Dimensions

Chapter 1

Sally Chester was a bitch.

She was the kind of woman who yelled at wait staff when her food was too hot, or if the complimentary chocolate on her pillow at a hotel wasn't the flavour she liked.

But, somehow, my dad thought the sun shined out of her butt. In the handful of times that I'd met her, she'd glared at me like I was something gross she'd stepped in, and purposely ignored me until Dad dragged me into their conversations.

So, when Dad told me we were going to be moving in with her, I was understandably pissed.

"No way, Dad," I said, folding my arms and turning away. Not a protest, just a fact.

"Charlie," he started.

"Nope. Not happening."

"Charlie, come on, it's been seven years. We need to move on."

I dropped my folded arms to stare at him in incredulous disgust. "Move on? Are you hearing yourself right now?"

Dad sighed the heavy, fake sigh he used whenever the topic of my mom came up.

Seven years ago, Mom disappeared. Just like that. Dad and I thought she'd just gone to work early like she sometimes did. But then she didn't come home, and when Dad rang her phone, it said the service had been disconnected. The police were involved for about three months before they declared her a lost cause, and gave up. Dad gave up soon after that. He just accepted the fact that his wife had gone and he was never to see her again. Although I knew there was never much passion in their relationship, I always thought there was enough for him to never lose hope. I was eight at the time.

"You know what I mean, Charlie. We can't keep hoping that she'll come back and everything will be okay again." Dad had obviously hoped that this conversation would go a lot smoother.

"No, I don't know what you mean! What if she does come back, Dad? If we go and live with her, Mom'll never be able to find us again!"

Dad knelt down in front of me, taking a firm hold on my wrists. "Honey, I know that this isn't what you want. But we can't keep living our lives like she's going to turn up at the front door, okay? She's gone, Charlie. And we need to keep living."

I turned my face away, refusing to let him see my tears. "We need to forget, you mean?"

He let go of my wrists and knelt back on his haunches. "We need to forget living like this. We need to move on. Find a new start where even though your mom's gone, we can find happiness. Sally's helping me; I'm sure she can help you as well."

I scoffed and rolled my eyes. Dad just sat there, staring at me, waiting for a response that I wasn't going to give him.

"Well," he eventually said, getting to his feet. "We can't take everything with us, so think about throwing some things out. We'll be leaving as soon as we can."

He closed my bedroom door behind him softly. After I heard his footsteps fade away down the hallway, I picked up one of my school books and threw it at the door, loose pages fluttering to the ground. Sally lived a state over. There was no way I'd be able to go to the same school.

After a week of defiance, I realised that there was nothing I could do to change his mind. Not the friends I'd had since first grade, nor the chart on the doorjamb in the kitchen that had measured my height since I could stand by myself. Dad's parents travelled too often for me to stay with them and Mom had never had any – she was orphaned at birth and though she'd had many foster parents in her time, none of them ever stayed in contact. The only choice I had was to leave the only home I'd ever known and let my dad drag me to hell.

Before I knew it, the walls were bare, and the moving guy had taken the last box out of my bedroom. Somehow, I'd been able to pack up my whole life into six boxes, three of which contained all the sketchbooks I'd used over the years. Over my 15 years of life, I'd managed to accumulate three boxes full of parchment style paper, scribbled over with convenience store pencils and felt tip pens that I'd managed to sneak out of school. Most of my drawings were based on stories that my mom used to tell me; about a faraway land where people can change into whatever they want, be whoever they want to be, and live lives where it didn't matter what you looked like!

I was putting the finishing touches on a girl that has halfway transformed into a lizard when Dad heaved himself into the car.

"Don't you want to say goodbye to the house, Charlie?" he asked, buckling his seatbelt. I hunched closer over my sketchpad, refusing to give him the time of day.

Dad sighed his fake sigh again, starting the car, its familiar groan lulling me into a false sense of security that everything was still normal. He reversed out of the driveway.

It may have been my imagination, but it seemed like he intentionally delayed changing gears, just so I could sneak a glimpse at my childhood home, before being doomed to a life of misery.