Yet To Be Determined

Chapter 1

It's not that I wanted them to go. 

I needed them to go. Desperately.

I loved my parents, to the same extent any teen starved for independence could, but they had this inherent knack for making you want them to leave just as quickly as you wanted them to be there. So much so that you wish they walked out the door and never came back, only to mail you some shirt you left at home, or I don't know, some emancipation papers. 

If you believed all those TV shows and movies, moving into college was supposed to be exciting. Admittedly, a small part of me was still reconsidering if this was the right move in the first place. What I was excited for, however, finally escaping the madness I'd been so used to at home... the very same one that was still swirling passive aggressively around my dorm like a brooding hurricane. 

"Why the hell do you think that's going to give him any more room than putting his bed over here, and moving the frame up a few notches?" 

My mother's charm bracelet jingled as she waved her hands around in heated frustration. It scored her rage against my dad like a violent percussive symphony. 

Her frustration with him had been simmering since the second we parked, and this was the beginning of it overflowing. I'd seen it far too many times before. 

My dad closed his eyes as if asking the Lord above for strength. 

"Because, Annie," his reply came in the form of an exasperated sigh, "he has three different drawers that could slide under the bed instead of shoving them in the closet, which gives him more room for his shoes!"

He ended the sentence with such vigor you'd wonder if having room for my shoes was really all that important. 

"I swear, you always do this." She threw her hands in the air. 

"Always trying to take over like you know better about everything. Always the arrogant asshole! For fuck's sake, Mitch, look at the way you packed the car!" 

To his credit, my dad tried his best to pack our enormous haul from Bed, Bath & Beyond into my mom's SUV like an episode of Hoarders. But bless his heart, he forgot that with it filled to the brim, opening a window for air was going to eject at least one thing out onto the highway. 

Needless to say, my bathroom trash can and cleaning supplies were now strewn all over Route 113.

That meant a pit stop at the Target just outside of town to replace everything before getting onto campus. The only thing I kept thinking as I watched my parents argue through the aisles was how grateful I was for having my own car and that I didn't have to hear the inevitable screaming match that ensued as my stuff took a flying leap out the back seat. 

I'd considered doing that exact thing myself numerous times on drives with them in the past.

An impending tennis match of seething insults began between them, one for the ages if you asked me.  

Defeated, and also entirely unwilling to put myself in the line of fire, I sat myself down on the same bed that started this war knowing that no argument would ever compare to the one surrounding Ground Zero, who stood shifting between her feet anxiously in the doorway for one of two reasons:

 1. She hated when they fought like this in front of her as much as I did (although I had many more years of experience at it)

or 2. because she was dying for a cigarette (a far more likely option). 

Her name was Monica, and she was Dad's brand new girlfriend, 19 years his junior at the ripe age of 31. 

If I was totally honest, I didn't have much of a feeling towards her at all. Did I think it was weird that she was dating someone with an age difference larger than the lifespan of the man's child?Yes. But as a single, only recently out-of-the-closet nineteen year-old, I guess my room to judge was small.