to do today?” Nona said while looking at all of the boxes.
“Unpack?” I was not very thrilled.
“Yep.”
Luckily for me, I did not have much to unpack but I did have to move some of my mother’s stuff to make room for my stuff. I mostly read all of my mother’s diaries and notebooks my mother had written in.
That day I had told my grandmother a lot of what I had done and told her about how laid back my trip was. “How was your week?” I asked.
“It was good mostly just mourning about how stupid I am. We also have to give your father some time with you or he is taking us to court, so yeah, every weekend which is Friday after school, all of Saturday, and Sunday. Then he will take you to school on Mondays, some weekends you can stay home but it has to be approved, by him.” She rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous, that man seriously has everyone wrapped around his finger and I don’t want to lose you and he’s smart so sorry I am ranting but you get it.”
“Oh, so this is very important.”
“Yeah.”
* * *
THE NEXT DAY WAS TUESDAY, I was going to start my new school. I was extremely nervous it had been about two and a half weeks since I had been in school. I was excited to make new friends other than Hayden, Ashley, and Conner.
My first stop was to the office, where I got my schedule. I looked down at it and saw my classes.
Period one.......................................... Physical Education........................................ Mrs. Baily
Period two.......................................... Math .......................................... Mr. Peterson
Period three..................................... English .......................................... Ms. Ortiz
Period four........................................ Reading .......................................... Ms. Ortiz
Period five ....................................... Lunch ........................................... ——————
Period six ........................................ Social Studies ........................................... Mrs. Andie
Period seven .................................. Science ........................................... Mr. Swan
Period eight ..................................... Study Hall ................................................. Mr. Swan
I was nervous to see everyone in my new classes. I found out I had multiple classes with Hayden because we compared schedules in the gym. The only classes we did not have together were English, Math, and Science.
I stayed in the gym after the bell rang and got to meet my P.E. class. There was a girl named Jessica, who was genuinely nice and became my first friend at that school. Jessica was the kind of girl that was exceedingly kind and usually tried to be nice to anyone unless you got on her bad side.
That day I got introduced to the labels, bad kids, good kids, jockey, and preppy. I did not like that they called themselves names, but it was all cool, I gave myself the nickname of ‘no nicknames.’ I didn’t really fall into the categories. I was not a bad kid, was not a good kid. (Well, it depends on who you ask.) I was definitely not a jockey, and I wasn’t preppy!
Everyone loved me at my new school because of my awesome attitude, there was just one girl that hated me, and the girl’s name was Ivy Lynn. There is always someone that is going to hate someone else. Everyone is loved and everyone is hated.
* * *
I CAME HOME FROM SCHOOL and told Nona and Bill, “I had a good day.”
“That’s good, hopefully, every day is good!” Nona said with a gigantic smile that told me that she was not lying.
“I think my days will be well, people seem to enjoy my presence there.”
“Goody, goody, goody.”
“I made a friend named Jessica, she has brown hair and is absolutely beautiful.”
“I’m glad you made friends.”
I ran upstairs and started to write in one of my mother’s diaries about how my day was. I wrote and wrote hoping that my mother would read it, even though I knew she would not. Just the thought that counts, somewhere deep inside of my heart I really thought she was going to read it.
Then my depression kicked in because I got to thinking about my mother, I got under the bed with the boxes of old textbooks and diaries and cried. I got up and ran downstairs, where I went to the basement door so I could find more of my mother’s stuff. I went down the stairs and found a big poster board. It had Sabrina’s name on it there were butterflies all over it and her class had made sticky notes and stuff about what they loved about her.
I read them and I found some really sweet ones and very harsh ones. Some said, “We miss you Sabrina” and others said, “Put him in jail, we don’t want anyone else getting hurt!”
This made me feel more hurt because I knew it was suicide and they were blaming my own father for killing my own mother.
The week went on, the school was great it was just what happened after school— seeing my mother’s stuff and me thinking about it which was not great.