23Rated T for mildly dark themes, possible character death, family drama, and adult themes. It is a drama for a reason.
Chapter 1 Prologue
Sleeping on the soft carpet of her bedroom floor, Ari had mixed feelings when she woke up that morning. Today was the last day that she was going to be spending in her room, in her house. Without all of her furniture and the walls, now void of all her posters and decorations, her room was a hollow shell of what it once was. It was as if all the memories of the place had been stripped away. Even the smell of the carpet wasn't hers anymore. Her mother had it cleaned after most of the initial furniture had been moved out. If it wasn't for her memories and the scars of tape and oily Sticky Tac leftover on the walls, it was like she had never lived here at all. Like she never had existed. It made her feel very lonely and full of longing. It was her house and yet, it wasn't. Not anymore.
She wanted to pull the covers of her sleeping bag over her eyes and pretend it was just a bad dream, but she couldn't shake the feeling of having a piece of her lost. Pretend... Just for a little while longer... But unfortunately she didn't have that luxury. The moving van would be here soon, and she still had to get dressed and ready for when they came. Her mother Kimiko had reminded her about this horrible fact when she came in to wake her daughter up.
"Let's get a move on, kiddo. Amity Park's awaiting!" her mom said with a cheerful air, but the feeling between them wasn't mutual. Exhaustion hung heavy in her dark brown eyes as she begrudgingly rolled up her sleeping bag and pillow and stuffed them into her suitcase. It was packed next to her worn, stuffed rabbit, Junpei. He was black and white and had a slightly torn ear, but he had held together after all of these years. She was almost ready for college, but she never grew out of him being her favorite comfort when she was sad, and today she needed him now more than ever.
After brushing her teeth and long black hair, she pulled on her usual green Fox Racing hoodie over her black denim jeans, t-shirt, and tennis shoes. Hearing the hum of a motor vehicle on their gravel road, she glanced out the window with a faint look of dread on her face. No cars ever went down their little dirt road; they lived out in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but fields and scattered bits of forests. The only people who did visit were the mailman, the nearby farm hands, who often drove their pickup trucks or tractors nearby, and the occasional marksman that came out for deer hunting. But the noise of the engine sounded nothing like either of them, and deer hunting season wasn't for another month, so it had to be the moving van Dad had hired. Two stocky men got out of an orange U-Haul and began piling in the remainder of their things they had set in the garage. Most of the stuff they had was going into storage, but the few boxes that were labeled with green duct tape went into their car.
It really was happening. They were moving. She hadn't believed her mother when she mentioned it a month ago. She had thought it was some cruel, sick joke because her mother always complained about their plumbing- she had used that as an excuse for why she kept the For Sale sign they had in the garage for years, despite that she claimed she had never been a pack rat.
She should have seen it coming. She never thought to question why her mother began bringing more friends over to show off their house, since her mom loved decorating and hosting parties, so it wasn't like it that unusual for her to do this. She had even been jovial enough to let Ari bring friends over more often as well. Seeing the movers packing up all their boxes made it all too official, one big final slap in the face.
This was the place she took her first steps, the place she had learned to ride her bike, the place she had her first sleepover! She spent eighteen years of her life making memories here, and now it was someone else's home to make memories in. Her mom's excuse was that the house held too many memories and that they deserved a fresh start, which apparently meant moving into her aunt Ayame's house in Amity Park, Minnesota, three states over. Her mother had attended an engineering and agriculture conference that had landed her a job at Axion Labs that she simply couldn't say no to. The money was good, and while she couldn't house hunt from three states away, they'd be able to stay with relatives until they had officially settled in, so at least they wouldn't be staying in a completely unfamiliar area. But that didn't make it any less painful to leave.
The warm and cool September air tickled her face slightly, as if the wind was bidding her goodbye. She almost thought to concern herself over the neighboring farm cats they fed their scraps to, but most of them were feral enough to catch their own dinners. The waif of hay-fields and corn blew around her, along with a slight updraft of manure and fertilizer from a distant cattle farm (as horribly disgusting as it was to most people, she had a feeling it was a smell she was going to miss the most).
"Come on, Inari," her mother grew impatient, stressing Ari's real first name. "The movers just finished packing up the rest of the stuff into the van. Finish up whatever you're doing or we'll move on without you."
Good. Then that means I can stay here, and you can leave... she thought bitterly as she wistfully looked back at the house before she conceded defeat and silently piled into her mom's blue Chevy Malibu. The only thing they had left behind were the tire tracks imprinted in the dirt.
