Hi, my name is Maddox Partridge, and I hate a lot of things. I ought to tell you about them.

I hate moving houses. I hate apartments. I hate music from the eighties. I hate rowdy teenagers, especially those who drink and do drugs, and I hate Oregon. To sum it all up, I hate being sent outside of my comfort zone.

Now, I find it very ironic that I had to move from my hometown of Saint Daphne, Illinois to Nowhere, Oregon. Excuse me, I meant Eubank, Oregon. My parents did not buy a new house; no, we were headed to an apartment. Oh, and my mom brought her ‘80’s Best Hits!’ CD to join us on our roadtrip. Could it get any worse?

I mean, yes, it did, but it also got better. Over time.

Let’s set the scene. There was a car whizzing down the road, sending leaves flying in its wake. My dad had his hands on the steering wheel. My mother had her window down, drinking the September air. And I was in the backseat, having gave up hours ago trying to find my earbuds, brooding. Brooding, and bored out of my mind.

It appeared as though we were the only car, for miles on end, with nothing but the trees and the evening star to keep us company. What an audience.

My mom turned to my dad and grinned, and turned up the radio. I seethed.

“Welcome to your life…”

“There’s no turning back…”

“Even while we sleep…”

I closed my eyes as my parents sang the song together, in an off-key duet. I wished that I could be struck deaf.

I shifted my focus onto the twilight sky. The faded purple of the skies complemented the great, billowing clouds stained peach and golden by the afterglow. The monotonous synth of ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ reinforced the all but alien view outside the car.

The moment the song ended, my parents shared a peck on the lips, and then, my mom declared for all the world to hear that we were only fifteen minutes away from our new home.

I should’ve corrected her. Not a new home, Mom, apartment.

Fifteen minutes away from Nowhere, Oregon. Fifteen minutes away from my ‘new life’, as Tears For Fears claimed.

New home, new life, new, new, new.

Oh, kill me already, I thought then. I couldn’t stand the facts. I couldn’t handle the reality.

Fifteen minutes expired in the blink of an eye. Before our car came to a stop, there were some words here and there between my parents. Not me, though. I remained silent for those fifteen minutes, as I’d been for most of the trip, and neither of my parents had anything to say about my mood. By the time us newcomers arrived at Gall Wasp Apartments, someone erased twilight from the sky, and now, only tiny, twinkling stars and an almost full moon had their turn in the limelight. The moving truck and its movers had beat us by about an hour, but they already began their work. While my mom hid her reddened face, embarrassed, Dad shouted happily at them and joined the moving process without asking if they needed any help. Typical, I thought. Dad couldn’t resist a display of his musculature, especially if my mom was around. He also didn’t resist the urge to brag in their presence—he bragged about what brought us all here. A new job opportunity.

The three men heaved all the furniture, sweating and straining, up the rusted stairs leading to our new apartment. Much to my delight, we had the third of three floors all to ourselves. Mom and I watched the movers and my dad as though helpless and rooted to the spot. You wouldn’t catch me dead doing work of that magnitude. 

Seconds later, Mom and I opened the car’s trunk and we rummaged around for some personal items. The items in question—three suitcases, a pair of tangled earbuds (That’s where they were!), and a pair of wedding rings. Mom’s and Dad’s, of course. At the start of the trip, my parents removed them from their fingers, which prompted me to wonder if I had not one, but two surprises. New house, and a divorce. I was relieved when my dad explained it was a symbolic (if a little weird) gesture. Remove the rings at the start, bring them back to their fingers at the end of the trip, indicating the change in their lives. Or something. I think. I didn’t quite get it, and my mom grew offended, voicing that I jumped to conclusions, something I rarely do.

“Are you angry?” Dad’d asked.

“I’m not angry. Disappointed,” she responded.

Oh! Another thing to add to my list of the things I hated—any moment where my mom used the word ‘disappointed’.

After an hour of an uncharacteristically silent mother, she reentered her sunny mood as if nothing happened. I realized I was never to say the word ‘divorce’ in front of my parents. 

Dad handed the movers a generous tip of four dollars and thirty-nine cents (all of my pocket money). He then crossed his arms over his broad chest and exhaled, the kind of exhale you make after a long, long day of hard work, though this was really just child’s play to my dad.

“Well, it certainly is a good place, look at it!”

I snorted, and I added, “We have,” in a whisper.

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“Andrew, you said the exact same thing the last time we were here. And the time before that,” said my mom.

Embarrassed by both of my parents, I let out a small chuckle and followed those lovebirds up the rusted staircase. My mother commented that the stairs looked as though they’d collapse under our weight at any moment. While Mom and Dad strutted into the apartment like they owned the place—which they did—I stood a few feet behind them, hesitant to step inside.

I hoped that this was the first and last move in all of my life. I couldn’t bear to start life anew a third time.

In spite of the initial repulsion to the apartment, I did like it upon closer inspection; perhaps I could live here. It was as if someone managed to cram a magnificent two-storey house into the space of an apartment. I scanned the living room, and found a kitchen and a bedroom door next to it, and then a polished wooden staircase that led to a loft and another bedroom. For the most part, the gray walls were barren, though the wall against the staircase sported an oil painting of bright yellow tulips. How much did this cost? My parents’ wallets must’ve been emptied. Well, Dad did get that bonus…

“Son!” called Dad from upstairs, wrenching me from my thoughts. That’s right—I was in the doorway again, letting moths into the apartment. “Remember, your room’s up here!” I shuffled inside and shut the door behind me, a little more firmly than I’d expected. A slam, for lack of a better word.

I ambled up the stairs, not before propping my suitcase against the living room wall. I studied the loft for a millisecond and then looked to the right, where I saw my open bedroom door on one side of the hall and the bathroom door on the other. I stepped into my bedroom and recoiled at the sight of my parents, standing hand-in-hand, smiling creepily like those twins from The Shining.

“Come play with us, Danny,” I mused.

“Who let you watch that?” Mom asked, dropping my dad’s hand. 

No comment. I looked at their shoes and breathed.

I mirrored my dad’s inextinguishable smile although I knew pretty well that a smile was not the appropriate expression for the emotions swirling throughout my body. The new room didn’t surpass my old room worlds away in Saint Daphne, but as with the rest of the apartment, I understood that it would have to do. My eyes trailed to and rested upon the window cut in a semicircle to the right of the bed, and I registered the shape of the moon. As if I caught the moon spying on me, I looked elsewhere. No sheets on the mattress, not a single pillow. I groaned internally as I realized this was not the same bed as my Illinois one. Never would be.

I turned to face my parents again, and I retained my smile, rather than releasing that dejected sigh that I had in mind. An important thought rushed to my head, and at once something icy appeared in my stomach. I swallowed a frog, then a sword—I gulped, and said finally, “School? On Monday? I forgot all about that.”

“School on Monday,” Mom confirmed with a nod.

At this the sigh escaped. Was homeschool a viable option at this point? Why interact with people? I had no intention to believe it, but no plea could stop it; Mom and Dad told me days earlier I’d be attending the local public school after I shrugged off Catholic school. I knew I would blink, or breathe, or say one word and it would be Monday morning. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, snuffed like candles.

Uncaring and incapable of reading my thoughts, my mom said serenely, “Oh, baby. You know that this is the plan. I’m sorry. What’s it all about? Are you afraid of meeting new people?”

Yes.

No.

Maybe?

Yeah, the answer was a yes. I didn’t say anything, though.

“I moved eight times, Amanda. I think he can handle—”

“Shh. You know he’s sensitive.”

Salt in a cut. Soap in my eyes. That’s what it felt, to hear that. I battled the urge to roll my eyes and storm out of the room, but where would that take me? Grounded? 

Mom approached me and rested a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just keep a low profile. I understand you’re nervous, but it’s really no big deal, really. And hey, school’s for learning, not for meeting people.”

I nodded. I nodded if I believed her; I nodded if I thought she was mistaken. 

“Well, we might as well get everything else out of the car,” said Dad. My apprehensive thoughts came to a halt; in their place came anger. Ignore this, why don’t you. Dad exited the room and hurried down the stairs. Thump, thump, thump. Fall down the stairs, why don’t you.

“Don’t get mad,” Mom said, once Dad was gone. I opened my mouth, as if to say, ‘How’d you know?’ but she continued before a word slipped out of my lips. “You don’t have to go, not just yet,” she went on, “Not if you don’t want to. You can wait a minute, if you’d like.” She turned away and hurried down the stairs just as Dad did, not without sending me a deeply worried look. Apprehension evolved into anger and anger evolved into embarrassment.

I sighed again. Alone, alone. I cracked my knuckles and brought my eyes back to the window, as though the moon were a friend rather than a threat. I blinked at it, and stared for a while. I guess I was waiting for it to blink in return.

The thumps resounded.

“Maddox, are you okay?” asked my mom’s warm voice down the hallway. I pictured her then, fingers folded together, her face uneasy. “You need to talk some more? Baby, I know a lot is on your mind—I’m sorry we never got to talking about it before…” She went on and on and then some, and I huffed. Call me ‘baby’ again. 

After I realized Mom was now silent and waiting for an answer, I said, “No, I’m fine!” My words faltered, however, and my heart seemed to shrink. Despite my stutter, he managed to fool her. 

Now truly alone, I collapsed onto my bare mattress and studied the ceiling above. That word—that horrible word ‘new’—reappeared. Everything here was new. The mattress below me, the ceiling above me, the bedroom surrounding me. New school down the street. New people—

Oh, no. People. New people frightened me the most, no doubts about that. Those two words had my stomach in a chokehold. New people, new faces. Would I be able to find a new friend, in the sea of all those faces?

My stomach coiled.