Where Is Your Boy Tonight

Maddie climbed out of the driver seat and placed her feet on the pavement of the driveway. She stretched widely, sore from the second half of the sixteen hour drive to what was now her home, and immediately began shivering in the cool Illinois air. When she left North Carolina it had been warm enough for shorts and a tank top, here it felt more like jeans and a hoodie.
"I hate cold" she mumbled before searching her cluttered backseat for a hoodie and pulling it on.

Once it was situated on her body she closed the door and looked at the front of her family's house. Then she turned and looked at the ones next to it, then spun in a circle examining them all.
"They all look exactly the same" she said as her parents got out of the car beside her.
"You'll get used to it soon enough sweetie" her mother said, kissing her head. "Let's go check out the inside."
Maddie followed her mom inside while her dad flagged down the moving truck, apparently they were having trouble finding it too.

Her mom showed her to her bedroom and Maddie decided to start bringing her things in out of her car.
When she opened her car door she looked around at all of the houses again. They all seemed to be a slightly different shade of blue or gray but otherwise, structurally, all the same.
Maybe it was because her family worked construction, her uncle designed and built houses while her father and mother did all of the inside finishing, but she couldn't understand why anyone would want to live in a house that looked like the rest. Her parents shouldn't want to either. Apparently another company really liked their work though, and offered to move them here with a huge pay increase.

While Maddie struggled to pull a box of books from her backseat she had the weird feeling she was being watched. She stopped yanking on the box and look at the house directly across the street. She saw someone looking out the window but back away quickly when she turned.

"In North Carolina you greeted new neighbors, not stare at them like a weirdo" she muttered and went back to pulling the box. It broke loose and she fell to the ground with a yelp as the box tumbled out and spilled books on top of her. "I hate it here already!"

A week later, Maddie sat at the kitchen table and pushed her potatoes around the plate.

"Sweetie, what's wrong? Are you nervous for school to start?" her dad asked, taking a huge bite of his dinner.

"Of course. I still don't know how to get to and from my house, they all look the same", she replied, "and on top of that I don't have any friends here." She had spent the last two days driving around to try and get a handle on the streets to take but got lost each time and had to call her parents to get her home.

"You're a beautiful young lady, you'll make friends quickly" her mother said, waving off her concerns.
Maddie rolled her eyes. Her parents wanted this new place to work out so badly they dismissed any possibility that Maddie could come up with.

"I can drive you tomorrow and pick you up if it would make you feel better. I'd have to rearrange some meetings but I can make it work" her father suggested.

"That will not be necessary" she laughed. "I'm already the new kid, I don't need my parents to drop me off and pick me up like a little kid. I'll be a senior for goodness sake."

"Just a suggestion" her mom said.
Maddie probably would have let them had they insisted. She knew her parents hated to reschedule meetings though. They jumped right into work only two days after arriving in Illinois. She could figure this out on her own, she would be seventeen in a couple of days, definitely old enough to "man-up" and drive herself to school.

"I'm going to go get my stuff ready for school, maybe see if I can look up directions or something" she half joked.

"That's my girl!" her father exclaimed with a smile.
Maddie laughed and climbed the stairs to her room, ' dear God please don't let me make a fool of myself'.