Water Lilies

Chapter One: Home Sweet... Swamp?

Chapter One: Home Sweet... Swamp?

I took one last final drag of the dwindling cigarette, before smashing it into the ground smothering it out. Sighing I stood, wiping my hand down the back of my waitress dress to clean any dirt away from it. Turning towards Jenny and Reef I gave them a sad face before kissing each on the cheek and grabbed my brown over-the-shoulder bag.

"I got to run guys, I need to get home before Mom does and smells smoke on me," I commented, running a hand through my carmel blond hair. It's natural "surfer girl" waves and golden highlights was something many girls envied. But personally I hated it, it made me looked like I belonged on the beaches of California, not the jazzy streets of New Orleans.

"You'll call us everyday though won't you?" Jenny ask. Though normally a hard core girl with her long raven colored hair, studded belts, extra eye liner, and I-hate-everyone-fuck-off attitude, she was the one that was taking my moving the worst. She had throw a tantrum when I had driven first thing only minutes after my parents blew the bomb, she stormed around her house cursing and throwing things and after many threats and mad plans to kidnap me and fly to Liechtenstein she crumbled into a heap in my lap and sobbed. After two tubes of ice cream, watching the entire Batman series, and much reassuring that I would only be two hours away and would visit every weekend, she finally got her backbone back.

"I promise", I sighed as she stood and wrapped me in her pale bony arms, "besides it's not like I'll have anything else to do. That swamp town is a dump!"

After one last kiss on the cheek and a stolen drag from Reef's cigarette, slinging my bag over my shoulder I strolled out of the ally next to the diner me and Jenny worked at, well I guess only Jenny work there now seeing as I was leaving to swamp hell tomorrow morning. I headed across the parking lot to my old fashion convertible slug bug. It's pastel orange paint was peeling and there was a dent in the bumper, but still I loved the vintage car with its cracked leather seats.

I hopped into the drivers seat and peeled out of the parking lot heading towards home. I was dreading walking through that front door and facing the fact that I was being shipped out to the middle of nowhere against my will, even if it was only for half a year tell I turned eighteen and moved back to live in a apartment with Jenny after we graduated.

The "River House", as Mom and Dad liked to call it, had been in my family since the beginning of time, literally. It was built in the eighteen hundreds by my numerous great grandfather. Though I had never seen it in a picture let alone in person, according to my Dad it was a house of beauty. "Vintage, three stories high, all white, beautiful lake (I think by this he meant swamp), wrap around pouch, house of grace, house of magic", his list had gone on and on. He bragged about the antique furniture and "historical beauty" of the house. To me it sounded very much like a dump.

My great Aunt Fransica was the last to own the house. The old lady had died just two months ago at the tender age of 104; in her will she had stated that the house would go to my father, and if he being unable to take burden of it, his brother, my Uncle Brad would receive it. In my opinion Uncle Brad was the best relative someone could ever ask for. At the stripling age of seven he had given me my first drag of a cigar, and not only that but also still to this day proceeded to give me anything I asked for, seeing as I was his "long lost baby girl" as he said it.

But my father did not share the same fondness that I did for my Uncle Brad. Being the well thought of lawyer he was, he saw Brad's "immature ways" and "lack of responsibility" to be distasteful. Having had a feud with his brother since high school there was no way he was going to let him take the house, even if it seemed unreasonable to take it when we had a perfectly good mansion.

Pulling up to the grande steel gates I punched in the familiar code and drove through as the steel parted. As a child I had though my family was well off, but never rich. There were so many other families that had so much more money then we did that I never saw it that way. It wasn't tell I got into high school that the real picture struck me. My parents had wanted to send me to a public school, saying that I would meet new real people and realize how much I've been given and how I can share that with others. At first I had been in denial, I didn't want to leave my friends and start over I was perfectly fine right were I was at. By the end of the first day of freshman year, I had realized they were right. I had never realized how fake some of the people at my old schools had been; how snobby and bratty they were. Even some of my old friends had talked bad about certain areas of the poorer parts of town, but now suddenly I was going to school and becoming friends with these people and the rumors were not true. They were great.