Allison Rand put down the last box that belonged in her bedroom sitting down on the same box she sighed heavily as she looked around her. The room was larger than that in the upstate New York apartment that she had lived in for as long as she could remember. Allison of course had been dead set on not coming here, she had complained to her parents a number of times but neither one of them had listened to her. She just knew that this was the single worst idea in the history of bad ideas that had ever existed as far as she was concerned. To move your twelve year old daughter across the country during her seventh grade year of school was just. . .well it was plain wrong!

Allison sighed heavily and stood up walking around her room taking in the things. The movers had brought in the bigger things the day before and set up the bed in her room so at least she would have a place to sleep this night. She had just learned that school didn't start for another two weeks here despite the fact that back in New York school was starting next week. Allison had of coursed tired to convince her parents that she could stay there with one of her friends and come visit them during the summer and winter breaks. Her parents had been less than agreeable with that idea. Allison wasn't sure why but she had learned long ago to not press her parents too much.

The young twelve year old girl stopped before a mirror that was stuck on her closet door and looked at herself. Allison had honey brown hair that hung down to the middle of her back if not slightly lower, she had a small button nose that was slightly turned up and a pair of very full lush lips. Allison was a very cute young girl that was just starting to turn into a woman. She had dark brown eyes that matched her hair almost fully and while she was starting to develop she had not really developed anywhere near as much as some of the other girls at her former school. Her breasts were there, if just barely, they weren't even half a handful and that was her own hand that she was judging them with. Allison was a very slender young girl.

She pushed a lock of hair back behind one of her ears and as she did she remembered the goodbye kiss that Tom had given her. It had really been nothing more than a peck on the lips, but it had felt nice none the less. Tom had been her boyfriend for nearly all of the second half of sixth grade all though they hadn't done much more than kiss and well she had let him feel her up a little bit too. She had been almost certain that they were going to step a little further together but then of course all of this had happened and now here she was trapped in this new place with her family. She knew no one here but her parents. Her social life had been destroyed completely thanks to her parents and it just plain sucked!

Allison walked over to one of her boxes and started to open it as she started to pull out some of her things a knock came to her open door. Allison turned to see her mom standing in the doorway. Her mom smiled and said, "Already starting to unpack hmmm?"

Allison shrugged her shoulders and said, "What else am I going to do mom? This really sucks why did you and dad do this to me!"

Her mom sighed walking in further and sat down on the edge of the bed as she said, "listen sweetie your dad had good job offer, we debated over it for a long while and if he didn't take this job offer it would have been a lot harder on us not just to live where we lived but also to prepare you for college and to pay for your college."

Allison softly said, "I didn't want to move did you guys ever think about that?"

Her mom sighed again and stood up walking over to where she was and gently pushed a strand of hair back from where it had fallen in front of her face and gently kissed her forehead before saying, "We did but in the end sweetie we knew that this was the right thing to do. The high schools out here are better than the ones in New York as well, this really is a better place, and you'll see that in a few years I promise." Her mom walked from the room and Allison sighed as she thought in her mind: no I won't! This was the worst place possible to move to. It was a small town in California! This place was going to be full of no one that she wanted to know and it surely was going to stint her growth as a writer as well. It just wasn't fair that this was where her parents had chosen to move her to. She wondered if they had really discussed how it would affect her or not. Sometimes her parents said they did something when in reality they had not done that thing at all.

Allison sighed and went back to unpacking her boxes. The small town that her parents had chosen to move her to was called Angelton, California and it was roughly four or five hours away from San Francisco. There were only about three thousand people that lived in this small town which meant that her social life and her ambitions were all going straight down hill. She wouldn't get a chance now to write for an interesting school paper to help her get a scholarship and she would be stuck here with her parents in this house every day of this week before school started because she knew no one in this backwater part of the world. Her parents at least could have moved them into one of the larger cities instead of moving them to this small town. Big deal if the plant that her dad was going to be running was here in this town!

She sighed and pulled out one of her notebooks from the last year. Inside was scribbling of different ideas she had and also some poetry she had written. The notebook had also been used for notes between her and her two best friends Irene and Alyssa. As she looked over their notes to one another she felt a little bit of a loss. This was the real reason why she was so depressed about all of this. She really didn't care if they lived here or in another part of California. She missed her friends. She knew deep inside of her that even here she would have a chance for a good scholarship so that she could go to a good school, but still her friends were not here. It was for Allison a profound loss, one she wasn't sure how she was going to get over.

Allison sighed and dug herself into her work. It only took her an hour or so to finish unpacking all of the important things from her boxes and that included of course her computer the only way that she was going to be able to stay in contact with Irene and Alyssa. Alison had barely finished plugging the computer up when her dad knocked on the door. Allison turned to see her dad when he said, "Sweetie dinner is ready." Allison had always admired her father's strength and how hard he had worked for his family. He had risen in the company that he worked from a line man all the way up to one of the big bosses. That had meant though that he had to take a job out here away from everyone that she had known.

"I'll be there in a minute dad." Her dad nodded and started to turn away when she said, "Dad when will the internet be up?"

"It should already be up so you and your friends from home can talk all you want." He smiled a gentle calming smile before walking from the room. Allison smiled as well thought not as brightly as her father. If only her parents understood her and where she was coming from. The next week before school started seemed to drag along very slowly. She learned that her street had no one her own age living on it and that most of the people on the street were either families just starting out or families that had kids already in college. It sucked because it meant that she couldn't try and make new friends before school started. Allison was also not sure about exploring the rest of the area that she had moved into because if she was honest with herself it was all done on purpose. She was trying to mope around the house and be in a sullen mood so that her parents might see the errors of their ways and let her move back to New York and live with her best friend Irene.

Allison's parents though were resolved that the three of them were going to make this work and to Allison that just plain sucked. It meant that she was going to have to adjust and learn to live out here. A part of her said to the rest of her: Well if we have to live here then I guess we should find a way to adjust ourselves to this place. Allison hated to admit it but that part of her was right. She had to learn to live here, this was after all, at least until she got out of high school, going to be her home. So she decided then and there that the only choice she really had was to make the best of it.

By the end of the weekend before school started she had resolved to see if she could fit in anywhere at this smaller middle school. She had learned from her mom that there were just over two hundred kids that attended the middle school that was how many kids were going to be in her seventh grade class back in New York! She was sitting at her computer that night before leaving telling this stuff to Irene who responded back with, "NO freakin way you gotta be kidding me!"

"No I'm not Irene," Allison responded back.

"That's like backwater area! You're going to be in a class with like twenty or thirty people and you'll actually know all of them! I bet some of them sleep with their own sisters and such!"

Allison typed back, "They do not! It's not that kind of backwater!"

"How do you know! Anyway I gotta go see ya l8r."

"l8r." Irene logged off and then Allison followed. She stood up stretching and walked over to her bed. Allison slept in a long tee-shirt and a pair of panties nothing else, she had slept that way for years now and had never thought anything of it. Her friends slept the same way. As she laid down in bed and drifted slowly off towards sleep she dreamed. In her dream she was laughed at by the kids as being a new kid. She was looked at and looked down on and she woke from the dream breathing heavily and hearing her alarm blaring very closely to her. . . ......(cont)