Lost and Found

Chapter Five

There will always be a reason why you meet people. Either you need to change your life, or your the one that'll change theirs -author unknown

***

"This is really fun!" Ethan yelled over the music. I nodded, not wanting to talk. This was how most of the night went. Ethan would try to make small talk and I would give one-word answers at the most.

Ethan was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. I've always liked that look. I'd rather have a boy in a cowboy hat and boots than Polo or Aero. He was so different from Paul in every way. I wondered how I could have feelings - old feelings for Ethan but still feelings - for both of these types of guys. Maybe you only like one, I thought. I shook my head and laughed at myself. I definitely liked Paul.

"So...do you still want to go to Colorado?" He asked.

"Yep," I responded. Then the band hit the chorus and I sang along as I danced. Ethan laughed. I looked at him through my long, dark eyelashes. I didn't want to say it, but he was amazing. He danced and sang with me. I remembered our first concert. We were seven. He and I danced all night even though we were horrible dancers. But we didn't care. When thinking of this, I could feel one piece of the wall I had build, crack.

"Actually Ethan, I submitted my form last week," I told him.

"Really? That's awesome. At least one of us is doing something with our lives," Ethan said, playfully.

"Where do you want to go?"

"Oh, you know. Florida, California, Colorado, Alaska."

My heart stopped when he said, Colorado. Was he going for me? No...right?

"Oh," I said, my voice barely audible, "that's cool."

"Yep," he responded.

"I'm gonna get something to drink. You coming?"

"Sure."

For the next two hours, we sang and danced. I spoke very little but I didn't think he minded. Ethan laughed, flirted, and acted as if we had never split up. He asked questions about me that I would mumble a response to. Ethan Reed would never break down my walls again. He couldn't. He hurt me once and I barely was able to make it through. I knew that I wouldn't be able to survive another hit.

***

"Hailey Gabriella Foster, don't you walk away from me!" Mother yelled.

"I'm gonna do what I want," Hailey said before she jumped in her car and left. She and my mother were fighting about makeup. Hailey said she didn't want my mother to take hers and mother said that the makeup was originally her own. I couldn't help but roll my eyes through the fight. At least when mother and I fight it's about something real.

"Can you believe that selfish child?" Mother said as she walked into my room.

I grabbed my jacket from school and walked out, but not before saying, "I'm leaving."

I walked to my room and wondered why I didn't lash out at my mother. Any other time I would have gone totally wacko on her. Maybe it was because there was only two-hundred more days with her until summer. Yeah, that was it. In two-hundred days I'll never have to see her again. I'll be free. Finally, after eighteen dreadful years, I'll be in Colorado without ever looking back.

"Only two-hundred more days," I said to myself. "Only two-hundred more days."

When I walked in the house earlier today I could feel that for once there was absolutely no feeling. Instead of resentment, hatred, and many other things, I felt dead inside when I thought of her. I heard my mother in the kitchen. No feeling. I stopped for one second with my mouth hanging open. After I walked upstairs and weirdly enough I grabbed a box. I started to grab some pictures off my selves, none of which showed my mother's face, and started to put them in the boxes.