26

Hi everyone!! I've been gone for a wee while but in reward yall are getting a really long chapter! It also took me a while because I really want to make it the best I can for yall and it aint easy yall trust me. And also its just like fulfilling idk lmao. School is getting so hard man I actually canttt. Anyway... Yall I know youre probably gonna just ignore me but like... could yall leave me some comments because I like hearing from yall? Idk would be nice but whateva. Also tysm for 5.3K reads actually wildd!! Enjoy the chapter guyss!

I was startled awake when it was still dawning outside, by none other than my mother, who was pissed off first thing, barking at everyone to get up and help her. It got really boring really fast. It was the first day of the summer holidays, so naturally every year up until now I would have been bouncing off the walls with joy. But not this year. 

I felt unbelievably light, but also heavy. I was in a dreamy, floaty state of denial and disbelief, while everything around me was thrashing it's point in that it was really happening. And I still just refused to believe it. That these were our last moments here.

"Get your asses up we are leaving in an hour!" I could hear her heaving boxes in the hallway. 

"AN HOUR?" The outrage came from me and all of my siblings who were spread out all over the house.

I got dressed only to see that we were not even close to being packed up and ready to leave, not surprising, since we only had two days for the whole thing, nevertheless concerning. Mine and Kaiya's room was still pretty much the same as it usually was apart from the fact that our clothes and stuff we used the most were packed. So we hadn't even properly started packing.

What the fuck was mom even thinking??

"Mom, you hired a moving truck, right?" I asked, walking into the hallway, because this was not looking good. I really didn't have any idea of what she was thinking or planning to do because she hadn't really told us anything, we were just meant to follow along with whatever she said. Or even better, read her mind.

"What??" She was dragging a box along the carpet full of God knows what, sweating, and the moving truck was probably one of the less important things for her right now.

"You hired a moving truck, right?" I had to make sure.

"No, we're only taking the stuff we need, then I, and only I, will come back later to finish packing up, once we actually find a house." 

"Oh, so you listened to Lois?" I muttered, mildly taken aback.

"No! I just thought... you know, maybe she's got a point. Now could you maybe help me?" Her voice reverted right back to that whiny and demanding tone.

"But..."

"But what?!" She spat.

"I-I need to go see Reese." We'd not properly said goodbye to each other yet. Neither of us wanted to accept the fact that I was really moving and didn't want to say goodbye until the very end, so that everything felt just that little bit longer.

"WHO IS MORE IMPORTANT, YOUR LITTLE SHIT FRIEND, OR YOUR MOM? NOW HELP ME." It wasn't even a question, just another demand. I gave up and helped her, because I was about to spend the next day or something in the car with her, because if she was mad at me, oh boy would she ruin the whole day for everyone.

When I'd finished helping mom get all the boxes full of only essential things which there was somehow a real lot of, in the mini van, I had a full blown heart attack when I realised there were 10 minutes left till we were meant to be leaving. I jolted up from the sofa where me and mom had momentarily sat down for, to go to Reese's while I still had the time, beg him to let me live with him instead, but mom grabbed my arm, slowly clenching it tighter and tighter. 

"Ow!" I screamed at her, trying to pull away.

"You're not going to see him." She had a straight up predatory look on her face, like she'd gone completely off the rails. 

"Mom! He's my friend! I need to say goodbye!" I tried my best not to sound too terrified or outraged. Thankfully just then the doorbell rang. Mom gasped and loosened her grip for long enough for me to slip out and run to open the door. 

It was Reese, and Dewey and Malcolm, which surprised me.

"Kids, get in the car, we're leaving. NOW. We have to leave before the traffic gets too big." She was raging out of nowhere, and it just seemed like she was trying to cause a scene. She came up behind me, sending shivers down my spine. "Sorry boys, but Georgia can't really talk right now." She told them in the fakest, most over the top sweet voice ever.

"Mom, but-" I tried to tell her, but she slammed the door in their faces, yanked my arm and dragged me all the way to our minivan in the driveway through our half packed, eerie looking and unnaturally empty house, while I helplessly tried to protest. Mom opened the minivan door and stuffed me inside next to Richard who, like all my other siblings, was already in the car, apart from Kaiya who had frantically checked that she'd taken everything and was getting in as fast as she could when she saw what kind of state mom was in.

As mom was closing the car door behind me I saw Reese sprinting round the corner of our house towards our minivan. He came over to my window, panting and expiated, inaudibly shouting and banging on the door desperately, trying to get me to open it, while tears welled in his eyes.

 My lip was bleeding because I bit it too hard and the tears in my eyes were blurring my vision. I frantically tried the door handle, but mom had already locked the minivan and was starting the engine.

It was really happening. We were really leaving. And I was never going to see him again. And we wouldn't even get a last goodbye that wasn't ruined by mom.

Me and Reese stared at each other through the window, hopeless. 

"Goodbye." I mouthed to him as the tears I'd been desperately trying to hold back started streaming down my face. I couldn't even look at him anymore. Mom drove the minivan out the driveway and onto the road while Reese stood in our driveway in defeat and despair, watching us drive away.

"Why the fuck did you do that?" I spat at mom with pure hatred through my tears as we drove through what was no longer our neighbourhood.

"Why the fuck can't you just grow up? Did you see anyone else make a scene? Or was it just you? It's not my fault you didn't talk to your shitty friends earlier." She was right. I'm sure everyone is equally as upset as me that they had to leave their friends, on such short notice too. I just had to get better. It was my fault I didn't get to say goodbye to them, I should have done it earlier. Everything was my fault.

"Could the traffic not have waited a minute, really?" I almost laughed at how stupid it was.

"Georgia, you just have to learn to plan out things better, stop trying to blame me for everything and take responsibility for once." I gave up. There was no talking with her. Ever. "God, I always hated it here. So glad we're finally getting a fresh start." She said brightly. I knew it was an act. I knew that's not what it was about.

I replayed the last 5 minutes that seemed like an eternity in my head several times, and the more I did, the more I bitterly realised mom was jealous. She couldn't stand the fact that Reese cared about me and I cared about him. Because she didn't have that. It was about dad. She still cared about dad, but dad didn't give two shits for her. I felt bad for her. She was obviously unhappy, yet she didn't have to hurt other people because of it. And she wouldn't talk about it either. She could never get vulnerable. She always put up this tough act, and would push everyone away. She couldn't admit she had a problem either. We're kinda similar like that in a way.

We drove past that diner next to the highway me and Reese went to after we'd first met each other, which was only a few months ago in reality. How was I so torn about a friendship that was so short and barely flinched after an almost decade long one with Emma? 

"Mom, can you turn the radio on?" I croaked, hoping that it would help me block out my brain at least for a while, because I'm just the kind of bitch that ignores all her problems because they're too problematic until they swallow me whole.

"No, how often do we get to spend time as a family? Exactly, so now is the perfect opportunity." Again, it wasn't even a question. I don't really know where she was going with that one because literally no one was in a talking mood right now.

"Can you please just turn it on?" I couldn't deal with it. It felt like I had literal brain stew up there. Too many thoughts and emotions, none of them clear enough to be actually deciphered because they all overlapped each other and they were all going around in endless circles and I just wanted it to shut the fuck up because it was too much and I didn't have the brain capacity to address them right now. I just wanted to turn my emotions and my brain off for a while, so I didn't have to face the heart-breaking reality that I had just left my only friend, my favourite person, behind. Our friendship might as well have never even happened. It was just a memory. I didn't even get the chance to give him anything so he could remember me. I don't think I could ever find someone to replace him. I don't think anyone could ever live up to that. I just didn't want to think about it right now.

"No, didn't you hear me?"

Tears started streaming from my eyes and I put my hand over my mouth in my best attempt to stifle my sobs and I turned my face towards the door.

"Are you really crying right now because I won't put the radio on?"

 Well I'm sure thats what it looked like to her, because she just didn't understand. She didn't know what it was like. I just wished I could have explained it to her. I wished I'd had that certainty that if I told her something vulnerable like the fact that my brain won't shut the fuck up when I need it to that she won't just tell me to fucking grow up, or that she wouldn't throw it back in my face later when she was mad at me or that she wouldn't simply laugh at me on the spot. And I was already upset anyway, so she was just making stuff worse.

"Why did we have to move so fast? Couldn't it have waited like a week?" I'd noticed Caleb visibly holding back from saying this the whole time we'd been in the car, but he couldn't hold it in anymore. "To pack properly, at least? It's not like we've got anywhere to go to, we're not in a rush or anything. God, it's summer!"

"I just told you. I hate it here. And you'll get to meet all the town kids before school starts. Besides, aren't you guys excited to see gran, aunt Leslie and Karen?"

Our 12 year old cousin, Karen, who lived with our gran and her mom, aunt Leslie, just happened to be a spoiled fucking brat that didn't love us all that much, and only ever hung out with us cause she didn't have anyone else, which mom was completely oblivious to. I kinda liked aunt Leslie, but she was literally always at work and it just so happened that her and mom never really liked each other.

The last time we'd seen them was last summer for a week, it was a tradition. We would usually have a family gathering, mom's brother and sister would bring their families too. Gran lived in a big house on a farm, so it was the perfect place. I loved going there, mainly because of the memories it brought back. It used to be way more fun when we were little, and dad would've still been there and we were all happy back then.

 "Not really." Caleb grunted.

"Come on, they're our family. And you know who just happens to live 40 minutes from where gran lives?"

"Who?"

"Dad."

"Oh fuck no. Don't you fucking tell me you want to go to see him?"

"We're all going to go see him. He's your father after all."

"Mom no! Take the fucking hint, he left us, remember? He doesn't give a shit about us! So stop acting like he does and he wants to see us! Jesus fucking Christ, mom!"

Mom didn't say anything for a long time. I looked over at her in the rear view mirror. She was biting her lip and staring emotionlessly at the road.

"We're gonna have to stop somewhere for food soon, aren't we?" She tried to lighten the mood again.

"Yeah." Was the only response she got.

We ended up stopping at a diner way too similar to the one me and Reese went to. I kept on finding little things that reminded me of him everywhere I looked.

The music that played inside the dinner was a song that came on the radio when we listened to it toghether often. Someone in the dinner was wearing the same shoes that he always wore. For a second I thought he was actually there, because someone sounded eerily similar to him and talked in the same manner.

None of the things were special in any way, but they were, because they reminded me of him.

First thing that I did when we went inside was to rush to the toilet, which reminded me of when I found him crying in the bathroom not so long ago, which got me wanting to cry in the bathroom stall, but I just couldn't anymore. I didn't have any tears left. It felt like my soul had been retched out my body. I was just a lifeless pulp. 

Everything felt so incomplete. Torn. Unfinished. Rushed. Why? Why did our last moments toghether have to be so... so heart wrenching?