You Were Mine for The Summer

The best feeling in the world is the absolute freedom, of summer. Being seventeen and living without any parents only added to the sense of what would hopefully be the perfect summer to start off my gap year. All the moving around and hours of homeschooling that lead up to graduating early finally meant something. But, I'm getting way ahead of myself...

My name is Rio; I'm a seventeen year old girl and have lived in fifty states and briefly in Puerto Rico. All while traveling with my two best friends. Oh, and assorted parents, my mom and dad, and my best friend Alli’s Dad. Your probablly wondering, "How did this happen?" or maybe even, "where can I download your life?"

I’d love to inform you but in order to do so; I need to go back to sixth grade...  

The summer of fifth grade, as I was going into sixth, my Grandparents moved to Puerto Rico, and left their five bedroom lake house to me. But, at the age of twelve I didn’t really need my own house. So, my whole family moved into the lake front property. I’m an only child, so we didn’t need three out of the five bedrooms… 

This is where best friend number one comes in, his mom had recently been transferred into the area and they need a place to stay desperately. We rented out two rooms on the west wing of the house, out to them.  The woman, Ashlee, brought her son in from the car. He introduced himself, but none of us could understand him… Because he talked with his hands.

This tall, red-haired, boy was named Sawyer. He had caught meningitis at the age of four, and the long lasting effect of the virus…  Sawyer was deaf. 

Over the course of that summer, Ashlee became one of our closest family friends. We hooked her up with the guest house in the back of the property. Also, Sawyer taught me basic American Sign Language, and slowly throughout sixth grade, I learned enough ASL to have conversations with his friends from deaf school.  I barely brought friends back from school, because I was worried too much of them judging Sawyer. He’s basically my anchor; I never knew how much impact someone could have on my life. 

Now onto seventh grade the year where we got a new girl, in such a small school this barely ever happened. The girl’s name was Allison, she was a brunette, and was reserved. She hated me, the first three months she was at school. Simply because I hung out with those girls, the snobby, stereotypical cheerleader types, but instead of cheerleading it was Volleyball. One day in home room, I said something about Ryan Shecklar… and Allison decided I would be worth getting to know. 

Alli and I were basically copies of each other’s personalities, but exact opposites in the looks department. I’m tall, blonde, and blue-green eyed, where Alli is short, brunette and brown eyed. The ultimate test of our friendship was when I had her over for a sleep-over after volleyball season; I wanted her to meet Sawyer. He was the test, turns out Alli knew how to finger spell. Needless to say she passed the test. Sawyer, Alli and I were inseparable. Then Alli’s dad gave us some much unexpected news, her parents were getting divorced. Allison stayed at my house the entire spring vacation, only texting her parents each day because she had promised my mom. We made it through all of seventh grade and half of eighth when my dad gave me some much unexpected news. 

He had been promoted, and his job required a lot of travel. My mom, he, and I would be moving around quite a bit, and leaving the house in Ashlee’s care. All the company had to do was find him a partner so they would have two opinions for all the decisions. Alli’s dad was doing basically the same job at a different company for less money… It wasn’t hard to get an agreement.

Sawyer was a last minute addition to the five of us who were leaving, it took a lot of convincing to his mom, but we left three months before school ended. We didn’t stay in hotels, or houses, but instead had a party bus/RV. It technically slept twelve but to this day I have no idea how that would have worked. 

We spent three and a half years traveling the US in the bus, nicknamed Propel, but after six months our lives really changed. 

While we were in N.Y.C, Sawyer decided he wanted to be a film-maker, to kick start his dream he made a YouTube channel, called “TheMilesWeTravel”, Alli and I were the stars. The video titles were named, by where we were to where we were going. Our first video was simply titled, New York. It was all Sawyer explaining what the channel would be about, and after he was done signing he added subtitles. Each video after that had Alli and I doing what we would have normally done. It’s almost like having our own reality T.V show. 

One early morning, we were in Montana. Alli brought out her guitar, and I started singing. That was the video that was the video that really got views rolling in. We kept up our YouTube channel out on the road, until through homeschooling, Sawyer, Alli and I all graduated early, and decided to move back home, and take a gap year. Ashlee, Sawyer’s mom, was going to come on the road with all the parents. 

We had conditions for the three of us moving back, we had to call every week, The Parental Unit reserved all rights to drop by whenever, and if we got into any trouble we were back on the road. 

My parents had asked Ashlee to build an apartment onto the house, when she had been there by herself. She had built on a tower resembling Rapunzel’s, there was a winding staircase with a circular apartment at the top, and under the floor of where the stairs were… was a secret room, themed like the bat cave, which was a movie screening room. 

So, there’s the back story, now we can jump to present day…