A Dustland Fairytale

"Totally fucked – will they mess you up? Well you know they’re gonna try.” – Spring Awakening

“No way,” I said, stomping down the hallway to my room. “No fucking way. I am not moving across the country to live with that whore.”

“Dean, you’re behaving like a child. And do not talk about Stacy that way – I won’t tolerate it in this house.”

“She’s four years older than my older sister. Do you expect me to just accept the fact that you’re marrying someone who could be your daughter?” I yelled.

“Yes,” he said, his voice almost as loud as mine. “I’m marrying Stacy, we’re moving to California, and you’re going to deal with it. I will not allow my son to rule my life.” I ignored him and slammed the door to my room. “We’re leaving on Monday, whether you like it or not.” Dad yelled through the closed door.

In response, I turned on AC/DC, cranking up the volume as loud as I possibly could. I couldn’t accept the fact that he was marrying that fake bitch. I wouldn’t move to California unless I could live with Rosie. I’d tour with her band – hell, I’d be their roadie if I had to. I would not live in the same house as her. I wouldn’t live with Dad’s replacement for Mom.

Mom died five years ago – it wasn’t that long of a time. Five years was half a decade, less than half of my life. It was too soon for Dad to try and replace her. He could never replace her. It’s not at all possible to replace a person, and I wanted Dad to realize that. There was no way anyone in my family could fill the space Mom had filled with some spray-tanned, bleach-blonde “real” housewife of Orange County.

That didn’t mean I could stop Dad from moving us from New York to California. We were going all the way across the country, from a loft in Brooklyn to a giant house in southern California, near Los Angeles. My sister Rosie had left New York three years ago for California, but she’d always wanted to leave. She didn’t love the city like I did; Rosie needed to be free, in wide-open space. I needed to be contained in concrete canyons.

Moving to California shattered my little world of school, fixing my bike, and friends. I couldn’t leave the city, and I would not sell out. The so-called “city of angels” was the last place I ever wanted to live. I didn’t want a realtor step-mom with an obnoxious social calendar and a dog she carried in her purse. My dad would be working constantly, so I’d hardly see him – that wouldn’t change at all. I’d be trapped, but I only had to survive one year and I could come back to New York for college.

When I moved across the country, I never, never would have expected to meet anyone like Juliet Hanson. She was the one good thing about moving so far from home. I thought everyone would be as shallow as Stacy, as focused on other people’s opinions and as concerned about what everyone in Hollywood was doing. Juliet was different – she cared, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to be careless, but she was raised to be entirely consumed by what others thought of her. Juliet Hanson fascinated me. From the second I met her I wanted to get to know her.

But boy, did she not want to get to know me.

I love Juliet Hanson. Juliet Hanson does not love me. This is where my story begins.