The Grace in the Fall

Road Tripping

In the past three weeks my house has been getting more and more bare. Our landlord has been over often. He was an awful man with bad teeth and stringy hair. Whenever he was in our house he seemed to always be standing too close to my mom. He was always finding reasons to touch her. Although my mom didn't voice it, she looked super uncomfortable and stressed when he was over. Slowly he came over more and more and helped my mom get the house ready to sell. During this time my mom got more and more tense and in turn that made me get more and more tense.

The house wasn't the only thing that was getting me more tense. Elie's secrets are getting out of hand. In the past few weeks I have had 2 more rumors spread around damaging my once normal reputation.

I was talking about it with Shiloh and Evie the other day. They described this as the scene in Mean Girls where Regina George dumped copies of the Burn Book in the hallways. I didn't really know what they were talking about because the last time I had seen Mean Girls was when I was 7 and my mom was watching it while doing laundry. Evie pulled up the scene on her phone and showed it to me. They weren't lying. That was a more dramatic version of what was happening in our Highschool.

My friendship with everyone was getting more and more strained. After the first week we all sat down at lunch and promised each other that we wouldn't believe a single bad word that goes on about us because it was almost impossible to decipher the truth from the rumors. We all promised we would do that but it was a half empty promise. About 40% of the rumors were pretty accurate. It was difficult not to get hurt over something that had a possibility of being true. Day by day the tension was getting worse in our little town. I kept expecting it to finally burst and explode. I keep wanting for that to happen but it won't.

The tension at the school was unbearable most days and it would be amazing to get out for the short times during the weekend. Everything was easier during the weekend. Everyone in the group would get together and we would just hang out and be around each other. We could forget everything that was going on in school and just relax. That's why everyone was so excited for spring break.

Spring Break was finally here and we had plans to drive down to Santa Cruz. Noah's parents set the whole trip up. They invited me, Dylan, Tanner, Trevor, Evie and Shiloh to come with them. They gave us almost total freedom on this trip. Since the McKlarens' car won't fit everyone they are having us drive ourselves. We get to decide who the best driver out of all of us is and they are driving the whole way.

Don't get me wrong, Noah's parents will be with us but they are more like glorified chaperones. Personally I was pretty excited for the trip. I had been excited ever since I got a tiny taste of vacation in Oregon three weeks ago.

We were leaving tonight. It only takes about 3 and a half hours to drive to Santa Cruz from where we were so when I got home this Friday afternoon I packed my bags. We will be there for a total of 5 days.

After packing my bags, which didn't take very long since I was living out of a bag anyway, I walked into the kitchen where my mom was fixing a sink. She was underneath the sink with a wrench and she looked a little confused.

"Hey, mom?" I asked her, diverting her focus from the sink.

"Yea-ow!" She sat up suddenly and hit her head on a pipe.

"Mom! Are you okay?" I asked as I walked over to where she was sitting.

She placed her hand on her forehead where she had hit the pipe, "Yeah, I'm okay. It might leave a bruise but I'll be fine. What did you need, hun?"

"I wanted to know if you needed help."

"No, I think Mr Hudder and I will be just fine." She smiled and patted my head.