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A Chapter by Genevieve Walsh

I�ve never liked flying. I just never have. I don�t know what specifically about it bothers me: I�ve never been one to get motion sickness or anything like it, and I�ve never been afraid of heights. I�ve never had any traumatic experiences that involve airplanes or flight. Driving doesn�t bother me, as long as I have something to do; sailing has never bothered me, in fact, I loved sailing, despite the hundreds of times I�ve seen the movie Titanic. There�s just something about flying that makes me uneasy, something that seems strange about it. Maybe it�s how the flight attendants explain in explicit detail how to use the cushion as a floatation device should the occasion arise, and how to operate the built-in oxygen mask over your seat that my mind drifts off into Everything That Could Possibly Happen to the Plane that Would Make It Crash Land, as it does every time we take off. Maybe it�s the fact that whenever I look out the window mid-flight and see the clouds, hundreds of feet below me, I begin to imagine how far and fast we would fall, should the engine give out or fall off or something. Or maybe, just maybe, my fear of flying has something to do with my fear of change. Strange as it may sound, I�ve always categorized them together. Flying equals different, far-off places, which equal change. Simple as that. But whenever I tell anyone my theory, namely my mother or sister, they say I�m crazy. Flying is flying and change is change, they say. Two completely different things.
However, that day, January 11, my theory was right, and no one could deny it. That flight was a step in one of the biggest changes the Snow family had ever encountered, and I hated every minute of it.
We were moving. We were moving to Ohio. I might have been horrified a little less if we were going to a place with a normal name, but no. My mother bought us a house (a very pretty house, too, judging from the pictures she showed us) in a tiny neighborhood called Summit Station, which is located in beautiful Licking County, Ohio. Licking County. Normally I don�t really pay attention to county names, but that one was an exception, you can see why. When my mother first told me the name, I laughed out loud and assumed she was joking. A county wouldn�t have a ridiculous name like Licking. Apparently though, in Ohio, they think differently.
I sighed and rested my head against the airplane seat, done with thinking about what was sure to be a really crappy decision. The window shade was shut tight due to my inability to look out of it without putting together a scene in my head involving crashing planes and fiery explosions. This was met with outstanding annoyance from my twin sister Michelle (who, for the record, looks nothing like me in my opinion � even though we are technically �identical�), who had the window seat and kept trying to open the shade when she thought I wasn�t looking; I had to give her a few severe talkings-to. Michelle was currently looking sulky as she typed with amazing speed on her cell phone: no doubt sending a text message to one of her friends back home �although whether the sulky face had to do with not being able to look out the window or about what the text said, I couldn�t be sure. Michelle knew that you weren�t supposed to use cell phones mid-flight as well as I did, but she ignored the flight attendants who gave her dirty looks, and whenever I tried to tell her to put the phone away, she always answered �God, Quinn, give it a rest. It�s not going to crash the plane.�
Although she tried to hide it, I knew my sister was just as upset as I was about moving. I�ve overheard her teary phone conversations to friends and seen her trash can overflowing with crumpled-up tissues. I was probably the only one who saw it, because she was acting the same way she always did. Michelle has always been very perky and happy-go-lucky, as opposed to me. I�ve always had a pessimistic side.
Seeing my sister talk to her friends back home made me think of my friends and how much I missed them. True, I�d only been gone half a day, but I knew I wouldn�t see them in person for a long time, and that started me missing them prematurely. My best friend, Pauline Fischer, I missed so much already, it physically hurt to think about her. She was the kind of person you never want to be away from, even for the shortest amount of time. She was a friend to everybody; there were so many levels of her personality, everyone found a part of her to relate to. I met her when I was two years old, at those mother-and-toddler dance classes. She was rebellious, refusing to hold onto her mother�s hand, while I wouldn�t go anywhere without mine by my side. We were partnered up for most exercises, due to her wildness and my inability to move without clutching onto a part of my mom�s body. I guess the instructor decided we evened each other out.
And she was right; we did. While our mothers bonded, always paired with each other, so did we. We became very close in very fast, and soon we were inseparable. Since those classes, we had been in school together every year, and spent most of our free time together as well. Even when we started middle school and there were suddenly cliquey girls and first boyfriends, she helped me survive it. We helped each other survive the gossip from the cliquey girls about the first boyfriends, other girls, and anything else they might have gossip about. And when it all became too much to handle, we would have a sleepover and pretend we were in a different time, a different place, where nothing existed except our own friendship. She was an amazing friend.
I stopped suddenly, realizing my vision was getting blurry. Thinking about Pauline was making me upset. I looked over at the window shade, past a still furiously typing Michelle, forcing her from my mind. I couldn�t cry on a plane; the last thing I needed was to ruin the flight for everyone with my loud weeping. To occupy my mind, I thought of all the new people I would meet at Licking Heights, the sure-to-be torture high school my mother had enrolled Michelle and me in. I�d make friends and eventually be happy.
I hoped.

The plane landed at roughly 3:45 P.M., after a three-hour period of torture for me. There was a nasty bit of turbulence near the end of the flight, during which I freaked out and thought we were going down because Michelle wouldn�t get off her cell phone. Her reply, however, was unsympathetic or concerned as always: �Quinn, I�m pretty sure they would inform us in the event of the plane heading toward the Earth in a death spiral, okay? Chill.� Which was, of course, what I had initially thought. Her snarky comments like this didn�t particularly help me when I was so sure I was going to burn to death in a fiery explosion. It also didn�t help that she was laughing most of the time it took me to tell her.
When the plane�s tires finally hit the ground and rolled slowly to a stop, I practically leapt out of my seat and into the aisle. When I rose, my legs felt wobbly and unstable from being still for so long. I didn�t leave my chair once the whole flight � too paralyzed from fear�so that�s why. I almost fell back into my seat but Michelle threw her arm out to catch me. She may be extremely annoying and unsupportive at times, but she comes in handy.
We walked out together into the airport. My mother sat in one of those hard, uncomfortable airport chairs in the terminal, a half knit scarf in her hands, which she was furiously working on. It was thick in width and already four feet long, although she claimed she was only halfway done. Knitting was one of my mom�s addictions, like coffee, romance novels and Dove soap, and you rarely saw her without a project in her hands. She picked it up almost two years ago, when my father was first admitted into the hospital. She put the long, light-blue scarf into her overflowing knitting bag as she saw my sister and me emerge from the terminal.
�Hey, guys! How are you doing? How was your flight?� She asked excitedly, pulling us each into a tight hug, She smelled like paint and floral perfume.
�It was fine Mom, thanks. How was your week?� Michelle asked. Thank God she didn�t mention my many theories about the plane crashing.
�It was just great, girls, you�re going to love the house! Mitchell designed both your rooms and they are beautiful, simply lovely.� Mitchell was a friend of my mom�s, who was an interior designer. She actually met him in the same airport we were standing in right then, when she flew in a week earlier. He helped her with the house, no charge, in exchange for free knitting lessons.
Although she�s been doing it for less than two years, my mom is quite the pro at knitting. So she accepted. Mitchell designed the house beautifully, and my mom helped him start his first project, which was a lime-green scarf he was making for is eight-year-old niece.
We left the terminal to go get our bags, watching the embracing couples and reunited families drift farther and farther away as we walked. Seeing the couples look at each other with so much love sent a small pang of jealousy through me. Relationships never worked out for people who were as shy as I was.
The baggage claim area was a very long and wide room with many conveyer belts holding countless suitcases � most of them big and black, but with the occasional green or navy blue � moving across them, being conveyed to the hoards of impatient passengers waiting to get there bags so they could get where they were going. My mother found our terminal�s belt and my sister and I soon found our luggage. My bag was sky blue, with flowers and hearts in black Sharpie, which I�d drawn so I could recognize it easily. Michelle�s was bright, neon pink.
Both of our bags fit easily into the small, new car, a Hybrid, I was surprised to learn. My mom had always talked about how she was going to get a Hybrid, but I thought this, like so many of her other plans, would just fall through as soon as the opportunity to fulfill it arose. I never actually thought she would put her plan to action in Ohio, but lately she was good for her word on almost everything.
The drive back k to the house was not long. Fifteen minutes on the Highway maybe, and then ten on a smaller road. It was much warmer than Connecticut, where I lived for sixteen years, the temperature resting near 40�. There were only a few inches of snow. When I left Connecticut that morning, there had been three feet. That was one good thing about this move.
I�ve never had much patience for snow, despite the fact that it
�s my last name. Winter is my least favorite season by a mile, and I spend most of my year dreading it. In March, when I finally see the first crocuses pop up, I usually scream from happiness.
Michelle got to ride shotgun, as she always did, because technically she was older than me. Older by approximately six minutes and twenty-four seconds, but still older. This usually bugged me, but in a brand new car such as this, I couldn�t be angry about it. I loved new cars, especially ones with seat warmers (Yes! Seat warmers!) in the back seat. So I just lay back and looked out the window at our new home.
The house was beautiful. It was an average-sized white Colonial with dark blue shutters and a door the color of a swimming pool�s water at twilight, a deep turquoise nobody could miss. There were snowcapped bushes lining the long walkway to the sidewalk and a definite possibility of a flower garden wrapping around the house. There was snow, so I couldn�t be sure. There was a sizeable oak tree to the right of the house, covering up a window that was next to it with its long, naked branches. It was gorgeous; it looked like a house from a movie, and I found myself excited as I threw open the car door and walked forward, up the walkway, brushing the snow gently off the bushes with my black-fingernailsed hands and watching it fall softly to the ground.
Mom�s excitement to finally show us the house took over when she got out of her new car and closed the door with her foot. She ran � nearly danced, she was so excited � up the walk, ahead of Michelle and me, and to the door. She waited for us to join her on the wide porch before throwing open the door and gesturing with her arms in a way that reminded me of a game show hostess advertising the grand prize of the episode.
And it was grand, the inside of that house. The front door opened into a large, T-shaped room that was wide in the front and got narrower toward the back of the house. There was a large bathroom to the right of it, nearly identical to the one upstairs in the same location. To the left of the front room was the kitchen.
My room was upstairs and to the right, giving me full access to the huge oak tree from my window. This might have come in handy, were I the badass type of teenage girl who sneaks out after curfew and gets facial piercings. But alas, no such luck. I was born the overly careful, conscientious type. The most badass thing I�d ever done was dye my hair permanently black the summer before, purely out of boredom with Pauline, who�d gone with a bright, vivid red. The chestnut-brown roots of my natural color were almost two inches long; but Mom said I couldn�t dye it anymore until I was out of the house and living on my own. I guessed I�d have striped hair until it gets long enough to chop all the black off.
The walls of my new room were a deep turquoise, like the front door. The trim was a pale sea foam green, and the door to the hall and to the closet were painted blood red all of the colors were the exact ones of my room back in Connecticut. It was exactly the same, but just different enough to put stinging tears in my eyes.
The furniture arrived at 6:30 p.m., a few minutes after we returned from our marathon grocery-shopping trip, buying everything we could possibly need to last us a long time. When my mom checked out the groceries and paid, the total was near $400.
I ran down the stairs in extreme excitement when I heard the doorbell ring.
�Michelle, Michelle, Michelle!� I squeaked when I saw her standing at the counter, snapping an Oreo in two and putting the bigger half into her mouth. She jumped about two feet when she heard my exclamation out of nowhere, and began to choke on the cookie. I clapped her on the back.
�Hey there, Quincy,� she said, after she was done coughing. �How may I help you?�
She said it very politely, slowly, and carefully, as if she was a therapist and I was her crazy patient who�d just threatened to jump out of her office window. With the way I was acting � overly hyper, practically bouncing from one foot to the other, not at all like my usual, calm self � that�s probably how it felt for her, too.
Any resentment I felt about the move temporarily evaporated at that. I was so excited, my voice undoubtedly sounded a bit squeaky when I said, �The furniture is here. Oh, my God this is insane, we�re moving in for good. But I�m so excited!� Duh.
Michelle found my attitude, as she always did when I had these episodes, hysterical. Sop she was laughing as she said �Sheesh, Q, turn it down a notch, kay? Did you forget to take your meds this morning?�
This was a joke, of course. Especially so since we were eleven and Michelle was diagnosed with A.D.H.D. I�ve had to explain on several occasions to several different people that just because we�re twins we don�t automatically get the same diseases or disorders as each other. Why does everyone find this so hard to believe?
I composed myself and looked over to the massive front room, where my mother and the furniture-delivering man were putting boxes on the floor, stacking them to unbelievable heights and constantly pushing them against walls so there would be more room. Occasionally they would take a piece of furniture from the truck and put it wherever there was enough room. I guessed we would have a lot of work before us, with all the boxes to unpack and furniture to haul around the house, and I was right. For the rest of the night we moved boxes around to various rooms, unpacked them the best we could, and assembled furniture all around the house. Not all of it came from our old place; there were several things I didn�t recognize. Some were small, insignificant: a new lamp, or coffee machine. Others were harder to miss: a gorgeous, cherry dining room table was one of the first pieces in place, because ;;my mom was so thrilled about it. It had tuned down the brilliantly purple walls of the kitchen, which at first I was majorly unsure about, but now seemed just right. Another new thing was a 40� Plasma screen TV�there was a fair amount of screaming from the two teenage girls in the house when that little gem was unsheathed� which was soon hung in the front room, now the family room, right in front of our cute little powder-pink couch that�s shaped like lips. We could get away with having complete girl stuff all around the house, like a purple kitchen, lip-shaped couch, and turquoise door, because no men lived with us. I guess the couch could technically fit in a bachelor pad � you know, one with leopard print everywhere and silhouettes of naked women stenciled all over everything � but the way we pull it off, it looks like a total chick crib.
It was closing in on 11:00 when the house was decently put together. There were still boxes, but we moved them into the basement to be dealt with at a later date. I was sitting on my bed, looking out the dark window at the now nearly invisible tree, when my phone rang. It was Pauline.
�Hey! Are you in the beautiful Ohio?� she said when I answered.
�I am. The house is gorgeous, I can�t wait to send you pictures. How are things back there?�
She snorted, and I could hear it over the phone. �You mean since this morning, when you left? Not much has happened. Connecticut is mighty boring without the Snow twins, let me tell you. Bobby Higgins is pretty torn up about you guys leaving, though.�
Bobby was Michelle�s boyfriend in eighth grade, which she dated for about two minutes. She never really liked him and he never really liked her: I�m pretty sure they both just liked the idea of having a boyfriend and girlfriend. We tried to fit Bobby and Michelle into casual conversation as much as possible.
We spoke about random things: compared the weather in Connecticut to the weather in Ohio (she was jealous a out the hardly-any-snow factor), talked about schools: me about Licking heights, her about Hartford Center High, where she would be starting her second semester of Sophomore year, and where I should have been starting the second semester of Sophomore year, if not for the big relocation. After about a half hour, we got down to the sad � but possibly most important �� stuff.
�I really miss you, Quinn. It�s so different here without you,� Pauline said, the sadness audible in her soprano voice, echoing over all the moils between us. I felt a lump rise in my throat.
�I miss you to, Pauline. I�ll call you tomorrow after school, I promise. Love you.�
�Love you too. Bye,� she said, and hung up the phone. I did the same, thinking for the first time about how different it would be, living so far away from everyone I grew up with. This move was permanent, I realized for the first time, with a shock. I seemed to be blocking out that fact; focusing on the positives. It was, indeed, difficult to be upset that day, with all the excitement. But being without Pauline, Nikki, Angie, Gretchen�.the people whose faces I would hardly get to see except for when I looked at the pictures in my shoebox. Even my Dad, who hadn�t lived us for almost two years, I would miss more than ever, because I knew that I wouldn�t be able to see him. Back home, I could have popped in to see him whenever I wanted; the hospital � called the Hartford Retreat � was a mile from my house. I didn�t see him often; it was hard for me to see him like he was. But the opportunity was always there, waiting, and I took advantage of that.
I had a lot of trouble falling asleep later, tossing and turning, flipping my pillow over to the cold side, listening to slow and soothing songs on my blue iPod. Michelle�s quiet crying had silenced at around 11:45, which meant she had fallen asleep, but I couldn�t get anywhere near unconsciousness: anything I started to doze off, I would have a troubling thought about school, or something else equally troubling, and I would be wide awake again�.
Ugh, school. That was sure to be a nightmare. I was an okay student: I�d never failed anything, but I wasn�t on the High Honors or something impressive like that. The only extracurricular I took was soccer, because I loved soccer with all my heart and soul. It was my way of getting unimportant things off my mind, taking my pent up anger out of something (not the opposing team, mind you the ball) and staying fit.
No, I wasn�t worried about the academic stuff, then. More the social stuff. The only reason I had most of my friends back home was because of Pauline. She was much more popular than I, so she hooked me up with things like that. I was too shy to make much friend progress on my own, and here, no one would be there to help me.
Well, that�s not totally true. I had my sister. But she would probably be too busy with her own social life to assist me with mine.
I rolled over on my side and concentrated on not thinking. It didn�t really work, which was to be expected. The night before the first day of school � first or second semester, no matter how long I�d been there � I rarely got more than four hours of sleep before being raised by the very annoying beeping of my alarm clock. I always freaked out over what I was going to wear (in this case, a black Paramore band tee shirt over jeans and Converse high-tops, with my dark hair down and loose) and thought up the worst-case scenario about what could happen the next day. Usually it pretty much stayed at Pauline not showing up. This one was so much worse I wasn�t going to talk about it to anyone, they�d have to use their imaginations. This time, instead of being in a building of lots of people I kind of knew, I would be in a bigger building with lots of people I didn�t know at all. Being alone just didn�t work out well for me, as anyone could tell if they got to know me for a while.
I could tell I was beginning to drift off, and I was glad. The clock read 2:46; if I fell asleep now I would have exactly three hours and fifty-nine minutes of peaceful rest before being awakened, so rudely, at the unfair hour of six forty-five. I knew if I spent any more time unknowingly keeping myself awake by thinking about tomorrow, it would be even worse because of my sleep deprivation. So I focused very hard on watching the lights on the inside of my eyelids, and I eventually fell into a grateful sleep.