There was no talking her out of it. I had tried to tell her that the guy raped me was gone and hadn’t touched me since that one night. Damien tried to tell her she was being irrational and that she needed to calm down. Even when Lucas arrived at home he told her that she was being stupid and then proceeded to tell me that I was being selfish. My mother never budged in her opinion and the three of us stopped trying to dissuade her.
We packed clothes, food, and any personal possessions that we deemed too valuable to replace. Four ATV’s and a motorcycle were pushed into a small trailer. The trailer was attached to the black SUV that Lucas would be driving. Damien would be driving the Mercedes Benz with dark tinted windows and all the luggage shoved into the trunk and back seat area. My mother was driving her compact BMW convertible that was too small to hold anything but her own valuables. I shared a ride with Lucas, mostly because he would have the music too loud to talk to me and he didn’t care too much about my personal business anyway.
“I hope you know that I think this is one of the most selfish things you could ever do.” Lucas said, his crystal blue eyes turning hard with anger. He put the key in the ignition and turned the car on. As I had expected, music came pounding out of the speakers. And so the start of our road trip to a new life.
My mother had picked sierra-Nevada, California as our new home. She couldn’t bear to leave the ocean on the east coast behind, so what better place, in her mind, than California where all it seemed to be was beach and ocean. And she figured mountains would be something even more like home, where we had lived in the mountains miles away from civilization.
It took us three days to drive from Virginia to California. Each night we stopped at the nicest hotel we could find, then the next morning we would wake up earlier than normal. We finally arrived in California we were forced to stay in a hotel for another week while trying to find a house that suited my parent’s expensive taste. It was surprisingly easy; almost all of the houses in California were pricy. The house the parents found was a three story house with an attic and basement that was settled into the base of the sierra-Nevada Mountains. A mile away from our back door was our own personal lake that entered into the pacific oven miles later.
The house itself took up a full acre of land. It was modeled after old southern mansions that were common to savannah and new oceans. The outside of the house was made up of white plastic that was made to look like wooden paneling. A wide porch stretched across the front and around the sides of the house. The front door was made of two clear glass doors that opened to a large entrance area. A large set of stairs led from the first floor to the second were spread across the entire entrance area. There was a large doorway sized hole in the right wall that lead into a dining area. Which then lead to the kitchen, then to the living room and the more formal salon room. All the first floor rooms were open rooms, most stretched up to the third floor. It made the currently empty areas feel too open and barren, stressing my mothers constant urge to shop.
The second floor was reserved for my parents. The entire floor was split into four areas. There’re bedroom took up almost half of the floor. It was pushed into the corner of the house furthest from the staircase leading from the first to second floor. On the completely opposite side of the bedroom was another set of narrow stairs that led to the third floor. Spreading in front of the bigger staircase and stretching all the way to the second one was sitting area that would suit most families as a perfectly comfortable living room. Towards the back of the living room was a separate room that could have held an entire bedroom or an office. Next to the office, but not connected to it, was the master bathroom. The bathroom could have done its duty for all four of us but could only be reached by going through the bedroom.
The stairs going from the second floor to the third were so unlike the steps going from the first to second floor it was like going into a different house. They were not grand or carpeted. Instead they were too narrow for even two people as thin as Lucas and I to walk side by side up them. They were made out of simply wood. It looked as if they had been painted white some time ago, but the white lead paint had, since then, peeled and collected in the corners. The narrow stairs just lead to a similar narrow hallway.
There were three doorways down the entire length of the hallway. The first door on the right had a stair case similar to the one between the second and third floor that lead to the attic. The second door which was sitting on the left further down from the attic stairs was the door to my room. And the final door at the end of the hallway was the door to Lucas’s room.
My room was large, too large to make me happy but nothing about the house was small. The emptiness of the room made it feel similar to the way the living room on the first floor had felt. But the two small windows positioned on one wall near the ceiling made the room feel just a bit smaller, which I took gratitude for. The walls were painted a sun faded pink, that let me know that a girl had occupied the room before me. The color would be changing to dark red soon, or if I could get my mother to agree, black. There were two other doors in the room; they faced each other on completely opposite sides of the room. The one to the right was a large walk in closet. There were two different levels that could hold hangers and house shirts on each shelf. There was a completely separate shelf for shoes that I was sure my mother would be happy to help me fill. The door to the left of the room lead to my own personal bathroom. One entire wall was made of windows, which made me slightly uncomfortable when getting too close and when I thought about taking a shower or using the bathroom. But the windows faced the forest that stretched out before the lake; there was no way anyone would be able to see me. The shower was made of four walls of warped glass to deform the shape of the person inside. A few steps away from the shower was an old fashion style claw footed tub. Across from the tub was a smaller section that held a toilet and a small sink. Above the sink hung three plain white shelves instead of a typical medicine cabinet.
Damien and Lucas were bringing luggage into the room it belonged to. There were only two suit cases for me, both of which simply held clothes. Most of the things I had kept in my room were small trinkets that meant nothing to me. My mom, on the other hand, had grabbed everything that hung in my jewelry box and all the bejeweled figurines that had sat on shelves and my dresser.
“Are you doing aright?” my mother asked quietly as she set down a small bag that I was sure held the jewelry and figurines.
“Well I’m in a completely different state, on the completely opposite side of the united states. On top of all that I have a major headache that I am thinking is from the lack of an alcoholic beverage.” The smile on her face fell at the words I said, but I didn’t feel about saying them, I hadn’t wanted to say them in the first place.
“Your stepfather-“
“You mean Damien.” I corrected her as I sat myself down on the bare wooden floor.
“Damien thought that you wouldn’t be feeling too well so when he went out to get diner he also grabbed you a couple of different energy drinks. He thinks that it will help get rid of your headache.” She paused, as if waiting for me to say something. I wanted to know how the hell Damien would know about something like this; but I really didn’t want to hear his little sob story and my mother finally turned to leave. “They’re in Lucas’s mini fridge downstairs if you want one.”
I stayed where I was and listened to my mothers footsteps down those narrow wooden steps. At the same time I was thinking about whether or not to actually grab one of the energy drinks. My headache won out and I forced myself onto my feet and down the two different sets of stairs. I didn’t see anyone, which wasn’t surprising, considering how big the house was. There were at least ten different cans of energy drinks. Half of them were small red bull cans, even though they tasted like cans of piss they would probably make the permanent hangover I was experiencing disappear quicker. There were two cans of monster and also full throttle. The last can was bawls, which I wanted badly but would probably wait until I was feeling better so that way I could enjoy it.
I grabbed two cans of red bull, a can of monster, and a can of full throttle. I took them up to my room without seeing anyone again; I heard the voices of Damien and my mother on the second floor, and I was pretty sure Lucas was in his room trying to connect his laptop to any type of wireless internet connection. The four energy drinks lasted me almost two days and kept me from having to go down to the kitchen to grab food. In those two days my mother had managed to buy a new refrigerator, a new microwave, a new washer and dryer, a new big screen television (alone with a new DVD player), and a new cordless phone. Damien took care of cable, phone, and internet access; that way Lucas didn’t have to steal the internet connection from our neighbors who lived miles away. Damien even managed to get running water and electricity on the first night. The only thing Lucas had managed was to successfully steal internet and to get three different girls numbers while the whole family was shopping for new bedroom sets.  
My new bedroom was quite to my liking, unlike my last bedroom had been. The walls were painted a dark red, mostly because my mother was convinced that black had something to do with the rape incident. I chose a small twin bed with just a bed frame and box spring underneath it, there we no footboard or headboard to go with it. The red sheet that hugged the mattress was the same color as the walls, as were some of the pillows. The top blanket was a soft black blanket with pieces of red weaved through it. Most of the pillows were black and there were at least six of them total. All of the furniture was made out of dark natural wood. There was a large desk next to the bathroom door that had a new laptop (which I hadn’t had before) sitting on it. There were plenty of drawers along with two different secret cubbies. My mother must’ve gotten the smaller things before because right after the desk was put together they were sitting in they’re proper place. There was a silver stapler, a matching hole punch, a silver mesh pencil holder that was full of new mechanical pencils, and a silver box built up with so many pink erasers that the lid couldn’t close all the way. A new printer was put into the widest cubby on the bottom with a stack of clean white printer paper next to it. A solid silver waste basket was pushed as close to the desk as it could get and was hiding behind a panel of wood that made up one side of the desk so that the trash couldn’t be seen from the door to my room. A new swiveling desk chair was pushed as far under the desk as it could get. The chair was upholstered in genuine black leather, giving the room the thick smell that leather had. A new book shelf was a few steps from the desk. It was made of the same dark wood as the desk. The book shelf was tall enough to pass a few inches below the two small windows and it was big enough to almost take up the whole wall. There weren’t any books sitting on the shelves yet, and I was sure it would take a long time to fill them. Directly across from the book shelves was my small bed and to the right of the bed was my dresser. The dresser had five large drawers that I didn’t need; I had so much space in the closet already. All my clothes were sitting organized in the closet and it wasn’t even close to being half full.
Once all the new furniture was set in place the room seemed to shrink a few sizes. It was comfortable now, instead of being too barren and strange. The entire house seemed to be like that. It took less than a day to put all the furniture where my mother wanted it, thanks mostly in part to the moving men Damien had hired. The huge house was habitable the day after we had moved in.