Working On A Title

The weekend flew by. Since arriving on Friday, I had no time to be tired. Although on Friday all I did was get my toothbrush and pyjamas out of my suitcase after some rooting around and then I fell asleep on my new, unfamiliar bed, surrounded by strange walls.

On Saturday I went to the mall with Sophia. She was more like a friend to me than a mother-figure, I preferred it that way. Nobody could replace my mother who died when I was three years old in some strange accident. The few memories I had of her were ones I cherished and Sophia understood this completely. We were going to get some new clothes, bed linen and kitchenware. I had fun although I didn’t want to admit that to Sophia. But she knew me better than anyone else and saw my expression lift when we entered my favourite store, Hot Topic.

We arrived back at the house (I still refused to call that place home, until it really felt like it,) we found Dad pinned to a wall behind a flat-screen T.V. I had never seen before. Despite being six-foot-four and the strongest person I know, a 50” screen was too much for him to handle. Sophia and I dropped the bags the minute we saw what was going on (thankfully all the ceramics and glasses were wrapped and boxed!) and ran across the spacious living room to help.

Once we had hauled the television off dad he started breathing heavily, and then stared at Sophia.

“I thought you said it was light” he said fiercely still panting.

“Oh so that’s what you said... Paul, you should know by now that when I say ‘yeah, sure’ I seriously have no idea what you have said.” Sophia answered with a smirk.

“Oh well, I should have known, I’m sorry darling,” my dad sighed as he leaned in to kiss Sophia.

Ugh. I hate when they get all lovey dovey on my ass!

I turned, grabbed my bags and bolted upstairs before they even realised that I was gone. I slammed the door shut behind me. I took all the clothes out of the carrier bags and laid them out on my bed. It’s a good thing Dad earns a five-figure salary a week, I thought as I checked the price tags. I’ve been doing that a lot since I got here, talking to myself, that is. I started taking the tags off the clothes and putting them into my closet, I had already tried everything on in the store since Sophia had insisted that we let my Dad get most of the downstairs furniture unpacked. Judging by the T.V. scenario, that didn’t go too well. My new clothes consisted of Skinny jeans in every colour under the sun, some band t-shirts and some t-shirts of my favourite cartoon characters including The Cookie Monster, Sonic The Hedgehog and Invader Zim, as well as Green Converse and slip-on Vans.

As I went over to my iPod dock so I could put on some Paramore when somebody knocked lightly on my door, even though it was open from when I had gone to search for some hangers for my clothes.

“Come in,” I said to the knocker without turning around.

Curious at the lack of reply or the sound of footsteps entering the somewhat large bedroom, I turned to see a strange face looking in at me. It was a girl, about my age with a similar style to my own. That’s always one of the first things I notice about people, how they dress. You might think I’m all into labelling people but I’m not. You can just tell a lot about a person from the way they dress. She looked at me with inquisitive eyes. She wore a tonne of black eyeliner. Just like me, 'cept for the difference in hairstyle and colour. Whereas mine was long, hers was short. Her brown hair was tinted with red and along with her smudgy black eyeliner; she looked like an emo panda. She looked pretty cool.

“Hey,” I said in what I thought was a friendly voice. “I’m Kristen, uh... who are you?”

She looked hesitant to answer my question. “I’m Sienna” she finally replied, “I live a couple doors down. My parents are downstairs talking to your Dad and Sophia. Sophia sent me up; I just followed the noise.”She added with a smile.

“Oh, right, cool. So... What do you guys do for fun around here, presuming that there are more people our age living here, not just you and me,” I said quickly. Although I only knew her like five minutes, I was eager to not make a retard of myself in front of Sienna.

“There’s a lot to do around here–”

I cut her off. Sienna was still standing in the doorway.

“You know you can come and sit down, right?”

Sienna smiled and sat next to me, cross-legged on the window seat. We talked all night.

* * *

I love that, when you just click with someone and you can sit there and talk for hours on end, like you knew each other all your lives, not only ten minutes.

It turns out that Sienna was sixteen, like me and was a sophomore going to Eric Major High, my new school. She liked the same music and was in most of my classes. We were pretty much friends instantly. Part of this was because she understood what it was like to be suddenly uprooted and moved to a different place. Sienna had only moved here from Boston a couple of months earlier, so she knew what it was like to be the new-girl-in-town. She promised to introduce me to her friends and sit next to me in my classes if I wasn’t assigned a seat. She also offered me a ride to school with her until I got a car of my own.

I was disappointed when her mom called up the stairs saying it was time to leave. She was just getting off the window seat when I said;

“I think this is gonna be a whole lot better than I expected, now that I know someone who was in the same situation”

Sienna smiled understandingly at me and gave me a hug. She went down the stairs to join her parents at the front door, where they were saying goodbye to Sophia and Dad.

“Hey do you wanna come over tomorrow to help me get rid of the icky pink paint on my walls?” I asked from the top of the stairs where I was sitting waiting for Sienna and her parents to leave.

“You know it!” Sienna replied with a smirk, she then turned and followed her parents out of the house.