“It’s time to tell you something.”

That’s what my dad told my sister, Shannon, and I when he came home from work. I could still smell the faint pine scent on his overalls that had been branded with the Anderson Door Factory logo; I could see the individual sawdust-littered curls swirling throughout his dark beard. I could see the indents of goggles on the sides of his tanned face where just days ago, mother had slapped him and bailed on us, bailed on me. I noticed the dark circles around his eyes and the scars on big hands that clenched and unclenched by his sides. I watched his bright green eyes falter as the tension seeped through their emerald depths and I was saddened by his pain. I saw and I noticed and I nodded.

Shannon, the prettier of us twins, tucked a thick auburn ringlet behind her ear in patience. Her eyes, the same color as my father’s, searched his for elaboration while I stood picking at the string of my hoodie. It was fraying at the end and I’d made it halfway up before Shannon elbowed me in the rib and I dropped it.

“What?” I asked. My father had never been very good with words and a freak accident with unstable scaffolding had left him with some minor brain damage. For the most part, he was the same but at the same time, he was too different. He was always forgetting things and for the most part, he was quiet. I thought of it like this: he was fine but his brain was still catching up with what he'd missed. He was like me. Almost.

The mean doctor with the white hair had told my parents that I had Asperger’s when I was a baby and so far, it hasn’t gotten any better. I guess I just have trouble connecting with people, I am oblivious to subtext, and sarcasm is not one of my strengths. But calculus is. I like calculus.

“Girls, we’re going to be moving.” Shannon blinked rapidly as if she'd been slapped in the face, while turning to me with a pained expression that seemed to be a mixture of her needing to use the bathroom and her trying not to cry.

“Am I supposed to say something caring and comforting?” I asked her quietly while tugging at the ends of my blonde hair. She squinted at me strangely before replying,

“No.”

“Well,” I clasped my hands together in an attempt to cope with the awkwardness of the situation. Dad scratched at his beard, sawdust fluttering to the floor in an unorganized race to reach the white carpet that I had just vacuumed. I stared at the wooden fragments and smiled. They reminded me of fairy dust.

“Nora.” Shannon was snapping her fingers in front of my eyes in an attempt to get me to stop thinking about the fairy dust. I turned to her but secretly, I was still thinking about it. “Do you have anything to say? We’re moving. Like, actually leaving Indiana.” I looked at dad who was watching me intently. I began to squirm under the heat of their gazes and resorted to tugging my hair again and wiggling my pink-polished toes that I’d painted just before dad got home. I didn’t like the color.

“Can we move to London? I want to try Belgian waffles.”

“Nora, that’s France,” Shannon told me, her annoyed face appearing. During our interaction dad was silent, staring at us like we were two test subjects inside of a glass container. It made me uncomfortable.

“We’re moving to Maine,” dad finally spoke.

“Why?” My expression never changed but dad’s went from disassociated, to distracted, to confused, but finally he settled on one – an expression he’d favored for some time now. His eyebrows were knit together in a frown while his mouth was slightly parted and his eyes were shut tight.

“Um,” he scratched his beard again and I tried really hard not to imagine little fairies dancing through the dust. Shannon kicked my foot and my head snapped up to where my father was fidgeting with his overall straps. “When your mother left, I found a new job.” Shannon muttered something about I can’t believe this, and left me with my father. "What do you think, honey?"

"Um…" I trailed off, my eyes connecting with his for a split second before I cast them towards the floor. "I guess it's okay. Will it make you happy if we move?" Dad tilted his face to the side, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

"It would make me very happy," he replied.

"I mean, as long as you start being happy again, I'll be happy too," I told him which earned me a smile.

"I'm proud of you, honey." I nodded out of a lack of anything better to do and excused myself to Shannon's room where she was sprawled across her bed, her phone clutched in her fingers that she'd let me paint blue. I didn't like that color either.

"How are you so calm about this?" Shannon hadn't removed her eyes from the screen of her phone but her words were directed towards me. I began pulling on my hoodie string again.

"I don't know," I shrugged. "I mean, I guess this new development is such a shock that I don't really know how to react." I nodded more to myself than to her Moving should be fun though."

"Nora." Shannon's voice was pleading and slightly understanding. "Nora, you're going to be leaving all of your friends, everything you know." My complacent expression morphed into one akin to horror. I did not like that at all.

"But I just started doing good in Studio Art ad Mrs. Brewer said if I finish the year with all A's, she's going to write me a recommendation for summer internships at a local art hall. And— and…" I clawed the air for more reason why we had to stay and Shannon nodded her head, ending my tirade.

"You see?" I wrung my hands and started pacing the floor, my palms pressed against the sides of my face. "I don't want to move."

"Me neither," I realized while speaking the words aloud. "I can't move to a different state even if they do have Belgian waffles." For a couple of minutes, we were silent, listening to the sounds of nothing that I was going to miss so much. I listened to dad clattering in the kitchen, probably looking for cereal but forgetting where he put it. I listened to the cicadas chirping outside of Shannon's bedroom window and I wished I could kiss them goodbye because they'd sung me to sleep many nights and gave me a calming start every morning. I saw and I noticed and I nodded.

"We can't move."