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Author's NoteHey its been awhile, well at least awhile for new original content from me, the Whateley stuff doesn't count because that's not my universe. This is a story that I came up with out of pure boredom one day. So when I sat down to write it, I wasn't really sure where it was going to go beyond the initial idea I had. I call it a Slice of Life tale because honestly, there really isn't much more to it than that. The chapters are on the short side and the story probably won't go beyond fifteen chapters. I'm not even sure how contained it will be at this point. I'm literally making it up as I go along :D.

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1.

BUMP.

I groaned, nearly dropping my book. Cursing, I turned to the window. Just how many bumps were on this road anyway? I tried to look but of course I saw nothing. In a car, everything zoomed past. I tried my best not to look. It always made me queasy. I always got a little shit in cars, especially when the driver refused to go the speed limit. That was Uncle Frank. He was impatient in everything. If you weren’t going at his pace, he’d run you over. Never in a car of course but I saw him push a little old lady to the ground once. No joke. It didn’t help that he had this innate gift to find EVERY pothole in the road either. I turned away from the window and held my stomach, closing my eyes for a second. I was trying to keep down breakfast. I hated long car rides. Dad did too. It was one of the few things he and I had in common. It was something insignificant before but now…

Now it didn’t matter.

Sighing, I tried to go back to my reading. I got a few more lines into the paragraph when…

BUMP!

I cursed.

This time I did drop my book, I was also being glared at from the front seat. Mom was riding shotgun, doing her best to read as well. My swearing drew her attention and her ire. I could have apologized but what was the point. She was cursing twenty minutes ago.

“Frank, every one!”

My uncle grunted. “This car handles like a piece of shit...”

“It's not the car, Franklin,” snapped my mother.

The two of them started bickering.

It was almost as if they were siblings; oh wait, they were.

I tried to tune it out. It wasn’t easy. They’d been going at it nonstop since we left Arizona. We should have flown. Unfortunately we didn’t have the money for that. Mom tried to sell us on the genuine road trip experience for days. I wasn’t happy about leaving home but I was at least trying to be supportive. I couldn’t say the same for my very own sibling. Thankfully the backseat was wide enough that the two of us could actually put a few things between us. Not that it helped much. Allison was bit high maintenance. I think calling my sister “superficial” would be nice. I know what I wanted to call her most of the time but I would get grounded if I tried. Instead, I tried my hardest to speak to her as little as possible.

Most of the time it worked.

“Ally, can you get my book,” I asked, realizing that in the justle of dropping it it slid to her side of the car, out of my reach.

She couldn’t hear me though.

She was currently plugged into her phone, like usual. I tried raising my voice but her music was loud enough that I could hear it. Groaning, I did the only thing I could think of and smacked her. She snapped and glared at me.

“What the fuck, dweeb!”

“Allison language!”

“Mike hit me!”

Mom sounded bored.“Madison, stop hitting your sister.”

“I dropped my book at that last pothole and it rolled under Ally’s feet.”

Mom sighed. “Allison, get you brother’s book."

She rolled her eyes at me, reached forward and grabbed it. Then she whipped it at my head. I’m just glad I didn’t have the window open anymore. All our windows were shut now and the heat was even on. I couldn’t remember the last time we had heat on in the car. But we weren’t in the southwest anymore. A fact that my sister kept reminding us over and over again. When we left Arizona three days ago, she was bitching about the heat, like usual. When we left the motel in Pennsylvania this morning, Mom told us to dress warmer. It was January in the Northeast. There was actual snow on the ground. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw it in person. Well my sister didn’t listen and kept wearing the same short shorts. Of course she didn’t start complaining about the cold until we were in the middle of nowhere.

Now it was too hot.

At least the trip was finally almost over.

We were in New York now, the last leg of our trip.

Home sweet home.

Well at least for Mom and Uncle Frank anyway.

My family was native to a little town in Western NY called Duncan, it was so small most people didn’t know about it. It’d like to say it was one of those famous places that no one ever heard of but it wasn’t. There was nothing interesting about it at all. Unless you liked cows. There were A LOT of cows there. We lived there until I was in second grade when we moved to a suburb outside of Phoenix. That was eight years ago. It was home, a home we never expected to leave. No one expected Dad to get sick. They didn’t catch it in time and the last two years of our lives were a living hell. That was three months ago. We tried to make it work but all of us were miserable. That was when Mom finally decided we needed a change of scenery. Grandpa Phil passed away last year and Grandma Karen was all alone in a big house.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

So Mom quit her job, we sold the house.

Uncle Frank hopped on a plane and agreed to make the trip back “home” with us.

Of course Allison wasn’t happy. It was her senior year. She tried to talk Mom into letting her stay with friends but Mom didn’t want to leave her eighteen year old alone. So the two of them were barely on speaking terms at the moment. Except to fight of course. That was nothing new though. All Mom and Ally did was fight. It slowed down when Dad got sick but that just meant they did it quieter. Me, I did my best to keep my head down and soldier on. It's what I always did. As long as I had a book, I was good. It's how I coped. Books helped me get through life. They were definitely there to help me through the dark times. Even when I didn’t feel like reading and all I wanted to do was cry, they were still there.

They were my escape.

Eventually I had to come back to reality though.

The thing is, I’m not a fan of the world as it is now or how it was before.

Especially the people in it.

People always disappointed.

At nearly sixteen years old, I was short. Shorter than most boys. I had delicate features and a soft voice. It got me into a lot of problems. Dad tried his best to help. He tried to get me to do things with him that he and his Dad did. We played catch, attempted to lift weights in the garage. None of it really worked. Dad tried to get me to play hockey when I was younger once. I found a passion for ice skating but not the sport Dad wanted.It was Dad’s thing. He played professionally. First in Quebec then in Buffalo. It was the reason we moved to Phoenix actually. Dad was traded there to finish out his career. He retired about a year before he got sick. We thought it was just because he was getting older and slowing down but it was actually the cancer.

I didn’t stop trying Dad’s things though.

I tried to the end.

I thought maybe if I kept trying, it would help him get better.

It didn’t.

Another disappointment.

So it was back to my books.

A smack on my shoulder broke me from my thoughts. I turned and Allison was holding something.

“You dropped this too”.

It was an old photo that I used as a bookmark.

Taking it, I looked and smiled.

I only ever truly had one friend in my life. His name was Charlie. He was the closest thing to a best friend that I had. We only met that summer before we moved but it felt like I knew him for years. We were inseparable. He was probably the coolest kid I knew. He was everything I wasn’t which only made him cooler. Charlie was that kind of kid who was into everything, not just sports either. He was rough and got into fights. He would spit and curse. If it was raining, he’d jump into the first puddle he could find. If there was mud, it was all over him. If Allison gave us crap, he gave it right back to her. He was fearless too. I used to idolize the hell out of him. When we had to move away, I cried for days. It wasn’t something a boy should do but I didn’t care. We had that kind of bond and it was shattered in an instant. It took me a long time to get over it but I never forgot about him. We kept in touch for a while. We were on Facebook and emailing every day. We even video chatted when we could. Then the messages stopped coming and the emails were less and less. By the time middle school started, our friendship faded away. It was hard to keep a long distance friendship, at least that’s what I kept telling myself.

Charlie was my first disappointment.

“That’s your little boyfriend, right?” asked my sister with a laugh.

I rolled my eyes. “Haha, you’re a riot.”

I stuck the picture into the back of my book.

She didn’t stop though.

“Maddie and Charlie, you were so cute together!”

She started making kissing faces.

I fought back the urge to punch her.

Instead, I turned away from her back toward the window.

It was weird. I hadn’t actually thought about him in a long time. I found the picture when I was packing last week. It was stuffed in one of my old yearbooks. I gasped when I found it. Everything had been so bad and depressing at that point, for a very long time. I think it all started with him, with leaving him. But I was going back now. I could see him again. That excited me. It also scared me a bit too. I was pretty certain I knew why he stopped talking to me. He got a life after I was gone, he got new friends.

The thing was, would he even remember me?

The ride into New York was fairly uneventful.

Or would have been if Ally had a bigger bladder. The first rest stop sign we passed, she started complaining about having to pee. She and Mom went back and forth about it for nearly ten minutes, ultimately it was Uncle Frank who made the decision. So here we were again, making more delays. It was just as well though, I had to pee too. Not that I was going to say anything. I liked ribbing her and for the last five of those ten minutes, I teased her with various water related facts. If she could have gotten away with it, she probably would have slugged me. As it was, she was glaring fiercely.

“Well I suppose we could all use a quick stretch of our legs...”

We were pulling into the rest stop now. As soon as the vehicle stopped, Uncle Frank was out the door. He made a mad dash for a small area near a gas station, a second later he was lighting up. Mom wouldn’t let him smoke in the car and the man had been twitchy for a while now. I gave him another ten second glance before I rummaged in my pack for a rubber band. I finally managed to find one. I was starting to pull my hair back into a ponytail when it snapped. I cursed. Shit, it was my last one too. I usually didn’t care if my hair was loose but not in public.

“Hey mom, you have a rubber band?”

Please say yes, please say yes.

Mom looked in her purse for less than a minute and shook her head. “Sorry sweetie, borrow one of your sister’s things.”

I turned to Ally and she had that evil grin. “I’m not letting him put one of my things in his hair!”

“Allison”.

Mom was turned around in her seat and glaring now.

My sister rolled her eyes. She made an attempt to “search” her bag before giving me an overexaggerated shrug. “I think they’re in my other bag”.

Sure they were.

“Convenient,” I said and that grin of hers took evil to a whole new level.

So that’s how it's going to be.

“It's fine,” I sighed and got out of the car.

I pulled up my hood, doing my best to get most of my hair inside. The last thing I needed was for some idiot to see it and make a comment. I generally kept it long. I’m not going to lie, it was mostly out of spite. Mom and Dad used to send Allison and I to a swanky private school. It was where a lot of the players on Dad’s team sent their kids. To Ally it was a paradise, being one of the in-crowd was her thing. I was never a fan of conformity. Thankfully the dress code didn’t dictate hair length. I kept it past my shoulders because most of the boys my age kept it short. Ninety percent of them were dicks and I didn’t want to be like them. Like their parents, all they ever really cared about were sports. I learned early on if I kept my mouth shut and my head down, I was left alone mostly.

The thing was, it wasn’t my hair that made them notice me.

It was my face.

I looked like Mom.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I loved my mother. The problem is, she was gorgeous. I know most kids think their mother is gorgeous but mine really was. She was a bit famous too. As a teenager, she used to be a figure skater. She won various competitions, even went to the Olympics. For a time, she was a household name. Then she gave it all up to go to college. It caused a bit of a rift between her and Grandma for a few years. A rift that was healed when Allison was born. When I was born a few years after that, their bitterness was all but gone. Things were still tense with them from time to time but time heals all wounds they say. Alas, Allison turned out to be a disappointment to Grandma. When her attempts to turn Ally into another Mom failed, she shifted her focus to me.

It helped that I liked to skate.

I felt free when I was on the ice. Unfortunately, it wasn't the same. I was a boy after all. Grandma tried to rope me into competitions but I was never interested. Mom taught me everything she knew though. Most of it was for girls but I didn’t care. Like I said, I was dainty and a bit on the small side. It was perfect for me to do a lot of the things that she used to do. The thing was, I knew she regretted some of it too. I once overheard her talking to Dad about me, said she wished “...Maddie was a girl too. He’s got such talent, he could go far...” It was around that time that I stopped skating too. I loved my parents but I was tired of them trying to turn me into a clone of them all the time.

So I decided to just be me.

A me that didn’t care what others thought of him.

Well, most of the time.

Like I said, I didn’t like the attention.

Walking from the car toward the rest stop building, I could already feel several eyes watching me. There were quite a few cars in the parking lot. I know they were all empty but being around this many people made me jumpy. Most people might think it was because I was afraid. In a way, I was but not for the reason one might think. I wasn’t a target for bullies. Hell, I think I would have welcomed some guys trying to beat the crap out of me. Yeah, it sounds crazy wishing to be beaten up but it was better than the alternative….

There was a group of them standing near the entrance. They were college age, standing around smoking. They were laughing amongst themselves. I noticed them when we first pulled up but I was hoping they’d be gone by now. No such luck. I took a quick glance their way as I was walking just to gauge what I might be up against. They were taller than me, well most boys were. They were all dressed for winter: heavy coats, gloves. If I had to guess, they were probably on their way back to college after break. I kept my head down and attempted to push past them.

“Hey, check this one out”.

Shit.

“Wow, a real cutie” said another.

“Way hotter than the first one.”

The first one they were no doubt talking about was Allison. My sister was cute in her own right. A lot of the boys liked her. Then they started to talk to her and found out that being pretty didn’t mean being nice. She had a horrible personality and treated people like dirt. I often told her if she kept it up she’d be old and alone in her later years. Then she’d get mad and hit me. She liked the attention though. I can only imagine that she tried her best to get them to notice her.

I was waiting for them to try to block the door but they didn’t.

I sighed in relief myself and pushed my way inside.

I stopped shaking as soon as I was far enough away.

I found a spot away from the entrance to catch my breath. Thankfully, that was a lot tamer than usual. Some guys just didn’t know when to quit. It didn’t matter how many times I told them I wasn’t interested. I tried telling them I’m not a girl too. That used to work when I was younger but as I got older, words like that only caused problems. Most either didn't believe me and those that did, just got really angry. I found that eventually trying to deny them was futile so I just tried to avoid them whenever possible. Most of the time it worked, other times…

“Hey wait up!”

Double shit.

There was ALWAYS one.

I cringed.

I thought about ignoring him but that never worked. So instead, I pretended not to hear him and made my way toward the restrooms. It wasn’t a lie, I really needed to pee. I could have blown his mind and went into the men’s room but that would have meant he could follow. That’s the last thing I wanted. The thing is, I did not want to go into the ladies’ room. I groaned. I was trapped and there was nothing I could do but wait and see what this guy wanted. Taking a deep breath, I slowed down a bit so he could catch me. There was no point trying to run anyway, I wasn’t that fast.

So I decided to turn and face him.

He was tall. He had rugged good looks too, sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. I was right to say he was older than me too, probably only by a couple of years though. There was something else about him too, something that I couldn’t place. It was almost as if we’d met before but I couldn’t figure out where. Which was crazy of course because I hadn’t been in New York in what seven or eight years.

He smiled, rubbing the back of his head. “Hey sorry about that. Those guys are idiots.”

Well at least one of them wasn’t.

“It's fine,” I said, willing to say anything to get rid of him.

This was embarrassing.

“I’m Steve by the way,” he said, flashing that award winning smile.

Wow, his teeth were so white.

This was usually the point where I burst the guy’s bubble. They would come on strong and all flirty, tell me their name and hope to have a chance. I usually felt bad afterward but it's not my fault I look the way I do. I tried cutting my hair once but people kept complaining at me for doing so, “why would such a pretty girl have hair that short” was a big one, so I just stopped. There was no point in trying. I was pretty much numb to all of it nowadays. If someone said, “oh you’re so pretty”, I took the compliment and moved on. If a guy flirted with me, I turned him down. I was always careful too. I started to read people in a way. I think I had a pretty good idea who was who and who might react badly to the truth.

Steve seemed like a nice guy.

What the hell? It's not like I’ll ever see him again anyway.

“I’m Maddie”.

“Well it's nice to meet you Maddie, I hope you have a nice trip.”

He then turned and started to walk away.

Wait, that was it?

Wow.

He got about five feet away before stopping and turning around.

“I’m sorry if this sounds weird but have we met before?”

“What?”

He was giving me a strange look. “It's just you look awfully familiar but I can’t quite place it...”

Ok, so that was a new line. I’d been hit on a lot lately and guys tried lots of different tactics. Feigning some kind of connection to me, a connection that was clearly fabricated, that was a new one. The thing was though, Steve seemed awfully familiar to me too. Maybe it was because he just had one of those looks. He looked like a typical All-American college student. He also looked like he could be on the cover of a magazine. I’m not going to lie either, he made me a bit jealous too. Steve was definitely the type of son that would make a father proud.

“Sorry, I’m just passing through, never been here before,” I lied.

I didn’t want a complete stranger to know where I lived or where I was going to live.

He nodded. “Must have one of those faces I suppose...”

“I get that a lot,” I lied again.

“I’d ask if you wanted to get something at the snack bar with me but this is awkward enough as it is, so I’ll just leave you to it.”

Good, because my bladder was about to burst.

He finally left but didn’t stop staring.

Now, that I was familiar with.

I watched him until he retreated back to wherever his friends were. As soon as he was completely gone, I made a mad dash for the restrooms. I was almost into the men’s room when a little old lady leaving the ladies’ room stopped me.

“Sweetie, that’s the boy’s loo,” she said with a friendly smile.

“Oh, I guess it is,” I said, thanking her as I went into the girls’ room.

I rolled my eyes as soon as I stepped inside.

I would be ashamed if this was my first time in the ladies’ room. It sadly wasn’t. I was all too familiar with places like this these days. This one had a peach colored décor and smelled like lilacs. I’m not going to lie, ladies’ restrooms always smelled a lot nicer than the mens’. I went into a stall and quickly peed. I didn’t want to spend anymore time in here than I had to. At the sink, I washed my hands as quickly as possible. In the mirror, I saw my reflection and groaned. Staring back at me was Maddie The Girl. Even with the hood and part of my hair spilling out of it, I still looked like a girl.

There was a flush behind me and a girl around my age approached the sink next to me.

“Girl, you need some color.”

“I’ll get right on that,” I said a bit rudely before leaving.

I was done being nice.

Walking out of the restroom, my phone buzzed.

It was a text from Ally:

YOU FALL IN?

I groaned and typed a response:

OMW.

Thankfully, Steve and his friends were no longer hanging around the entrance. I sighed in relief before making my way out of the building. Ally was standing outside near the car, looking annoyed. She huffed at me as we both got inside. I’m not sure what her problem was, she could have gotten in without me. A few minutes later, we were on the road again. I found my book but I couldn’t get back into it. Every time I tried, I kept getting distracted thinking about Steve.

“He was cute,” said my sister out of the blue.

“What?”

Could she read my mind?

“The guy, you have good taste.”

There wasn’t a mocking tone to her voice either.

“Shut up!” I said and slugged her arm.

“Mom!”

“Madison!”

I sighed and apologized.

Now that I was thinking about it anymore but why was he sticking with me when no one else ever did?

Author’s note: As I’m sure all of you know, comments are life blood to an author. I’m not begging or demanding, but I certainly would appreciate anything you have to say (or ask). It doesn’t have to be long and involved, just give me your reaction to the story. Anything critical you have to say, PLEASE do so in a PM. Pointing out people's flaws or mistakes in a comment is hurtful and NOT appreciated.Thanks in advance...EOF