Young Writers Society

10. The New House

The rest of the summer seemed to drag on for weeks more than it should have, each day hotter than the last. I had nothing to do, and spent a lot of my time playing my guitar or reading, hoping it would just hurry up and end. It wasn’t like I was desperate to get back to school, but being at home was just too cramped now. Dexter spent most of his time playing on his games console in his room, and Journey was either bugging me or drifting aimlessly around the place like she had no purpose. She was always a little spaced out, like she never quite managed to get her head out of the clouds. I would have related to her, but I knew she wasn’t stuck up there in deep thought. Actually, I doubted she’d ever had a thought in her life that wasn’t about a boy or makeup.

“Are you ever going to stop playing that guitar?” She moaned at me one afternoon as she laid on her bed. “It’s doing my head in.”

“You’re only jealous because you’re the only one who can’t play the guitar now.” I’d been giving Dexter lessons, like he asked.

Journey sat up in a huff. “AJ and JJ can’t play either, so I’m not the only one. And I don’t want to play the guitar. I want you to stop.”

I started to play much louder, and she groaned, covering her ears with a pillow and laying back down.”

Mum was still trying to convince dad that we needed to move house. She’d found one on a moving site whilst browsing on her laptop one sleepless night, and was absolutely sure it was the house we all needed. It was picturesque, yes, but also expensive. Very expensive - not the kind of house for working-class families like ours. Yet mum was set on it, having already booked a viewing with an estate agent.

“How can we keep on living here?” She practically yelled at dad one night across the kitchen table. “Where do you expect the boys to sleep when they’re older?”

“I know we’re going to have to move eventually,” he admitted. “But there is no way we can afford to put a deposit on this house when you’re not working anymore. Not right now, anyway.”

Dexter, Journey and I all sat quietly, waiting for Mum to erupt into one of her rages. She stayed calm, and swallowed a mouthful of her dinner before answering. “We can get out a loan, that’s what everyone does. Pay it back later.”

“Heather, we are not taking out another loan. I’m still working to pay off the last one!”

“John, I’m not arguing with you. We’re not staying in this dump of a house any longer!”

Over time, Dad came round to the idea. Or he just eventually got sick of Mum moaning. The house mum had fallen in love with was still up for sale, “Just waiting for us to buy it.” By the time half term rolled around, and I was stuck deep into my second year at secondary school, we’d secured the deposit.

I was never consulted in this decision. Perhaps I didn’t want to move, didn’t I get a say? Or did my input not matter because I was so young? This house had grown on me over the summer, despite slowly driving me crazy. It was like some strange version of Stockholm syndrome; I’d started to love my captor. Every inch of our house held a story, an anecdote or some slice of history. There were dents in the walls from childhood games, scribbles on the back of doors from long-gone crayons and a plethora of different stains in the beige carpets. I tell anyone what each stain was and how it happened - they were a part of the family as much as I was.

When I told Dexter how I felt about moving, he just laughed at me. “A few weeks ago you were saying how if you had to be cooped up in here any longer you were going to turn into Jack Torrance and hack us all to bits with an axe! You just like to think the opposite of what everyone else is thinking, even if that’s not how you truly feel about it.”

He was right, but I wasn’t going to admit it.

“Maybe I’ve warmed to the idea of sharing a bedroom with Journey for the rest of my life.”

Dexter shook his head and let out an amused sigh. “You’ll love having your own room, trust me. You can practice your guitar without her moaning, and dance to those cheesy 80’s CDs without her laughing at you. And you won’t have to put up with her snoring. I can hear her, and your room at the other end of the landing from me!”

By the end of term, my room had been packed away into big cardboard boxes and loaded into the back of a great big moving van. I stood idly in my room, staring at the carpet whilst my head tried to get used to the fact that this room was no longer going to be mine

Mum interrupted my daydreaming by clearing her throat, loudly. “C’mon, everyone else is in the car and it’s only a matter of time before the boys start getting grumpy. Your dad is already getting nervous about the drive even though it’s less than half an hour away. Why do you look so upset? I thought you were excited to move, get your own room?

“I am, it’s just - I don’t know. This place has so many memories, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to hang on to them all.”

“You sound like a senile old woman! You’re twelve, you’re hardly going to lose your memories. Plus, what memories do you have of this house anyway? I’ve always hated it. Now, hurry up, or you’ll have to walk.” She was wrong; memories could get lost so easily. They slipped through the gaps in our minds without us even noticing. It’s like grabbing a fistful of sand at the beach. It begins to slip through our fingers no matter how hard we squeeze our fists.

So I closed my bedroom door behind me, and made my way down the stairs for the last time.

The car journey took barely forty minutes, yet with my family it felt like four hours. AJ wouldn’t stop crying, Journey was having a raging argument with her boyfriend on her phone, Mum was whining about Dad’s driving. Dexter and I were crammed in the back, barely visible under the amount of boxes we had to hold on our laps.

“I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend!” he whispered to me. “Who in their right mind would go out with her?”

I giggled. “Someone who’s deaf, blind AND mute, I reckon. There’s no other way they’d be able to stand her.”

“I can hear you, y’know,” Journey craned her neck round to look at us, but our faces were hidden by boxes. “And I don’t have a boyfriend. Not anymore. He’s a fucking idiot and I don’t know what I ever saw in him.”

“Language, Journey!” Mum snapped, glaring at her in the rear view mirror. “The twins are both awake!”

Journey turned forwards again and cooed over AJ and JJ for a moment. “They’re barely five months old, mum, they can’t understand me!”

Our new home waited for us at the end of a long gravel driveway so bumpy that our rusty seven seater barely made it. The moving van followed closely behind us as we slowly crawled closer toward the house, being driven by a rather eerily silent removal man named Brian. The house seemed to stretch right up into the clouds as we pulled up outside the door, smiling menacingly as it did so. I don’t know how a house managed to smile, but it definitely did, the rotting white wood that formed the window frames acting as big sharp teeth. As I stepped out of the car and closer to the front door, it seemed to sigh with the wind, like it was already fed up with our family.

“Isn’t it just beautiful, Cas? If you thought our old house was full of stories, I can’t wait to show you the stories this one has to offer.” Mum gripped my shoulders and shook me playfully. “You can have first pick of rooms if you like. I thought you’d like one on the third floor, away from everyone else.”

“Then you know me too well, Mother.” I said in a mock posh accent, turning to face her and bowing. “I shall bid you farewell as I venture into this modern abode.”

She ruffled my hair affectionately. “Strange girl.”

Through the front door, which was solid oak, was a small hallway. Off to the right was a kitchen, and through that a dining room. Off to the left was a lounge, which was the size of the kitchen and dining room combined. The stairs were straight ahead, directly opposite the front door. I kicked my shoes off and advanced upstairs in a cautious fashion, like I was a part of some military mission to catch fugitives who were hiding in the unexplored rooms. The floor was made up of polished wooden planks, a deep colour akin to that of brown sugar, and I gripped tightly onto the bannister to assure that I didn’t slip over in my socks. Our old house had been padded with soft carpet; this one didn’t look like it would be as forgiving to childish injuries.

The first floor consisted of four bedrooms and a bathroom, each around the same size as my old room. I kept my back flat against the walls as I edged along the corridor, looking in on each room as if to clear it from the following troops. The windows were large, flooding the floor with bright yellow sunlight that almost blinded me when I opened each door. At the end of the hall was another door, hiding a narrow and winding set of stairs that lead to the converted attic. I could tell that the house didn’t like me intruding so deep into its interior as each step groaned under my weight. There were two bedrooms in the attic, and a tiny little bathroom huddled in the corner that could barely contain the shower and toilet that sat within its walls.

I chose the room that faced out towards the front garden. It had a window seat, presumably designed for the lookout who liked to watch the gates to warn if enemy soldiers entered the property. Looking out of it, I could see dad and Dexter helping Brian unload the moving van, leaving our whole life on the gravel driveway, ready to be unpacked and rearranged.