The world as I knew it....all became so fuzzy.

I still remember the first day my father came into my room asking if we could talk. It always meant that I did something wrong. I was thinking I was gonna get in trouble for sneaking out again. No, it was so much worse. We sat down, my mother was still at work. He looked at me, with so much excitement. It was a look that screamed, "WE WON THE LOTTERY!!" Well, maybe for him...

"Angel, I want you to know that I don't mean to lie to you. I try to tell you the truth every time." He starts off. Yeah, I already knew this was gonna be such crap. "I know you've come to call Warwick home. I know you love this small dingy appartment, and I know you love your friends here."

Once he said that, I already knew. We were moving. Again. After he PROMISED that Rhode Island was our home, and the biggest move we would make is to a house. It was like the rest was a blur. All I heard was "reassigned" "military" "Parris Island" "South Carolina"

That was the word that made my head snap back up.

"South Carolina. As in the state near Florida. As in hick land. As in SOUTHERNERS?!" I practically screamed. This. Was way out of hand. No one said anything about the south. I remember the last time I was in the south. It was Mississippi, and it wasn't pretty. It's all I needed to hear. I didn't care about the ocean, or how pretty it was. It wasn't home. I marched into my room and just cried. I called my best friend Sarah soon after to give her the bad news.

"Oh. My God. I just googled South Carolina. It's rediculous. It's like famous for palm trees and civil war crap. You can't live there! You'll be like 8 states away! You have to be there when I graduate! Stuff like that is important Angel, you have to move in with me and forget your family, no joke." Sarah basically just started ranting on and on about how horrible this future home of mine was, and I was not interested. "I bet you'll come back after a year with a thick country accent wearing boots and talking about the civil war." She said, trying to make me laugh. It was the last straw. I had to cry.

"I have to go Sarah, I'll see you at church this Sunday." I barely got out before big heaving sobs took over. It was one down, two more to go.

Sarah McHale was my best friend for the longest time. We were so close all the time. I called her my twin. I've known her from the time I first came to the states, and we just talked a little. It wasn't until I came back to Rhode Island when I was about 10 that she became my best friend. I have two other really close friends. Their names were Amanda Gavitt and Devan DiLibro. We were friends from the fifth grade, and sadly, they weren't friends with each other. I had to face them tomorrow during lunch. It'd be the worse day I've had in a long time.

As the bell rang the next day to signal lunch, I walked a bit slower until I saw them, sitting at our usual table, with a chair in between them. My chair. I sat down, and refused to look at them.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" Devan asked. She was my bad-ass friend. We were the rebels at the school, while Amanda balanced me out by being the good girl. Amanda looked just as curious and worry filled her eyes.

"So, um...I'm moving. In about 3 months I think." I whispered.

"NO. FUCKING. WAY." Devan looked as though she was about to kill.

"Oh my God, Angel! When did you find out?" Amanda crooned. She was always the motherly type.

"Just last night, and I've never felt so miserable. I'm going to South Carolina. Near this base called Parris Island. Apparently it's a Marine base." I said, while fighting the urge to cry. I bugged my father into questions late last night, and the answered didn't look too bright. Nothing he said appealed to me. I had to do some research myself. Especially with the fact that dad was torn between 3 different places to live.

Amanda and Devan kept voicing their sympathy and outrage all throughout lunch. I just picked at my food and listened to it all. It was just not a good day.

Later on that night, I get a phone call from Amanda, she was trying to get me to think positive about all of this.

"Maybe it'll be like in all the books we read! Some really hot guy will like you there because you're this new girl and you two fall in love and it'll be for the better!" Amanda said wistfully. Her crush for 2 years wasn't interested in being more than best friends, and romance novels were all she read these days.

"Yeah, sure, and my sexy bod and charming personality will lure them to me. Right. Amanda we are in reality, if books happened in real life, we'd be living it up!" I replied. I was not the cutest girl in school. About 50 lbs over-weight, Having the usual zit problems and my hair was so long, I could sweep the floor with it. I knew no guy liked me, so I gave up on trying. I loved my rock music, My dark baggy clothes and being nothing more than "One of the guys". Boys were thought of a friends in real life, and something more in dreams.

Amanda fought with me for ages all the time. She was a bit more heavy set than me, and was on the soccer team. She had some social skills, while I had none. I had friends because my teacher in the fifth grade basically told me to grow up and be happy, maybe friends will come to me. Lo and behold, Amanda and Devan were at my side. My best guy friend was at a different school during my junior high school years. Jay Leach. He went to LaSalle, the preppy school for rich snobby kids, and I resented the fact that he left me for the most important years of my life.

As our conversation of me being negative [as usual] and Amanda being positive [as usual] continued, other thoughts of turning into a hick came to mind. I've never been so scared to change who I was. I was happy being baggy gothic-like girl who lived off of rock, yet played the violin. Music was life, but I hated playing such a wimpy instrument as violin. I wanted to learn bass guitar so badly, but my mother would never let me. It wasn't a "classic" so it was rejected. My arguments of string bass is the same thing but bigger were always ignored and I was silenced with a threat of some kind. My life was always filled with walls and boundaries. The only one allowed to bend them were other adults like my Grandpa in North Kingston about 5 mins away or my Aunt Nancy about 30 mins away. [Which seemed forever away...]

My Grandpa introduced ice skating to me not too long ago, and any chance I got, I'd go to the big pond behind the greenhouses my Uncle Matt had across the street from my Grandpa's house. I was planning on joining the ice hockey team next winter and learning how to skate better. It doesn't even snow in South Carolina, much less have a ice hockey team. My life as I knew it was about to be crumbled away...