From Brooklyn, with Hate

Chapter 4

 "June. June. Juuuuuuuune!" a voice, waking me from my slumber.

"Wha....? What? What's wrong? What do you want?" I groaned, wanting to be left alone.

"Mom wants you. She said something about her computer."

"Okay, fine." I threw my covers off and recognized the voice rudely waking me up was Jamie. "Did mom just pick you up from the daycare place?" I asked after realizing that we had previously dropped the boys off.

"Yeah," he nodded before walking out, "we just got back."

I crawled out of my bed and popped my head out of my room.

"You needed me, mom?" I asked after seeing her propped up at the table with her computer.

"Yes, I do. Come look at this." She said, waving me over to the table. "I found this job that would be perfect for you. It's a cyber cafe close to the school. You could go after school tomorrow to apply. And, since its a cyber cafe, you can bring your computer or phone, once we get another one for you, and work on homework."

"Okay. Yeah that sounds fun. I'll print out the application paper at school tomorrow during my study hall, if I can."

"Great. Well, we have some food in the fridge. I went to the store before picking up the boys and I got some microwave dinners and a little bit of food, as well as random other things. There's a bag of stuff for you over there. I got you some new toiletries, and there's also some notebooks and folders in there for school tomorrow."

"Okay, thanks mom. Are we going to find an apartment soon?" I asked as I grabbed the plastic shopping bag.

"Hopefully soon. Although we might be in this hotel for at least a few months until the first few paychecks come in from the both of us. I found a cashier job at Best Buy, the pay isn't too bad."

"Okay. I hope we can soon. Also email me the link to the cyber cafe website so I can print it out in school tomorrow."

"Doing it now." she called from the main room as I put the bag of supplies on my bed, placing the school materials in my carry on bag and the rest in the bathroom. The triplets and I got the rooms with the connected bathroom in our hotel room. It had a main room with a small dining table and a pull out couch in front of the TV. There was a room with a connecting door, my room, that had a connected bathroom. The triplets' room was symmetrical to mine, on the other side of the main room. They got their own room because there's three of them and they're small enough to share one bed. Mom wanted me to have my own room so I could have my own space away from my brothers, which I appreciated.

I looked around my room. It didn't look like my room necessarily. It looked like a room, sure, but not my room. In my room, back in Mexico, I had posters up on the walls, all from American Hollywood movies. Each wall was painted a different color, and patterns stenciled onto each wall. One of the walls was a deep blue, like an ocean, with animal stencils and seaweed painted up from the trim. The wall with my window, opposite the door, had shadows of trees painted onto it. The background was a cream color, and the trees were black, There was grass on the bottom, like the seaweed of my ocean wall. Across from the ocean wall was my poster wall. This was the one wall we hadn't gotten around to painting before my dad left. I had most of my furniture except for my bed against this wall, and to fill up the extra white space I had all the posters I had collected. The last wall, with the door, had an Alice in Wonderland theme. It was the door scene in the newer live-action movie after Alice falls down the rabbit hole and is standing in the room after she shrinks and finds the small door leading to Wonderland. The door is open and painted inside of it is Wonderland itself. The rabbit, mouse, hare, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Cheshire cat, and the mad hatter extending his hand, inviting me inside. The most disappointing thing about this wall was that as soon as I turned the doorknob (the creatures were all painted on my door, you see) and opened the door, it opened into the dreary hallway, reminding me that I'm not in Wonderland, I was just in my old, sad house. Everything there reminded me of my dad.

The only thing I regret from leaving the house in Mexico is that I had no way of bringing my walls with me. If I could have brought those bedroom walls, I would have been happier. Unfortunately, there was no room in Aunt Clara's house for extra bedroom walls, much less in my suitcase.

I walked out into the kitchen to find it empty. Opening the fridge, I discovered mom was, in fact, telling the truth and she did get some microwave dinners from the store. Not being very hungry, I instead chose a small can of chicken soup from the pantry and put it in a bowl to heat up in the microwave. I looked around the room. It was nice hotel. Small, but nice. I would start my senior year of high school tomorrow. Back in Arizona, the school I had been going to started a lot later than most traditional schools. Julia and I had been at school for a week before the fire. And just to think, I had just started to make friends at the end of the past year. My phone had been destroyed in the fire so I haven't talked to any of my friends from Phoenix in weeks. They probably just gave up on me.

A beeping noise brought me out of my trance, signaling that my soup was done in the microwave. In the middle of me enjoying my canned dinner, Tyler walked in from his room.

"Hey June." he greeted.

"Hey Ty. How are you feeling for school tomorrow?" I asked him, already knowing he'd be nervous.

"Nervous," he replied, "you probably guessed."

"Yeah, with you it's more of a rhetorical question. You've always been nervous for school."

"Rhetorical?"

"Never mind, you might learn what it means this year."

"Oh, goody." he said sarcastically. Tyler had always been nervous for school. Neither mom or I know why. We think it's because of him being a triplet, and that somehow someone would make fun of him, or just see him as one of three. I don't see how that could be possible at all. Tyler was the only one of the triplets who can draw. He is phenomenal, and I used to keep one of his smaller drawings in the back case of my phone.

All three of them has a different special talent. Tyler has his art, Jamie is learning guitar, and Ryan is extremely into every single type of sport. I don't see how Tyler could think he's just one of the three, because each one of them is special. Of course it's not easy to see at first glance, other than Ryan, but they are different.

"Tyler, stop thinking that. All three of you are different. You'll be fine." I said, trying my best to reassure him.

"Okay. Thanks June. I'm going to bed now. Goodnight" he says as he starts walking towards his room.

"Not before I get a hug!!" I run up to him and catch him in a hug right before he can run into his room, laughing and squealing as I tickle him. "Night Ty, I love you."

"I love you too June."

I smile, walking back to the table where I had left my food, and put my used dishes away, aka throw out the Styrofoam bowl I had used for the soup.

As I crawled into my bed, thoughts and worries about the next day had consumed me. I was nervous, of course. New school, new people, new look. I had scars, some were still blisters, from the fire. Sometimes I still have trouble breathing from lung damage due to the smoke. Yeah, and this was all my own cousin's fault. With a million bad school situations flying around my head, one good stuck out. A hope. Maybe, just maybe, this one could be a fresh start. And that was the last thing I thought before letting sleep consume me. 

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xoxo Roxy