last resort

o n e

THE NEW HOUSE IS THE EPITOME OF CLICHÉ.

It's a house cut straight out of a Keeping Up With The Kardashian episode. There's a large empty foyer with checkered floors and never-ending magic staircases twirling up against the walls with aluminum, sunken window frames leading out to the garden of eden.

I feel like such a spoiled brat, reliving a novel written by someone cliché like John Green [not that I throw his books back at him]. Unfortunately for me, that seems to be the norm around here in Golden Beach.

It's my norm.

I lost myself within the first five minutes of wandering around the Wonderland, trapped somewhere on a floor definitely not touching the earth and definitely not somewhere I started [I presume was the front door]. Other than that, it looks the same like all the other halls, white with crappy wood floorboards squeaking at me like a scale.

With so many rooms to pick from, it feels as if I can pick two and the rest of the house will still be vacant. Such a waste of money [not that my parents care about the amount of Starbucks we could've bought with the wasted money].

Like the expensive rosewood floor [such a waste, tut-tut]. And the semi-matte paint paired up with old, yet simple, Victorian-printed wallpaper. Everything in this house is a complete waste of money, because my darling Hollywood favored mother won't favor any of this. She'll probably replace it all when she comes back from LA.

The maze-runner hallways lead to me a wing [I guess it's the east wing of the house, it feels like an east wing in a hospital]. A door is open a notch, just like all the other bedrooms, but there's some form of lodestone pulling me into that direction. Each step is a moan to the wood, croaking in sheer pain. I roll from my heels to the pads of my toes, balancing my weight evenly across my toes.

I push open the barren door, revealing a whole new world I might want to live in. Unlike the other rooms, this one isn't fit to house Queen Elizabeth. It's a plain room, with plain window frames and plain floorboards.

A room I can play with.

There's awkward shapes made by the walls, it's not a square or rectangular room. It's funky, but with a nice paint job and a few decorative band posters and Polaroid pictures, I can live within social media again and not just some hotel we've been crashing at.

"I see ye' found ye' room."

I jerk my head over my shoulder to take in as much of my brother as I can. I don't know how much I'll see of him yet, especially with so many universities and colleges of his choice just around the corner.

I'm just glad he picked to pickle along with us and not abandon us with a foot already outside the front door.

"There's a lo' of potential in he'."

"I can tell."

I walk over to the window, sucking up all the sunshine this side of the house gets. Four squares of sunlight perch on the rosewood floor, each step in the sun so warm yet so delicate. I need to get use to so much sunlight. In England, we barely got any sun and now I could become a pot roast if I spent five minutes too much in it.

"Le's go check ou' the backyard," Telle says, resting both his damp hands on my shoulders. "I hear there's a swing se'," he winks, shooting me with his dazzling smirk. My brother is a complete ladies man, from his bleached crop of hair swooped back and shaved on the sides, to his toned mesomorph figure hugged by pieces of material to tease them.

"Swing!" I cheer, jolting out of the room first.

Even though the swing might be the only good thing about this house, or this area, I'm still giving it a chance.