Surprisingly, Finn hadn't fought me that hard on my room selection. His room was across the hall and hopefully that wouldn't turn out to be a bad idea. Sharing a bathroom would suck, obviously, but I had already been doing it since forever.

It took about a week to fully unpack and get settled in, but I had actually started to get excited. New surroundings and new opportunities! I wanted to take advantage of the forest being so close to the house, so I walked around for a bit, taking pictures of pretty much everything. I didn't go in very far, but I could already tell I would be spending a lot of time outside.

I went back inside the house to show my mom the pictures. "Ma, look! Because of the rain, everything is so green! Isn't it pretty?"

She always liked looking at my pictures and even showed them to her friends at work. She was a nurse and luckily got a job in Forks. Apparently, there was already juicy gossip going around the hospital, because she briefly glanced at my camera and told me, "Yeah, sweetie, that's beautiful!" Then she launched into some scandal between one of the nurses and a doctor.

I was a good listener, but I couldn't help the slight disappointment, and I felt myself just nodding along. She certainly couldn't tell that she didn't have my full attention, so I didn't feel too bad.

Afterwards, I went to my room to connect my camera to my laptop. I liked to tweak the photos with different filters and make them more interesting. Nature was the best model, I thought.

I had put together a giant board for my pictures when we first got to the house, and I already had a good amount of it covered. With the new photos printed out, I could tell I would have to expand the board.

Finn knocked and opened the door simultaneously. "'Sup bro. What nerdy thing are you doing now?"

I stuck my tongue out at him and went back to my laptop. "I'm not your bro. And I'm printing out my pictures to hang up. Nothing nerdy about that, dummy."

"Well, whatever, you're still a nerd." He looked around my room and saw Charly by my bed. "Hey buddddy! How you doin', huh?" He continued to speak like that and rub his belly before suddenly yanking my ponytail and running away, laughing.

"Ugh, Finn, you stupid-head! Yeah, you better run!" I rubbed my sore head and fixed my hair. Jeez, you would think my brother would act like he was in his 20s, but no.

It was kind of weird, I guess, that we both lived at home still. I was 19 and a sophomore in college while my brother was 23, had only one year of college under his belt before he quit, and wanted to be a rock star. Both of us had gone to the same community college back home, but he failed most of his classes. I didn't do so hot in high school, but for some reason college really worked for me. Suddenly, I was making A's left and right! I guess that was why Finn started calling me a nerd... or maybe photography was actually nerdy, I had no idea.

I disconnected my camera from the laptop and turned them both off, right in time for my mom to yell out that the food was ready.

Finn and I raced down the stairs, punching each other in the arms.

"Hey! You two, cut it out!" My dad said to us as we walked into the kitchen. We weren't the type of family that sat down at the dining room table, so he had a plate with him in the living room. I rolled my eyes at him, while Finn made a funny face at his back. We laughed, causing my dad to glare at us, then grabbed our own plates of food.

"Thanks," we both said briefly to my mom, and ran up to our rooms.

Being a whole floor away from my dad really did feel better. In a small house, with one floor, you tended to run into each other constantly. I figured the space would calm him down some, since I seemed to be the cause of his rage daily. Obviously, it didn't matter how much space there was between us, my dad just sort of hated me.

Oh well.

We had only been at the house for about a month when kids started pulling pranks on us. I still hadn't met anyone, so there was no telling who was doing it.

"Tilly, can you clean the front door while we're at work, please?" my mom said.

I groaned. "Ugh, what happened now?"

When I opened the door, there was yellow goop all over it. On the ground, something red had some of the stuff in it. Before I touched anything, I went back to my room and put on rain boots and clothes I could dirty up. With gloves, I picked up the red thing- could it be a condom? Did they even make red condoms? Hmm... gross.

I filled a bucket with soapy water and scrubbed away with a rough sponge. It wasn't egg, but maybe that egg mix you could buy at the grocery store. Both the yellow goop and the red thing puzzled me. Who would do something like that anyway? Finn and I had no friends yet, let alone enemies. If it was people our age, then it would be extremely ridiculous. Did college kids still do things like throw toilet paper in trees and egg doors anymore? I figured that stuff ended around junior high.

My best criminal candidate was a guy that lived just a few doors down. It obviously wasn't the little old lady next door. He was relatively my age, but he could have been younger. Maybe high schoolers around here did that kind of thing to the town's newcomers. If I had a person to ask, I would have. For now, he's the suspect, I thought to myself.

Every time something happened, I blamed that kid. When I told my mom my theory, she just said I was obsessed with him. Sure, from a distance he seemed somewhat attractive... in that I'm-a-little-punk kind of way. Finn said I just sounded like an old man yelling at youngsters to get off the lawn. He didn't have to clean up the mess though.

Since Charly was an inside dog, he couldn't really help with the things happening outside. I noticed that the crimes happened late at night, so that I could wake up to the not so nice surprise to clean up.

I hated the feeling I got from those things. It was like my sense of security was being tested or threatened. Sure, it started with egging the door, next was writing on the cars, then throwing rocks at the windows. I was definitely getting paranoid, but I just didn't like what was happening. I wanted to end it. Many times I thought about walking to his house and questioning him, maybe even talk to his mother, since he wanted to act like a child.

When I cleaned up trash in the yard or toilet paper in the trees, I made sure to show no emotion. I acted like it was a normal thing to do, just in case he was watching to see my reaction. Hopefully, he would end it if it was no fun anymore.

I rinsed the door off with the hose and stretched my back. I had hurt it a while back, so little things seemed to strain it. When I said I was tired of cleaning up, I meant it literally and figuratively.