Game

The whirring of my bike gears came to a stop as I glided down the remainder of the street. Although I’d had the entire summer to prepare for the sight in front of me, seeing the moving trucks in my driveway still stung. We were only moving a state away, but it may as well have been an ocean. I’d done my best to participate as little as I could in the move, only packing up my room slowly over the course of two months so it would hurt less.

But it didn’t hurt less. Augusta was the first place that I really considered to be my home—I had started high school here, and I had stupidly thought I would end it here too, but my dad stuck to his policy of moving every three years to appease his bosses. We relocated often because they wanted to see how my brother and I got along in different Settings. Augusta was our typical New English simulation, and it was time to leave.

My dad smiled unsurely while I got off my bike and rolled it into one of the trucks. I ignored him: he knew how I felt about moving. Ten more months in Augusta, just enough time to stick around and graduate, wouldn’t kill us or cause us to become underdeveloped. I half-hoped that this new Setting would make for a bad anatomical reaction and we’d have to move back. But I knew that it wouldn’t, because, above everything, I was still a human being and bad anatomical reactions just don’t happen in human beings my age.

I got into the passenger’s seat of the car my brother and I shared, slamming the door behind me. We weren’t going to ride to the new house with my dad—we were both on the same level of anger when it came to the move. My brother, Scott, followed suit, “I can’t believe this,” he said for at least the tenth time that day as he got into the driver’s seat. His palms pounded against the steering wheel and he shook his head to himself. Scott had had a good run in Augusta: he held the fastest records in both cross country and track, got good grades, was amongst the most popular crowd in school, and even dated a girl who went on to become the Junior Prom Queen. While I may have not been as well-known or athletic as him, I fit in well there. We both did.

I pulled my legs up to my chest, resting my arms on my knees. I stared out the window for the last time, hoping to mindlessly soak in as much of the neighborhood as I could without thinking about the pain. It hadn’t changed much in the three years we’d lived there: the family that lived across the street from us had moved out and the new tenants had changed the color of the house from a dull grey to a vibrant yellow, then back to grey; the lawns were all the same sickly green color that they’d always been; the pink roses underneath my bedroom window were infested with weeds like they became every summer; the trees were all abundant with life.

My dad gave us a terse nod that it was time to go, and I rolled down the windows in hope that the lingering mixture of pine and manure would forever linger in my nose. I wasn’t sure if it was the salty air or the shrinking city that stung my eyes, but either way I rolled up the window and got lost in my thoughts.

We were headed to Colebrook, a sleepy town five hours away in New Hampshire. I’d never been there, but I had seen pictures of the house we were moving in to and I wasn’t pleased: the house was located at the mouth of a dense wooded area, making my backyard nothing but dirt, trees, and unwanted wildlife. Colebrook was supposed to be our close-knit, small town Setting, in which the size of the school was about 200 students—roughly an eighth of the size of my school in Augusta. Now, I’ve never had much of a mind for numbers, but I was fairly certain that 200 students in grades 9-12 was not a lot. That being said, I planned to go through the school year as under the radar as I could, attempting to prove a point to my dad—I wasn’t happy about moving, why should I pretend to be?



After five hours of tailgating our father, we arrived in Colebrook. It was worse than I had anticipated: it was so small that I was afraid we’d speed right through it. A few groups of teenagers were lounging around what I assumed were the most popular locations; Main Street had fewer cars than the street we’d lived on in Augusta…already, I hated it.

But this small town captivated me more than the entire trip had—I was now sitting up in my seat, my eyes glued out the window as Scott inched along, waiting until the house that I’d seen in pictures to come into view.

The house, however, wasn’t actually in town—it was just outside of the town limits, down a winding road that led to a forested area, The Great North Woods. We came to a clearing and a two story white house came into view. It was old, with chipped paint and dusty windows, but a beautiful, livable place that I would call home for the next three years.

Scott parked on the gravel driveway, next to a large yellowing lawn, and sighed. “It’s pretty, at least,” I offered.

We got out of the car, grabbing the few pieces of luggage that we had carried on our journey. It was late afternoon now, and I wondered what we’d be eating and where we’d be sleeping.

The movers began to unload the trucks, removing cardboard boxes and disassembled pieces of furniture. Scott and I headed inside together—it was just as grand inside as out, with a wide half-landing staircase to the left and a vast empty house everywhere else. We took the stairs slowly, observing every aspect of it.

My new room was decently sized and square, about the size of my room back in Augusta, with empty white walls and a scuffed wood floor. The window faced the west side of the house, giving me a view of the forest and a poor excuse of a creek. I mentally planned the layout of my room, hoping there would still be room after my bed and vanity were situated.

I’d been there but a minute and I already felt lonely and remote, like I would never fully be happy again as long as I lived in Colebrook. I stared out the window, hoping that, if I wished hard enough, the forest would become the suburb in the Setting that I would forever love.

I imagined my friends in Augusta, forbidden to contact me in fear that I would never fully adjust to the new Setting. I told them what I could—that my dad worked with the government and that it was useless to hold on to my memory, because I had no choice but to go with him and finish growing up until eventually it was me that worked with the government too. They respected my family’s secrecy and wished me luck, telling me that they would miss me and that my memory couldn’t just be erased, just like theirs’ couldn’t be for me. We made empty promises to look each other up after graduation, but I knew that they would be hard to contact and I would be even harder to find.

“Hey,” said Scott lowly, startling me. “How long were you standing there?” he asked.

I had hardly noticed the soft green light of the forest turn into a harsh orange—the sun was setting. “I was just spacing out,” I said.

He held offered me a small paper plate with a sandwich on it. “I brought your bed up,” he said as I took it. “Dad told me I have to help you with your room since I’m done with mine.”

“Are the linens unpacked yet?” I asked idly, just glad that someone familiar was around. I peeked past Scott and noticed what was undoubtedly my bed frame waiting in the hall. I took a bite of the sandwich as he dragged it in, not needing my help at all.

“Nope,” he said, his muscles barely straining as he turned the frame on its side in order to get it through the door, “But your pillows and a few sleeping bags are downstairs.”

I contemplated on how to get out of the room with the massive foot of the frame caught against the door. Scott looked like he was about to break the wall in order to get it through—he’d never had much patience when it came to things like that. “The bathroom’s a Jack and Jill,” he said, jerking his head toward a closed brown door, the same color as the one he was trying to avoid. “You can get out through my room.”

Uneasy with the fact that we were practically sharing a room, I trudged through the newly-refurbished bathroom, pleased to see that it at least had enough counter and cabinet space for the both of us. Scott’s room looked the same as mine, only with a northern window and furniture. He already had a few decorations up—a picture on his desk of he and a few friends directly after a cross country meet with a series of medals dangling from each other their necks, a lamp elevated by a few books that would have been dusty if not for the move, a few boxes marked with his name, and a backpack that looked ready for school tossed into the nearest corner.

School, I thought. We were starting our first day of school the day after next, a week after the rest of Colebrook Academy’s students, who started school impossibly early. The only thing I actually liked about school was the structure that it gave my life. However, with a whopping student body of 200, something told me that getting accustomed to school would be easier said than done.

When I got back to my room, my bed, complete with mattress, and vanity had been settled in, exactly where I had pictured them, leaving room to spare. Boxes with my name were piled into a pyramid in an empty corner, waiting for me to go through and unpack them. I placed my pillows and sleeping bag on the bed, shouting a thank you to Scott, wherever he had gone off to.

It felt a little easier to be alone in the room with familiar items surrounding me, but I knew I would sleep restlessly for the next few nights until I finally accepted it as my own. I kept both doors to the bathroom open, needing to know that Scott was still in this with me, even if our dad wasn’t.