Something Stupid

The day I kicked a boy in the groin.

"Sweetheart, I know you don't want to do this, but trust me, it'll be good. For both of us." I sighed at my dad's words. No matter what reasoning I brought back to him as to why we shouldn't move, he always brought it back to the same thing. That it'll be good for the both of us.

Frankly, I was getting tired of people deciding what was best for me.

I packed my last box reluctantly. As I finished that up, I looked at my dark purple walls I had painted just over six months ago. A lot can change in six months. Unfortunately, my home isn't as stable as paint.

It was getting close to 8am--the time I was supposed to be heading to my new town in my new car that my dad had decided to get me as an apology. Not that I wasn't grateful, but seriously? A new car to uphold the fact that I had to have my life uprooted from its comfortability and shipped five states away?

Even though my dad didn't have the most mundane job, it didn't require him to pack up and move. He had the option of taking this incredibly dangerous job or letting someone else take it. Guess which one he chose.

Of course the job wasn't the only reason we were moving. He had been wanting to relocate for awhile. Which I understood, but couldn't he have done it after I moved away for college? I had asked him this also, but he just replied the same thing he always did. This was best. For both of us.

His job was another problem for me also. I couldn't just tell people the actual reason why we were moving--that the CIA was expecting a certain somebody to show up a certain somewhere and another certain someone was expected to catch him and bring him to justice for his crimes. Why my dad wanted me to come along on this, I don't know.

But thing is, the CIA didn't exactly know who the guy was, much less what he looked like. Just that he supposedly lived in this uber small town--and had been for awhile. Not exactly sure how they found out this information, but they're the CIA. So that pretty much explained it when my dad told me.

So basically my dad was being sent, me in tow, to a small town where the most wanted and unknown criminal lived. Splendid.

I wasn't supposed to know any of this of course, but being the daughter of one of the best CIA agents had its perks, I suppose, if you looked at it that way. The only thing my dad wouldn't tell me was how he intended to figure out who the criminal was. But whatever, the less I knew the better.

I grabbed my still-steaming cup of coffee, bravo Starbucks, off of the mountain of boxes and made my way through the house that I'd called home for the last seventeen years of my life. I was nostalgic about this place, but change came with the territory of being me.

I nodded my head and said thanks to the movers I passed as I walked through the house one more time. I tried not to think of the times me and mom had watched American Idol countless times in the living room, while deciding who'd make it to Hollywood or not.

Or how we'd cook up Thanksgiving dinners for the homeless in the kitchen while singing so loudly even the birds would fly away from the tree that was closest to the kitchen window. I tried not to think of the pain she endured but somehow kept smiling through multiple sessions of chemotherapy.

That was how my mom wanted me to remember her. Not as the women who died of cancer, but of the one who tried to see the good in the world despite the stories she heard from dad. But that was five years ago, and that was why my dad wanted to move. Everything reminded him of her and how even he couldn't save her, the man who saved lives he didn't even know.

Even though I still held a smile for the neighbors that came to say good-bye, offering their baked goods for the ride there, tears threatened to spill after plunging into the driver's seat. It suddenly hit me how much I truly loved this place. That I wouldn't be back. And I think that's what hurt me the most.