My.Heart (♥).Is.Beating.For.You

My mother's old green Pontiac carried us to a place called Wilmette, a suburb just outside of Chicago.
I tapped my toes together impatiently.
I stared out the window, feeling a sense of dread in our new home.
We pulled up in front of a small brick house that seemed to be squished between two bigger houses.
A large brown fence surrounded the green, overgrown yard.
The car stopped with a squeak and a screach of the breaks and my mother threw open the car door with an exclamation of joy.
My younger sister Lilly threw open the door in the back seat and bounced out onto the concrete sidewalk.

"Jade, come on." My mother said as she opened my door and becokned me out.

I shook my head and looked around. I was a small-town girl put in the suburbs.

"Mom, you didn't mention that we'd be living in suburbia." I groaned as I stepped outside of the car.

She walked over to me and shot me a look of sympathy as she said, "Honey, please... be more positive. We are much better off here and you know that."

I sighed, because I did know that she was right.

We left for the sole purpose of not having to have anything to do with my father ever again. We left because we wanted him to completley dissapear from our lives.

Lilly still had no clue who he was. On rare occasions, she asked about her father, but all she ever recieved in return was a replyof silence and she quit asking.

"She's too young." My mother told me once. "It's best that she doesn't know. She deserves the chance to grow up without worrying over him"

She, again, was right. I knew just because I had to grow up with him, that she didn't have to.

Shortly after Lilly turned eight, we decided we were going to leave Virginia and move to Illinois, slightly closer to my mother's family. My mother had a sister that lived four hours away and an uncle that lived in the middle of the city.
I reached up and pushed my long brown hair behind my ear and turned to look up the sidewalk, and then back down, before I looked back at the house in front of us.
"Well..." She began as she looked at me and tried to smile. "Shall we go see the house before the movers arrive?"
I sighed and crossed my arms and smiled slightly.
"Sure." I replied.
Lilly was already standing on the front steps bouncing up and down excitedley.
My mother had already started walking across the lawn and I was still rooted in my same spot, looking down the street trying to figure out where the sound of a lawnmower was coming from.
She turned around and noticed that I hadn't moved.
"Jade?" She walked a little closer to me. "Honey, everything okay?"
I was silent for a couple of seconds before I sighed and followed my mother to the front door.

I walked around the entire house once without saying anything. I guess this won't be so bad.
I ignored my mother's overly-excited exclamations about the 'amazing master bathroom', which I suppose was amazing compared to the small, cramped bathroom that my mother, sister, and I shared back in our apartment in Virginia.
Lilly and I had our own bathroom, which she was also overly-excited about.

Lilly and I also had our own rooms. Something that we hadn't had since she was old enough to move out of the crib in my mother's room.

The moving truck arrived around four that evening.
We spent two hours moving furniture and unpacking before we left for dinner at Wendy's, came home, and spent the rest of the night unpacking our things.
My sister and I still fell asleep in my bed, just like always.