Fall

Entry One

Entry One: August 26, 2011

My hands are shaking. We're leaving now. But I guess I should explain first.

 "Thalia!"

I burrowed into the gray blankets surrounding me, the midnight sky outside equally gray with an oncoming storm. With every thunder the whole building around me shook, including our little apartment. The heater didn't work and my blankets were thin, but it wasn't that bad. It was only the beginning of autumn, and the nights only dropped to the fifties. 

"Thalia! Now!" I had a feeling my mother might have said more, but her voice was muffled by the booms and rumbles vibrating through the sky; the brownstone; my very bones. I nestled one more time into the blankets, hoping almost to bury myself into the slightly itchy but welcome fabric, but it didn't work. I got out of bed, shivering. My bare feet padded across the old, wooden floors, my favorite nightgown swishing around my knees.

"I'm coming," I called. I walked into our miniscule kitchen and turned right, opening the door of my mother's room. She was scurrying around, fast as the mice I often saw alley cats chasing. Her large suitcase lay open on the bed, half full.

"Come on," mother gestured towards the bed. "Go get whatever you want to bring, Thalia, quickly. Then bring it here." I did. I ran to my room and grabbed my best clothes, my journal, and my hairbrush. Then I ran back and set it on mom's bed, both of us packing our treasures.

"Where are we going," I asked her softly.

"Somewhere new," she said curtly. "Somewhere new, of course. Now help me close the suitcase." I sat on top of it as she put the latches into place.

"There we go," she told me. "There. Now let's go."

She already had two other bags packed by the door. She took two and I the other, almost dropping it as the thunder made itself known very loudly and scarily in the night. I looked at Mom in unsureness. She smiled reassuringly, probably. It was hard to tell in the confusion of the dark, cut through in flashy intervals with blinding lightning. She took my hand and pulled me out the door of the apartment, then down the stairs; out of the building; into the car. She put the three big bags in the trunk, and then jumped in just as it started to drizzle.

I looked out the window as we drove down the road, amazed at how everything had changed so quickly. My whole life uprooted before my eyes. The rain beat down stronger and stronger, a dull picture outside my window. The sky started lightening with the rise of the sun, but not much. Our headlights made way for us in the fog as the storm grew around us.

I looked down at my small, pale hands. I almost seemed to match this kind of rain, but I didn't want to. I was still wearing my billowy white nightgown, my black hair mussed and greasy. I figured I looked like a ghost. At the moment, I felt like one.