The morning dawned cool and rainy, and the dismal weathered was a perfect match for my mood. I never dreamed I would be doing this, but my mother had decided for us that we were moving. As I zipped the last of my things into my school backpack, I looked around my room in the only home I had ever known. I had a lot of memories here, home, school, friends, all of which were being left behind. Last night, Anna and Cherise had joined me on the deck and we had drunk sodas and eaten chips and popcorn and talked about plans for camp next summer. Somehow we would find a way to communicate... My laptop was out, since Mother wanted us to cut all ties to our life here.
"Charlotte! Breakfast! " the bellow startled me out of my reverie and I took a last look around my room with a sigh. I pulled the hood of my black hoodie up over my head and made my way downstairs, sticking my earphones in.
"Get those things out of your ears, Char. " my mother looked tired, which would make her cranky and irritable. Great. "How many times have I told you, no music at the table. Now eat fast so I can pack these dishes. We've got to get on the road. " she put a cup of coffee by my place and gestured at the table before turning away to the sink to wash the pan. I looked down at the plate of eggs and toast with no appetite and sat down.
I still didn't understand why we had to go. My father had been killed in a car crash on his way home from work and for two months I had moped around the house, wishing the hurt would pass but knowing it wouldn't. Life was never going to be the same ever again. So why did we have to leave our house behind too?! The memories here were all we had left.
"I wish we didn't have to go, " I attempted even though I knew it was probably in vain. Sure enough, my mother whirled on me, her eyes flashing fire. "Charlotte! We talked about this. I can't afford to keep up the mortgage payments without your father's share of the income, I got more responsibility than I can handle with you and my work isn't enough. Now hurry up and eat!"
I ate. As soon as I cleared my plate and drained my coffee she whisked my dishes away and shooed me out of the room, complaining that I was making us lose time. I returned to my room and rolled up my sleeping bag and foam mattress I'd slept on. I looked around my bare, empty room morosely, then picked up my knapsack and carried my things out to the car. There was a small U-Haul trailer into which I tossed my bed roll and then tucked my bag in by my feet. The backseat was packed full to bursting with Mother's things.. The car smelled faintly of mothballs and I wrinkled my nose as my mother locked the house, tossing her key in through the mail slot, and she hurried to the driver's side. She put the box of dishes and her own overnight bag on the floor of the backseat and we were off, without so much as a backward glance, away from the only life I had ever known, away from the home in had grown up in. I put my earphones in and turned to the window so she wouldn't notice me crying.
We drove all day and late into the night, barely stopping for rest or food. Once, when I complained that my muscles were sore from last night's camp bed, and I wanted to walk around, Mother glared at me with such vehemence that I shut up, meekly buying my chips and soda.
She was silent for a while and then she turned to glance at me with that stern, critical eye that seemed like the only way she could look at me of late.
"Don't slouch, Charlotte."
For once she said nothing when I put my earphones in and cranked the volume. Why do you hate me? I wanted to ask. You are taking me away from my friends, my school, the only life I have ever really known, and the only words you can find for me are criticisms about how I sit, how I delay us. Isn't this supposed to be an adventure? Isn't that what you promised? I didn't understand her, I would never understand her. Other people talked about their moms as their confidant, their best friend, their refuge in trouble, but that was something I would never really understand. I would never know the freedoms the truckers speeding past us knew, with the peace and quiet of the open road a way of life. How I longed to experience that feeling. There might not be bars on my window, or locks on my door, but I felt like a prisoner.
"I'm like a bird / I'll only fly away/ I don't know where my soul is / I don't know where my home is." - Nelly Furtado