I stared out the window of my families car, watching the blurred outlines of trees and orange gradient sky. The bumps in the road slowly causing me to feel an even larger stomach ache than the one my nerves had worked up previously. "You excited to see the new house kiddo?" My father suddenly turned to say with a large grin plastered on his face. It just barely showed behind his beard he had decided to grow out to look more "Manly" since we would be in the countryside. "I bought it to be a project later on for me and your mom. But it'll be a nice change of scenery for you going into junior year!". I hadn't been allowed to see pictures of the house, and hearing that it was a future project translated to "atleast one or two doorknobs are gonna knock you on your ass trying to get a door open" in my head. "Yeah, I'm pretty excited for a new change of pace I guess..." I said through chattering teeth and a grin made up of pure doubt and nerves that my parents could never seem to catch onto. 

"Well I for one am very excited!" This statement came from the driver's side as my mom gave me an all-forgiving smirk through the mirror above her. At that point I could literally say I was being looked down on... Not that my mom blamed me, or was upset at me for the moving, and she DEFINITELY wasn't Transphobic. But my mom more or less felt like having to move was proof that she hadn't done enough to teach me to stick up for myself. Which wasn't true in the least. My mom was a therapist and my dad was a realtor, they made a good pair but neither of them had guts of steel. So there wasn't much advice they could give me. Being honest I think the advice from both of them would have been the same "just don't let them get to you." And while I adored my parents and all the efforts they made to make me happy I had many doubts that moving was going to change much. Given I was still going to be the "Freak" that I was considered to be at my old school.

"Well I'm glad someone in this car is excited!" My dad said dropping his grin and giving more of a nervous look. I wasn't sure why until I looked back up in the mirror my mom had checked and saw a less-than-happy expression across my face. The look was reading as a mixture of fear and doubt. "I'm fine dad, I was just thinking about how much work this house might need." There I went again... lying through my teeth as I often did to avoid talking about what troubled me. However this once I was glad I had, as my dad's face once again broke into a grin. "No worries kid! It's an old Victorian beauty. Everything is in working order, it just needs to be more modernized." When it came to houses and real-estate me and my dad had an understanding of "the older the better" except while I wanted to keep it vintage my father wanted to strip them of all culture and make them into a stone slab looking color-scheme. "I'll tell you what dad, if you let us keep it mostly vintage with just a few modernizations I'd be more than happy". 

After this brief conversation we were finally 30 minutes from our destination. I spent this time with my headphones on full volume, head back, and drifted off. 

The feeling of something lightly brushing my cheek startled me awake and I opened my eyes to see the sky had begun to darken with the first star in clear sight. Still tired and blury eyed I looked up at my mom stroking my cheek and saying in a gentle tone "Hun we're here, cmon sweetheart get up". At the words "we're here" I sat up full force, removed my headphones that had fallen silent, unbuckled, and jumped out of the car. I turned around to reveal a large Victorian home, magenta shingles and mint green accents over the windows, a black tin roof, and large wrap-around black porch. It was an oddly charming combination of colors I had never seen on a house, and being honest it made me feel alot better given it was nothing like what I pictured. And actually looked updated. "Grab your bag and hurry up, it's getting cold out here hun" with that I grabbed the backpack that sat on the seat next to where I had spent 7 hours sitting. I pulled it out of the car, slung it over my right shoulder, and made my way up the stairs of the house.

Working my way into the house, there was a fairly large entry way with a suspiciously placed fireplace that I assumed once hosted a bench for warming yourself, aswell as the room up in the winter. I slid off my green converse hightop sneakers, set my bag down next to them and gingerly placed my headphones on top of the bag. I had been right before about door handles because the door leading from the entry-way to the living rooms handle was impossibly stuck. Or atleast I thought at much until I tried tugging one final time, this time with the door swinging open and my father laughing at the sight of me on the floor from the other side. "Really, you had to pull a prank within me stepping through the door for less than 3 minutes dad..." I said in a less than amused tone while welcoming a voice Crack or two from pure exhaustion. "Most definitely I did! I figured you would spend a good amount of time staring at that gorgeous fireplace though, so I almost didn't make it to the handle". He said this sounding disappointed that I hadn't spent a whole 5 minutes staring at one of the thousands of fireplaces I had probably seen in my lifetime. "I saw it. But I've seen so many fireplaces and I'm tired, so I figured I would look for a place to sleep and look tomorrow". With this my dad laughed and I soon found myself with a confused expression once again. "No can do kiddo you start school tomorrow we enrolled you a week ago remember?". "WHAT?!?!!" I said jumping up and brushing the dirt off of my now very dusty jeans. "Yeah! Don't tell me you forgot already honey". My mom said walking in with a box and pecking my forehead before passing my dad in the doorway. "It's already the 19th?!?!! I figured I would atleast have a week to unpack and adjust...". "You'll have plenty of time to adjust over the weekend. Your starting on a Friday, it's one day and then you'll have two to do whatever adjusting you want to".

Suddenly, now knowing this information even more worries filled my head. I hadn't washed my binder from wearing it the former day to a family "goodbye" event. And I most definitely was not wearing a sweaty (and most likely musty by this point) binder. "Dad I swear to god... for your sake there had better be running water because otherwise I don't have a binder and I'm not going anywhere without one". Suddenly my dad's face was frozen. My heart raced and he frantically called out for my mom. "Fran....FRAN!", "YEAH?, WHAT DID YOU NEED ARNIE?" My mom replied yelling from what looked to be the kitchen. "CAN YOU MAKE SURE THERE IS RUNNING WATER FOR ME HONEY?" My dad said between glances and nervous smiles to me. "SURE THING HUN" she yelled back with a singing tone and a long pause, which was spent with frantic glaces exchanged between me and my dad. "YEP IT LOOKS LIKE ITS WORKING!" she yelled even happier in response. Me and my dad both let out the most relieved sigh and facial expression possible in those few short seconds before finally.... "NOPE NEVERMIND ITS NOT WORKING! DID WE NEED IT FOR ANYTHING?". Tears welled in my eyes, and panic hit my father harder than a brick to the back of the head would have. 

He did his best to reassure me in the few minutes before making the worst scenario even worse... "it'll be fine! We can figure something out...wait, I know!". He said reaching into his left Jean pocket and pulling out a small slip of paper. "I met the neighbors when I viewed the place for the first time. Tim said he had a kid your age and seemed pretty nice, I have his number here I'll give him a call and ask him if you can go fetch some water from them". My eyes bulged out of my skull and one sentence formed in my head that I spit out faster than I've ever said anything in my life. "Your fucking kidding me right?!?!!"