My mother used a great word to describe our new home. It has a quaint feel, don’t you think? ‘Quaint’ fits Littleroot Town to a tee. I am a bird trapped in an incredibly small cage, the unlucky sibling stuck at home. Of course, despite what my parents say, it’s completely my fault that we moved to begin with, and I’m sorry for that. But still, this was an unbelievably huge punishment for someone who has done no wrong.
While I’m stuck in solitary confinement, my siblings are out seeing the world. Despite their begging (well, Bobby’s begging), my mother wouldn’t let me tag along. To make matters even worse, on our first night there, my dad stayed at his gym. I had a feeling this wouldn’t be a one-time occurrence. I mean, I don’t even get along with Valerie that well, so the thought of my father not being there to keep me sane really bothered me.
After a long ride in the moving van from Sunnydale to Littleroot (most of which, I spent in long conversation with my desk), I didn’t exactly feel like packing. The only things really that were at my disposal were an old encyclopedia, my cell phone and charger and my bed. I grabbed my phone and hopped on my bed with the idea of texting all my old Johto friends, but once I began scrolling through my phone book, I realized that there was nobody I wanted to talk to. Nobody really will understand the incredibly feeling of isolation I feel right now. It’s almost as bad as when-
“Professor Emerson and your father have been friends for years. I think they have a kid about your age, if you want to go with me. I’m sure you can’t possibly be more bored over there than you are right now.” Professor Emerson… The resident whiz kid professor of Hoenn. I vaguely remembered meeting him when I was younger, but I hadn’t been attention to him then. If I remembered correctly, he was just a middle-aged guy with reddish brown hair and a nice smile. Oh, and he was super boring. I remembered thinking that he would’ve made a great doctor, even though only adults would find him even remotely interesting.
But if he had a kid that was my age, he was golden to me. There were only two houses in the whole town, and if there was a girl my age there, then things would only be so much smoother. I could just imagine it: Staying up late talking about boys (though considering what all had went down before leaving for Hoenn, I was definitely staying away from boys for quite awhile), painting our nails, random chatter until Valerie yelled at us to shut up and if she was really cool, she wouldn’t be afraid of bug Pokemon and would chase them away from me. That was probably a bit too much to ask for though…
I couldn’t argue with Valerie’s offer, because she was actually right. How could I possibly be more bored than I was right then? During the course of the minute and a half it took us to get to the Emerson household, I prayed that this girl wouldn’t have a special fondness for science experiments or unnaturally colored hair or music that screamed. I really just needed somebody normal to hang out with. ANYBODY.
The Emerson family was obviously expecting us, because they were all sitting in the living room. Unfortunately, I didn’t have to worry about this girl being super nerdy or strange, because the girl wasn’t even a girl. The girl I had gotten so excited over was 5’9” with shaggy light brown hair, wide green eyes and a scar on his forehead, and was most definitely a boy. Even worse, he was a cute boy with a great smile, and when he flashed it at me, I thought I was going to stumble or something (and not just because I was clumsy).
I was quite annoyed at this whole fate business. This girl was seriously my only hope, and now my hopes have been crushed because the girl I needed to have next door was born the wrong gender.
The matriarch was overly perky, which made me wonder how she even got along with Valerie, because Val is quite the opposite of perky. She has a very dry sense of humor, the only thing I really inherited from her. Well, that and her sarcasm. This strange woman who I’ve never even met before smothered me with a giant hug, and though I didn’t hug back, she continued beaming at me.
If this was her attempt at sympathy, it was crap. “It was,” I said coldly. I was starting to get thoroughly annoyed. This bitch was totally getting on my nerves, the girl I had spent a minute and a half praying over didn’t exist, there was a cute boy next door despite the fact that the male species is pretty much on my shit list and I was stuck here for possibly the rest of my teenage life. How… uncool. It was like a conspiracy or something.
Valerie nudged Mrs. Emerson, as if she knew that I was starting to get angry, or maybe she just didn’t want a rehash of the whole big blowout that had caused my dad to get a job as a gym leader in Petalburg City and uproot us to this wasteland. “I’m Jessica, and this is my husband Jacob,” she said, gesturing to a man on the couch. He opened his mouth to speak, but Jessica went barreling on through her introduction. I momentarily felt bad for Jacob and his son. Oh, to go through life without a chance to speak. “And this is our son, Nathan.” The look on her face indicated that this, her son, was like a precious gem or something. To me, he was temptation in a polo shirt. “Nathan, why don’t you show Jenn up to your room?”
Nathan looked grateful for the opportunity to speak, and led me through the main room up to a room on the second floor. It looked quite a bit like mine, except without all the boxes. Obviously the architect who had designed the community (well, if you counted two houses as a community) hadn’t gotten too creative with layouts of the house. The walls were lined with both band posters and sports posters. Some of the bands I liked, so I figured that maybe there was at least a five-minute conversation in the near future. That was probably it as well. From what I could tell, I have nothing in common with this boy, this boy who probably wouldn’t know hardship if it bitchslapped him in the face.
After scanning the walls, I noticed that he was staring at me, probably staring me down as I did with him earlier. He probably saw just saw an awkwardly skinny girl with blue eyes wearing a bright yellow t-shirt, black shorts and silver sandals (carelessly picked out on the way out the door), with mildly pretty blah-brown hair (it was soft and glossy, due to the hour wasted blow-drying and straightening). I definitely was not at my best, not after riding in a moving van all day. A shower only washes away dirt and grime, not anger, irritation or exhaustion. He was much prettier than I, with that shaggy hair and naturally long lashes and dimples. His clothes (a white polo shirt with pressed jean shorts) were clean and obviously at least somewhat expensive. He cared more about his personal grooming than I did, yet another reason that I couldn’t be around him.
“So where’d you move from?” he asked, the first thing he had said in the ten minutes I had been over at his home. His mother obviously knew a lot about me (‘You’re quite the little star in Johto, I take it’) but he didn’t. I was just as new to him as he was to me.
“Sunnydale,” I replied, thinking fondly of the place I had left that morning. “It’s really small, but it’s still bigger than this place.” I didn’t want to dump on Littleroot in front of him yet, in case he loved the place or something (even though I fully didn’t care if I offended him or whatever, because I wasn’t planning on ever talking to him again). “It’s a suburb of Ecruteak.”
Was I really going to tell him? Hell no. “It’s been my dad’s dream to be a Gym Leader his whole life. He saw that Petalburg needed one, and so he took the job.” I used the cookie-cutter response that my mother had been using since announcing that we were leaving the house I had lived in since I was four.
Nathan didn’t seem to really respond. Finally, he said, “I don’t think that’s really why.”
I glared at him, outraged that he would attempt to dig into this tangled web that my life had become within two and a half short months. It was seriously none of his business. I REALLY couldn’t associate myself with nosy people, so it was obviously just fate that we weren’t going to ever talk. “Excuse me? I don’t think that’s really your place to say.”
“Just saying. You seem bored by that response. I’m sure whatever you’re covering up by using that bogus answer isn’t as bad as the fact that you’re completely faking it so that you don’t have to tell me anything.”
“What the hell?” Just who did he think he was? He had seriously just met me! He didn’t know a damn thing about me, who I was or why I had moved to this waste of land. “You really don’t have the right to judge me or what I say. You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“Well, I have a Mudkip,” he replied, grinning. I looked the other way to avoid his smile. After all, I couldn’t go swooning over a nice set of teeth when obviously destiny meant for us to stay merely acquaintances. That would seriously be messed up of me, to go fooling with destiny and such.
“I have a Growlithe.” I thought slightly of the Pokemon I had left behind in Johto and winced. Even after spending only a few hours in Hoenn, I knew it could never really be my home. “I’ve never gone out seriously training with it though. I’m not allowed to travel.” ‘Not because I can’t trust you, Jenifer, but because I can’t trust anyone else. Of course she didn’t. Not after what had happened.
“How about I give it a work-out then? Maybe we could have ourselves a little battle out on the lawn,” he suggested, and his voice had such a pleasant tone to it that I wondered briefly if maybe fate had been wrong.
“Bring it on,” I said with a grin. It definitely felt weird to be smiling around this Nathan kid, especially considering he was nosy and cute and naďve and all. I hated how I couldn’t tell if he was a friend or a foe, or if maybe (if I got my way), neither, just a neutral party that had flashed through my life for a little while, never to return.