Sending all my love to you

1. meeting Lottie

Lotties POV

I was having the best dream until I heard the worst noise in the world.
The alarm from my phone was blasting in my ear, followed by my mom's piercing voice telling me that it was time to wake up.

I should probably tell whoever cares about my back story. Not that I really have one, my life is kinda boring.

My name is Lottie, Charlotte when I'm in trouble. I'm currently 17 years old and I was born in England. I lived in England until a couple months ago.

My dad passed away about a year ago and my mom hasn't been the same. She never liked to go out and socialise with anyone else when we were a happy family. We would have family time every weekend where we would go on an adventure to other cities and pretend that the world was all sunshine and roses.

My dad passed away from a car accident and that was the night when I felt like I lost both parents. My dad was driving home from work late one night when he was hit head on by a drunk driver that was driving in the wrong lane. The only peace I have with it is that my dad didn't suffer and he didn't even compute what was happening before it happened.

My mom turned into a shell of a human. She started to drink pretty heavily to numb the pain of being a single parent and losing the love of her life. She started to go out more and more until I was finding myself alone in the house for days on end. It was cool at first but having the house to yourself isn't all it's cracked up to be. I didn't have many friends, I certainly didn't have any friends who would be up for hanging at my house so it got pretty lonely.

My dad had a great job and earned a lot of money so my mom was able to stay home and take care of me when I was a young child but when I started becoming more independent, she busied herself in the day by cleaning the house from top to bottom, which usually took up a whole day because we had a big house. We weren't rich but we were comfortable so when my dad died, my mom struggled to pay the bills and we started getting angry letters through the door from people who wanted our money.

I had a feeling that she wanted to move us out of the only home I'd ever known, I started finding housing ads on her laptop and she had several estate agents come round to price up the house. I expected us to be moving into a smaller house, maybe a few miles away where the houses were cheaper. I never expected to be moving thousands of miles away to a town I'd never heard of before.

It turned out that my mom hadn't been dreaming of moving to Oakland her whole life and seized the opportunity as soon as it arose. Oh no, I found out that she met a guy that lived here. She met a guy online and decided that he showed her enough love for her to move us over here without even speaking to me about it.

His name is David, he's a few years older than my mother. He wasn't anything special to look at, he had a classic dad bod, he had dark brown hair and brown eyes. He cackled when he laughed and he smelled of damp clothes all the time. I was wondering why she liked him so much until I saw pictures of our new house. It wasn't a big house but it had a pool and my mom had always wanted a pool.

I had no choice but to pack up my entire life into two suitcases and get on the plane with her. You could argue that I was old enough and I could fend for myself but I didn't feel mature enough, I also didn't have any money because even though my dad left me some money in his will, I wasn't allowed access until I was older. I had to leave behind the two friends that I had, I had to leave behind my whole life and the mere thought sent me into more panic attacks than I'd like to mention.

Life hasn't been great since moving to Oakland. It hasn't been a nightmare but this town is so goddamn boring. I never realised that small towns literally have nothing in terms of enjoyment. There's a beach, a skatepark and a diner and that's all we have for entertainment. It took a while to change my school records over from England so I had the last two months to explore my new town, I explored every inch within two days.

Because of the scarce opportunities for fun, I just sit in my room most of the time and play my guitar. My dad bought it for me when I was 14 and it's been my pride and joy since. I'm not really sure what kind of guitar it is but it's red and white and it's beautiful. It's taken me a while to learn the chords and I'm not going to be the next Jimi Hendrix but I'll get there.

I wasn't excited at all to be starting at a new school. The only thing that I was looking forward to was the fact I didn't have to wear a uniform anymore. I hadn't met any of the local youth because everyone was at school when I went out to explore the town. It's not like I gravitate towards people anyway, I like to keep to myself, I always have. I've never really been any good at making friends or even having conversations with people so I knew it could take me months to make a friend, if I made any at all.

I wasn't a bad student really. Well I wouldn't call myself a bad student. I had good marks in all my classes and the teachers at my old school liked me but I did tend to get into some trouble. Mainly for skipping and not doing homework but I didn't really care. If your lesson is boring, I'm not gonna pain myself with having to listen to it. I truly didn't care enough at my old school to pay much attention so I really wasn't going to start trying to be a model student at this school either and if that got me expelled then bring it on.