4
________________
The new paint smell is caustic in the hallway just outside my room. Nothing about this place feels like home yet. I don’t understand why Mom and Dad thought moving would solve all our problems. Well, their problems: the fights and cold shoulders. Not mine. They know better than to think mine could vanish behind new walls or be swept under untrod carpet.
Or really, they don’t know better. They don’t know at all.
Maybe that’s the problem.
I’m lonely.
Ugh. This place is so...pastel. Baby pink, baby blues, new-growth greens. It’s almost Thanksgiving, and the air’s thick with cinnamon apple and clove candle smoke. Mom’s been decorating like crazy.
Leaving Tad to his oh-so-important suicides, I head downstairs taking the steps two at a time. Lillie’s zoned out in the li
