Is This Real... Or Am I Dreaming

Last night, when me and my mom’s last flight arrived into Ontario, it was early in the morning. So we decided to stay at a nice and quiet inn for the night. But now we were in the car approaching the neighborhood where our house was.

The house was beautiful; at least it was on the outside. Since it was the ending of March, there was still a little bit of snow on the ground, but the roads were all cleared up. But the house looked like there were three stories, counting the underground basement. It was a light peach color with forest green trimming and it was a nice size, a little bit bigger than our old house in Alaska. Some trees were on either side of the house and the driveway was gravel and at the end of the driveway, there was a ‘for sale’ sign, but was covered with a red piece paper with white writing saying ‘sold’.

Once my mom parked the car on the driveway, I immediately hopped out and went up to the front door of the house. My mom was slowly walking up the walkway to the house, so I had to wait patiently.

When my mom finally unlocked the house, I burst the door open and ran right past her. I was already amazed and I was only in the entryway that looked into the living room. Above the door to the house, I didn’t notice that there was a semi-circle window above with a beautiful chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Even though there was not a piece of furniture or decoration in the house it still felt ‘homey’, if you get what I mean. The living room was very spacious with a gargantuan window to let the sunlight in. Connected to the living room were the dining room with a kitchen on one side and a hallway on the other side. Right across the living room and to the left of the entryway was an office with French doors with another big window. To the right of the entryway there was a hallway split into a ‘T’, one bedroom on each side that had a bathroom in the middle of them. After I explored the east side of the house, I turned around and started to look what was on the west side. Right across from the kitchen and the dining room, a hallway connected with wood floors and in front of the entrance to the kitchen, a door was across it. I opened it up and stairs led up to the third level, it seemed like an attic and I hate attics, so I just shut the door and continued on. Next to the door, there was another bathroom, only this one was smaller without a shower like the one on the far east side of the house. Again, there was a ‘T’ at the end of the hallway; to my right was the biggest master bedroom I could imagine, with a big bathroom of two sinks, a Jacuzzi tub, a separate shower, a small room which consisted of the toilet, and a marvelous walk-in closet. Too bad this wasn’t mine! I would love it. I walked out of the master suite and walked down the hallway to another door and opened it to find that it led to the basement. I decided to check it out, so I walked down the steep staircase to find a big screen TV stuck on the wall and another bedroom splitting the basement into thirds. I assumed that this was the entertainment room, a guest room, and storage space. After I checked out the basement, I found that there was a medium sized mudroom to put shoes and hang jackets with nice shelves with drawers. And last but not least, I opened the last door of the house to see a three car garage. I could only come up with one conclusion after I looked through the whole house, and that was, ‘this house is awesome. I think I’m actually going to like living here.’

When I came back to the main part of the house, I heard my mom frantically calling my name.

“River! River! Where are you? River!”

“What? I’m in the living room now!” I replied hastily.

“You weren’t there a minute ago. Where’d you run off to?” she asked with a quizzical expression.

“I was on an adventure!” I joked.

“To where?”

“Around the house, of course! Where else?” I laughed.

“So what do you think about the house?”

“Oh my God, Mom! I absolutely love it!” I jumped up then and gave her a big bear hug. She simply just laughed and hugged me back.

“Well, I’m glad you like it. I suppose we should’ve gotten something a little bit smaller since it’s just the two of us. The house has five bedroom and six bathrooms with a huge living room and basement. But there weren’t many options and this is a nice neighborhood and also close to the school you’ll be attending starting next week. And I thought you would like this house, too.” She explained.

“I do, I love it. Thank you, Mom. So what town or city in Ontario are we living in? I texted Micah telling her we were moving to Ontario and not that long ago I received a text back asking what town or city we were in.”

“Oh, we’re living in Stratford. The movers with our boxes will be here soon, so let me show you your room so you know where to put your boxes.” I followed wherever she was going while typing a message to Micah. Once I looked up I found we were standing outside of the attic door.

“The attic, Mom? Really? Am I turning into Cinderella? There are other unoccupied bedrooms in this house besides the attic.” I said.

“Attic? This isn’t an attic. This is a bonus room. C’mon.” she opened the door and grabbed a hold of my hand pulling me with her giving me no choice but to follow her. Turned out I was wrong about the room. Since there was no light when I looked up from the bottom of the staircase, I didn’t know that the stairs were carpeted. When my mom and I reached the top of the stairs, I found that the room was even more spacious than the living room and bigger than the master bedroom not counting the walk- in closet and master bedroom. To the right of the stairs was a small, but big enough, bathroom with a shower. There was a corner next to the outside of the bathroom and I immediately thought it would be a nice place to set a bookshelf and a desk to work on there. There was a small window as I walked across the room and another door that led to a small walk-in closet, which was about half-size of the master bedroom’s walk-in closet. I’m glad I was wrong about the ‘attic’ and I found to adore this room. My own sanctuary to be left alone in, blast my music, and to just hang by myself or maybe with a couple of friends.

“We didn’t bring any of the beds with us, but this weekend we’ll go find you a queen sized bed for you up here, the room is big enough for that big of a bed, but no bigger. Unless you want a smaller bed?”

“No, a queen will be perfect. Thanks, Mom.” I went over to her to give her another hug with a kiss on the cheek.

“Okay, well you can hang out here until the moving truck gets here. I won’t be here because I’m going to go to the store and get us some food for a couple of days and run to the office to see what day I start work. Okay? I’ll have my cell phone on if you need anything. The movers will leave after all the boxes are unloaded. And we’ll sort through them together tonight or tomorrow. Love you.” with that my mom went downstairs and soon left.

While I was waiting for the moving truck to come, I was talking to Micah through texting and listening to my iPod. I didn’t have my iHome since I packed it in some box, so I had to deal with a pair of annoyingly uncomfortable ear phones.

R: Im living in stratford ontario btw.

M: STRATFORD?!? Do u no who lives ther?!?

R: urm… no? people? am i supposed 2 no a specific person?

M: r u serious? A certain pop star? Ring a bell? JB?

R: Of course u wuld no that now wuldnt u? U no i dont scoop up every deet of JB like u do.

M: Oh, shut up. But yeah, now u no i guess. Ur so lucky! What if he lives in the same neighborhood or nxt door 2 u?

R: um, mi? Hes on tour. So i dont think hes here now. This is his hometown yes but that doesnt mean that hes in town rite now. I g2g. The movers r here! Gotta unload all the boxes. Ttyl!

M: Kk. Byee! Txt me l8r!

With that, I put my phone in my pocket and went downstairs to start unloading the boxes. It was really nice outside with the sun. However, you could still feel the crisp cold air from the wind. So before I went outside I pulled on my magenta North Face jacket for warmth. No sight of the drivers of the moving truck was noticeable, so I had no idea where they were. Thankfully the door to the back of the truck where all the boxes were was open. I looked at all the boxes and found that I had a lot of work to do. So I better start it so it would be finished by the time my mom came back home.

When I was about a fourth way done unloading all the boxes and with a two boxes stacked on top of each other, I noticed across the street two teenage guys, one had a video camera and was taping the other guy who was doing some funky dance moves.

I stopped walking on my way up to the house and stopped in the middle of the driveway and stared at them. I guess it was kind of rude, but I was fascinated at the way the guy was moving.

Suddenly, they both looked over at me and pointed. Once I saw that, I immediately blushed, put my head down, and continued on my way into the house to drop off the boxes in the living room. But to my surprise when I came back out they were standing next to the moving truck.

“Um, hi. Can I help you?” I asked kindly still somewhat embarrassed that they caught me staring at them.

“So you’re moving here?” the guy with a hat on his head and the video camera in his hand.

“Looks that way, huh?” I said in a smartass way. The other guy just laughed. I went back over to the truck and grabbed some more boxes and began to walk back up to the house. When I came back out empty handed, both of them were still there, only leaning against the moving truck now.

“So?” I prompted trying to get an answer out of them about why they were still here.

“Uh, I’m Ryan and this is Chaz.” The guy that was dancing in the street said. I looked him up and down trying to figure out what kind of guy he was, but I came up with nothing.

“I’m River. Nice to meet you. So what were you guys doing on the street?” I asked.

“Nice name. I was jerking and Chaz was taping it. We have some videos on Youtube.” Ryan explained.

“Jerking?” I asked.

“Yeah, type of dance style, I guess.” Ryan said.
“That’s cool. So, uh, wanna help me unload all these boxes and bring them inside? It’d help me a lot. All of these boxes in the truck have to go into the living room inside.”

“Sure.” Ryan said and picked up some boxes while Chaz put down the camera and then picked some boxes up.

With both Ryan and Chaz’s help unloading all the boxes, the job got done much faster. In just a half hour it was all done and the truck left. Now I was starting to sort out the boxes trying to find all of mine.

Suddenly my phone loudly vibrated because of a new text message coming in. I picked up my phone and didn’t recognize the number so I just put it down. But then about five minutes later it went off again and kept going off every couple of seconds. Eventually I got so aggravated that I just threw it across the room almost hitting Chaz, but he dodged it just in time. Ryan and Chaz just burst out laughing.

“Oh, sorry. Did I hit you?”

“He dodged it.” Ryan said while still in a fit of laughter.

“Whoa. Why do you have Justin’s number?” Chaz asked as he walked to me with my phone in his hand.

“Who’s?” I was confused.

“Justin. Justin Bieber? JB?” he prompted.

“Oh, is that who was texting me?” I asked.

“That’s his number.” He replied.

“Well, my best friend and I went to his concert in Washington last weekend and I met him backstage and he asked for my number. And I guess he finally got a hold of me. I actually forgot about the whole ordeal until now.”

“He was probably busy, like always. We don’t hear from him often much anymore. So what school are you going to?” Chaz continues.

“Um, I think my mom said Stratford Northwestern Secondary School? I’m not sure if I have the name right. And speaking of my mom, she’ll probably be here soon.” I said.

“No that’s right. We go there, too. We should go, but I guess we’ll see you next Monday? Or maybe sooner in the neighborhood? See ya, River.” Ryan and Chaz headed back over to the entryway to leave.

“Sweet! I’ll already have friends at the new school! See you later!” and that was when I was left alone to keep sorting through boxes and waiting for my mom to come back home.

I was glad that I already had two people I knew so that I wouldn’t totally feel like the ‘new girl with no friends’. I decided to stop sorting through boxes after awhile once it got boring, so I called Micah and told her my good news and everything that has happened since I’ve arrived at the new house. Hopefully I would be able to find a best friend almost like her here in Stratford, Ontario.