A New Life

Chapter Four

(Back to present day)

I get in my sister's car. We have to take all four. Plus the U-Haul truck that my dad is driving. My mom is driving her SUV, Jack is driving my dad's truck with Briana , Parker taking his and Jack's Elantra, and Grace taking her Elantra with me accompanying her. My mom takes the lead, then Grace, Parker, Jack, then my dad. When we all see Briana, we immediately go hug her because she's been in the kennel for the past two days. Then we head off.

For the first two hours Grace and I have been listening to some of our playlists and jamming out. After we get tired of that we talk about all the memories, ones we both knew, the good ones, the bad ones, the ones, only one of us know or remember, and ones before I was born. That lasts another three hours. Then I start reading a book that I'm reading for an hour or two. We all agreed last night during dinner that we would do nine hours today, then seven tomorrow. So far we are seven hours in and Grace's eyes start getting droopy. The next stop we go to I take the wheel for her. I have my permit and I have an adult with me so I'm good to go. Finally after two hours of driving we get to our hotel that our dad booked at 11:30. We unload the stuff we need and get inside to our room. Mom and Dad are sharing the king bed, Grace and I are taking the other bed and Jack and Parker take the other one. My siblings and I are used to sleeping with each other because we go on road trips sometimes and this is the price you have to pay when you have three other siblings, especially two girls and two boys. It's understandable enough. We all fall asleep around midnight. Around one in the morning I feel myself being kicked to the ground and get up, grab a pillow and a blanket and sleep on the couch. My mom is kind of a germ freak so I get a clean sheet from the closet and wrap it and the sofa. I finally get on and close my eyes. I feel my legs being pushed down and open my eyes. Oh, it's only Briana. "Come on girl." and I pat my chest. She moves up and rests her head on it. That's the thing about Briana. She likes to cuddle. Especially me.

I wake up to shuffling around the room and feel Briana licking my face all slobbery and clean. I thank her and look at my phone. 6:30. Ugh. I hear someone calling my name softly and look up to see my dad with a questioning look on his face. I mouth, "Grace" and he nods. Grace is known for kicking people off when she has a bad day or just can't sleep without knowing that she does it. My dad and I wake everyone up and get ready to go downstairs for breakfast. They serve it pretty early in this hotel. After eating a good breakfast we pack up and hit the road.

It's kind of the same routine that I did yesterday with my sister. We jammed out to the rest of our playlists, talk about some more memories, read, take a quick nap which after I'm completely refreshed, then I take the wheel and she takes a nap, etc. Seven hours later, we arrive at Eastham. I woke Grace up and hour ago because we got to Cape Cod, and now we finally made it to our new home. Our parents wouldn't tell us what the house looked like, but they wanted it to be a surprise. All they said was that we would all like it, it was close to a beach, around ten minutes, and that it was a good size house. We pull up and we all get out and stare in awe. My mom must have been looking for a house when she wasn't packing. She told us at the last gas stop that our old house finally got sold and that she got a text that we got the new house that she hoped for. We walk up to the front door and she reaches under the mat, in the two flower pots next to it, and on the top of the ledge where she brings seven bright and shiny keys in her hand. One for each of us, and a spare. She puts the spare back into the flower pot right next to it and asks who would like to do the honors. We all tell her to do it since she found it an got it. She unlocks it and we all step in, letting Briana go in first to sniff everything out. She eventually lays down in the middle of the family room and sighs. Then we all sigh. We all congratulate our mom and have her give us the tour. Let me describe a bit about our new house.