Fifteen

I have been fifteen for zero months, zero weeks, five days, and twenty three hours.

It has been a long five days. In that time I’ve moved from Pennsylvania all the way down to Florida, to the small town of Hallsville just west of Orlando. My sister and I have almost bonded from this shared tragedy of leaving behind are entire lives to leave and follow our mom to Florida, our Dad had died years ago so we didn’t really have a choice.

I say almost bonded, because my older sister, by only barely two years I might add, has continually insisted how this move has been so much harder on her – due to her leaving from her senior year of high school, all of her friends, and her boyfriend Zach – then it could ever possibly be on me, a just turned fifteen year old sophomore, who had a fair amount of friends I might add.

The fact her and Zach had only been dating two weeks didn’t come up in her argument.

I’d left my life behind too of course, while I hadn’t been as ‘well known’ as Jennifer, I had been friends with same group of people since elementary school. And sure I didn’t have as many ex boyfriends-

I’d only ever had one boyfriend, and he didn’t really even count in a way. Nothing had happened, and we only ever went on one “date,” a trip to the movies with his family.

But, it wasn’t easy to leave everything I’d ever known. I knew my city: the popular places to hang out that cost almost no money, which roads to avoid because they were known speed traps, everything.

Hallsville was nothing like it. It was much more country, and the only place you could walk to from the neighborhood was a gas station, and I had barely met anyone yet. School started in one week, and I was going to be the new kid, for the first time since first grade.

I had tried to at least somewhat look on the Brightside; at least now no one knew me as Jenn’s sister.

Sure, it really wasn’t that big of a problem. Scott was a pretty common surname, and we were so different personality-wise that most people didn’t make the connection. But once teachers found out I was suddenly called “Jennifer” at least once every few weeks, even though I think we don’t look that much alike, and Mikayla sounds nothing like Jennifer.

And honestly, my male Biology teacher Mr. Thompson had been just a little too friendly when he found out. Luckily, once he realized how different we were, I the more quiet kid in the back of the class, he left me alone.

So it was nice to be away from that, but really, there wasn’t anything else good about it other than that.


I sighed from where I was sitting on my bed, cross legged and staring at the boxes of decorations I had sat on the floor by the door. My old room had been covered with collected pictures and posters from over the years, but my new room’s wall’s were blank.

I missed my light yellow walls too. These were a dark blue, my mom told me it used to be a boys room before we moved in. ‘At least there wasn’t a smell…’ I thought to myself as I got up and started picking through some of the items in the boxes. I pulled out a few important photos and put them on my nightstand.

I stopped when I reached the end of my star lights, and started working to untangle them. I’d had them in my room for as long as I could remember, decorated around the headboard around my bed when I was little as a night light, now still there just because I liked them.

I finally untangled the mess and reached the plug, and turned to the nearest outlet in my room to plug them in.

It was dark outside by now, my mom had been asleep for a few hours at least and my sister was on the computer talking to some friends back in Pennsylvania.

The stars lit up and I involuntarily smiled. I lifted them up and watched the shadows they made on the walls, which didn’t look quite so bad now. They went well with the star theme; the star’s silhouette against the dark walls looked perfect.

I glanced at my alarm clock, and noticed again how late it was. I didn’t have school, but there was a lot to do in the next week. I sighed and set the stars back in the top of the box, and reached down to unplug them too.

As I laid back in bed I stared at my walls and imagined my stars still lit up on them, then I rolled over and saw the actual stars outside my window. I didn’t use to be able to see them in my old neighborhood, in my old life.

I smiled, then closed my eyes and fell asleep.