Your Melody Sounds As Sweet As the First Time It Was Sung

I stared blankly at the big red ‘sold’ sign out the front ofmy the house. The pictures made it look so impeccably neat and clean inside, nothing like the house I’d grown up in. There was none of our furniture in the house. No photographs on the mantle of our family. No loose sheets of paper covered in scribbles that I called drawings in preschool. No evidence that the house had ever belonged to us at all, even though it was all I’d ever known. Everything that made that house my home was in a truck on its way to the new destination.

I understood why we had to move. Mum just couldn’t deal with all the memories, all the little reminders of good times passed. To me, however, this was home. I’d never moved before. This was the house my parents brought me home to when I was born. This was the house I’d played ‘families’ in with Sarah when we were five. This is the house Dad taught me guitar in, and by association beginning my love for music. This is the house I’d always pictured myself living in forever. This was my home. This was my life.

And now I was leaving.

“Charlotte!”

My knuckles whitened as I tightened my grip on my black and grey shoulder bag and turned around. There were traces of more tears in my mom’s eyes as I walked over to her, away from my house and everything I knew. I hugged my mom tightly and she hugged me back.

“Are you ready, sweetheart?” she asked me softly, brushing my hair out of my eyes.

“I think so,” I gulped. “I don’t know what to expect.”

She took in a deep breath and exhaled with closed eyes.

“Neither do I, Charlie. Neither do I.”

***

So I guess I should explain why we’re leaving the place we so obviously don’t want to leave. There’s no good way to say it; my dad died a few months ago. Car crash. I was really close to my dad. Our family was close. Perfect. I guess that’s the thing. There’s no such thing as a perfect family. That’s why ours had to be demolished. I was an only child with two happy and considerably young parents. Sometimes we’d have movie nights, just the three of us. We’d cuddle up with a bowl of popcorn coated in icing sugar, three cans of coke, two pizzas – one vegetarian for me and mom and a supreme for dad – and watch three movies. We’d all choose one. Dad and I would mock mom’s soppy romantic comedies to cover up the fact that we actually thought it was sweet, mom and I would cover each others’ eyes for the really graphic parts in dad’s gory horror movies, and I’d usually find something in between like a thriller or adventure that we’d all love.

Just because I can recall all this doesn’t mean I’ve just accepted it and moved on. People grieve in different ways. Mom’s on the verge of tears most of the time, and I can just tell that she’s always thinking Why him? Why us? What did we do that was so bad we deserved this?

Even though was only fourteen, I think my method of grieving was better. Of course I cried, but only when no one could see me. A part of me died with my dad in that car crash. It made me grow up. I was no longer the perfectly happy, innocent little kid I used to be. Like mom, I’m always thinking of him. He’s always there in my head, but unlike mom I never dwelled on the reasoning beyond his untimely death. Instead I remembered the good times. I remember his smile, his hopes, his dreams. Some might say it’s unhealthy the way I really believe he’s still here in a way, but I don’t care. It’s the only reason I keep going. In everything I do, I’m trying my best to make him proud.

As my mom and I drove along the highway to our new life, I thought about dad. As usual. Was this what he would have wanted? For us to leave New Jersey? For us to sell the house that had seen me grow from baby to toddler, toddler to child, child to teenager? Well, no matter how far away we are from the house, dad’s coming with us.

After hours and hours spent on the same thought, I let my dad’s favourite band, The Smashing Pumpkins, serenade me through my headphones as I was greeted by the big sign of my new home; Summerlin, Las Vegas.

***

We pulled up in front of a nice looking house. It looked just like all the other nice houses around here. My initial thought was I hated it. The white paint, timber porch, blue railings… The truth was I didn’t hate it. I just hated that it wasn’t my home. This would be mine and mom’s house. The Jersey home was mine, mom’s, and dad’s. It makes all the difference in the world.

“Here we are, Charlie,” Mom stated, looking up at the house. She was trying to use her ‘I’m a strong, confident woman in control of my life’ voice, but knowing the effect she wanted to achieve, I could detect her voice cracking and wavering at the edges.

Until dad died I’d never seen my mom cry. She had been that strong, confident, in control woman. She had been happy and fun. My best friend. But dad was our best friend too. Now that he was gone, mom was always on the brink of a breakdown.

The car pulled to a stop and we both got out, pushing the white car doors shut behind us. I think that somehow the moving men knew about our family tragedy, because they insisted on fixing all of our furniture wherever we wanted it and helping us get set up, more often than not throwing us sideways glances and sympathetic smiles. I wasn’t entirely opposed to these charitable acts; hey, I did’t have to do as much work.

It was the afternoon, around three thirty, when signs of life began to show on my new street. I was on my sixteenth trip (yes, I was counting) back out to the truck to bring in another box when I saw two boys walking up the other side of the street. I couldn’t see their features very well because they were still too far away, but I noticed that they were both clad in navy blue and white uniforms. Haha. Uniforms. I guessed that they were around my age, maybe a bit older. One of them was really skinny, and the other was a little chubby, but in the good kind of way. Their heads were both bowed as they talked, as if they were talking to their polished shoes or the sidewalk instead of one another. The chubby one’s hands were wrapped around the straps of his blue backpack, and the skinny guy’s fingers wrung the strap of his grey messenger bag as if he were trying to strangle it.

No, I’m not a stalker. I just overanalyze everything.

As I watched them, the chubby guy looked up at my house, nudged the skinny one and pointed in my general direction. It’s rude to point, you know! The skinny guy’s head snapped up to look at me curiously. I turned my gaze away, hoping that they hadn’t noticed how long I’d been watching them walk, and grabbed the box labeled ‘kitchenware’ before heading back inside.

For some reason, I really didn’t want to see Chubby and Skinny again. The way they looked at me made me feel like the town mystery; I didn’t like the attention. To avoid them, I waited ten minutes before going outside again, but unfortunately for me they were still there. They had stopped walking now, and were stationary directly across the street. I didn’t want to risk looking like an idiot by turning around and walking straight inside again, so I made my way over to the truck again. I was very self-conscious as their eyes followed me to the truck where I retrieved yet another box and walked inside as slowly as I could, so that they wouldn’t suspect the truth; that I wanted to get away from them.

When I got inside, I put the box down and peered through the white living room curtains and out the front. They were still there, but thankfully not staring at the house anymore. They were just talking. I waited for fifteen minutes until they eventually headed inside one of the houses across the road. The house looked very similar to my new one; different colours, same design minus the window I was peeking out now. All the houses on the street were slight variations of this one. How exciting.

I missed New Jersey. I missed my old home. I missed my dad.