Coffee's For Closers (And Also Romantics)

Chapter 1: Cheryl

Cheryl stared out her backseat car window as they pulled into the driveway of their new house. As she looked at where she was going to live for the first time, all she could think was that Thorn Hill looked exactly like every haunted house in every cheesy horror movie she had ever seen.

It was a mansion of course, but considerately smaller than their old home back in Seattle. Instead of glowing with the riches and fancy decor Cheryl was used to, it was dark and lifeless. Completely uninhabited. How had her life come to this?

The car had stopped moving and her mother was getting out of the car, but she didn't move. Her earbuds were blasting King Princess way too loud, but she couldn't bear to talk to anyone right now, least of all her mother.

She closed her eyes and listened to the music filling her ears, letting it soak through her head and soothe her mind. If only she could just forget everything that had happened for a single minute. But there was no escaping reality.

Finally, Cheryl opened her eyes and stared back at the house looming before her. Thorn Hill was a fitting name for such a place.

She sighed and pushed open her car door, stepping out onto the driveway. The air was fresher here than she was used to- it lacked the scents of fuel and shops and people, unlike the way the city was always filled with the smell of something.

Cheryl left her earbuds in, even as she walked towards the front door, because she knew all that would greet her was silence. And Cheryl could not stand silence.

Her mother had already entered the house, not even looking back to see if she was following. She had left the door wide open, so Cheryl stepped inside and left it the same way behind her.

It was dark inside, the only light coming from the sun streaming in through the doorway and the towering windows. The place may have been beautiful once, but now everything was coated in dust, not having been touched in years. As if it's last inhabitants had disappeared without a trace, without a second thought to what would happen to the poor house they left behind.

Cheryl had thought the house seemed haunted and cold from the outside, but now she realized it was just... sad. And empty. She understood the feeling.

There was a staircase that led, presumably, to the bedrooms, and that was the only room Cheryl really cared about. A kitchen was a place for cooking, a living room was a place for sitting, a dining room was a place for eating, but Cheryl doubted those places would get much use from her. Her bedroom would be her space.

So she climbed the stairs, not being able to hear it through the music, but she could tell half the steps were creaking as she put her weight on them. Her hand was covered in dust from the handrail by the time she reached the top, but she simply wiped it off on her clothes and continued down the hallway she had found at the top of the staircase.

There were several rooms up here, doors lining both sides of the hall. She gently cracked open each one, peeking inside to see what lay behind them.

They were all bedrooms and bathrooms and closets and such, nothing unexpected. But none that really sparked her interest. All dusty and dark and unwelcoming.

Then she reached the last door on the left. She pushed the door open and found a room, similar to all the others, but something about it was different. It wasn't the biggest, and it was just as dim and dirty as the others, but it had an energy about it, like it wasn't quite as sad as the rest of the house.

She pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside. There were two decent sized windows and a big canopy bed in the center of the room. An ancient rug covered the majority of the floor, and a few other typical furniture pieces filled the rest of the space, all ornate and beautiful, charming in a quiet way.

Cheryl would have to tone it up a bit- she wasn't much for quiet, but it would do. It would do very well. She imagined all her things filling up this room, her duvet and her trinkets and her clothes, and it almost felt like a place she could live in. Almost.

Because with the mental image of her things came the memory of her old bedroom, the one she had lived in all her life, with the accents and designs all created specifically by and for her. That was the room she loved. The room she had been forced to leave behind, and would never see again.

Cheryl sat down on the bed, stirring up the dust around her. She watched as it swirled and floated through the air, caught in the patches of sunlight from the windows. The dulled, white comforter was silky to the touch, but too boring for her taste. She hoped the truck with all of her things, her packaged boxes containing the remnants of her old life, would arrive soon. She wouldn't be able to relax here until the room looked like her own. Or at least had some red in it.

A hand suddenly tapped her on the shoulder, roughly, so it felt more like a jab, and she jumped, shaken from her thoughts. Pulling out one earbud, she turned to face her mother, who was standing beside her with a look of annoyance on her face.

"What do you want, mother?" Cheryl asked sharply, trying to hide how startled she had been, though she knew her mother had seen her jump at her touch.

"I just came to tell you that I've hired a maid to rid this place of all it's dust. I couldn't stand to look at this grime for another second." She wrinkled her nose in disgust as she stared pointedly at the dust on Cheryl's clothes. "Really, I don't know how you let yourself get so disgusting so quickly."

Cheryl rolled her eyes. Always a complaint or a critique of some kind with her, never a simple conversation where her mother didn't go out of her way to treat her like the dirt underneath her fingertips.

"Whatever. I'm going out," Cheryl announced, standing. She didn't want to be stuck in this stuffy place any longer, not until she could unpack her things and breathe without inhaling a lung full of dust.

"Clean yourself up first. I don't want you making a fool of us to our new neighbors with your dirty clothes. And not to mention your hair." With that last snide comment, her mother turned and exited the room, heading back downstairs.

What was wrong with her hair? Actually, Cheryl didn't care. Her mother was probably just trying to make her feel bad, as usual.

But that logic didn't stop Cheryl from slipping into the bathroom connected to the bedroom to check herself in the mirror. Her long, red hair was a bit messy, so she tied it back into a ponytail with one of the hair ties she always wore on her wrist. Then she smoothed out her slightly rumpled blouse and straightened her skirt, which ended just a couple inches above her knees.

Though she would never admit it, she did want to make a good first impression with the people she met in this new town. Ugh, Cheryl hated first impressions. Back at home, everyone knew who she was, how important she was, and that she wasn't to be messed with. It may be slightly pretentious to say she had been the queen of her high school, but she had definitely reigned over her peers.

Now she would have to start all over. And it was the beginning of summer break, so she wouldn't even be able to make her place at school for almost three months.

She sighed and turned away from the mirror, putting her other earbud back in, which had still been dangling at her side. Then she walked back down the hall and the staircase and out the door without looking back.

She took a long, dust-free breath once she was standing outside, tilting her head up and closing her eyes. Maybe there was something good about this fresh air after all. After a moment, she opened her eyes again and noticed the sky was much gloomier than it had been just a few minutes before- the sun had disappeared behind a wave of dark clouds that had seemingly appeared solely to block out the light. Just her luck.

But she set off down the side of the road anyway, because going back inside the house right now was not an option, and maliciously hoped the sudden gloom would leave Thorn Hill, and her mother, sitting in darkness as she  headed into the heart of the little town herself.