Dear diary,
On long car trips, the family mini-van is like a portable argument.
Auntie Evelyn drives, of course. She doesn't trust Leon with the car anymore, not after he drove her old Mazda into a brick wall straight after he got his permit.
She'll be sitting there, hands clutching the steering wheel, deathstaring the license plate of the car in front of us. She never, ever talks during road trips, she just glares out the windscreen with her lips pursed, handbag in her lap, ready to make a run for it if need be.
Leon, my brother, and the bane of my existence, sits in the passenger seat controlling the radio. When I argue that I should be allowed to sit there sometimes he starts talking all smart, saying that there's a hierarchy in this family and in it, he is above me. He says that since he's the oldest, I have to sit in the back with the cat in her cage.
The cat that hisses and claws every time there's a bump in the road, and scratches up car seats if she's ever let out.
However, sitting in the back gives me the best position to kick the back of his chair. My bare feet drum hard against the grey leather interior whenever he turns on a Metallica or Eminem song. And he'll reach an arm back to try and punch my legs. When he does this, I lay my legs to the side, draping them over Myrtle's cage.
Fran used to sit in the seats behind me, taking up a whole cushioned bench with her legs and bags. She used to reach over and pull my hair or ram the back of my seat with her knees if she got bored.
Fran never could sit still, she would have her legs hanging over the back of her seat one minute, and then she would be lying down in her seat the next. She used to say that car trips made her ADHD act up, just to have Evelyn reprimand her for making light of a mental condition so many struggled with every day. She would of course roll her eyes and go back to her video game or her MP3 player or whatever would be capturing her attention for the next few seconds.
Yes, I hate car trips, but this one feels different.
Today we're moving to Los Angeles from Maine. A long way, right?
Fran died only one month ago, and already it feels like years. It feels like losing her had made me age fifty years, and I'm now an old woman looking over her ancient photo albums. Blowing off dust that has accumulated on the black and white pictures of old, dead family.
The van I'm sitting in is stiff and silent.
The tops of my thighs are getting stuck to the seats and unsticking loudly. We're pretending that 'Piano Man' by Billy Joel is enough to fill the awkward silence looming over us but we all know it's not.
I didn't want to move. I wanted to stay in the house where I lived with Fran and my Mom and my dog, Peanuts before they all died.
I wanted to stay there and remember them. But people grieve in different ways, and the way Evelyn chose to grieve was to force both me and my brother to pack our bags and move across the country to start a new life and make new friends.
Even Leon is quiet, and it seems like he never stops speaking. I know what he's thinking though. Once he turns eighteen he's out of here. Off to Alaska or Idaho or Italy or Australia or wherever in the world he wanted to go.
I yearn for the freedom he'll be getting in two short months. Because when he's gone I'll be stuck with only my emotionally vacant auntie and my dead sister's cat.
Evelyn, who is an angry driver on a good day, looks positively furious. I bet she can't even see her eyes are so narrowed.
I wont dare look in the back seat. It feels too empty without her. Being in this van doesn't seem right without her annoyingly high-pitched voice ringing in my ears. And I'd whine "Shut up Fran!" Like the ungrateful teenager I am. But now I wish that I had never said anything mean to her ever, because right now I'd gladly cut fifty years off fifty years of my life to hear her voice again.
Just to hear her screech along to the lyrics of a Black-Eyed-Peas song, I would gladly trade in my soul.
Just as I stopped writing that sentence The van screeched to a halt.
"This is the place." Auntie Evelyn said, grabbing her purse and hopping out of her car, slamming the door shut behind her.
"You're kidding me." Leon said flatly, also getting out of the car. He raised his sunglasses onto his head to get a closer look at the apparent castle we were staying in.
"I told you guys it was great! What were you expecting?" Auntie was trying so hard and it made me sort of sad.
Evelyn used to be the prettiest girl in Rose-Haven. She had long, thick wavy brown hair and green eyes like pine trees. Even as a teenager she had skin clear like a baby and teeth straight and white. Her smile won her sashes and crowns and ribbons. So many that there was a box up in our old attic stuffed with all of her old first place ribbons and trophies.
Now, because of a mixture of stress and age, her looks were beginning to fade tremendously. She got her first grey hair at age twenty-seven, six months after being granted custody of her late sister's three children. And now, six years later at the age of thirty-three, she had given up on dying her silver strands all together, and had settled on becoming an old, ugly spinster much younger than she thought she would.
Sometimes, (And she would never tell anyone this) Evelyn wished that it was her younger sister, Claire who had topped herself instead of her big sister, Virginia. She no doubt had more reasons to.
Twenty three and no single romantic prospect on the horizon. Working a job that, although was her dream, barely made enough money to pay the bills forcing her onto welfare. All of this, while still stuck in the shadow of her two big sisters.
One, an ex-beauty queen with enough diamond necklaces and tiara's to put the royal family to shame.
And another, a successful defense attorney with three beautiful and healthy children.
Evelyn was ashamed of these thoughts, and would stuff them away into the depths of her brain as quickly as they had surfaced. But they were still there, and they still made her sick.
Did Claire think this about her too? Probably. Even though the beautiful middle child was the most beautiful, Virginia was by far the most popular. Not only between the sisters, but with everyone else as well. She was kind. And smart, and funny and she had a way of making you feel special when you were talking to her that Evelyn had not experienced with anyone else.
Evelyn thought about Virginia when she looked at me. She said I looked like her in a lot of ways, but in some ways I also looked like my father. His name was Domenic Mancini, and I can barely remember him. And before Francesca died she never met her father at all.
He left when Virginia was still pregnant. To photograph the cheetah's in Iran for National Geographic. He died on the aeroplane ride home after six months away. He was eager to meet his new daughter, who his wife had named Francesca.
"I wasn't expecting a fucking castle." Leon replied, flicking his glasses back down over his eyes.
"Language! Don't swear in front of Valentina she is just a child!" Telling off Leon was a part of Auntie Evelyn's daily ritual. Along with doing laundry, getting her nails done and bathing in the blood of her virgin servants.
When I was young and my mother had just died, to make me feel better Leon used to tell me stories about the evil Countess Evelyn, who kept spiders as pets and could turn men to stone with just one look. He told me that checking inside her mouth was no good because vampires would hide their fangs during the daytime.
The stories came to an end when I tried to stake my Auntie though the heart with a sharpened stick. It didn't work, and I was grounded for two weeks.
"She's not a child, she's nearly fifteen, right Val?" Leon looked to me and grinned.
I stayed silent, just smiling to myself. Auntie rolled her eyes and handed me two boxes. "Go put these in your room." She said "Yours is the one with the purple walls, I thought you'd like that one."
She smiled at me and I smiled back. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. Maybe a new area would be just what we needed to heal after a loss this huge. My outlook was optimistic as I scaled the stairs to my new room and when I got in I set the boxes down on the floor and took my diary and pen out of my messenger bag once more.
The new house is bigger than I thought. Much bigger than the last one. And it looks haunted too, which is definitely a plus. Maybe I can meet someone at school who knows about the history here and can fill me in. Honestly, I'll be lucky if I make any friends at all.
One friend will be an improvement on how things were in Rose-Haven.
Anyway, I need to start unpacking now or I'll be sleeping on just a mattress so until next time,
Yours sincerely,
Valentina Rose Mancini
(A/N: Thankyou for reading the first chapter of this story! I hope you liked it and if you did please review and tell me what you think I should work on or improve on)