Samhain Publishing Ltd, Ebooks and Books in Print

When I came home from school and saw the boxes, I knew. We were moving again. My dad stood there, looking for some reaction from me, waiting for me to say something, but I put my head down and stared at my sneakers. A hole was wearing through the toe. I couldn’t face him.

In my room, I slung my book bag onto my bed. The books in it made the secondhand mattress sag a little. The books were new, for me. I thought I’d try it. Something different this time. I’d be a nerd, a grind. Study, do homework. It was working. School was easy if you gave it any effort, even if you’d jumped around as much as I had. There was nothing else to set me apart—brown hair, brown eyes, average build. I could blend in anywhere, and I liked it. It made things easier if no one noticed me.

Two brown cardboard boxes rested against the closet door. How thoughtful of my dad to put them in here for me. I stared at them through narrowed eyes. They mocked me in my father’s voice. “Better get started,” they said. “It won’t be long now.”

Moving was the only constant in my life. It was as routine as catching the school bus or going to summer camp was for other kids. I was fifteen years old and I’d moved dozens of times, so many times I’d lost count. They say a person who can’t stay in one place has “itchy feet”. My dad’s feet should have itched right off by now. I sighed and lay down on the bed, catching the boxes with my toe and knocking them to the floor, closing my eyes on the strange urge to cry.

I blinked the tears back quickly enough. I wasn’t leaving anything behind here. I knew better. It was me and my dad, a united front against the world. I wondered where we were going this time. Not that it mattered. Some places were hot and some were cold, but the places we lived were always run-down and the kids always stared at me.

In one school or other—maybe even this one, I couldn’t remember—the teacher had given us an assignment where we were supposed to make a list of all the things we wanted to accomplish in our lives. Supposed to help our self-esteem, or something. As I sat there chewing on the end of my ballpoint and staring out the window, the teacher determined we should each share something from our lists. This cheerleader sitting next to me, who’d never been out of Indiana or wherever, grinned and flipped her hair as she proclaimed she wanted to visit each and every one of the fifty states. That was her goal in life.

I got detention for laughing. I couldn’t help it. To pass the empty minutes in detention, I went over the map in my head, figuring it out. I’d lived in at least forty. Maybe more. There were some I couldn’t remember. Not Alaska, not Hawaii. Most of the rest.

When I was little and I couldn’t sleep, I used to repeat the names of places to myself. Back then it seemed important for me to remember. I don’t know why. Maybe I was nothing more than a dumb little kid, who knows. I can remember some of it: Salem-Springfield-Riverside-Washington-Troy-Midway-Greenville-Bell-Fairview-Cleveland… I didn’t know where it had started, and I sure didn’t know where it would end up.

Not long-term anyway. For now, I knew exactly where I was going. I was going to dump my clothes and stuff into those two boxes. There’d be stuff left over. “Don’t be a collector,” my dad used to always tell me. I knew why. Anything we bought would end up in the back of his pickup truck, sooner rather than later, as the highway unfurled in front of us, leading us to another place that would never get to be home.

I don’t know why he does it. I’ve met kids who moved a lot, but their dads or sometimes their moms were in the military, and the military made them. It was for work. Everyone accepted it. But my dad worked in gas stations. We didn’t move for work, although conveniently there were gas stations everywhere. He’s restless, I guess. Or maybe once upon a time he was like that dumb cheerleader and wanted to see all fifty states. Maybe he was keeping track. Maybe when we hit fifty we could stop.

I didn’t think so, though. If the point was as simple as reaching fifty, we wouldn’t backtrack. We’d leave once we’d touched a state and not go back there. But sometimes we moved only a couple hundred miles. Never the same place twice, though. Never. My dad’s what people would call a drifter, I guess, except he’s got me.

I don’t know why or how he ended up with me. You’d think a drifter would leave a kid behind with her mom, but that’s not what happened. I don’t remember her, and I can’t ask him. He loves me, though. That’s more than I can say for a lot of people I know. I guess I’m lucky. If he didn’t love me, I’d get left behind one of these days.

When I was a kid I used to daydream about that. I used to daydream a lot of things when I was younger, before I grew up and got sense. It went something like this: instead of coming home to boxes, I’d come home and he’d be gone. After awhile it’d become clear he wasn’t coming back, and I was on my own. Some wonderful, kind, generous millionaire would adopt me and I’d never have to move again. I’d get new clothes and I’d make friends and the kids wouldn’t ignore me in school anymore. Thinking about it now, maybe I watched that movie Annie too many times.

The door to my room opened and I sat up, crossing my arms and letting a scowl fall across my face. “Dad,” I said, a warning. He was supposed to knock. We’d been over this.

“You’re sitting around daydreaming, you lazy kid?” There was only a hint of teasing in his voice. “Come on. We gotta get a move on.”

“We’re going tonight?” I couldn’t help whining a little.

“Yeah. Come on.” He pulled the door closed behind him.

Reluctantly I got up from the bed. The first thing I did was dump my schoolbooks out of my book bag into the trash. There’d be different ones waiting for me at the next place. Goodbye, math. Goodbye, science. See ya later, nerd girl. So much for that idea.

I folded the cardboard boxes with a practiced hand and opened the closet. Another pair of sneakers, jeans and shirts and things, a winter coat. The sheets off the bed. Folded the flaps closed. Opened up the next box and looked around. There wasn’t much else to pack. No books, no video games like a normal kid. A funny little pain blossomed in my chest. I’d finally done it. One box. Dad would be proud.