the Clarks【one】| alicia clark

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summary: when you move next door to a new town, you don't expect to befriend the neighbours – the Clarks – so imagine your surprise when they become family, too.

warning/s: mentions of alcoholism, verbal and physical abuse, absent parenting and drugs.

author's note: someone requested this on tumblr and i've been working on it as quickly as i can as it was so fun to write! may have gone overboard though and it's like 5 parts long but you can never have too much alicia so! hope you like it :)

also something to note: Y/M/N = your mother's name

also something to note: Y/M/N = your mother's name

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9 years old...

I didn't want to move schools. I had my friends and I liked where I was and the teachers were all nice to me, but that didn't matter to my parents. I knew they weren't moving out of spite, they just had to for their jobs, but I didn't like it.

My new school was hard to adjust to, the teachers nice but strangers. My classmates already knew each other, having grown up together no doubt, and I was the new girl who didn't belong. I wasn't a sociable kid, a little anxious and a little nervous to make new friends, so it was hard for me to settle in. But being quiet meant I was quite observant, too.

It was the first week in my new town, at my new school, when I was getting dropped off home by my mum to our new house. The neighbours, a family I'd noticed since moving here because one of their kids – Nick, I think his name was – was in my class, and they always left around the same time as us in the mornings. And just like that, they were pulling into their driveway at the same time as us now.

When my mum and I got out the car, they were doing the same and I caught Nick's eyes as he jumped out the car. His mum noticed us and offered a smile, waving at us.

"Welcome to the neighbourhood!" she said to my mum, already stepping a little closer to the small fence between our front drives.

Nick smiled a little when he saw me, waving his hand. I began to smile too, my first real welcome since arriving here, and just as I lifted my hand to wave it, my mum grabbed it and dragged me up the driveway and into the house, not giving them a response. I didn't understand why she was being so strange, but when she mumbled 'weirdos' under her breath, I figured she was having a bad day. Still, I smiled to myself at how nice they seemed. They weren't all that weird to me.

In fact, they were quite the opposite.

One day, barely a week later, I was playing in the garden, riding my bike around in circles, when I heard some noises coming from the neighbour's garden. Curiosity getting the better of me, I climbed on one of the bins next to the tall fence separating our gardens and tried to find the source of the music and chatter from next door. Peeking my eyes over the top, I realised they were having a barbecue.

A man was flipping burgers on the grill, a drink in his hand, and he was chatting to who I recognised as Nick's mum. His parents. Nick was there too, playing with his little sister, but nobody had noticed me. At least I thought they hadn't, until I looked back to Nick's mum and met her gaze, freezing in place. She didn't seem angry, instead smiling and waving at me, but it freaked me out that I'd been caught spying so I quickly jumped off the bin and back to my bike.

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