The day we moved was a strange one. The sun was bright in the blue sky above us. I looked out my window and noticed a cloud shaped like a pencil. I had always considered pencils to be extremely lucky objects. I knew the day would bring something spectacular from the moment I saw the pencil cloud.
Paige stalked into the room. Obviously, she didn’t share my optimism for the day.
“Mom says to stuff all your junk in this box.” She threw the cardboard box at me. I ducked.
“Thanks, you could have killed me with that. It was headed straight for my head.” I gathered the box and began filling it with my most treasured possessions. A gum-wrapper with my crush’s phone number on it, a plastic bobble-head doll that I swore looked just like a human version of my dog Samson, and an orange jump rope with three knots in the center were the last things I put in the box. I taped the lid shut and stood up to admire my work.
“Hurry it up, Amy!” my dad yelled up the stairs.
“I’m coming!” I grabbed my Cinderella pillow from the corner and began the long journey of scooting the box down the hall. I hadn’t decided how I would manage to get it down the stairs. I suppose I hoped a genie would appear and grant me three wishes like they did in the movies. I would wish for a unicorn, a secret hideout, and a personal assistant to carry the huge box of stuff for me.
“We’re leaving without you!” Paige called from the car. Somehow her voice traveled farther when she was frustrated.
“I’m coming! I’m coming!” I pushed the boxes down the stairs and out the front door. “I’m here!” I said as I fell off the porch. I landed on my pillow with a soft thump. “I’m all right. Don’t anybody bother calling an ambulance.” I brushed myself off and continued the journey to the car.
Samson barked at me from his place in the back seat. It appeared he was saving the seat next to him for me. I climbed in the van. Having completed my duty of getting the enormous box outside, I handed (or rather, pushed) it over to Dad who hoisted it into the U-haul attached to the back of his truck. In a matter of moments we were on our way.
Paige protested our move to the middle of nowhere with a petition signed by all twenty-seven of the kids in her class, three Spidermans, and one George Washington. She insisted it was “a monstrous tragedy to uproot a girl after her first year of junior high.” Surely they would let her spend the rest of her school years living with her best friend.
Our parents looked at the petition, then each other. Then, to Paige’s surprise, they said together, “No.”
“But why?” Paige whined.
There was no answer, just a stern look from both our mother and father. Paige vowed to never speak to either of them ever again. The silence lasted a record-breaking two weeks.
Sitting in the back of the minivan, I wondered what would become of us. How would this move change us? Would this new life be better, or would we wish we had stayed in our big blue house on
“What do you think, Samson?” I asked my puppy.
“I think this is stupid. Look around. It’s like they never even entered the twenty-first century!”
I glared at Paige. “I wasn’t talking to you. You were saying, Samson?”
“Aarf!” he replied.
“We’re here,” my mother said as she turned off the road and onto a dirt and pebble driveway.
“Whoopee,” Paige said sarcastically.
Exactly three hours and seventeen minutes after leaving the town I had grown to love, I was standing on our new front porch admiring the view. How different would it be living in the country after living in a bustling small town for the first twelve and a half years of my life? I would soon find out.
***
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” I tried to console Paige.
“Not that bad! Look around. The only thing around here to do is throw rocks!” Paige picked up a stone and threw it across the backcountry road.
“Mom says there’s an ice-cream shop in town.”
“We’re ten miles out of town. How are we supposed to get there?” Paige tossed another stone across the road. “We don’t even have any neighbors.”
I had no answer. Paige had made her point and made it well. There really was nothing around. There were no other kids for us to play with. I would be stuck with Paige all summer. Suddenly, I wished I had protested with Paige. Maybe two angry daughters would have made a difference.
“Paige! Amy!” We both turned toward the house.
“I guess mom wants us,” I said. We gathered ourselves and headed toward the house.
“What’d you want?” Paige asked when we got inside.
“What?” Mom looked confused.
“You called us. Here we are,” Paige said.
“No, I didn’t. But while you’re here…”
We didn’t know it at the time, but that day would be the start of something bigger than ourselves. Something incredible was about to happen. Our world would soon be turned inside out. There was no way we could have been prepared for the things that were to come.
