My Summer is Going to be Lame...

Dear Journal,

Firstly, I don't know why I'm starting you.  Secondly, you will never turn into a dear diary...that's just plain weird.  But then again, that's how my life has been lately. 

Ever since the Griffins moved last month, I've been miserable.  I had an inkling that I only had social status because of Zac and Lina but since they moved, that truth was cemented.  Seriously, why did the army have to transfer their dad?  And to Italy of all places!  In a matter of days, my best friends have crossed an ocean and the rest have kinda just evaporated.

It's so lonely.  Summer's coming up, but it's not like I have anything to do because the twins are gone....

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The hum of the loud burr of a truck engine broke through the silence.  Okay, so normally, nobody moves from Southern California unless it’s to Hawaii; but since the Griffins house was empty, I instantly knew the noise was a moving truck, bringing a family in to replace them.  As silently as I could, I slipped from my perch to peer out the tree house window.  A large U-Haul truck was pulled up in the driveway next door.

I couldn't help but smirk at the man and woman that were slowly unloading a couch from the back.  I normally wouldn't have cared, but vindictiveness took the best of me.  Honestly, did they really think that they could just waltz in and take the place of my best friends since like birth?  As they struggled into the house, lets just say I watched with glee.  

After about fifteen minutes, they made it inside.  I was about to draw myself back to writing inside my tree house, when something caught my eye.  A boy stepped out of the back of the truck. 

Well I could say more like glided.  His dark, wavy head poked out from the truck; and the rest of his fifteen year-old self followed.  He was dressed in a black and green plaid shirt and a pair of dark jeans.  Ray Bans sat on top of his head while one ear bud hung in his ear, the other hung lazily down his shirt. Sunlight glinted off his light sage green eyes as he turned in my direction.  He nodded at me and smirked.  

The nerve of that kid didn't bode well at me.  Just the way he acted made it look like he owned the world.  I don't know what possessed me, but I picked up a geode and flung it at his head.

I know it wasn't a smart thing.  I could have killed the annoying kid cause I'm a pretty good softball player, but I did it anyways. 

He didn't flinch as it headed straight towards him.  At the very last possible second, he twitched and it sailed by him within a millimeter of his head.  The geode hurled to the ground and splintered into thousands of tiny purple pieces, the sunlight streaming through them, casting light in multiple directions. 

Rage burned within me.  That geode had been a gift from the Zac.  And it was lying in pieces with that miserable excuse of a human being.  He looked quizzically at the ground, as though he hadn’t noticed it at all.

“You dropped your geode!” he yelled at me with nonchalance.  I narrowed my eyes, glaring at him violently, then disappeared back into the tree house as he raised an eyebrow quizzically.

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The music in my headphones was loud.  It wasn’t generally.  Honestly, I prefer alternative rock, you know, artists like Coldplay and such.  However, at that moment I was listening to rap, which I hate.  Unless I was mad.   

I stared at the wall so hard that I could have bore holes in it.  The tree house door creaked open and my mom’s head poked in.  “Allie?” she called.  I continued staring at a wall.  In an alternate world, there would have been huge, melted holes in the wall.  However, there was no such luck.  The wall was as whole as ever.  “Allie?” she called again. 

I didn’t answer.  She marched up to me and pulled the headphones off my head.

“Mom!” I whined. “Give them back.  And leave me alone!”  She rolled her eyes. 

“Allie Lewis, what has gotten into you?  Ever since the Griffin twins moved away, you have been a completely different person!” she exclaimed.  Then it was my turn to roll my eyes.

“Ya think?  My best friends are currently in  Italy.  Isn’t the problem obvious enough?” I asked.  My mother pursed her lips and looked at me with a harried expression.

“It’s time you got over them,” she murmured.

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” I thought. "They've been my best friends since diapers."

“A new family moved in.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well I do, and we are going to go welcome them to the neighborhood!” my mother exclaimed.  My eyes widened in horror.  That would mean I would have to be nice to that annoying kid, the one I had chucked a geode at less than an hour ago.

“I’m not going to!”  I declared.

A smirk worked its way across my mother's face.  I should have known that I was doomed.  I was as soon as she opened her mouth.

“Yes, you are."

"No--" I started to protest, but she cut me off.

 "I have already talked to Mrs. Roscue and arranged it all.  They will be coming over for dinner tonight.  Besides, they have a wonderful son that's your age.  I believe his name is Rhys...”

And that's about where I tuned out.  My head swarmed with excuses, but none seemed plausible enough to get me out of the horrid evening to come.  Rhys Roscue...really, that name sounded so posh that it made me want to barf.