Heart: Chapter One

Heart: Chapter One

Chapter One

My friends back in California told me that moving to New York would be quite a reality change. But hey, I grew up in San Francisco! What could have possibly been worse than the crowd that lived there? Well, I discovered that the people of New York were critical of self confidence, and truly down right cruel. However, even if I knew what was going to happen to me, I still would have come to New York, and done it again.

I exchanged AIM screen names with my best friends and gave them my new telephone number. I did have my Razor cellular phone, but I'm no posh girl who clung to my cell phone for dear life. Its power was off for most of the day, unless I needed it. And while I was leaving what I had always known, I was excited to be moving to "The Big Apple". I had never even gone on a vacation anywhere east of the Mississippi River, so I was jumping up and down in my seat as we flew above the river.

The plane ride was 5 hours and 35 minutes. When I stood, my knees banged together and I tripped over my own feet as I left the plane. My jeans were covered in crumbs of Ritz crackers that I had been munching on, and a spot of Pepsi that was on my right thigh. My, most likely oily, gel slathered bangs that covered my brow and gently rested on my eyelashes. I blinked myriad times to try and move it away from my eyes. My pale skin was slowly losing its few pigments of color, and it was surprising how quickly I was "behaving like a New Yourker". Phony pronunciation of "Yorker" and all.

As I left the gate, my younger sister yammering on in my ear, I looked at all the stands. Magazines, coffee, and a mass of "I Heart New York" merchandise. My feet moved forward toward the baggage claim. The movers had brought the boxes that my family and I had packed to our new house about two days ago while we sold our house. So we had no choice but to pack a suitcase or two of easily accessible clothes for the first few days of school.

Oh, ew.

I had forgotten about school. The crowded halls and congested classrooms. Cliques of all kinds that clung to one another. Rumors that spread like wild fire and impossible standers. Teachers who believed that you were capable of anything if "you set your mind to it". Yeah. I knew all of two people who even liked school. As I grabbed my suitcase, schools grip on my gut grew worse.

The wheels of the auburn baggage clanked onto the marble floor of the airport. They rolled across the sleek ground below me. My shoes made a perpetual squeaky noise and my sister kicked my black Cherokee sneakers as if to silence their obnoxious noise. However, she just got a long, unenthusiastic, "Ow", from me.

"You know what, Jamie," she uttered.

"You know what, Stef," I growled, holding back some nasty insults.

"Ha, ha," she said with a whine. "Anyway, I thought you'd be a true pain on the plane, but you didn't screw any flight attendants over."

Wow, she was right. Back on any plane ride to a vacation spot, throughout the duration of the flight I'd be such a misfit. I would continuously torture the stewardesses working the food chart. Saying such things like, "I think your food is contaminated," or "Hm, There's nothing I want...except some 'sugar' would be nice." And that would be followed by a slap on the back of my head from my mother. However, this trip, I sat and watched my movie. I believe I received a few cold glares from the flight attendants who had heard of me. But I didn't do anything horrible. How odd. Now I feel like I must misbehave.

"Now, now, Stephanie. Don't put any ideas into his head," I heard. I turned to be met my brawny father.

"Hey, Dad," Stephanie and I smiled.

My father was a tall man. His head was covered in a 'James Bond' kind of hair. He had gray eyes with a stipple effect of blue. Surprisingly, he was quite a thin man, with feet just so off from beginning hobbit feet. I was glad that I had inherited my mother's small feet. He wore an old 80's ACDC tee, and jeans that are encroaching onto their expiration date. He sported a pair of white, torn Nike sneakers, and his suitcase was an onyx, leather Dooney and Burke. He flashed my sister and I a smile and spoke again.

"Enjoy the flight?" he asked.

"Yeah," I replied. Stephanie said something along the lines of 'it was too long'.

"Well, that's a four hour flight for ya!" my father said as a reply to Stephanie's comment.

"Five hour!" my sister and I corrected.

After looking around the baggage claim, I noticed that a member of this little family was missing. "Where is Mom?" I questioned my father.

My father jerked his head from left to the right. Due to his reaction, I could answer my own question.

"Nice Dad," Stephanie commented.

Stephanie was always the vocal one. Nothing stayed in her mind for more then a split second. Her blond curly locks gave her the stereotypical 'valley girl' appearance. She had the same salt-and-pepper eyes as our father but she had our mother's lush eyelashes. She wore a teal, form fitting long sleeve shirt that went past her waist. A mini skirt fell over the top of her thighs and a pair of leggings were under them and ended past her knees. She had to tell me as we left home that it was the style in New York, but I had a hard time believing her. She had her coach bag slung over her left shoulder, which, by itself, looked like a carryon. Her peacock suitcase rested low to the ground and looked like it weighed two tons. Girls and their clothes.

"Now I knew she was..." my father began. He often went on with his sentence in his mind, not saying much of anything.

"I'm here!" My mother's voice flew in our direction.

My mother stood before for us in her glory. Her long pin straight jet black hair fell to her waist, and she had a set of stunning sea blue eyes. Her beautiful sapphire butterfly hair pin glittered in the shine of the lights in the room. She was wearing a long knee-length skirt of an azure tone. Her long sleeved suit top was the same tint and her high heeled shoes made you question how on earth she lasted a five hour flight with those shoes on! Points that make me glad that I can wear anything I want and still have girls falling at my feet.

"Where were you, Honey?" my father questioned while giving her a kiss on the cheek.

"Bathroom. Women have needs," she grinned. "Shall we?" she questioned the whole family.

I nodded and prepared myself for now a long car ride.

We began on our walk to find the rental car floor, and after getting lost in this marble maze about twice, we found it. It was on the last floor and it withheld a striking resemblance to a garage. It's assortment of vehicles was quite a sight. There were bulky Hondas to the small Saturns. Colors from the families of blue, black, sliver, and white. Each car had a painted number below it that informed the renter that this was their car.

My back made itself comfortable on a long pillar that was placed just positional to the small rental car booth. My mother and father exchanged conversations with the women in the booth, who sounded elderly. I tapped my foot on the cement ground and stared at my long, thin leg. I wonder why I had such feminine features. It was quite a shocker that girls were crushing over me and not the group of sexually active homosexuals.

My mother and father completed their conversation and told Stephanie and I to get moving. We all walked side-by-side and in an orderly fashion. This wasn't something my sister and I were taught to do over the years; it just came a bit naturally.

* * *

The car we had rented was an Element from the Honda dealership. It looked small, yet it was spacious on the inside and left you with a gasp of "I want it!" It had also made the car ride quite bearable. My legs were not scrunched up to my chest in my seat and I could pull the seat back and watch the clouds.

After an hour or so in traffic, we pulled up to a small suburban area. Amityville. It was a quaint little town and was not what my sister and I had expected. We had believed that we would be moving to the city and live in some apartment, where you could sneak out at night and get into a club! Well, maybe that was more of my vision then hers.

It was a small double floor house. Painted a fading-buttercup tone, it looked at though we had moved to the set of "Little House on the Prairie". And as my sister and I exited the car it must have shown on our faces, because the first thing to stumble out of my father's mouth was words of encouragement.

"It can't be that bad! And you two will start to love this town!" he beamed.

"Yes. It is better then the crammed streets of San Francisco," my mother commented.

Stephanie and I looked at each other and both our faces just had the words "I do not want to be here", written on our faces. Yet, we stopped from rolling our eyes and held in our sighs as we open the door to the domicile.

It was a simple interior. A thirteen step staircase to the second floor was there when you opened the door, and what was to be the living room was to your right. It was a small room, with boxes pilled to the ceiling inside it. A puzzle of how to get around the labyrinth of boxes entered my mind. It seemed impossible, I gave the mountains a huff and headed up stairs.

There were only two rooms. One door to the right and one to the left. I open the door to the left and inside was an empty space. It had hardwood floors that shined and Robin's Egg blue walls. A set of cretins was in the one window at the end of the vertical room. They were a beautiful snowy white and I let them fly around me as the soft breeze picked up.

"I want this one!!" I heard my sister cry.

I turned and she had the door to the room, across from the one I was currently in, wide open! She was dancing around in the open space with a pleased smile on her face.

"This house isn't so bad," she smiled at me.

I nodded and stared at the window once more.

* * *

I had set up a makeshift camp in the space that would soon become my room. I was parked right in the center of the room and laid in my sleeping bag. It had taken my most of my morning, but when I awoke, I had slowly counted the small bumps on my ceiling.

478 was as far as I got.

I rolled over onto my stomach and gazed out my window. For some unknown reason it captivated me. The sun shined in my room warmly, and I let a sneeze escape me. "Oh here it comes," I muttered to myself. 3...2...1!

"JAMIE! STEPHANIE! TIME FOR YOUR FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!"

I rolled on to my back and huffed. "Great."