Unexpected

Chapter 1

A month has passed when we moved to Florida. Summer is still in the hearts of the Florida people. Every one of them wore bathing suits, Hawaiian shirts, shorts, short shorts, and sunglasses as far as I can see.

"Isn't this great guys? Doesn't the smell of the summer breeze makes you want to jump up and splash into the ocean?" Mom says while pointing at the beach and dancing in the car. We all looked at her, with grumpy faces.

"I know its hard to start fitting in again. But at least give it a try." Mom looks at us. The SUV was not really big enough for us all, so Ray sits at back, since he's the biggest while Jessie and I sit at the middle.

Lisa snorted as Mom reassured us. Ray was listening to music with his iphone, so he didn't actually heard her. As for me, I look at Mom and say:

"Yeah. We're all excited to 'start' again."

"Cheer up, Mark. Maybe you'll meet someone like Lisa here at Miami." Dad cuts in, looking at me through the rearview mirror.

"Dad, there's no possibility that a person would act and be like the person whom I've known forever." I crossed my arms, signaling that I'm done talking.

Mom looked at Dad, he did the same. Then silence filled the air. All day, we drove near the coast, looking at the big, vast, ocean. We passed malls, parks, business, and weirdly, many 7-11 stores.

Just as we were coming towards the street our house was located, we passed by the school Ray, Jessie, and I are going. The school was named Gilmore National High School. It has an outside basketball court, a soccer field surrounded by benches, a playground near the parking lot, and a big banner hang from the main entrance saying 'Welcome, Gilmorians'

"Gilmorians? Doesn't it sounds like an alien from the movie Star Wars or Star Trek?" Ray says, and laughed at his own joke. Nobody acknowledged him, so he returns listening to his music again.

I thought to myself, is there really going to be easy to fit in? I mean, I'm a Filipino, my English is great and all, but will the kids at this school accept me? Well its hard to tell, I haven't even met people with my age in our neighborhood.

•••

I gotta hand it to Dad, he work really hard. The sight of our house made my Mom screamed, made Jessie hang open her mouth, and made Ray and I stare. The house was totally amazing! Outside, the house has two, no three floors, including the basement, which is not what we expected as a basement supposed to be. Its a bedroom, a really big bedroom, complete with a Plasma screen tv and our PS4 console.

"Who wants the big room?" Dad say, gesturing his hand through the whole room.

Since its a boy-like room, that means Jessie is out. That leaves Ray and I. We started arguing, saying he's the eldest but I'm the smart one. But Dad stopped us, he picked up a small bowl, and wrote something on 2 Post-it paper, folded them and put them on the bowl.

"Pick one." Dad says, handing us tge bowl.

Ray picked up the one the left side, mine was the right one. And together we opened it.

"You win." I say aloud.

"Congratulations. You get the big room." Mom says, and then clapped her hands and hugged me. I was so overwhelmed I could just explode. I ran across the room, admiring the room, my room. Ray threw the Post-it he got and staggered upstairs. For the whole day, we checked the house out. The living room was huge, the kitchen too, the backyard too, pretty much everything was huge.

Dinner came, and we all sat down as one, happy family. We laughed, we talked. Everything was going okay. Jessie was telling us about her room, then Ray's, then mine. It felt....... normal. Suddenly, we all forgot we moved, forgot about the sadness we felt when we left our friends. It was a normal night.

•••

I woke up at 5:30 am, as always. Its habit I've been doing. Stretched my body, did push-ups, sit-ups, took a shower, got dressed and tried to find the window, to let some sunlight in. But later that I realized that this was not my old room, its my new basement room, and there's no window. Damn.

I went upstairs and found Ray and Jessie eating cereal, I joined them.

"How was the big room?"Jessie asks with a smile on her face.

"Fine. What are you happy about?" Then I saw her giggling, what happened to the grumpy Jessie yesterday.

"I met a friend today." She smiles and blushes as she said the word 'friend.'

"Friend? More like crush." Ray says and tickles her.

"What do you mean?" I ask Ray.

"Well, some nice neighbors came by to welcome us in the neighborhood while you were taking a shower. By the way, your singing is even louder here that in our old house."

I do sing a lot in the shower, its my favorite thing to do.

"Ray's right. You were like..... 'Nice to meet you......'" Jessie starts singing Taylor Swift's Blank Space, and laughed as she mimics my voice. I laughed at her too and apologized to both of them for my reckless singing.

"So who were the nice neighbors?"

"I think there family name was Darling. European I guess." Ray says as he finished his cereal. I wonder who they were and zoned out for a minute, imagining what they looked like. Not until Ray snapped me back to reality.

"Where's Mom?" Of course, I didn't bother where Dad would be because he's at work. Mom usually stays with us, whenever she leaves, she goes to the mall or the grocery store.

"She and the Darlings went out to chat for a while." Ray says.

"Speaking of Darlings, Zach is out there right now, I'm gonna go talk to him." Jessie says, giggling.

"Who's Zach?" I ask her, but she already went outside.

"That's the name of the boy she just met, and has a crush on." Ray says. Before I could ask any questions he stood up and told me to go out and meet them myself, and then went to my room to play games. I finished up my cereal, went back to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, straightened shirt, brushed up my hair and headed for the front door.