The rest of the day passed by as uneventfully as it could have. Meaning that it was pretty eventful, from meeting new teachers, and finding her way around the building, to the strange encounters with the resident bad boy. Overall it was just a normal first day. She walks home at the end of the day, trying to clear every trace of Jack from her thoughts.
"Hi Mom, I'm home." She walks through the doorway to find mountains of boxes lining the walls and scattered around the floor space, across the whole house, as far as the eye can see.
"Hi Sweetheart, how was your first day?" A middle-aged woman, with the same dark eyes Iona has, looks up from behind one of the piles of moving boxes, which like the family, only arrived at the house today. She slides her bag to the floor before moving to give her a hug.
"Hmmm, it was...in one word," she thinks for a moment trying to find the right word to describe the day she's had," interesting."
She lets her go and gives her a concerned look, "Oh? So what happened that made it so interesting?" She takes a step back turning to the box she was busy with. Then looking back at Iona, she smiles waiting for her response.
"Oh nothing much. My teachers seem nice, and the students are friendly enough, not much different to my last school. I think I just need some time to get used to not really having other girls around. It's actually better than I thought it would be."Iona gives her mom a smile hoping to reassure her that she'll be okay.
"Well you'll be fine, you just need to keep your head down and work hard like you've been doing. I'm so proud of you taking the jump, to move to a new school. In your second last year too, when your marks count so much towards you getting into university. You're such a hard worker. I know you'll be fine," she gives her another tight hug." Thank you so much for helping support your dad in this. He's so happy to be working as a teacher again. We both knew how much he didn't like working in research and development...and when he got the job offer and they then included reduced school fees for you, well it was too good not to accept.``
Despite the cliché that mothers and their teenage daughter won't get along and end up fighting like cat and dog, Iona and her mom do get along well. I'm not saying that, they don't fight, because believe me they do. They just don't fight often. Overall they get along pretty well. Iona tells her just about everything, and she knows her mom will always be there for her. For some reason though she keeps the parts of her day involving Jack to herself.
She gives her mom one more squeeze before stepping back and swinging her bag over her right shoulder again turning to the stairs.
"Is my room upstairs?" A smile that she didn't know she had in her spreads across her face and, because she can never hide anything, the excitement that's now filled her shows in her voice. 'I've always wanted an upstairs bedroom; this day just got a whole lot better.'
Her mom nodes not quite looking up from the box she was busy with when Iona walked in, "Since you got home first you can choose which room you want. There are two on each side of the passage as you get to the top of the stairs. You can choose one of those and Nick can have the other."
"Thanks Mom!" She's already halfway up the stairs. One of the many things she loves about being the eldest child, she knows from experience that it pays to come home on time.
Poor Nick, only two years younger but he'll always be the baby of the house. But hey second born, second place. Not really though. Her parents have always made it clear that they love them both equally no matter what.
Like mom said there are two bedrooms on either side and a bathroom on the left just after the first bedroom, and a spare bedroom on the right. At the end of the passage is the master bedroom with its on-suite bathroom and walk-in closet. It's one of the nicest houses she's ever seen.
She ends up choosing the bedroom on the left, and even though it doesn't look out on the garden, it's going to be easier to get to the bathroom in the mornings. Isn't it funny how a little choice like this can change so many things in the future. I'm not saying that it will, but I'm also not saying that it won't.
She puts her bag down on the floor so that she can start moving the boxes holding her things into my new room. The upstairs looks the same as the ground floor; boxes lining the walls on both sides. She's all too happy that her mom insisted on having the boxes labelled as they were being packed. Now she only has to look for the boxes with the blue mark to know which are hers. After a minute of searching she starts moving them into her room. After about twenty-seven minutes -no it was twenty-seven minutes exactly, yes I timed it- she's found all her boxes. her bed, and her mattress and moved them into the room on the left. Now time to unpack and actually move in.
She sets up her bed and pushes it against the wall by the window. Eight boxes later she finds her sea blue bedding and curtains. The curtains are the first to go up.
As much as she loves this new house and her new room there's on problem. That is that this house is one of those houses that you see in movies. The kind where all the houses along that street look the same, and they've all been built too closely together. Because of this one of the first things Iona noticed about her room is that she can see straight into her neighbours bedroom. Which means that they can see straight into hers.
Being the nosy girl that she is, she's already spent most of those first twenty-seven minutes looking across the gap into the other person's bedroom. This is what she's noticed; Firstly it looks like she's living next door to a guy.
Well at least, judging from the grey bedspread, and oak furniture. The walls are a dark blue, except one that looks like it was once white, but is now covered in bad posters. Some that she's able to identify as, Nirvana, Metallica, D.C. Talk, Apocalyptic, Skillet, Fireflight, and Black Veil Brides. There are a few others but she can't seem them well enough to make them out. The dead give away though is the clothes that are lying on the unmade bed. There's no way a girl would wear boxers, or have those kinds of sheets. Other than his bed, his room is pretty clean. She can see a desk in the corner and overall the room doesn't look all that different from what she knows hers will look like once everything is unpacked.
Which she's reminded she needs to finish doing. Just as soon as she gets her desk where she wants it she hears the doorbell ringing.
"Hey aren't you going to let us in!" She can't help but smile at the sound of Liz's voice travelling up to her room.
"Can't you open a door?" Iona calls back, teasing her. Just to be safe she closes her curtains and heads down stairs. Even though Liz reminded her this morning she'd still forgotten that they planned for them to come over, and help her unpack my room. By the time she reach the front door there. 'I wonder where mom is.'
"Hi." Nicole wraps her arms around her, and anyone would think they haven't seen each other in months. That's one of the things Iona loves so much about her, she's always up for a hug.
"Hey." Liz joins in the hug.
All of them suddenly notice that this has been the first time in three years that they haven't seen each other all day. The sting of the reality that Iona's left their school, left them, hits them all, but Iona pushes the tinge of coming tears away. Breaking the saddening spell she calls out, "Mom! Nicole, and Lizbeth are here. We're going upstairs to unpack, "
Iona then sees her mom in the kitchen unpacking the kitchenware.
"Hello, Aunty Hannah!" Nicole, and Liz both call out giving Iona's mom, Hannah, a hug.
"Hi, Sweethearts. How are you?" She laughs hugging them both in turn.
"We're good thanks." Lizbeth answers
"Are you girls going to stay for dinner?" Hannah asks as she goes back to the boxes. "I didn't feel like cooking tonight, with all this unpacking going on. So I'm going to order pizza later. I don't think it'll take more than fifteen minutes after I order."
"Thanks, Aunty Hannah."
"That sounds great, thanks Mom. Um...when is Nick going to be home?"
"Oh, I forgot to tell you. The teachers thought that since it's the first week, and he's only in form 2, he should join the new first form students for orientation. So he's staying late after school for the week. Dads bringing him home later since the orientation ends late and he has to be there anyway." Hannah explains, all while unpacking more and more stuff.
"Cool, so we got the house to ourselves for now." All three of us are smiling like there's no tomorrow. "Mom, we're going upstairs to unpack my room. See you just now."
"Alright, I'll call you later for dinner."
The girls head off to start unpacking boxes to earn the pizza to come.