Clarity

August

School is starting soon. My mom is making me go to registration myself, because I'm a big girl, and she wants me to start taking initiative. I don't want to take initiative. Why can't she just home-school me? She is more than qualified. She likes to see me suffer, she does, it makes her happy, I swear.

At least the house looks like a home now. I hardly leave it, so it might as well be homey, right? My days consist of running, eating fresh fruit from the fruit stand at the edge of town, running some more, cleaning, showering, and then laying on the floor of my bedroom questioning my existence. 

Megan is never home, she is always out with friends, and that boy that witnessed my stupidity three weeks ago. I'm assuming he's her boyfriend. 

Noah offered to go to registration with me, and we could skate there. He gave me this huge speech, he probably rehearsed, about how if I want to survive in this place, I should be seen with him or his sister periodically before school starts. I guess they're pretty popular. 

It doesn't surprise me, the doctor and principal's kids would most likely be pretty popular in a small town. 

Also, their grandfather, his name is also William, is the mayor. 

The Mayor.

I don't understand these people. 

Why would there be two William Carpenter's in the family? Wouldn't that be confusing? I mean, it makes sense that some of the people in town call Dr. William Carpenter, Junior, but still. Why would someone name their kid after themselves? That gives them a life of always trying to live up to the person who had the name first. It's setting a kid up for failure, really. 

Dr. William Carpenter is an exception though, seeing how being a doctor is prestigious. 

My mom hasn't talked about taking me to therapy recently. The therapist two towns over she found, I have yet to meet. Which is surprising. Maybe she realized there is no point. 

There is the slight chance that William asked Noah if he thought I was a nutter. If one were to rate my nuttiness on a scale of one to ten based on Noah and I's short, mostly one sided conversations, I don't think I would be that high on the nutter scale. 

William said he would look into finding me someone to see, I'd like to think he was a man of his word, since he is a doctor. He could think I don't need to stare at the second hand in an office that looks like it's straight out of a Better Homes and Garden full page print for an hour twice a week. 

I'll go with that. 

The Carpenter's seem like good people. Christine is the kind of woman who is always put together, complete with a string of pearls, and professional closed toe high heels. She walks around town like that too.

Noah went on one of his tangents when I wasn't really listening, and said something about his family settling this town over a hundred years ago. 

That's depressing. Noah's family has basically been in Gem for over a hundred years. It's not too shocking that Megan is probably going to make her way to Portland and never look back. 

Portland fits her, Gem doesn't. She's too loud and restless to live here. I heard her rapping to Drake the other day when she was washing her car. I don't think her mom would appreciate her fowl language. I know I didn't. 

Swearing is unattractive. Unless the word fuck would be highly appropriate in a situation, I try not to use it. My mom would also wash my mouth out with soap. She's very traditional. 

I don't know if I want to go to registration at the high school with Noah. I feel like he's being nice to me because I'm new. People in small towns are always friends with everyone, and now that I am a resident, I have some obligation to be friends with everyone.