A lot of people would have been pissed in my position, but I was actually a little pleased. My dad moved a lot, every few years, I was used to that. The suck part was that now he was being moved with just a couple months left in my senior year. Another person, my twin sister for example, would beg him to put it off for two months.
Not me. My life had taken a hard downward turn in the past month at my old school. Things had been going great, right up until the pep assembly where Hayden had thought it would be funny to goose his girlfriend as he ran behind her when he was announced. It might have been funny if she hadn't been one of the two people holding me up in the air by one leg.
I hit the gym floor hard, my knee twisting and hip dislocating as Anaya tried to hold on to me and catch me. I wasn't just out for the rest of the season, I also lost my scholarship. What wasn't as bad, but still FELT as bad, was that I also lost my boyfriend. We hadn't been super serious and I wasn't in love with him, but it had still sucked when he told me he didn't want to date anymore since I wasn't a cheerleader. That had seemed super shallow and had put me in a really low place.
I wasn't upset at all when dad had come home a few weeks after the incident and announced that we were moving. Rose was pissed, yelling and screaming and begging, then threatening. She didn't want to leave her friends behind, or her newest crush (who didn't even know she was alive.)
He hadn't asked why I was so eager to go this time, I was sure he knew.
When we made it to our new house, a beautiful brand new smart home with all the amenities, Rose was a little less angry as she looked around the immaculate place that had never been lived in. It was an empty canvas and the artist in her loved that.
I even let her pick her room first, even though it was my turn this time.
Dad came in and looked around, then gave me a smile. "Excited, True?"
"For a new school? A little," I admitted, blushing. I wanted a chance to reinvent myself with a new place in these last couple months of school. I could be whoever I wanted and I didn't have to pretend to be someone I wasn't just to get a scholarship.
"I have you both ready to start on Monday, have your classes and everything. You'll watch out for C-Rosey?"
"I will," I agreed with a smile. Rose got a nickname, but not me. Dad had always said I was too mild to warrant a nickname as cheerful as my sisters. C-Rosie... short for Compass Rose. My dad's joke, naming twin girls Compass Rose and True North. Later, he tried to convince me that he'd named us on purpose, her with her cheerful name, and me with my more even tempered and steadfast name. He'd known who we were going to be.
We'd never met our mother, she'd never even held us. Dad and his husband had hired a woman to be a surrogate for them, then a month before we were due, his husband had left him for a wealthier man. Dad hadn't cared, so he said, we were all that was really important.
"Moving van will be here in twenty," he told me, looking at his phone. "Let's go have a look around the lake and see if we have any hot neighbors!"
I smiled and shook my head. Dad always teased that his taste in men was better than mine. He didn't tease as much about boys with Rose, she was too volatile. Her emotions were as huge as her personality and boys were pretty much ALL she thought about besides art.
"C-Rosie!" Dad yelled down the hall.
Rose came running into the living room, grinning. "The last room looks out on the lake AND on the neighbors a ways down! There's a boy out there mowing the lawn! Can we go..."
"Easy tiger! Just so you know... if there's a boy mowing the lawn over there in this neighborhood, he probably works for a landscaping company. He won't live there and you may never see him again."
"Seriously?" she asked, dejected.
"I told you, this place is going to be different. We did well before... now we're doing a little better. This neighborhood... it's not the kind of place where people cut their own grass. If there are kids your age, you'll meet them at school."
Rose sighed, then shrugged it off and grinned. "Can I paint my room?"
"Of course. True? You like your room?"
"I'm sure I'll love it," I shrugged.
"You haven't looked at it?"
"I will later. Can we go down to the water and sit on the dock a while? Put our feet in the water?"
"It's still too cold for that, the lake will be freezing!"
"It's warm enough outside?"
"But it takes a few weeks of warm weather to get the water warm! It's only been getting warm here recently, it's not like down south. We'll walk down to the little dock behind the house, but no getting wet yet, alright?"
Rose ran outside ahead of us and I took dad's offered arm as he led me out to walk slowly around the property.
"It's a lot bigger than I thought," I told him, looking around at the distant neighbors.
"Yeah. One of the things we got used to down there, was houses being so close together. Yards are bigger here. Rose! Stay over here with us for now!"
"Daddy!" Rose complained, standing by the edge of the house and watching the young man on the stand-up mower with no shirt on.
I had to admit, from what I could see, the man was attractive. Not my type at all, but right up Rose's alley. She liked the huge, tall, sculpted jock types with the bright smiles. I usually went for a different type, though my last boyfriend had been a jock too. A football player even. He'd been small as far as football players went, though, and that made us a matched pair. When we'd been thrown together at a party at the start of the season, he'd pulled out all the stops. I didn't have major feelings for him, but he'd been nice and he had nice lips. Kissing him had always felt good and I liked that he'd never once pressured me for more than that. His parents were the real reason he dated me, I was pretty sure. They loved me, loved having me over to the house and his dad especially loved talking to me. He didn't know many people who were as into the same books as he was and we'd hit it right off. Daniel seemed to be using me to keep them pacified in some way, though I'd never really understood that part of it. He and I weren't close, we didn't spend a lot of extra time together or go and make out alone. We went to a few parties where we were both expected to be and he had me over to his house. A lot. We did do homework together, but even from the start it had felt like we were just friends and neither of us cared to make it more.
When he'd come to me and said he didn't want to date me anymore since I wasn't a cheerleader anymore, it had stung. I hadn't thought I'd be upset since I didn't care for him, but even still, it hurt to think that ALL he had wanted from me was a uniform and the body in it. I could have been anyone.
For the hundredth time, I tried to push him out of my head, hating that I was giving him so much of my thoughts. He didn't deserve them!
I looked over at Rose again and envied her a bit. She was lovely, as lovely as a rose. In a lot of ways, Rose was the most average girl in the world... but she also wasn't at all. She was average height, average weight with curves that weren't too much or too little. Her brown hair had a slight wave and she always wore it up. Her grades were average. What really drew people to Rose was her brilliant smile and glowing personality. She was always happy, unless her world was ending, which it did at least twice a week. People gravitated towards her and she made friends easily. She was outgoing and funny and loved to party and do girly, silly things.
I wasn't any of those things.
We were twins, but not identical in the least. In fact, most people couldn't tell we were even related. I was a head shorter, my auburn hair so curly I had to use my own weight in conditioner every month and I was small enough that I could still get clothes from the kids section, though I refused, always looking for the smallest sizes in the JR Miss. Where Rose was glowing and smiling, I was usually looking down at either a book or the floor. When you were short, most of what you saw in the hallway was arms, chests, backs, backpacks. You were down in your own little claustrophobic hell. Where Rose was charismatic, I was neurotic. An atypical personality. I didn't like change and I didn't take chances at all. I'd never had the big feelings Rose had, my feelings were always subdued and quiet.
Dad called me his little watcher, because that's what I did. I watched. I watched people, I watched the things around me, but I never inserted myself. If someone like Rose, or my one friend that I always made, inserted me into something, I went with it. Just like with Daniel. I went with it. Just like when Rose had made me try out for cheerleading with her two years ago. I went with it. I didn't even stop when she did, the coach telling me I had an easy scholarship as a flier.
