"Daniel, we're here." I heard a soft voice speak.
"Huh?" I awoke from my sleep and rubbed my eyes. I felt so groggy.
"We've arrived at our new house! It's so beautiful, don't you think?" Mum's face was full of joy.
Oh right, yeah, that.
I sighed. "It's okay I guess."
My Mum was so enthusiastic about moving, though I didn't blame her. Our old home in Cardiff was full of bad memories for the both of us. I never liked the thought of moving because I'd sort of gotten to know Cardiff and made a few friends but now it's back to square one.
"Cheer up sweetie, we can leave all the bad memories behind and start over." She kissed my forehead and began to take boxes from the car to the front door.
Although I didn't want to accept it, she was right. I needed to stop being so negative about the whole thing, maybe things would be a lot better here.
I'd unpacked most of my things by late evening. I took a longer look at my new room. It was bigger than my old room and it faced out of the front of the house. I liked the view from my window; the sky was a beautiful shade of orange. I loved watching the sunset, I'm not sure why I found it so intriguing, I just really enjoyed the sight of it. After gazing out the window for a while I turned back towards the last few boxes and sighed. I would unpack them tomorrow, for now I had the things I needed the most like my phone, my laptop and my camera. I logged into Twitter and checked my mentions. I replied to a few tweets then logged into Tumblr where I spent most the night on.
I woke up in the morning covered in sweat. The nightmare was over, thank fuck. I hated nightmares because they were always related to my day to day life and that's what made them unforgettable. I quickly ran a shower then headed downstairs to see if Mum had unpacked any of the cereal boxes considering she prefers to eat toast. I spotted the box of Cookie Crisp on the bottom shelf of the cupboard and poured myself a bowl. The house was dead silent; there was no noise to be heard apart from the birds chirping every now and again.
"Mum?" I called up the stairs after finishing my cereal.
No answer. I walked up to her room to find the bed made and her presence absent. Maybe she'd gone to the shops or something, she'd be back soon.
I headed to my room and got changed into my favourite Muse t-shirt and my black skinnies. Skinnies were pretty much all I lived in, they were so comfy, although I must admit my joggers are the most comfy piece of clothing I've ever bought. I was about to blast my music out when all of a sudden I heard a stranger's voice talking downstairs followed by my Mum's. I opened the door slightly and attempted to eavesdrop on what the stranger was talking about.
"So you only just moved here yesterday?" the stranger had a polite, reserved tone.
"Yeah, I moved here with my son Daniel. He's most likely in his bedroom. Daniel?" My Mum called.
"You have a son? Phil you should go up and say hi, introduce yourself."
I heard a shuffle and moved back from the door, checked my room to see if it was decent enough for someone else to see and placed myself on my bed, looking up at the ceiling pretending to look as natural as possible.
I heard a slight knock on the door. "Yeah?"
"Hey, um…" I turned towards the door to see a skinny, black haired boy standing by the doorframe. I smiled.
"You're Phil, right?"
He nervously smiled back. "Yeah, I live across the road. My Mum saw yours this morning and dragged me over to say hello."
The word dragged went straight through me like a dagger. He didn't want to be here, he was forced to come over. As soon as his Mum was gone he wouldn't say another word to me.
"Don't look so worried, I don't bite you know." Phil's voice pulled me back into reality and I shook my head slightly.
"If you don't want to be here you can go if you want." I sighed.
Phil laughed. "I'm sorry if I don't come across as the welcoming type. I get nervous when I meet new people but you don't look as if you're going to mug me the minute I leave so it's cool."
Wait, was he being serious? I studied his facial expression and came to the conclusion that he was definitely serious. This came as a shock to me as nobody ever wanted to talk to me in Cardiff. I was the outcast, the one who never fit in, the weirdo.
I laughed to break the silence and pointed towards my games console. "Do you play?"
"Of course! Let me see what games you have, hm." He carefully placed each case on top of one another when he'd had a look at the game title and eventually settled on Sonic.
"You like Sonic too?" Phil looked back towards me.
"Yeah, the game's pretty cool actually."
"Me too! Okay, we're playing this." Phil threw one of the controllers at me and I patted the space next to me on the bed.
We played on Sonic for a few hours until Phil gave in.
"I give up!" He threw his arms in the air. "I just can't get past this level!"
"How can you not get past the level, it's so easy! Look I'll do it for you-" I went to grab the controller from his hands.
"No! I want to do it!" He snatched it away just as I was about to make contact with it.
"But we'll be stuck here for days if you can't get past, let me do it!" I laughed. I really wanted to show him how to do it but I discovered he was stubborn. If he wanted to do it there was no persuading him.
"I'll kick you off the bed if you don't pass me the controller!" I pretended to be serious.
"You wouldn't do tha-" I aimed my feet for his hip and using all the energy I had, pushed him off the bed onto the floor. I went over to where he was just sitting and peered down at him.
"I totally wouldn't do that now, would I?" I smiled and raised my eyebrows at him.
"I hate you." He laughed.
There was a few seconds silence as he got up off the floor and just after those seconds had passed, Phil's Mum called up telling him that she was going.
Phil looked over with a partially sad face. "That was fun, we should definitely do this again sometime." He smiled.
"Sure. Next time my room should hopefully be all set up without any boxes in sight." I followed Phil to the door and just before we head downstairs he handed me a piece of paper.
I unfolded it to see a number scrawled down on it. "That's my number for when you wanna hang out next."
"Thanks." I looked back up at him and I swear time just stood still. I'd never taken in how pretty his eyes were. Light blue, they reminded me of when my Mum used to take me to the park in the summer. I'd look up and there were no clouds about and all you could see for miles was bright blue sky.
Phil coughed and turned to walk downstairs. I grabbed his wrist instinctively.
"Thanks for today, it beat my average day of just lounging around on the internet."
"It's alright, I enjoyed the company actually." He smiled once again and headed downstairs, put his shoes on, waved up to me and then followed his Mum out the door. I closed my bedroom door behind me and smiled.
For the first time in years, I actually felt a slight bit of happiness.