Strange Beginnings

Chapter 1: Moving On

"Sugar, let's get up. Time to go," chimed Stephanie from outside my bedroom door. The curtains were still closed in my room, casting dark shadows across the floor, with maybe a small spectacle of light peeping through. My eyes were only half open, and in the darkness I fumbled for my glasses on my nightstand. Clumsily, I attempted to grab them, but they only tumbled to the floor, causing a sub-conscious groan to come out of me. 

"Oh come on honey, it ain't too early is it?" Stephanie's accent drawled through the door, still waiting outside.  Ever since she adopted me from foster care, she was always careful to give me my personal space. And if she had to wait the rest of her life outside my room until I would let her in, she would. "Missy, you alive in there sugar?" she began to knock neurotically. 

My real name is Matilda, but Stephanie insisted on calling me Missy. She was the closest thing I had ever had to a real mom, so I was really willing on letting her call me anything. She had begun being my single foster parent six years ago when I was ten, but then adopted me when I was twelve. Now I travel the world with her and her camera. That's right, she makes a living as a traveling photographer, and I get to go with her on all her picture-taking embargoes. 

"Missy, get up!" she hollered, no longer being patient with me. "We have to leave now if you wanna get to Arizona tonight!" While she was giving me warning about crashing down this door (so much for personal space) I was half on my bed, half on my floor looking around for my glasses. At last, when I finally grabbed them from under my bed, I shoved them on my face and blinked, regaining the little focus I had lost. The room around me was small; it only had room to fit my bed, my nightstand and a little chest of drawers. The house itself was built in 1889; a historical southern Louisiana style home. It had character and this is where Stephanie and I stayed when we weren't out traveling. 

"I'm up! I'm up!" I yelled back, pulling my body off the mattress. I shuffled over to my window and pulled back the curtains, only to be blinded by the bright, Louisiana sun. I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked out over the small lawn, currently overthrown by dandelions. It would be two months before I would be back here. I took a moment to take in the sight of my lawn; the grass, the weeping willow tress. They would all be only artifacts in my memory, because for the next two months, I would be in a desert with the only significant sign of plant life being a cactus.

Eventually, I made it out of my room and walked down the hall to the kitchen. Stephanie was already in there, making eggs. Her brown ringlets were pulled up into a clip as always, but a few hung down over her face. 

"Mornin'," I greeted, taking a spot at the small wooden table. I was hit with the aroma of the eggs coming from the stovetop, as Stephanie busied herself over them, swatting away an occasional gnat. 

"G'mornin' sugar," she said warmly, not bothering to look back. Her southern accent was so thick that if I had just met her, I wouldn't be able to understand a word she said. And that was just the case when I first started living with her. I came from a big city, with people from all different areas of the world, only a few of them had a southern drawl. So when I came out here, to Nicollet, I wasn't expecting this big of a change in dialect. Down here I swear is the home base of the deep south. 

"Here's yer eggs, eat 'em up foe we git on the road," she told me, setting down a red plate with scrambled eggs on them and a side of blueberries. She also handed me a mason jar filled to the brim with iced tea. Honestly, what else would we drink? 

I loved this old house, especially in morning time. The sun would come in through the fat glass windows in the kitchen and spread its light all the way to the back wall. Stephanie would often keep a window or two open, to keep the place cool, so we could hear the birds chirping as the dew would set in in the morning. The house was quiet, we didn't have any neighbors. It was just us, the birds, and the willow trees that surrounded our small lot. But it was beautiful; I liked it so much more than the cities. 

Fifteen minutes later, Stephanie and I were packing up her little Jeep with a few of our belongings. She was piling in bag after bag of her clothing, bathroom supplies, board games, and not to mention all of her photography stuff. I laughed to myself watching her struggle to shove it all in the back of the tiny trunk, her hair clip hardly doing it's job at keeping her curls back.

When everything was set, we got in the front seats. "Do you have your laptop?" she asked me, turning her nose down to look at me above her thin, black-rimmed glasses. They looked almost identical to mine. 

"Yep, got it right here," I said, patting my backpack that was by my feet. 

"Good, because don't think yer gettin' outta school jest because we're goin' away foe a while. This ain't no vacation, you got 'sponsibilities," she said to me in an authoritative voice. She only got that way once in a while, when she was talking to me about serious things, such as church or my schoolwork. 

"I know Stephanie," I condescended, rolling my eyes. As she pulled out of the driveway, I took one last look at the house. It was a small, one-story white house with relaxed green shudders. The yard was pretty plain, we couldn't have any flowers because we were hardly ever home to take care of them. So instead we just had a wooden bench, in the back corner of the yard under one of our willows. 

"Oh don't worry," Stephanie cooed, grabbing my arm when she noticed me gazing out the window. "We'll be home befo'e you know it." I turned my head towards her. She had a nice smile, one only a mother could have. Her age was beginning to show on her face for when she smiled, little creases showed up all over her eyes and lips. She also had a little brown mole on her right cheek, which she always said it was just a beauty mark and that one day I'd get one. 

So we began our journey to Arizona. Out of all the places we had been to, I don't think I had ever been there. Something about it seemed enticing though. It made me feel like it had tons of secrets, and it was beckoning for me to come over. I felt raw with excitement about going here-who knows what we would find.