Dear December

Chapter One

It's only five days into the year of April Adams, and it's already off to a bad start.

Five days of life in Southern Arizona. Five wretched days where I have spent the whole time desperately trying to accommodate to this lifestyle of Arizonan absurdity. Literally.

This morning I was late to my very first day of school because I was cleaning soggy lentils out of the kitchen sink from when my dad got home after 'celebrating' with his mates. He must have thought the sink was the bin or something, I don't know- he was profoundly drunk. Besides, I'm not one-hundred percent sure what he's celebrating? Okay so he's got a job promotion, yes, whoopdeedoo. But truthfully, the only thing I've seen come out of it is being forced to move into the single most boring neighbourhood I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.

In the whole five days we've been in this state, our neighbourhood has done nothing short of representing the architectural equivalent of watching paint dry.

Living in Nevada, half of my friends were situated on my street. Now the surrounding houses are mostly populated by elderly couples and I think it's safe to say I'm not exactly jumping to make a platonic bond with Mr and Mrs Limestone from across the road. They have a shed in their back garden. With crates full of guinea pigs.

That's fifty two crates of pure, live guinea pig.

I was stressing before we even arrived in Arizona; choosing to travel on New Years was an incredibly ill-advised mistake. The amount of vehicles on the road was enough to send even my dad spiralling through a colourful fit of rage and curse words.

Celebrating New Years by sitting in hours of traffic in a sweaty, humid car, (my mum is incapable of feeling warmth- we have to turn the heating up to a setting that practically replicates the pits of hell itself), wasn't exactly my idea of a good time. I was definitely looking forward to getting into the new house and having a nice, cold shower to cool myself down.

Introducing the second mistake I made that day: getting my hopes up.

In fact, I wasn't really getting my hopes up. It's not exactly a demanding expectation for the one and only shower in the entire house could maybe just try and work, right? Apparently not. The damn thing seemed to be only compatible with one temperature and one temperature alone: absolutely boiling. Scolding, actually. Upon satan's fiery wrath spewing violently out of the shower head, I hissed a string of swears and tripped over the purple towel I had left on the floor. I could've died hitting my head or something.

Eventually I just had to do that thing, you know, when you tip your head upside down under the nozzle in desperate attempt to keep the water from marring your skin.

And you know what? My dad said we don't even have the money to fix it yet. So I'm either letting my skin sizzle until his new job kicks in or going to school smelling like my drunk uncle.

And now here I am, shuffling down the hallway in a hopeless attempt to find my first class. Unfortunately for me, I have the directional dexterity of a sink.

Room F13, room F14, room F15, I count the plaques that label the doors as I stroll past the seemingly endless amount of classrooms. I'm looking for an F23. As luck would have it, my first lesson of the school year is calculus. Oh, the joys of making a fool of myself in front of a room filled with totally judgemental brainboxes. People in calculus classes are always stuck up assholes. In my experience, anyway. That's not a self characterisation, by the way. I'm the exception.

I pass room 20. Surely I'm getting close now- it must be the last room of the corridor or something, since there's only a couple of doors left going dow-