Keeping Up With Piper

Chapter 20

10 YEARS EARLIER

I grab my azure blue backpack and walk to the white door of our perfect suburban dream of a house, just that this place isn't even suburbia. It's a super small town far away from any type of actual civilization. It's my first day of high school in Maywood. We just moved here from Toronto because of my Dad and his new job as a postdoctoral researcher at a small local private university. I'm not Canadian, I'm American, but so far I've only lived a few years in the United States. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, but shortly afterwards we moved to The Golden State, California. Back then it was for my Mom's job. I grew up in the wonderful city of San Francisco, Outer Richmond to be precise, until I turned seven years old. I miss that time so much. I haven't been to San Francisco in a while. Growing up there is one of the things I am most grateful for in my life. It's the perfect city to spend your childhood in. You get that small-town intimacy and its big city flair. Only five days after my eighth birthday we moved to Toronto, Canada. I went to middle school directly in the city center. I was supposed to go to a high school for theater and performing arts afterwards. My Mom's an actress, that's why. She was pretty successful until she married my Dad and got pregnant with me, Samantha Goldinger. She still refuses to leave us for more than two weeks in a row. Her child and her marriage, that's her priority now, it is not acting anymore. She doesn't do as much filming as before. It doesn't matter how often I tell her I'm old enough to take care of myself. But I get it why we had to move here. This job is a great opportunity for my Dad. He can finally work on his habilitation. That's what he always wanted. My Dad is some kind of a nerd. He's interested in everything scientific and spends a lot of time in libraries. He's often busy but I'm grateful to have such a creative and outgoing Mom and a nerdy scientist as a Dad. Mom took me to theaters, art classes and operas, and my Dad visited museums, science fairs and zoos with his daughter.

"Let's go, Mom," I say. "I don't want to be late on my first day."

"Okay, honey," she says and hurries to the white front door but stops as soon as she reaches the doorframe. "Forgot the car keys. Sorry. Just a second."

Mom never wore anything business-like, obviously, since she doesn't have an average nine-to-five job. I mostly see her in blue jeans and white shirts. Her hair is just as copper red as mine. It's obvious that she's my Mom. People keep telling me I just look exactly like her, like a younger version of her, an exact copy. I have seen photos of her, in her childhood and teenage years, and it's true. She looks like me, not only today but even more when she was my age.

"You look exactly like Amy," is what relatives tell me, my grandparents, old friends of my parents, neighbors, basically everyone.

"Okay, ready," Mom says.

Together we walk outside and get in the car. It is one of those late summer days where the sun is still out and shining but it's also windy and cloudy. Autumn is arriving. We drive about fifteen minutes, then the car stops. Outside the window I see the school building of Maywood High. From the outside it looks very much like every other high school, with its American flag, the red and beige-brownish bricks, however, it is a little smaller than all the other schools I went to. At Maywood there are only about two hunded students.

"Have a great day, sweetie," Mom says and puts her hand on my shoulder. "Have fun, make friends and learn lots of things."

"Sure," I say and get out of the car. "See you later."

I turn around and watch her silver Tesla drive away. There's a huge meadow on each side of the path that leads to the main door. The red brick building is quite flat and there's an American flag right in front of it, just like the Canadian flag in front of my middle school in Toronto. I don't really miss my school but the city. I guess in most ways all schools are alike. But moving from a city with almost three million people to what looks like a tiny village is a big step. Jennifer, one of my classmates in Toronto came from Georgetown, South Carolina. She told me it is very different there compared to Toronto. She said everyone knows each other, most of them are even related in some way or another, and nothing ever happens. I knew it would be boring to live in a small town on the east coast but it is worse than expected. There wasn't much to do during the last week. I unpacked all of the moving boxes, decorated my room, and we also met a few neighbors. That's it.