The sunshine was a bit of an adjustment for me, considering I moved to Seattle when I was seventeen and had been living there since. Now, at twenty-three, leaving Seattle was like giving up a part of myself. But at the same time, it felt like leaving a dark part of my past, the part I had used to cope with my parents' divorce. My parents divorced when I was fifteen. Mostly, it was my mother's fault. She left my father for some rich man in the city. Apparently he was a baker. After a month of my father telling me and Prim that she was 'on a business trip', Mother sent a bunch of paperwork I didn't understand at the time. Daddy filled it out and sent it back to her. And like that, she was gone forever. Mother wanted custody of me and my sister. The only reason she got it was because Dad worked from six in the morning until eight in the evening. I resented my mother. Every moment I spent with her was like going through Chinese Water Torture, unbearable and irritating. So the day I turn seventeen I moved to Seattle to live with my dad. Then he changed jobs and moved to Washington, D.C. I don't remember where my Mother ended up, but I know it wasn't in D.C. with my dad. The sound of blaring horns pulled me out of my memory. It was getting dark so I pulled into a nice hotel to stay the night. As I parked the car, I looked around at the hotel. It looked expensive, but I didn't care-this wasn't my bill anyway. Corporate told me before I left that they would pay for any and all expenses during my trip to Santa Cruz. For some reason, the busle in the lobby surprised me. I pushed my through the crowd to the front desk. A woman in a sharp pantsuit sat behind an old computer there. She put her finger up as a sign for me to wait, because she was on the telephone. I stood there patiently and pulled a hair off my blazer. "How may I help you?" The woman said as she hung up the telephone. "I need a room," I said stupidly. She nodded. "Is it just you tonight?" "Yes," I said, "it is." The woman typed on her keyboard a little and clicked her mouse a few times. "Alright," she said. "Your room is on the second floor. It's room 211." "Thank you," I said as I grabbed the key card and sauntered over to the elevator.