No Strings Attached

Chapter 1

"But...that apartment looks weird." It was the only excuse I could come up with. I didn't want to move. I don't know why. I guess I just always liked living in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

"Seriously?" my dad said. "That's the best you can do?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but realized that there wasn't really anything I could rebut with. I mean, I had just about no friends there in Wyoming, and my school was kind of crap. I just liked living in the least populated state in America.

With that in mind, we were moving to one of the most populated cities in the US: Boston, Massachusetts. I may have had a better comeback if I knew how horribly I did in crowds. Since I'd lived in such a small place for as long as I could have remembered, I had never had to deal with social anxiety before I moved. It hit me with a force that I was not prepared for.

"How long do I have left here?" I asked him instead of attempting to argue.

"Well, the rent contract begins on the first of the month – not next month, the one after that – so you have just over 7 weeks until we hit the road and get a second chance at life." He looked distant for a moment, as if he were remembering something sad. Although he probably was. My mom died after a long battle with leukemia 8 months before. After that, both my dad and I made some pretty bad choices. We decided together that it was time for us to forget about the things we did and get a fresh start.

But moving to another state wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

I knew that no one would really miss me. After I did some pretty shameful things, I lost the majority of my friends. I didn't blame them, though. I treated them like dirt. I would hate me, too. Macy was the only one who would still hang around me, and want to. But she was nice to everyone, so it wouldn't take her long to get over me. But I thought that was good. I don't hurt anyone by leaving; I probably made some lives better. I also wanted to leave without having many attachments there, so perhaps my loneliness was best.

When I move to Boston, I decided, I won't tell anyone about what I did. They'll just leave again. And then I'll really be alone. I want to start a new life with no strings attached to my past.

--

Moving Day came. My "friends" pretended they'd miss me. I knew they wouldn't, after the way I treated them. One last time, I took a look around my bare, empty room. It had the same bright blue wall with the huge windowsill, and the same off-white carpet floor; but something was missing. Not just the many, many posters I had plastered over the other bare white walls, or my simple wood-frame bed with the blue and white plaid quilt where I spent many nights lying awake silencing my pained cries and doing other things I probably shouldn't have done. It wasn't even the Pillow Corner, where I used to stay up all night reading with tons of blankets and pillows surrounding me. All of that, I knew, would be in my new room in Boston.

What made the room incomplete was me. I had called that bedroom mine since the day I came home from the hospital. That room had gone through so many transitions, from being a nursery with little ducks along the baseboard, to a "big girl room" with pink and blue butterflies dangling from the ceiling, up until that day, when I was seventeen years old, and moving away forever. All the memories I had, good and bad, came from me, living and reliving them in that old room. I was taking those memories with me, but I knew that some of them would be forgotten within a few years' time.

In that moment I realized that memories were the only thing keeping me in this crummy old town. I had grown up there. Now, I was just leaving. Leaving for a chance at a new life in an entirely different environment. To make new memories, new friends, new...well, everything. This was the first time I was sad about leaving Wyoming. At first I was excited to escape from such a tiny state, and at that time I didn't know how I felt.

Just so I wouldn't forget what my first room looked like, I took out my phone, and took a picture. My room was so bare, but I found it more welcoming than ever.

I leaned down to pick up the last box I'd packed up, and saw the stupid little puppet I'd had since I was a baby resting on top of all of my other important belongings. I had still slept with it, and made certain that it was the last thing I packed. It was the most consoling thing I had when Mom died. I carried it everywhere, even though I was sixteen. I brought it in my backpack to school, and always had it in my purse when I went out. My parents told me that my first sound – besides the raspberries and farts and other various baby noises – was "bop." I don't know why, but it sounded like the perfect name for a panda puppet, so I named my puppet Bop when I was four. That's been its name ever since. But I never really decided whether it was a boy or a girl.

I smiled at Bop, and shut the door to my room. Then I slowly walked down the hallway, not even registering my footsteps. I was just savoring the time I had left in my house.

When I passed my parents' room, I stopped. I glanced in the doorway, and found my dad standing in the middle of the bare room with only a single moving box sitting next to him. He was clutching a picture frame, with a tear running down his cheek. It was obviously a picture of Mom. I carefully set my box down, and hugged my dad. He hugged me back. My dad and I weren't really close before the cancer, but we were brought together when Mom was diagnosed. We used to fight and scream at each other all the time, but neither of us had risen our voice towards each other in in months. And I actually started to tell him things, instead of hiding every detail of my life. He knew me better than the majority of my friends had. And I liked it that way. Now we were moving together, to a new place, for a new beginning.

He loosened his hold on me to look down at me. We both grinned slightly, then he kissed the top of my head. I backed away so he could put the picture back in the box, but it wasn't out of my sight before I could catch a glimpse at which picture he was looking at.

It was a picture of Mom and me in the park when I was about seven. I was wearing a denim dress, and sitting on a tree branch. My smile was so wide, and happy. My front tooth was missing, so I looked a little ridiculous, but I was still having fun. Mom was on the other side of the tree, hanging upside down off a branch with her legs like a possum. Her smile was as beautiful as it was the day she died, and her hair as shiny and perfect. Even on her deathbed, she was an angel.

My dad wasn't in the picture. He was behind the camera. I remember that day. We went on a picnic, and spent the day together. There are so many pictures from that day; it's one of the Littleton Family iconic moments.

"Ready to go, Teapot?" my dad asked me cheerfully. He called me that for irony. You know how the nursery rhyme goes. It was my favorite thing when I was little, and I am the quite opposite of "short and stout." I'm very tall and slender, with long and lengthy limbs. My shadow looks like female slenderman. It also sort of sounds like my real name: Tegan. So he used to sing the nursery rhyme with my name in it. That was probably why I loved it so much.

"Ready as I'll ever be," I replied, only halfway joking.

"Then let's hit the road!" he called, waving a fist in the air.

We bounded down the stairs and out of the house together, arm in arm. I turned to shut the door, but took a final look around the foyer, snatching a last memory for the brain. Then I shut the big red door with a bang and joyously put the last box in the moving van.

I hopped in the passenger seat of the Subaru and buckled up, anxious to start over.

Dad slipped the keys into the ignition, started the motor, and stared at me intently. "Look out Boston! The Littletons are coming!"

And we were on our way.

~A.N.~ As I said, this is just a preview to the story. If you like it, like and comment to motivate me to continue. Have a great day! :)