I Miss You, Asshole.

I Miss You Asshole. - The Beginning.

"Yellow is the new gray?" Carly offered sullenly. Evan, Zach, and I nodded in agreement.

"No!" The women in front of us cried hysterically. "It was gray in the picture. Why is it, of all colors, yellow?!"

Right in front of me - in front of the Grey kids - is our crazy mother. And she's on her knees, in the grass, crying because the color of the house is yellow and not gray like she expected.

Meet my crazy ass family. Carly is the oldest at twenty years old. She isn't moving in with us, but her dream college is ten minutes from our new home. Zach and Evan are twin brothers at nineteen (and still live with their mom). Then, there's me - lone seventeen, going on eighteen in a couple of months, me.

"You'll deal, mother," Carly stated, a little impatient.

It's not every day you have your mom crying over the color of a house. Of all things we did after moving, this was the worst.

"Doubt it," Evan muttered. Zach elbowed him swiftly in the gut. Carly and I did the same. Twice.

"Evan's right." Mom sniffed, standing up slowly. "I'm gonna run to the store and get some paint from Lil-"

"Mom," Carly interrupted not-so-politely, "We're not in Hushbud anymore. You're here, in Brinch View, where you can't just run to the store. You have to drive." She explains.

"What do they call it here?" Mom furrows her eyebrows in confusion.

"Walmart," Zach and Carly say together.

"Why couldn't they be twins?" Evan whispers to me. I shrug.

I don't really talk much, and when I do, it's only when someone speaks to me first. It was how I was raised. Don't speak unless they've spoken to you first.

Mom has shelled me from the world. And boy was I in for a wakeup call.

"Do they sell paint there?"

"No," Carly sighs impatiently. "You have to go to Home Depot."

You see, my brothers, my mom, and I moved out of our small town, Hushbud, and into a bigger town called Brinch Lake. Our old town burned down from a bad wild fire. Thanks to Hushbud being closed off by trees, the whole place burned down.

So the Grey family packed their things, and moved closer to Carly, who's in college. At this moment, my mom's have some issues with our new house. As you can tell.

And that's how I find myself squished in a mini-van, on our way to Home Depot. Carly is driving, and Mom is in shotgun. Mom's pressing her nose to the window, and she's breathing heavily.

I believe she's having a mental breakdown.

"Where's all the farms...or, or...the cows?" Mom kept asking. She just couldn't get over the fact that our small town burned to a crisp and moving closer to the city and Carly was our only choice.

By this point, Carly is ignoring her.

Finally, we arrive. It's big. Like, bigger than all the Hushbud meadows combined. All the pretty white flowers flashed through my mind. And then, the after picture of the field; bare and black. It was terrible.

"It's bigger than our house!" Mom exclaimed. She was so nervous, she gripped my hand tightly.

She hasn't held our hands in public since I turned eight. (And it was lucky for all of us.)

Inside, it's much bigger.

People are there. Not that I'm looking for anyone special. Maybe a senior skipping school and coming to Home Depot...? I highly doubt it, though.

Immediately, Evan and Zach disappear into the crowd. Carly is on the verge to leave, too. But she came here on a mission and she's too determined to do something like leave our mother stranded here.

Carly is now temper-mental 24/7 after her last boyfriend dumped her brutally.

I didn't know the whole story, but I remembered Carly telling Mom the situation. I'd been around but Mom shooed me with a quick: "Carly's been dumped, and she isn't taking it well."

I really didn't care anyway. Carly always was a bitch. She's just more out with it than ever before.

"Need help?" A man close to my mom's age asked, appearing out of nowhere. He has a pearly white smile, and has hair curled like Elvis Presley.

"Yes." Mom's brown eyes go as huge as saucers. "We need gray paint!"

The guy gives her a skeptical look (probably wondering if she's crazy) but said, "Follow me."

"I-I didn't get your name." Mom starts saying, all nervous-like. Is she trying to flirt? I shuddered at the possibility.

"His name is Victor, mother," Carly explains, "It's on his name tag."

"Name tag?" Mom crinkles her eyebrows. Back in Hushbud, everyone knew everyone. No one had name tags.

"Actually," Victor says without turning around. "My name's Peter." Peter flashes a quick sympathetic smile to Carly, before facing forward again. Carly stuck her tongue out at the back of his head."I'm filling in for Victor, because he's on his honey moon in Hawaii."

"Good to know," Mom replies earnestly.

I mentally roll my eyes. Like we honestly care. But I was raised to be polite, so I nodded with a smile.

"Here we are." He finally says after going through rows of home appliances. "You said gray, right?" He asked Mom.

She giggles like a little school girl. "Ye-yes, we need a big bucket of gray paint."

"It's for our house." I add.

"Ooh," Peter's face looks pained. "I thought you said window panes not gray paint."

I start to notice we're by the window panes. All shapes and sizes. I stare in horror.

5...4...3...2...1.

"How do you mistake window panes for gray paint!?" Carly screams.

The next few minutes conjure red in the eyes of Carly M. Grey. She's red in the face. Her green eyes are wide. And her brown hair is being pulled by her frustrated fingers.

She's going, "How dumb are you!? You'd think they'd hire people who can actually hear! And have common sense! Unlike you, you...dumb idiot!"

Meanwhile, Mom (finally) lets go of my hand, and tries to calm down the mighty Carly. Peter is looking nervously from the exit to the greenhouse, and back to Carly and Mom.

As for me, I'm inching away slowly.

It's only my first day in a new town, and already my mom's had a mental breakdown, Carly's going crazy, and my brothers are nowhere to be found.

Do I really need to show up to the new school and people say: "Hey, there's that unfortunate girl, who's related to that lunatic. What's her name...? From college..? Carly! Carly the lunatic!"

I could see it now.

I speed-walk faster than I usually do. "Desperate times, calls for desperate measures," I mutter to myself.

"And those legs of yours makes you power walk like a granny to get away from whoever you're running from...?" The sudden guy's voice stopped me in my tracks. Obviously, not to myself.

Carly was right on the phone. One person is always watching you here; rather they acknowledge it out loud or not.

The possibilities of someone watching me right at this moment scared the freckles right off my nose. I twist on the heel of my converse to face this boy.

I'm pretty sure he's a year older, judging by his experienced arm muscles. Arm muscles? Really? Actually, he was seriously hot in my eyes.

His green eyes scanned over my slowly. But his lips didn't twitch into a smile. Actually, it stayed in a slight pout.

Might as well size him up as well, I thought with a mental shrug. Or maybe I actually did shrug, 'cause he gave me this amused facial expression.

This...guy also has jet-black hair. He was tall. Not basketball tall, but enough to have me tilt my chin slightly. His eyes were constantly moving all around me like a fly.

I was probably doing the same. There was much to look at.

"What are you looking at?" He chuckled, his lips finally turning upwards. But it wasn't a smile yet.

Instantly, I knew I wanted him to smile at me. For me. Because of me.

But his comment caught me off guard. What to say?! My mind raced frantically for a quick, yet witty reply.

"Those green bricks!" Seriously? "...so pretty."

The worst part is we're not standing in the brick section. We're looking at lamps. "Lamps equal bricks?" The guy asked like he was genuinely curious. "That's a first." But his amused face returned, and so did that twitching lip.

I couldn't help but smile back. He was definitely flirting. Did it mean I should flirt back?

I didn't get the chance. As in a girl's voice called in our direction, "Logan, I'm leaving!"

Logan, eh?

"As you can see, I gotta go." Logan brushed past me, and then turned around. "What's your name?"

My hazel eyes gazed upwards. "Hazel."

Logan grinned. "How ironic. Later, Hazel." And with that, he left with the same jet-black haired girl. Was it his sister? Or his mom?

I must've stood there longer than I should because across the aisle, a little boy stared at me with this crazed look. Lovely, even children will think I'm crazy.

"Hazel bay?" I snapped my head up to meet my mother's gaze. Peter's holding a can of paint. Both his and Carly's expression is neutral. "Go find your brothers for me will you?"

"Sure." Like I know where my brothers could possibly be in this big store.

"Actually, I can announce over the intercom for them to come to the entrance." Peter put in, noticing my bugged-eyed looked.

"Even better!" Mom clapped her hands, clearly delighted.

So, the four of us walk over to a lone register line. Eventually, we're all back in the car. This time, Mom is driving. She insisted she needs to learn how to drive again.

"Rolling in the deeeee-eeeeeeee-eeeep!" Mom sang loudly, and off-tune. She had the tendency to belt out her favorite songs, which happens to be every single one.

"Mo-om." Carly, ever the kill joy, interrupted her. "Could you please sing in your head?"

"Why, that's called humming," Mom replied, wisdom leaking in her voice. "And that simply will not do."

"Um, where did my mom go?" Evan asked earnestly. Zach and I laughed in agreement.

"Here, trying to be herself." A quick jerk to the right. "Whilst her daughter frets with her for no reason whatsoever."

The rest of the ride is silent. After a few minutes, Mom starts singing again. Carly groans. I lean my head against the window. And the twins ended up falling asleep.

"But you played it to the beat...!"

The final chord woke me from my daydreams. We're sitting in front of our house once again.

Mom kills the engine, and literally jumps out the car. For a forty-five year old, she sure had a lot of energy. Not to mention patience for her four kids.

The four of us slowly crawl out of the car and meet our mom by the front door. She has the paint can resting on her hip, and she has a determined look.

"We can start today!" Her face breaks into a huge grin.

I survey our house. It's really big. Three stories high, white shutters, white front door, and a wrap around balcony.

"Pass," Zach, Evan, Carly, and I said in unison.

Being oh so smart, the idea sprang to my head that we needed to pick rooms. Don't the kids in the movies always race to get the biggest room?

Surreptitiously, I walked inside the house and up the stairs.

Upstairs, there's a long hallway with doors on either side. The first door I open up is a bathroom. Another storage closet. And a few more are medium sized rooms.

At the end, there's another bathroom that connected to something. Could it be a room?

I swirled around it to find a really small room. Bigger than the storage closet, though.

"That one with the bathroom is mine!" Mom shouted. The sound of thundering feet going up the stairs made my arm hair stand on end.

Without thinking, I ran back into the hallway to come face to face with my brothers.

There are two average sized rooms, and one closest sized one. Who'd get the closet sized one. I glanced at the door closest to me.

So did Zach. Damn.

I took a run for it. My hand brushed against the door frame and I immediately called, "My room!"

Just at the same time Zach did, too.

"Zach got it!" Evan instantly calls. I look at my hand. It's right over Zach's. Damn.

"Have fun," Zach flicks my hand of his. "With your closet room."

"Mom!" Is my instant reaction. It's not fair to have a small room. Those two need to share a room. In fact, they need to get their own houses for my sake!

Mom comes bounding up the stairs, her curly dirty blond hair bouncing along.

"Yes?" She looks at the three of us frantically. "What is it?"

"Haze is mad 'cause she gets the closet room." Evan quickly explained, always the brain of the bunch - the exact opposite of Zach.

Zach is those players, or so I've heard from the seniors at my old school. They'd come up to me with a strip of paper. "Can you give this to Zach-y, it's my number so don't lose it." 'Wink, wink'

It got so annoying. I just started telling people my brothers moved out of town. Now we actually did.

"It's not fair!" I argue. "They need to share a room. Girls need their space."

Zach and Evan look at Mom in that 'are you seriously gonna believe that bull?' Mom actually nodded in approval. "That's true."

My face broke into an evil smile. I was getting my way for once. Finally!

"Anyway, there's a big basement for y'all." Mom said. "It can be bachelor's condo if it weren't for the bunk bed.

Two figures zoomed down the stairs.

"It's yours, sweets." Mom winks in a motherly fashion.

"Is there really a bachelor pad down there?" I asked her retreating figure.

She turned her head slightly with a small smile. "It's something like that."