Prologue- Taxes and Journals

Prologue

Sub-Zero_Titan

Bonjour ma Journal Intime,

I have been staring at you for about three hours. I got you like… five years ago, and never gave you a second thought. I would love to start with my life currently (such as my problem with Radio_Freak), but I think I’d rather pretend that you were a person that I was confiding in, so…

A wild life story appears!

I guess I should start with the night taxes ruined my life. If I said it was my first memory, I’d be lying, but that would add a nice effect to it.

It was snowing and blistering cold, but that’s really just a normal Canadian night (did I mention that we were in Canada? We’re in Canada.) I wasn’t sure what had my daddy so worried, but he was packing our suitcases into the truck bed like no tomorrow. I was leaning against the truck with my arms crossed, squinting and shivering. Mum was returning to the mailbox, and reached for my hand when she stopped next to me.

“What was that?” I asked, my green eyes nearly forced shut by the wind and dry air.

She hummed happily and swung our arms before lifting me up and opening the car door. “What was what, cher?” She asked as she placed me carefully in the back seat. I was four years old, but we didn’t have enough ‘money’ for a booster seat. Money was a term my parents used often, but not much when they thought I could hear them. It made Daddy scowl and mum send me to bed early. I wasn’t sure at the time what it was exactly, but it seemed important, and we didn’t have enough of it. When I asked why we were moving to ‘America,’ mum said that it was because we had to, and daddy muttered about money.

“The mail. You just put…” I trailed off, looking for the word. The one I had in mind was ‘several’, but I hadn’t ever tried to pronounce it before. Mummy always told me that I was ‘advanced,’ and that was why I couldn’t say everything I thought. She said that my head was working better than my mouth.

I didn’t know what advanced meant until I heard someone use it on the TV at my friend’s house a few days later, and I put two and two together.

“You just put… a bunch of letters in the mailbox. Why couldn’t you just call them with that phone?” I gestured with my mitten towards the public phone that was stationed right beside our brick apartment. She gave me a smile that thinly veiled the fear and worry in her eyes.

“Why, dear- those were just my recommendations to Santa!” She told me cheerfully. I blew my bangs out of my face unbelievingly.

“It’s all right to tell the kid that they’re taxes, it’s not as if she’d understand,” called my father gruffly from where he was tying our couch to the roof of the car. He was standing on the edge of the open door way, and stretched up to reach the ropes that lashed it to the truck. After a final tug, he slapped the side of the seat victoriously, and herded my mother into the old and well-used pickup truck. I pulled a paperback book with a worn and cracked spine out from underneath my jacket, where I was keeping it safe from the elements, and began reading.

When I was nine, I realized how strange it was that no one else could speak French- I had at first assumed that these ‘Americans’ learned it at a later time than my old schoolmates, but I soon found otherwise. It had been five years since I had moved away from my home, and this was when my Mother first started to go on longer business trips more often. That year of school changed drastically from start to finish; at the beginning, my Mom still took care of me and made me eat my vegetables, but by the time fifth grade graduation came along (I had been bumped up a grade and was at the top of my class) she only left a message on the home phone a week afterwards about how her trip was being extended. Nothing about how proud she was, or even where the emergency pizza money was hidden.

And then there was my dad. He joined the army not long after we arrived in ‘America’- and did I mention that neither one had the time to even bother telling me that America was a separate country? Yeah. From age four to nine, I had no clue what America even was. Needless to say, by the time fourth grade rolled around, I felt more than left out. I ended up staying over at my friends’ houses more nights than not.

When I was ten my dad went MIA. His fellow soldiers said that it was like he disappeared off the face of the earth one day, without leaving a trace or so much as a hint. I was heartbroken. It was the last time I caught more than a glimpse of my mother for a long time after. She took off work to mourn with me and to give me news: We (I) were (was) moving. Her work, because of her high position and constant work leave, paid extremely well. She planned to have us settled by next summer. Our new house was practically a mansion on the wealthy side of town, so she decided to toss all of our old furniture (Except for my stuff. I pulled the barely coping half-orphan expression, and she conceded.) and spent the two weeks she took off work shopping for new stuff.

At this point we were the exact opposite of what we were in Canada.

Summer came along, and all Mum left was a letter and a tip for the moving crew. I turned eleven the day before, and celebrated with my best friend in my empty living room with activity books and prank calls. She decided to help me direct the movers. I was very interested with interior design at the time, so mother practically let me arrange all the rooms by myself, with minimal input.

The men came. You should have seen their faces when they found out that two pre-teens were going to boss them around.

Before I knew it, I was twelve. My next-door neighbor was a girl named Kyra, who became my new best friend. She was the only kid in that place that I could stand, mostly because BOTH her parents worked overseas and never had time for her. We came up with a schedule for which empty house we stayed in, but mostly it was hers, because she had been living there since she was little and it had her own charm to it, while mine was novel and squeaky clean with no personal touches. Although, if you stepped into my room, it had enough personal charm for five houses. There were typed papers all over the walls, photos decorating every visible surface, and a display case for all of my vintage cameras (which I bought with my added up birthday checks from mother).

When I started private highschool at age thirteen (advanced, remember?), I stumbled across the photography club and finally put my talent to use. The members oohed and ahhed over my old-timey cameras, and I finally learned how to use some of them from our ancient teacher, Miss Nevera. Kyra joined, and we became partners in our obsession.

The blog started up in our sophomore year. It was originally just me, but Kyra often made contributions as a guest blogger. We called it ‘Maine Through my Eyes’. I stopped writing to Mother completely after that.