There's a house on Raritan St. It's not an exceptionally unique home; in fact, it looks like a lot of the houses on Raritan St. It looks like a lot of houses on a lot of streets in a lot of places. It is light blue with white trim, with a not-too-green-yet-far-from-dead lawn that gets mowed once a week by a child paid $20 to do so. There's a cherry tree near the front window that looks dead nearly all year round, except for a few months in the spring when it blossoms. Sometimes there is a red, 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit Convertible in the driveway outside of the two car garage; sometimes there isn't. The curtains are often drawn on all the windows, but sometimes in the summer, the pale, quiet face of a bored teenager peaks through up in the top, left most window.
Inside the walls are white and the carpet is white and there are smooth granite countertops in the kitchen and all of the bathrooms. The beige walls in the den are covered in duplicated copies of diplomas from Scarsdale High School, Columbia University, Columbia Medical School, and various other honors and degrees. In the family room, just above the brick fireplace is a blown up photo of a husband, a wife, and their two children—twins, one girl, one boy. The husband stands tall and smiles with his dark hair and thick mustache, one arm wrapped around his blonde, curly haired, toothy wife. The son smiles with his mouth closed and thick, black rimmed glasses perched high on the bridge of his nose—the glare of the flash on the lenses makes it harder to tell if his smile is reaching his eyes. He's dressed in a suit to match his father, though he doesn't look much older than ten, and the tie is draw tight around his neck. Beside him, his twin sister is flashing the same smile as their mother. She's wearing a pink and white sundress, which seems like it was made for the sole purpose of making her look like a miniature doll of her mother.
The father is a doctor, no, a surgeon, who heads up the ICU at Lawrence Hospital Center. The mother was a stay at home mom until both of her kids reached middle school, and now she volunteers down at the City Hall, heading up the Youth Advisory Panel. The daughter at sometime in her life has been a swimmer, a soccer player, a softball player, and a tennis player, but has now, at seventeen, settled on gymnastics. She gets A's in her classes, but doesn't challenge herself with the honors courses because she feels it will distract her from gymnastics. She likes to holds it over her brother's head that she's three minutes older than him. She's made sure to establish and maintain as many friendships as she could throughout high school, as it gives her an excuse to stay away from the house. The son was at first encouraged to participate in all the sports his sister did, but was withdrawn as soon as he father saw him fail miserably. He focuses on school instead and if all goes right, will graduate with a 4.32 GPA. It's been decided that he'll grow up to be a doctor, just like his father. He's shy and rather awkward at times and has not had the luck his sister has had with friends. He wishes he had an excuse to stay away from the house.
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There's a run down, but very lively trailer park just off the highway, down a hill from it about twenty yards. Cherry Hills, it's called. There's a sad excuse for a forest behind it, with a dirt path running through it along side a shallow creek. On the very edge of the wood there's one of the larger trailers. Egg shell on the outside and baby blue on the inside. It's got four off-white steps leading up to the creaky front door with the torn screen. The living room bleeds into the kitchen and the dinning room, the only separation being the few walls that distinguish the bathroom and bedroom. It's not dirty, though. The couch is second-hand and the TV doesn't get the best reception. The counters are perpetually stained and one of the legs on the kitchen table is shorter than the rest, held steady by a rarely used dictionary, but it's not dirty. Dishes are washed as soon as they are use and placed back in the cabinets and clothes are always put away in the closets.
On the wall in the bedroom are taped three pictures. One is a picture of a young boy, maybe in third grade, with light brown hair and an uncontrolled cowlick in front. There's a crease down the center of the photo, like it was folded in someone's wallet at one point. The next picture is the picture of a young girl, probably late teens or early twenties, sitting on a swing in a park with a tiny baby in her lap. The baby is giggling and smiling as the woman presses her lips to its nearly bald head; there's a huge scratch across its left cheek. And the last photo is of the same boy that is in the first one (and probably the second one). He's older now, fourteen or fifteen, and he's grinning up towards the camera as he holds a large acoustic guitar with a red bow tied around the neck. There's a tiny tree in the background with strands of popcorn hanging on it and tinsel strew about; it's Christmas. There are no pictures of a father.
There's a pristine, white uniform laid out neatly on the bed in the one bedroom and jeans and a t-shirt tossed over the arm of the couch. The mom works as many shifts as she can get as nurse at Lawrence Hospital Center, and the son recently took an after-school job at a record store a few blocks down the street to help out. He smokes and walks to school, and smokes and walks to work. He has taught himself to play guitar and has it in his head that he'll be a famous rockstar some day and his mom won't have to worry about money anymore. Sometimes he cuts classes and hangs with the kids down at "The Corner", and sometimes his teachers tell him he's either dumb or just not applying himself, but he can't find the motivation to care. He feels guilty when his mom begs him to try harder, but it never lasts long and a day later he's back to slacking off. He doesn't think anyone in this town is worth his time and he counts the days until graduation on an old calendar from 1976.