The Imperfect People

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Megan

Clayton, Florida was (for the time being) going to be my new home.  For how long, I didn't know.  In the past two years I had moved three times to three different states.  Originally, I'm from California, but when my parents passed and my Aunt Olivia stepped in to take over both job roles things changed for me quite a bit.

California reminded me too much of loss.  So, Olivia packed us up and we skipped down to New Mexico where she knew lots of her old high-school buddies were living.  We lasted there about nine months before things got tough.  The thing is about New Mexico - it's boring.  And the kids are assholes.  I almost got beat-up walking home from school one day because some bukly Hispanic chick mistook my smile for something else that was (in her words, not mine) "gonna get my white ass kicked all the way back to The Valley" or something.  

I hadn't really listened because I had already started running away from her.

The next stop was Ohio.  Ohio had been my favorite.  We lasted there the longest.  The high-school was great too and filled with those type of teachers that called you by your first name and high-fived you in the hallways. I got close to this girl Gwen who befriended me on my very first day because I didn't know where to find my way to Geography II.  She smoked, she was wild, she didn't care about what anybody thought of her and she kept to herself most of the time.  Which is what I liked about her.  Her screw-the-world-live-for-the-moment attitude made me smile on more than one occasion.  Our new house was in the middle of nowhere, which I liked.  The peacefulness of it all.  It was so quaint and quiet and exactly what I needed.  

Olivia wasn't a huge fan of Ohio and this was mostly because her last ex-husband Raymond was from Ohio and she hated him more than she hated her first ex-husband John - and that's saying something, because she never tried to run over John with a car.  

Our reasons for leaving Ohio were because it was impossible for Olivia to get a solid job.  She worked part-time waitering at this place called The Buffalo Chicken House which was a restaurant in the middle of town that's best customer was apparently an eighty year old guy called Keith who definety was not there for the buffalo chicken, if you get way I mean.  It didn't pay enough.  We couldn't keep up with our bills.  The water was turned off.  You get the picture.

That's how Florida comes into the picture.  Our third state.  Olivia studied Computer Graphics at college and got wind that one of her old professor's daughters had a successful Graphic Design company - based in Florida.  So she gave him a call, basically begged (she told me if I ever told anyone about it she'd disown me), he pulled a few strings, and then a week later Olivia was offered a job.  Sometimes it's not what you know, but who you know that can come in handy sometimes.  And being a good begger, obviously.

"You like it here so far?" Olivia asks me on my first morning waking up to the smell of the salty Flordia air.  We stand in the kitchen.  The house is modern and large and like something you'd probably see in the pages of a low-budget interior design catalogue.  The entire place was fully-furnished before we moved in so mostly everything I look at is brand new and holds no memories.  I sigh as I sit down at the breakfast bar and stare at my reflection in the shiny marbe surface.

"It's... okay," I reply.  "Okay" is all I could do having been here for less than forty-two hours.

"I like it," Olivia chirps, opening up a cabinet to grab two mugs.  

One of them used to belong to my mom and says "I'M NOT A F**KING MORNING PERSON" on it.  It's the only thing I own that belonged to her.  That single mug holds a bundle of memories that brings a smile to my faces.  Olivia begins to fix us some coffee.  I used to feel bad for Olivia.  It was sad, what happened to me, but what happened to her was even worse.  She lost a sister and gained a... well, she gained me.  It couldn't have been easy.  Nothing can prepare a person for something like that.