Her Little Secret

Chapter 2

I could not believe it.

My face just hung in disbelief. My eyes and mouth were wide open. Instead of feeling something, I felt nothing at all. No emotions. I was in shock. I just stared at the wall.

My dad didn't seem to notice or at least pipe down. Instead, he just let his excitement flow everywhere. He was saying all this positive crap. It was really pissing me off. But I didn't want to upset him because that would make things ten times worse.

Then I felt my emotions wave through. I thought I was about to cry. I couldn't take it anymore. "Mom, I'm going out to the car," I said. I squeezed my eyes shut for a few seconds so I could control my feelings until I could exit.

I think Mom got the message. There was pain in her face. She looked worried. "Sure. Here, take the keys." She carefully pulled out the keys from her purse and handed them to me. I turned towards the exit when Mom told me, "We'll be right out in five minutes." I was practically dragging my feet as I left. I could hear her explaining to Mr. Rowe how I was feeling.

-

I sat in the backseat of the car, letting all the emotions just let loose. First there were tears; then crying; then calming down, which was because crying just wore me out, although emotionally, I could cry for ages. I glanced at the rear view mirror. My face was so red and puffy. I shook my head.

When I could finally breathe, I took out my iPod and earbuds and listened to Coldplay. Alternative music always calmed me down. I leaned my head back on the window and closed my eyes. I needed to escape for a little.

I ended up falling asleep from exhaustion of crying, because the next thing I knew, my parents were done with the real estate place and we were pulling up to our driveway.

As soon as we were parked, I got out as soon as it was possible. My mom was going to say something, but I stuck out my palm at her to shut her up, and frantically sped through the door and into the house without a conversation. I sprinted into my room and slammed my door.

My parents seemed to decide to leave me alone for basically the rest of the day, which was nice. With my alone time, I called my close friends.

Calling Ellie was probably the most important and depressing events that ever occurred in our friendship. First off, I picked up the landline phone. Dialed her number...six times...before I had the nerve to actually talk to her. The sixth time I knew I had to stay on the line, or else I'll never be able to talk to her.

Beeeeeep. Beeeeeep. Beeeeeep.

The line picked up. This was it. This was the farewell. "Hello?" It was Ellie.

"He- hey, ugh, umph, er, um." I was being a nervous moron. I had to pull it together. "Hey Ellie, it's Claire."

She didn't catch the tone of voice that I had. "Oh hey Claire, what's up?" she replied in a cheery tone.

I didn't know how to start, but I had to go for it. I was literally crossing my fingers. "Alright. So we've been friends since the second grade and we've been there for each other and we've done everything together, right? And that we promised to never separate?" I asked, in a very high pitched voice.

"Yeah..." she answered, almost in question form. She caught on to the drift.

The silence on the line was deafening.

"Ellie...I'm moving in...a week, and I won't see you again. Maybe never...in the future." I'm so relieved of spilling the news - but at the same time so devastated. And it hurt because it was true.

"What? A... a week? What the hell? Why didn't you tell me earlier?" The pain in her voice hurt even more. She was asking so many desperate questions. "I can't believe this, Claire. Why?"

"My dad got a promotion for his job, and well...today we found out we had to move in one week."

Silence.

"I'm really sorry, Ellie. This is as unbelievable to me as it is to you."

No reply.

"There's going to be a lot of things we didn't get to do. We didn't get to do that bucket list thing you were talking about, right?" I said. I tried to cheer things up a little with some memories.

"Yeah. Oh my, you remembered that." I was relieved she was still on the line. "That was from sixth grade. Wow." I could feel her smiling.

I smiled. "Yeah. So many memories, huh."

Ellie hesitated. But she spoke after a minute. "I just really can't believe you're moving. But it's okay. We'll still keep in touch, right?"

"Yes, we will. Over Skype, Facebook, you name it."

"Alright. Let's meet up one last time. How about the day you leave? That okay with you?"

I thought about it. That sounded good. "Yeah, one last time. One last goodbye."

We sat there on the line for a while, thinking.

Ellie ended the conversation. "Okay, well I better go, I have a dentist appointment to go to in a half hour."

"Er, yeah. I got to go too," I said, which was a lie. I had all the time in the world to chat.

"Bye," Ellie said. She hung up before I could say bye back.

-

The packing process started right away. Boxes were everywhere in the house. I started packing up my room, starting with my dressers. I pulled out each drawer and lay them on the floor. I took out the clothes and stacked them in the boxes. Same with the other miscellaneous stuff in my room. Within the next few days, our house was pretty much empty, and it was stashed away into the U-Haul.

Wednesday was our last day in town. Ellie came by to visit for the last time. We hugged, we cried, we told each other stories, and said our last goodbyes. It was pretty sweet. But sad.

I really couldn't believe it now. We were headed to Minnesota. Here we come. Sigh.