The Jock & I

P r o l o u g e

Scared was an understatement.

No, I was dreading it.

It's bad enough I was already completely socially inept, but now we had to add moving to the mix?

Nice one dad.

Stupid Law Firm.

That's the thing about me, I talk to myself alot if you haven't noticed. I mean when your name is only known by the teachers who teach your class, you don't have many people to tell stories too, unless you feel like spilling your thoughts to the school guidance counsler, but that was a little to up in the air for me. Anyways, my name Is Ashley Powers, and my family is ruining my life. We've lived in Toronto, Canada my whole life. I had one really great friend Anna, who was just as socially incomprehensive as myself, and together we survived our first two years of High School.

Now? Forget it. I am doomed.

I'm not like my older sister Samantha and my older brother Seth. They are twins, both 18, not only do their social abilities surpass mine, but their both pretty darn athletic, where as I can't even jump rope for the gym final.
So yeah, I got the crappy genes of the family. I don't really think I necessarily take after anyone though because there's my mom, who is a dental hygienist, basically has to talk to kids all day while poking their mouths with metal tools, and then there's my dad. Attorney Brian Powers of Trustings Law Firm. He has to talk to criminals all day, and if that doesn't top the social abilities chart, I don't know what does.

I don't fit into the mix at all. Everyone in my family is excited for the move for the most part.

New York City, big bright lights, busting with people, the city that never sleeps.

I like sleep.

I don't really get the fasination. I get it maybe if you're like the rest of my family and you're used to making conversation with hundreds of people all day, but I have trouble finding things to talk about with my one friend Anna, how was I supposed to skate by in a High School with 10,000 kids, and a city with over 100,000 people per square mile?

Doomed.

It's September, and school is just about to start, so I guess i'm just glad I wont have to awkwardly walk into class in the middle of the school year, where everyone's eyes will be on the new freak from toronto with skin as painfully pale as a ghost. Good thing I wasn't moving someplace with a dangerously hot climate, like California where bronzed skin girls can be seen at every corner, and then not only would I be the new girl but, I would be creepy pale ghost from cold, boring Toronto whose never been in a climate above 65 degrees.

My older sister is more then excited for this move. She keeps explaining to my mom and I how we are more then lucky to be moving to the
"World's greatest shopping capital!"
Mom always laughs and nods in agreement, but truthfully the last time I went on a shopping spree was with my Grandma Betsie, a week before school freshman year. I haven't been to a major shopping mall since, so clearly I was less enthusiastic on the topic then my sister was.
Seth's excited to move because
New York is home to some of the greatest sports teams in the nation, again big woop!

My dog didn't really seem to mind the move ether. As boxes came in and out of our house by the moving trucks and their workers Rocko, our Yorkshire Terrier just kept wagging his tail with enthusiasm.

Then again, Rocko is just a small eight pound, 2 year old Yorkie, who really has no say in the situation.

We knew next to no one in
New York City, besides all of my dad's co-workers that would be moving there as well, but all their children were younger, and of course not attending the same High School as I was so that left me back at square one knowing no one but my brother and sister who were guaranteed to acknowledge me for about a second, until they found a group of socialites to hangout with.

I put on my best face, like i always do and tried to seem the least bit satisfied to move to New York City, because I know my dad's job was really giving him a well-paid salary, and it wasn't his fault they decided to up and move, but it was alittle silly that they placed their company as somewhere as desolated as the part of Toronto I lived in, in the first place.

I didn't live by one of those major snowboarding, busy city towns in Toronto, I lived in a small suburban part of Toronto that was home to only about 1,000 people, which doesn't even begin to add up to the amount of kids in a New York City High School.

I would be going from a medium sized Victorian Styled house, to a modernized Victorian Villaged apartment.

My room was going to look like one of those apartment bedrooms on Sex and the City or Friends!
I was going to have a huge window that overlooked a busy street with yellow taxi's zipping by, and hundreds of people waiting at a crosswalk, that looked like tiny ants from 500 stories up in the air.

Next thing you know I would be living with Carrie Bradshaw, or Ross and Rachel!

I really did watch too much reality television.

Anna came over to our house yestersay through the messy aray of boxes scattered throughout the house to say goodbye.

She looked kinda distraught, and I have to say if worlds were reversed and she was the one leaving me in this abandoned town without a single friend, Yeah it would definitely suck, but at least she wasn't the one moving to a city so congested, that you couldn't even walk a block without being stopped by an intersection with hundreds of people huddled on the sidewalk together waiting for the city bikes, yellow taxi's and huge Suv's filled with New York Driver's to pass, making walking just that much slower.

I could only imagine how brutal it would be in the winter.

Brutal, and Freezing.

Great.

Anyways tomorrow is move-in day and we will be driving 7 hours to New York.

Chester Heights, right at the heart of the hustle and bustle of city life, in New York, New York, is where our new apartment is located.

I am going to have to sit in the back of my father's black sudan Suv cramped between boxes of our junk and Rocko squeeming in terror on my lap, while Sam and Seth got to travel in my mom's red mercedees.

Explain to me the fairness of the situation.

And you wonder why my family is ruining my life.