It was the beginning of summer, and I was thrilled. The adventures that laid ahead only excited me even more. One early morning, I had just been woken up by my mother and father coming home from something. Whatever it was, they couldn’t tell me. Emerging out of my room, my mom scurried up to me and dragged me over to our family room. She pushed me down onto the couch next to my sister, Avery.
“Well, girls,” My mother began, “...You may not know, but your dad and I have been going to counseling meetings for a very long time now, and we wanted to make a decision.”
Avery and I looked over at each other with widened eyes. Each of our expressions seemed to speak silently “What ‘counseling’? Is it good or bad?”
“Your dad and I have decided to get a divorce.”
My stomach dropped. Why now? I stared into my mother’s watery eyes and knew that she was, in fact, telling the truth.
Later that night, I lay in my bunk-bed, staring at the bed above me and remembering the time my family had put this bed together. It made me sad to think that all that time, my parents were really just pretending to be the perfect family. It dawned on me that all the time my parents were downstairs wasn’t because they were fixing a door, it was because they were fighting. Just then, a wave of anger and sadness washed over me. What would happen next? Am I the only one? What if no one understands?
The next day, I had this heavy feeling in my chest. Being in this house made me sad. I wanted to go. I wanted to leave. I wanted to move. Dragging my feet into the kitchen where my mom and dad used to cook away together, blasting music from our tiny portable speaker, I slumped down into a bar stool. I placed my hand in the counter in front of me. I hated this counter. It was so green and ugly. The white, green, black, and brown swirls of shiny marble counter that I hated. It looked like barf, too be