A Family That Lies

Chapter One

I’d been gone for two months and twenty-two days but it didn’t seem like long enough. Yet somehow my entire life had changed while I was gone.

                For the last two plus months I had been in California at my dad’s house. He’d moved out there last September after my mom confessed to him about her affair. Now almost twelve months later, my dad was on the opposite side of the country, I was about to go home to the house that I now shared with a mother that I hated, a soon-to-be-step-sister, two-soon-to-be-step-brothers-one of which I went to school with, and the man that my mom left my dad for. And all I really wanted was to go back to California and live with my dad forever.

                It was safe to say I was really looking forward to my last two years of high school.

                I waited outside the airport in the chilly Michigan air looking for my mom’s green minivan. When it finally pulled up next to me, I was completely taken back. Michael, my soon-to-be-step-dad, was sitting alone in the car.

                “I can’t believe she did this,” I said out loud to myself. “Actually I can.”

                Since I left she was doing everything she could to force me to mesh with my new ‘family’. I’d already agreed to drive to school with Foster, and share a room with Ella. Both of these things I regretted agreeing too immediately afterward. Mostly sharing the room, but when I called back saying I’d changed my mind she said she’d already told Ella and she was really excited. I suspected she was lying for two major reasons. One because it was my mother, and two because no one was ever really excited about sharing a room.

                “Michael,” I sounded angry and I didn’t care.

                “Hi Ginny, I know you were expecting-“ he started to say as he picked up my suit case but I waved his thought away.

                “I don’t expect anything with my mother anymore,” I said walking past him and getting into the car.

                The car ride back to the house was silent and long. The more time I spent in the car with Michael the more I wished I wasn’t there. There was so much I left to do for this last week before school started. My summer assignment for AP Psych. Telling my friends about my mom and Michael. Telling my friends that I was living in the same house as Foster Drouin. Going maid of honor dress shopping with my mother. The usual stuff that one would postpone to the last minute.

                Finally we pulled into the driveway of the house that I once considered home. I didn’t know where my home was anymore. I found myself constantly homesick for a place that no longer existed.

                I walked into the house with my bags in hand, I refused to let Michael carry them in. The second I was inside I was surrounded by unfamiliar faces. I stopped immediately and waited for Michael to reach where I was standing.

                “What is going on?” I asked.