What We Used To Know

She had hated it here since the first time she stepped foot on the Illinois ground. The Abraham Lincoln Capital airport had been the first building Addie ever stood in in Illinois, and she hated everything about it. Addie didn’t even have to look outside of the gaping windows all over the place to know that this new place would not be a home to her; it was only a holding pen until she was old enough to move out and flee back to England.

This new city she was going to live in was called Springfield. Perhaps because the last place she had lived in had the word “field” in it also, Addie was destined not to like it at first. She had convinced herself by the time they grabbed their luggage in the airport that she could never, ever like this new place enough to call it home. The way everyone drove on the wrong side of the road and talked with strange accents drove her crazy within the first day of living in this new country.

Every little thing about Springfield seemed to be a polar opposite of how things had been back home. Even the hatred she first harbored about Sheffield in the early days of living there stood no match to the gut-retching hate she would no doubt hold for Springfield until she escaped it.

Everything was just wrong. So wrong, that Adelaide feared things may never be right again. How much could one family take before they finally collapsed into pieces that could not be repaired? How many more days of solitude could Addie handle before she really went off her rocker and shut down hopes of leading a healthy life for good?

It was summer holiday (which was really known as summer break, or summer vacation, to the locals) by the time Addie and her mother had arrived in Springfield. This of course left Addie no chances to make friends over the summer. The one in which she did nothing but sit in her room at her aunt Abigail’s house writing poetry about how much she both hated and missed her deceased brother, Jordan. He was all she could think about. His death took over every aspect of Addie’s mind, pushing out any other thought of the past.

So she sat alone all summer, writing about how hurt she felt, fearing for her future as things continued to shift around her.

Caroline hadn’t applied for a job when she moved herself and her daughter to the United States. She thought that for once, she should just take a break and maybe spend time trying to get to know the only child she had left. Her son and husband’s deaths made Caroline realize that she knew virtually nothing about her only daughter, and there was so much Addie didn’t know about her own mum. She hated how she had let her work-life get the best of her during her children’s youths, but there was only one child left who was still growing up, and she swore that she would not miss the rest of her daughter’s life. She had let Jordan slip right through her fingers, and she was going to be damned if the same thing happened to her daughter.

Caroline really tried to help Addie, but it didn’t seem to work, as Addie was still a skeptic of her mother who had never really been a mother. She uttered a few words about “being there” for her daughter through these “tough times” and that things would “even out eventually.” Nothing felt true to Addie though. Everything felt surreal and out of place.

She felt like things really never would get better - that she had been damned to the United States when she needed her home most, that she was uprooted carelessly by her mother in hopes of making things better for the two. No, nothing really would ever feel better to Addie judging by how things were going right now. She felt like she needed to go back home to someone; someone to comfort her and make her laugh so much she forgot what was really happening in her personal life.

But she couldn’t remember of anyone who could do that back home. She couldn’t remember if she had even had any friends back in Sheffield at this point, except that one kid, that Oh… What’s His Name kid. Everything from back there was becoming a blur now as she started giving into life in Springfield, at least accepting that if she couldn’t remember anything about her past life in Yorkshire, it was for the better. The less she remembered, the less she would miss it, and the easier it would be to move on.

Nevertheless, the schooling system in Springfield gave Addie enough confusion. She was set to enter year nine back home, but over here, she was really starting year eight, which they called eighth grade. And this weird building they called a middle school only held grades sixth through eight, instead of how there was primary and secondary school in England. Of all things Addie was able to understand, school was always one of them, but not here. Now, it was just another addition to the list of things she hated in Illinois. She didn’t like the concept of having to go to “high school” until she was eighteen, whereas back home, she would have been working and going to college before eighteen, then moving on to university.

Eighth Grade:

This year really was miserable. Addie didn’t know anyone, or anything about how the schooling system worked. It was hard to try and survive her first year in the States; her first year where she was completely out of her element in every possible way. She obviously knew that she didn’t fit in with the kids her age, just judging from the way she had heard them talking. They used words and phrases that didn’t make any sense, or she didn’t know what they meant. It was like the youth of Springfield had their own language.

Eighth grade was the final year of middle school, so Addie at least had thoughts of transferring to a new school next year where there would be more people; more chances to find people to fit in with. No one else in this school seemed to take much notice of her, due to her old habits of solitude and shutting herself in. She was just another invisible at this school, skating by in the classes that she had already taken back home; classes that were far too easy.

That didn’t mean she ever tried to make it known that she was obviously the best in the class. There may have been four cases in which she actually spoke out loud in the classroom during the entire year. Addie was scared that maybe her mum would start moving around again, so she took precautions when it came to other people. Her precaution was that she didn’t talk to them at all. This was her way of surviving in the past, and hopefully it would hold up long enough for her to get by. She knew that by the time she arrived at her next school, hopefully she could find something better than what she had had in the eighth grade.

Ninth Grade:

Addie started high school this year. The school was absolutely colossal and she had gotten lost so many times on her first day, that people already knew her as “the girl with the accent who gets lost a lot” from all of the times she had to ask for directions. They organized the hallways and classrooms in a way that made it impossible to keep track of, which often gave Addie a few setbacks when trying to get to class.

Soon enough though, people just started coming up to her to walk with her to class. They talked about their homework assignments and how much they hated their teacher. Everyone seemed to be a bit infatuated with the foreigner, giggling at how much different she was from them, but loving how unique she was. Addie wasn’t popular by any means, because she wouldn’t let people get close enough to her, but she was known. Everyone knew that Addie Kaston was the quirky girl from England who everyone was always curious about, but never got to touch. They were always kept at arm’s length by Addie, just another one of her precautions.

Despite the number of times her mum (her classmates always giggled when they would talk about family and Addie would talk about her “mum” while everyone else talked about their “mom.”) had reassured Addie that they would not be moving again until she graduated from high school, she felt like her old ways were habits now, and that keeping people far enough away so that they couldn’t really see the real Addie was the best way to go. She didn’t want people finding out that even though it had been almost three years since her father and brother had died, she was still hurting everyday. Addie was scared the others would see that she really was just a wackjob and not someone they should want to be hanging around. So she kept them as close as she was comfortable with, leaving them always wondering what was going on with her.

Addie Kaston was a mystery to her fellow classmates, but they just couldn’t help wanting to know what the real Addie - the one who let people in and showed them how she really felt - was like.

Tenth Grade:

Addie was slowly becoming “Americanized.” She learned that she could get her driving license once she turned sixteen, making it so that she could drive around on her own or with her friends. This made her feel normal, like she fit in with the rest of the Americans. The mother and daughter really started to pick up on the ways of the people who lived in their new country, adopting the changes in their new life. Addie was adjusting though, really accepting now that she wasn’t going to go back home soon, and that for now, Springfield was good enough. She might not have even hated it as much anymore.

She had friends now. Actual friends that she talked to on a regular basis and laughed with and did stupid things that got them in trouble with. It almost felt like she had that one friend back again, the one from back home who Addie used to be close with. He was the friend she referred to as “…oh, what’s his name.”

In truth, Addie didn’t remember anything at all now from back in England, because there were too many good distractions that lead up to how she was now. Addie was acting like a normal teenager, her perfect grades slowly sliding as her old self-image slid away from her as well. She took care of herself, wearing make up and straightening her hair just like the rest of her friends did. Addie was normal now, and she liked feeling like she belonged for once in her life.

Her defense mechanisms were still in place; she only let in the few people she learned to trust over time, and they still didn’t even know anything about her - even if they thought they did. Addie was still the mystery no one could figure out, because she covered everything up to keep others from finding out her past that still scarred her, making her step back from social aspects and reevaluating them to make sure no one had figured out that the Addie who would laugh and smile was really a small girl on the inside who was afraid of everything.

Eleventh Grade:

She’d managed to fall in love with the music of Jack Johnson. Every single song of his was on her iPod, constantly playing. She couldn’t get enough of the songs, swooning over the sweet lyrics that made her wish she could fall in love with someone and have something like what was described in “Do You Remember.” Sometimes, as much as she hated it, Addie got lovesick.

She hadn’t dated a single boy since she moved to the States (or ever), but somehow, she just didn’t want to. It was that feeling of being scared of intimacy or getting close with someone else that made Addie shy away from dating. It had been hard enough for her to let in a few of her friends, but letting someone in who she was going out with scared her. Addie was scared that she might already have commitment issues, or that she would be defunct in the romance department someday. She didn’t want to fall in love, because that meant she had to let him in, and he would see all of her secrets and pain and run away from her. That was how Addie saw it; she thought that people were scared of other people who had a past, one with pain and scars, so they’d run away from her and her baggage. No, Addie would never be the same after the night that she last saw her father and Jordan.

Some days though, she wanted nothing more than to just find the perfect person that would love her no matter what her past had been like, no matter how much emotional scarring she was trying to hide. Her brother’s suicide had caused more damage than anyone could have ever imagined it would have.

There was one option she found to cope with her fear of being loved - or found out, in her eyes. She had learned that by fooling around with boys was the way to get the feeling of being loved; neither she or the boy would care enough to actually care about the other’s feelings. She’d stayed true enough to herself to remain a virgin, but Addie had done enough things by the eleventh grade to no longer be considered innocent.

And as her innocence disappeared, so did her accent. It was when Addie turned seventeen that she started noticing that her strong Yorkshire accent was fading to the point where she actually sounded like she had been born in the United States. Slowly, Addie was losing herself. The girl she had been in her youth, in England, almost five years ago, no longer existed. She had grown up and mutated into an American girl who was like everyone else at this point.

Twelfth Grade:

Her last year of high school was filled with getting in trouble and thinking about what was going to happen next. She decided not to move back to England; that place wasn’t her home anymore. As much as she hated admitting it, Springfield had done her good. She found friends, a place to fit in, and a way to forget everything she used to know. Now, it was up to her as to what was going to happen next. Her friends were going to college while Addie wasn’t sure what to do.

Addie was scared to graduate and move on to the real world as the end of her high school experience came to a close. Everyone else was doing it, too, why couldn’t she just take a blind stab into what life would be like outside of school and see what it was like?

She was going to leave high school and enter the real world with the mindset that she would do her best to achieve what she wanted, while keeping out of trouble - and out of love. Addie still feared any type of romantic commitment, still fooling around trying to get a short feeling of what it would be like to be loved, without any complications.

Addie was going to do something with her life, she told herself, but she didn’t know what. The book of poetry she was writing grew ever more as she had more and more experiences to write about while she dealt with the feelings of tackling a new chapter in her life.

She wasn’t convinced that being a poet was going to be consistent enough for her, but her friends and mother - who she had started calling “mom” at this point - convinced her that it should be published. Addie was scared though, scared that people would read her poems and analyze the deeper meaning behind them. They all reflected how alone and scared she always felt. It didn’t matter how many people she was surrounded by, or how long she had forgotten how she used to feel; at the end of the day, she was still alone.

Two more musical loves had been added to the solitary playlist Addie listened to, though. Matt Nathanson and Sufjan Stevens were played along with the Jack Johnson songs Addie was in love with. The three musicians held a strong place in her heart, letting her escape into their world as she listened to their lyrics that pierced her heart in more than one way.

Jack Johnson had come to Illinois five times while she was in high school, and she had attended every concert. Her friends took her, going along for some fun while they enjoyed how much fun Addie had while she sung along with Jack when he was on stage. They always knew she had issues letting people in and acting like they did - careless and free - but seeing her as happy as she was at every concert made them feel like good friends. They’d always been there for her, for anything, but Addie never came to them. She tried to solve every problem she ever had on her own, letting her writing or her music take her away from all of the pain of actually dealing with what was bothering her.

And now, she was heading out into the real world, alone. And the only three people she could ever really count on were Sufjan, Jack, and Matt; but they didn’t count, since it was only their lyrics that made Addie feel like she was something more than she really was.