How long was I going to have to wait before these stupid people cleared out of my house and let me get my room back to myself at last so I could have a proper mope around?!
"This place is ideal," cooed the withered-looking old woman as she inspected my bedroom with beady eyes. "Much better than all of the other properties we've viewed so far..." Yeah, like I care.
"Urgh," I grunted, whishing she'd just shut up for one minute.
"I mean, just the shape of the rooms is so...homely."
"Uh...yeah," I said, wondering how long it would be before she was admitted to somewhere that provided strait jackets. I wondered if she would find padded walls just as homely. "Look, I don't mean to sound rude, but I've got a load of...uh...homework, and it's kind of in for tomorrow, so could I kind of...have my room back?"
The old women blinked, looking offended.
"Urm...please?" I said, since the woman was starting to look quite upset.
She blinked again, before backing out of the room. Yeah, you go scuttle back off to your cave, I thought.
As soon as she was out and my door was closed, I flopped face first onto my bed, wondering if I lay there long enough I'd pass out.
A month ago, my mum had told me we were moving to a place near Eastbourne, a million miles away from my inland small town life, and to add insult to life-threatening injury, I had to go to a boarding school since mum had sold some new music software to Microsoft (which in itself was bad enough- I'm a total Mac) and had cashed in...well, let's say a lot.
Ok, so maybe this town was small (and totally without any job prospects unless you fancied working in 'Flossie's Fruit 'N' Veg' your whole life), but it was still pretty good. I mean, I had great friends, a fairly decent school, and I was on a fairly comfortable place on the social ladder (and let me tell you, it had taken me a hell of a long time to work my way up from the very bottom).
Another reason I didn't want to leave (one reason I will NEVER use in arguments with my mum) was the fact I was totally in love with Ben, a god-like boy in the year above who made my insides turn into something that resembled melted marshmallows when I even thought about him.
In a word (well, maybe more than one, but 'In more than one word' doesn't have the same ring to it...shut up brain, you're not helping)- mum was wrecking my life, in the same way a mad seagull would wreck a limpet's.
My phone buzzed loudly on my desk, and I groaned before rolling over on my back to reach it. One new message. Knowing my luck, probably from the phone company. Or even better, from George, my own personal stalker.
"Omg he's just asked 4 ur numba! SCOOORE!!!"
My heart skipped a beat. It was from my (bonkers) nearest and dearest, Megan, who, as it happened, was close friends with Ben's close friends, therefore being close friends with Ben and my only link to Ben apart from when I bump into him on the way to maths.
My fingers flew across my iPhone's keypad (one of the perks of mum becoming rich overnight) as I replied.
"Omfg! Ben?!?!"
I put the phone down and stared at it, mentally willing it to vibrate. Suddenly it did, giving me a heart attack (even though I'd been expecting it to vibrate...I do not understand the way my brain works sometimes). My fingers fumbled as I opened the message (I'm not obsessed. Ahem).
"Uh, no, he meaning ben's mate joe, the one that looks a bit like that actor...whatshisface."
My heart sank. I really needed to stop getting my hopes up about every little thing about/ thing that could be about Ben.
I put my phone back on my desk, pretending not to have got the message, and slumped back down on my bed again, feeling (if possible) even lower than I had before. This day was NOT going well.
Just then there was a timid knock at the door, and I heard mums new Jimmy Choos clicking on the floor.
"Did I say you could come in?" I mumbled, my voice muffled because my head was still buried in my pillow.
"I did knock," she said shyly, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside me.
"And? I could have been doing something private, which I am, as a matter of fact."
"And that would be...?"
"Thinking of ways to commit suicide."
"You really do need to stop being so over-dramatic."
"And you really do need to stop ruining my life. It works both ways."
"You know what? I don't know why I bother," she said as she stormed back out of my room again.
Great. Now I'd pissed off my mum as well (Ok, so I guess me being that rude to her didn't help, but she should have continued annoying me anyway. It's what parents do).
I didn't realise until I sat up and wiped my eyes that I'd been crying. Everything had just been getting to me recently; I guess moving and all that stress that comes with it didn't help much.
My phone buzzed again, and I lazily picked it up, my head feeling hazy.
"So can i give it to him or not??"
Another message from Megan. "Yeah, whatever," I replied. "At the moment I really couldn't care less."
(Random fact about me- most of the time I text in full English. It saves me having to think about pointlessly leaving vowels out of words).
About two seconds later I got another text.
"Hey Sky, it's Joe F, Meg gave me your digits, is that ok?" (FYI, my name's Skyler, Sky to my friends, just in case you thought he was trying to text God or a cloud or something).
I rolled my eyes before putting the phone down pretending I hadn't got the text, then picked it back up again, thinking it would probably be better if I didn't ignore him.
"Yeah that's fine. Did you need it for any particular reason or are your usual textees boring you?"
He replied surprisingly quickly. You know, for a guy.
"Pretty much, yeah. And I see you a lot but I've never really talked to you, so I thought it might me good to break the ice at some point."
"Fair enough. No offence, but I'm really not in the mood for a pleasant chat at the mo, so unless you want me to rip you to pieces via text, I wouldn't attempt at conversation."
No reply. Huh, I guess he'd gotten the message more effectively than I expected. I'm sure I'd forgive him for not being Ben later, just maybe not now when I felt in the kind of mood serial axe murderers must feel shortly before deciding to go out on a killing spree.
After another ten minutes of lonely moping, I slowly made my way downstairs and into the kitchen to raid the fridge so I could run back up to my room with an arm full of Jaffa Cakes and a tub of Ben and Jerry's under my arm so I wouldn't have to come back down later, but mum caught me just as I was opening the freezer.
"Are you in a better mood yet?" she asked, leaning against the kitchen door frame.
"I don't know, are we still moving?"
"Yes."
"Then no, I still feel as depressed as Satan in a freezer."
"Look Sky, there's nothing for us here, and you could do so well if you went to this private school."
"Nothing for us? So my friends and my hometown mean nothing then? Because a big fancy school and a new house are obviously so much more important!" I spat out the last few. I stormed back up the stairs and slammed my door. Then I realised I didn't have any food and punched the wall, and my knuckles started bleeding. Fan-fucking-tastic.
