Love Me Crazy

1. Shy Pathetic, Little Girl

I didn't ask for my new life. I didn't ask my mom to become one of CEO's of Lawrence Paper Products. I didn't ask her to divorce my dad just because he drank. I definitely didn't ask her job to transfer her from the little town of Oakland, Connecticut to the busy city of Phoenix, Arizona.

I guess I seem just a tiny bit selfish. I have good reason though, very good reason.

I'm shy. I'm horribly shy. Ever since I was three, I knew my shyness would be the death of me. Someday, I'll be sprawled out in a gutter because someone said hi and I...freaked. I just can't stand the thought of moving to another state, again. For, this isn't a first.

In every city, I never fit in. Somehow, someone at school always labels me a "whore" and for the rest of the school year, everyone thinks I'm pregnant. I guess people who don't talk have to be hiding something. But I'm not. I just like to be alone.

So here I am riding in my families cramped SUV, just waiting for my new life. I didn't ask for this hell. It just came knocking. Then it broke in, stole my identity, and laughed. Yeah, that's what it did.

"Mary, did you get the glassware out of the truck? I can't find it."

"Mom...I only got my stuff. It must still be in there...ask John to look in the back."

"Uh...okay."

My hip was currently shoving the wood drawer to my newly finished dresser as my eyes rolled. My mother was an incompetent bungler when it came to moving. She always labeled every box to make certain she could find it at our new dwelling. And yet, every time without fail, she seemed to misplace several of our boxed possessions. I knew I was never going to see my container of Barbie's again.

"Found it!" I heard her scream from the first floor.

"Knew you would..." I murmured lowly as I began to put my room in order. It was very nice sized room. It had two small windows on one wall and then an adjacent massive one. The closet is little diminutive but then, my clothes are too. I am a rather short girl.

I was busy organizing under my white and ivory green bed when I noticed that a tree lie outside of my huge window. A small smile spread across my face as I quickly crawled out from under my sleeping quarters and walked over to the glass windowpane.

It was a willow tree, looking rather ancient and depressed. Its roots were rising up out of the ground, looking like an old woman's hands. Its light green leaves were swaying in the mild wind. They looked like my hair: droopy and tired. But I liked them that way, I did.

"Mary! Get down here, we have neighbors!" I could hear my mother call while I was fixating on the old soul.

Oh hell. Already?! I can't stand people who don't give us but five minutes to move in. They probably have cookies, freshly baked from their new stainless steel oven...

"Look," my mother said as I walked to the front door, a fake glow in her annoying voice, "They brought pie."

I just nodded, looking at the steaming pastry before I turned to gaze at its makers. It was a man and woman of mid forties stature. They looked like the kind of people your grateful your not related to. They had these plastered grins and crazed looks in their eyes that reminded me of deranged clowns. As if clowns weren't deranged enough.