From Russia With Loathing

Part 1

    "Pack, donate, or throw away?" 

I turned away from the book I'm looking at and look at the object in Audrey's hand. It was a screen print of leaves I did for one of my classes in college.

    "Pack it," I tell her. "It was the only decent art project I did in college." We both laugh at my below average art skills.

   I graduated a year ago with a masters in Interior Design and a minor in Urban Design from Pratt. I love everything about art and design. For as long as I can remember all I have ever wanted to do was surround myself with art and beautiful things. Nothing made me happier than sitting in the middle of a perfectly decorated room. Perfect color scheme, decorated with just the right amount of artfully selected items, and a touch of coordinating art on the wall. That is how I saw my future self and career. 

   While I loved art, my artistic level was that of an advanced kindergartener. That's defiantly one of the things that drew me to interior design. I could do most of my designs and plans on a computer. 

"I thought I told you not to let me pack more then three boxes of books" I scold her as I tape up the sixth box of books and set it with the others.

"You can never have too many books." Audrey tells me. She throws one of the ugly decorative pillows her aunt gave her into the donate box. "Plus the more books you have to smarter and better you look." 

I just roll my eyes and laugh at her. "And half of those books are your design books and you are going to need them at some point. You know, for inspiration or what ever they are for." She says to me. 

    Audrey Hamilton has been my only best friend since kindergarten. She brought her Backstreet Boys CD in for show & tell one day and I knew at that very moment we would be best friends till the day we died. And as the fates would have it we have been inseparable since. We both would go on to attend the same best privet schools money and power could get you in New York City. After our high school graduation we spent the whole summer traveling around Europe. We did the touristy sight seeing stuff as well as the typical spoiled rich girl non stop partying stuff. When we returned from "sowing our wild oats", as Audrey explained to her parents, we moved into a small  apartment that Audrey's parents bought for us. We both payed them an arm and a leg in rent every month, but we both knew it still wasn't even close to what the rent on a place like ours actually cost. Her parents said it was a business thing or some kind of tax right-off, I can't remember. We both knew they were being over protective and wanted us to live a secured building in a good neighborhood, so we just went with it. We both decided to stay and go to college in the city. Audrey went to Columbia and I went to Pratt. So our apartment was between the two.

     Audrey and her parent were the only people who knew about my family, and the type of business they were involved in. Audrey's father was one of the most well respected art dealers in the city while her mother owned two art galleries in Chelsea. Her parents were everything I wished mine were. They were the perfect family. They never fought and they told each other everything no matter what. 

Audrey and I had already been best friends for years when her parents found out about my family. We were in middle school when her parents went away for the weekend on a business trip. She begged her parents to let us stay home by ourselves. They wanted her to stay at my house but I aways adamantly refused to let Audrey anywhere near my family. After much convincing they finally agreed to let us stay by ourselves, the only condition being that Mrs. O'Donald next door would check in on us periodically. Audrey's family lived in a five story brownstone on a quiet street in one of the best neighborhoods in manhattan. They also had a top of the line security system. Her parents always joked that it was to protect their most expensive piece of art, their daughter, but we all knew it was for the Warhol prints that hung in the living room and the Picasso in the dinning room. That weekend Audrey and I got into her parents liquor and in a drunken state I told her everything. A week later she unwillingly told her parents some of what I had told her after they figured out what had happened to their liquor cabinet. I then confessed as much as I could to them, leaving out most of the really bad things. Like any sane parents would be they were hesitant to let their daughter hang out with someone like me. They eventually came around when my father had to go to prison for two months and they agreed to take me in so I didn't have to go into the system. Since then they have treated me like their own daughter. They are the only love and stability I have ever known.  They are the only real family I have ever known.