THE INCIDENT – CHAPTER 6

School starts mid-August, while it’s still hot and humid.

Rose has a friend to walk with, the kid she met rollerblading, but Mom insists on driving me to the high school, even though it’s less than a mile away. When we get to the gate of our community, there are two girls about my age just walking through. Mom stops and asks if they’d like a ride and explains which house we bought this summer.

Angelica and Natalie get into the back seat while Mom goes on about how we’ve always lived in a tiny town, that this seems like city to us, and how this school is so much bigger than my old one and she hopes they’ll be my friends. These girls clearly spend hours on their makeup, hair, and nails. There’s no way they’d want to be friends with me, even if they weren’t obviously really tight with each other. I try to limit the damage with a shrug and eye roll.

Then Mom goes on about how I’m a top student, but the best classes were all full when I registered and they put me into a jumble of whatever was open. They even put me into two art classes instead of college prep!

Basically, Mom tells Angelica and Natalie I’m a nerd and a scared little hick who’s desperate for friends. She doesn’t realize that, though. She thinks she’s helping. At least she introduces me as Tina, not Montina.

When she drops us off, Natalie thanks her for the ride.

Angelica looks at my schedule and shakes her head. “Your mother wasn’t kidding. They dumped you into dumb-dumb English and crappy classes for kids who wouldn’t pass social studies or science any other way. The rest won’t be too bad.”

“Are you in any of them?” I know the answer but ask anyway.

“Hardly. We’re in the IB program.”

IB, International Baccalaureate Program. I’d never heard of one until Mom found out I couldn’t get into it and started raving about it. At least my being a nerd won’t count against me with these girls.

“Your first class is Spanish. It’s up that way. That teacher is okay.” Angelica points down a hall. “The room number’s on your schedule and there’s a map of the school on the back. Good luck.”

With that they disappear in the opposite direction.

Spanish is overflowing, with six students standing. The teacher takes roll, then says she’ll see how many drop out the first week before she tries to fit more desks into the room. “Meantime, a clipboard will help.”

I decide to be early every day and get a desk.

I have two art classes, drawing and painting, with Mr. Bonhomme. He has us draw the first day. Gym is boring. English, science, and social studies are plain dumb, stuff too easy for Rose.

The first weeks of school, those art classes are what save me from total despair. Mr. Bonhomme is happy as long as the room’s not trashed and we look like we’re working on our assignments. He doesn’t mind people talking while they work, either, as long as there is silence while he explains things. It ends up with a pleasant place to work. My other classes are too large or have too many trouble makers in them. The teachers are battling for control all the time.

I try talking to people in the art classes, but they go their own way at the end of class, and at the end of day everyone heads home. Mom keeps asking me if I’ve made friends, and what about those girls we met the first day, until finally I scream to just leave me alone and go to my room and slam the door shut.

It doesn’t help that Mary’s never the one to Skype me, and she’s not home most of the time when I try to get her. Texting works better, but it’s not the same as having a best friend right there in the room with you. She’s posting lots of photos on Facebook. She’s moved into a new crowd.

The first Monday in October Angelica and Natalie start stopping by every morning to walk to school with me. I figure Mom talked to their mothers.

Later, I wonder if I was right. Maybe they had plans for me from the start.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

The Incident is contemporary YA (Young Adult). Following time-honored tradition, I’m publishing it here in installments. To be alerted when the next segment goes online, “follow” this blog. The entire story will be published here. You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to publish the story elsewhere. Thank you.

#teenmoving #teenintrouble #teenchangingschools #teenincrisis #bullying #teencontemplatingsuicide #YA #freefiction #YoungAdultFiction #fiction

THE INCIDENT – CHAPTER 5

By the time we’re done with ice cream and goodbyes, it’s almost two o’clock. Rose and I wave at our friends until we can’t see them anymore.

Then I settle into the navigation seat and get serious. “Should I set the GPS?”

Mom smiles. “No. I know the way to Denver. From there we take seventy-six north to eighty east, and that takes us most of the way—seventeen hours of driving, or more. We won’t need GPS until we’re getting close.”

“I can help with the driving.” I’ve had my permit for months. Now I’m sixteen, I can go in for my test and get my license.

Mom glances over and turns up one side of her mouth with a look that says she’s sorry she has bad news. “You can drive while we’re still in Colorado, but your permit’s not really good outside of the state.”

“What?” I squeak.

“You’re going to have to take a new driver’s education course, specific to Illinois, to get a permit there, and you can’t get a license until you’ve had that permit for nine months. They also have education and practice requirements.”

“That sucks.”

“I know. I’ll pull over and let you drive part way to Denver, but I’ll take over once we’re getting into traffic and freeways.”

So my sixteenth birthday, I wake up in a motel in Nebraska no longer allowed to drive. I wish I’d left Mom’s present to open today and I’m feeling sorry for myself until I get out of the shower and Rose is there with a helium Happy Birthday balloon and a spider plant with a bow on it.

“For your new room,” she says.

“Thanks, Rose.”

I give her a hug. I’ve hardly even thought about how hard it must be for her to be moving. I mean, she’s not a teenager. She doesn’t have a boy that was starting to be interested, but she’s never lived anywhere else, either.

I decide I have to pay more attention to her until she makes new friends.

We eat the motel’s free breakfast, get showers and pack up. By the time we leave, it’s eleven.

“I really wanted to start earlier,” worries Mom. “We still ten hours of driving.”

“It’s Tuesday, Mom. The moving guys said they won’t be there until Thursday. We have all day today and tomorrow, too.”

“I know. But I wanted to get there tonight, just in case their schedule changes.”

I try to be the voice of reason Dad usually plays when she’s like this. “Drive most of the way today, then we can get up early tomorrow and you’ll be there Wednesday before noon. Besides, we’d still have to stay in a motel, unless you’re going to make us sleep on the floor.”

“That’s the plan once we get there. We have the sleeping pads and bags in the car, remember? But you’re right, we’ll drive about eight hours today, enjoy the pool at a motel, then get up early enough to get the key from the realtor right when they open.”

“Doesn’t Dad have a key?”

“He’s in training about sixty miles from our house. He’s putting in long days getting up to speed on the new job, so he’s staying close to work.”

My stomach tightens. Dad’s job had never gotten in the way of our doing things. He always said family came first. “He’s going to move into the house with us once the furniture gets there, isn’t he?”

“Of course,” Mom says.

Only he doesn’t.

He comes home Friday night when most of the unpacking is done, and even when his training’s done and he moves into the house with us, we only see him for breakfast. He usually doesn’t come home until Tina was in bed.

The summer isn’t all bad, though. It’s a lot hotter and more humid here than we’re used to, but the basement is always cool. I help mom fix up a nice family room down there and do some other painting she wants to do to make the place her own. My room is this boring off-white, but it’s bigger than my old room so there’s one open wall where Mom agrees to let me paint a mural. I make a grid on the glass over the photo Mom gave me for my birthday and a larger one on the wall, then carefully draw, then paint, our old backyard. So it’s the first thing I see every morning.

We go into Chicago and do some museums and stuff like we’re trying to appreciate being close to a city, but the days I really like are when we go to Lake Michigan with the kayaks. The lake is like the ocean, only no salt and the waves aren’t as big, but I can “surf” with my kayak after a few tries. It’s almost two hours to the beach, though, and there’s a lot more traffic here, so we only go a few times. There are some lakes to play in that are closer and we try a couple river runs with the kayaks, but the water’s so low we have to portage places and there’s nothing above a Level 1 or 2.

We’re living in a small town, but it’s surrounded by other towns, so it’s more like city to me. We actually live in a gated community. That’s so bizarre, that you have to go through a gate to get into our neighborhood. There’s a nice park and playground in the center and enough streets to make it feel like its own small town, if you knew the neighbors. No one’s outside much. Rose made a friend rollerblading in the park, but I haven’t even seen any other teenagers. Her elementary school is a block away from the gate and my high school’s not much farther, but when we go to register me for classes, we find out it’s huge, a “consolidated” high school with kids from several towns attending.

That means there’s going to be hundreds of kids in my class, not a few dozen. The first day’s going to suck, not knowing anyone. I’ve always known almost everyone.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

The Incident is contemporary YA (Young Adult). Following time-honored tradition, I’m publishing it here in installments. To be alerted when the next segment goes online, “follow” this blog. The entire story will be published here. You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to publish the story elsewhere. Thank you.

#teenmoving #teenintrouble #teenchangingschools #teenincrisis #bullying #teencontemplatingsuicide #YA #freefiction #YoungAdultFiction #fiction

THE INCIDENT – CHAPTER 4

“It’s amazing how much junk there is in this house,” says Mom.

I’m the one helping her sort through stuff in the attic, so she’s not going to get any argument from me. Rose is at Laurie’s.

“When did Dad’s parents move here?” I wonder how long it takes to collect this much stuff.

“Before he was born. Your grandfather always said it was the year Kennedy was assassinated.”

“Which Kennedy? Weren’t there a couple that got shot?”

“JFK, the President. 1963.”

“So this is fifty years of stuff.” That explains it.

Mom nods. “Thank goodness your grandmother wasn’t a saver. She threw out a lot of things. It could be worse. But I don’t think she ever came up here.”

I take a swig from my water bottle. “She’d have died of the heat.”

Mom smiles. “You’re right.”

“Most houses around here don’t even have attics.”

“True. This place was probably built by someone who moved here from back East. Most of the older houses back there have attics. I think it was the sixties when they started building one-story houses without them.”

“So there are a lot of older houses back there? Is our new house an old one?”

“You saw the photos online, Tina. It’s a very nice house built about ten years ago.”

“Does it have an attic?”

“Just an airspace, but it does have a basement.”

“We’ll have to make sure we don’t collect this much stuff in the basement.”

“You’re absolutely right!” says Mom. “You’ve been helping all morning. Do you want to go spend some time with Mary now?”

“No, I’ll stay and help you. She’s going to Grand Junction with her mom today, to get school clothes.”

“If you’d said something, I could have let you go with them with my credit card.”

“No, I think I want to wait until I see what people wear at my new school, before we go buy a bunch of clothes. What if it’s majorly different, you know?”

“Good thinking.”

We finish cleaning out the attic half way through the afternoon.

“I think we deserve a break.” Mom goes through our to-do list. “We have cleaned, taken carloads of stuff to the thrift store, done repairs and painting according to the realtor’s directions, and this place is ready for the open house this weekend. Let’s throw the cooler into the car, the kayaks onto the roof, get your sister, pick up some deli food for dinner, and spend the rest of the day at the river.”

“You weren’t expecting me to argue, were you?”

So that’s what we do. It’s a beautiful hot August day. The river is low, so the water is pretty warm and the current’s slow enough that I can paddle upstream far enough to have fun coming back down. It’s calm enough, I even tie a rope to the second kayak and help Rose get upstream far enough to ride down.

It’s a great day.

We head home when it starts to get dark. Rose is bushed and zonks out in the car. Mom carries her to bed while I take the kayaks off the car. Then Mom and I sit on the back deck in the dark, drinking sodas.

“I love the stars here,” Mom says.

“The stars will still be above us. Same ones, right?” I joke. “We’re not going to the Southern Hemisphere or anything.”

“No, but they won’t be as bright, even on dark nights. Altitude really does make a difference.”

“For real?”

“For real,” she says. For the first time she sounds sad that we’re leaving.

“Is this job really that important to make us all move like this?” I ask. “State colleges are good enough, and they’re not so horribly expensive.”

“That’s not the only reason for your father to take this job. He’d hit a dead end here. His work was beginning to bore him to death. He needed this challenge, and the promotion is giving him the recognition and reward that he’s deserved for years.”

“Good. I thought it was all about college, and I didn’t want you two to be miserable on my account.”

She puts her arm around my shoulder. “We’re not going to be miserable, not any of us. It’s a new type of adventure, that’s all.”

“When’s the moving van coming?” I ask.

“Monday. The realtor wanted furniture in place for the open house, but we need to pack up everything we can and stack it all in the garage before Saturday.”

“Thanks for the afternoon off.”

“I needed it, too.”

Her cell phone rings.

“Hi honey,” she says. “We’re almost ready for the movers, and we had a wonderful afternoon down at the river. Has the deal closed on our new house?”

She walks inside as she continues chatting with Dad. I stay in the yard, enjoying Rocky Mountain stars while I still can.

The next days go quickly. I go over to Mary’s and see all her new school clothes, and hear all about the shopping trip with a couple of our other friends. Then she comes over to our house and helps pack stuff. Mom says the movers wanted too much to do all of that. Even with Dad’s new job, she can’t see spending money on something she can do herself. She even priced renting a truck and towing the car behind it, but Dad talked her out of that. I think he felt guilty he wouldn’t be here to help with the lifting and loading.

Friday night, I stay over at Mary’s and we sneak out to a party down by the river. Someone hands me a beer and I take a tiny sip because I’m thirsty, but I don’t really like the stuff, so mostly I just hold the bottle.

“Shoot,” says Tim, the boy who took me to the dance. “Thought you were going to be designated driver for everyone once you got your license.”

“I’m not really drinking. But I don’t have my license yet, either.”

“Are you really moving? That’s what people have been saying.”

“Yeah, we leave Monday.”

“That sucks,” he says.

We end up walking away from everyone and kissing some, but he’s really not that great a kisser, or maybe I’m just not into it tonight. When we get back to the group, I find Mary.

“You ready to go?” I ask, even though she’s standing in a group with Ronny, the guy she’s been crushing on for the last six months.

“It’s your last night. You sure you want to leave?”

I can tell she wants to stay, so I stick around until she’s ready to go.

Saturday morning, once Mary finally wakes up, we walk over to my house, where the realtor has everything ready to start the open house at noon. Mom takes us all back to the river for the day, Mary and Laurie, too. We have fun, but all day I’m thinking about people walking through our house, about how Mary’s already moving on to new friends, and the fact that Monday evening I’ll be on my way to a new life I didn’t ask for.

Sunday there’s nothing to do. Mom complains she’s crazy to drive anywhere when she’s got such a long drive ahead of her, but the three of us get into the car and we go to the closest easy fourteener and walk it with her. At the top, she looks across the mountain ranges and breathes in deeply. I look away when she blinks a few times. I know it’s tears. I so hope this new place works out for all of us.

The movers are there first thing Monday morning, loading up the truck amazingly fast. They make Mom sign papers listing everything they’re packing into the truck, because they have other people’s things in there, too. That’s why we’ll probably get to our new house ahead of them. They have to unload some stuff in Kansas on their way. I hope they don’t mix up our stuff with the other people’s things. Mom’s not really happy about that, either.

When they’re gone, we walk through the house one more time, top to bottom, inside and out, to make sure there’s nothing of ours left behind. Then we drive by the realtor’s office to drop off the key and meet Mary, Laurie, and their mothers at Jack’s for a goodbye ice cream. They surprise me with a cake and birthday presents from Mary and Mom.

“You didn’t really think I forgot tomorrow’s your birthday, did you?” asks Mom.

Actually I had thought exactly that, but I grin as if such a thought never crossed my mind. I tear into my presents, even though it means I won’t have anything to open the next day. Mom’s is a big photo of the view from our deck. Mary’s is a cool book with pictures of us growing up together, our families camping together, and all the places we really love. I get a little weepy at first, then we look at the photos together and remember good times and laugh.

“Skype me as soon as you have internet,” Mary says as she hugs me.

“I will.”

I’m about to get weepy again, so I get into the car. It won’t be the same, of course, and I know she’s already getting closer to the other girls. Hopefully, I’ll make some good friends, too.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

The Incident is contemporary YA (Young Adult). Following time-honored tradition, I’m publishing it here in installments. To be alerted when the next segment goes online, “follow” this blog. The entire story will be published here. You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to publish the story elsewhere. Thank you.

#teenmoving #teenintrouble #sayinggoodbye #teenchangingschools #teenincrisis #leaving #bullying #teencontemplatingsuicide #YA #Movingasateen #freefiction #YoungAdultFiction #fiction #TheIncident #Colorado