Chapter 1

"You look... Different." My dad said, glancing over at me.

I nodded. "Well it's been a while." I said quietly, crossing my arms.

My dad just nodded, pulling into a gated driveway.

My eyes widened slightly as I looked at the apparent wealth that he had.

It wasn't a mansion, but it was a fairly large house.

"We've fixed up the guest room for you." My dad told me, pulling into the garage.

I didn't reply as I got out of the Range Rover.

The amount of wealth that I'd already seen was overwhelming.

I pulled my little cloth bag out from the floor in front of my seat and shut the door harshly, pulling the bag on my face.

I silently followed my dad in through the back door of the house.

We entered a beautiful kitchen, where a blonde woman was sitting at the counter, waiting nervously.

She looked up quickly at the sound of our entrance.

I instantly recognized her as the skank my dad had been having an eleven year affair with.

Her boobs were noticeably bigger than the Christmas card we'd gotten. Boob job much?

That always pissed me off. Who sends a Christmas card with their new family to their old one?

"Hi, Zoe. Nice to see you again." Cheryl said happily, taking a tentative step towards me.

"Yea that's me." I said, not even cracking a smile.

I knew it was rude, but I wasn't going to pretend like I was happy for being across the country with a family that I didn't know.

"Uh, I'll show you up to your room." My dad said, giving me a smile.

I just nodded.

"Where's all of your stuff?" Cheryl asked, raising her eyebrows.

I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. Not only did she look like a Botox pumped barbie doll, she was dumb too? Way to go Peter...

"In here." I said, gesturing to my bag.

"All of it?" Cheryl asked in shock.

"Well see I tried to fit my car in it, but they wouldn't let me past security at the airport." I said with a straight face.

"Oh darling you can't fly cars on airplanes." Cheryl laughed.

I just looked at her.

No shit, sherlock.

"Alright let's go." My dad said, giving me a look as we walked towards the stairs.

I crossed my arms and bit my tongue as I followed him to the long staircase that swept up around the front hall to the second floor.

"Mine and Cheryl's room is right here." He said, pointing to the double doors directly across the staircase. "We've got offices down there, and the other bedrooms are over here."

I didn't particularly care about what was in the house.

He turned to the left, telling me where the two kids' rooms were.

I knew that they were about my age, twins or something.

As we passed a closed door, I heard muffled giggling.

"That's Luke's room, he probably has Claire over." My dad told me.

I raised my eyebrows.

Was he that naive that he couldn't tell what was going on in there?

We passed another room with the door slightly open, on the opposite side of the hallway.

I glanced in to see a room filled with pink and yellow. A girl was sitting on her bed, Beats headphones over her head as she watched something on her laptop.

She glanced up as we past. She held my gaze until I walked past the door, following my dad to the room next to the girl.

"Now this has it's own closet, but you'll have to share the bathroom with Lauren." My dad told me, pushing open the door.

My eyes widened.

The room was bigger than any of the houses my mom and I had lived (camped out) in for the past few years.

"Wow." I mumbled, setting my bag down on the floor next to the door.

"Oh there's a closet over there for your clothes." My dad told me, pointing to a door on the opposite side of the room that was next to a clean desk. "We can go shopping later this week if you'd like, but you can wear some of Lauren's uniform clothes to school."

"Uniform?" I asked in shock.

"Well yes." My dad frowned. "What else would you wear?"

"Normal clothes?" I replied slowly.

"To Howell Academy?" My dad laughed, raising his eyebrows. "Oh boy, no." He shook his head.

"Okay then."

"I'll let Lauren know that you're here." My dad said. "But anyways, dinner's at six, we'll eat out on the patio tonight. Uh, do your best to look nice, your mo- Sorry, Cheryl, worked hard on dinner."

I winced, he was about to say 'your mom'.

"Thanks." I mumbled, picking up my bag again as I walked towards the bed.

My dad shut the door behind him as he left and I took a nervous seat on the edge of the tall, queen sized bed.

But I quickly jumped off of the bed and walked over to the door.

I stuck my head out, looking around the hallway before carefully making my way out.

I looked in all of the rooms that I could find, searching for a phone.

I finally found a landline in one of the offices. The office desk was covered in papers, school assignments it looked like, but the phone was towards the edge so I didn't have to touch anything.

With shaky hands, I quickly dialed Will's number.

As the phone rang, I stared in awe out of the window at the large backyard with the multi level deck and large swimming pool.

"Uh, hello?" Will answered nervously, not knowing who the number was.

"My bed is larger then my car." I hissed. "And they practically live in their own damn city their back yard is so huge and the wife is the dumbest blondest bimbo I've ever seen." I groaned.

"Hello Zoe, nice to see you too." Will laughed.

"And oh my goodness, they've got twins my age right? And the guy was clearly banging his girlfriend and Peter didn't even bat an eye!" I whispered.

"Why are we whispering?" Will whispered back, amusement in his voice.

"I don't know I snuck into an office to get a phone and I don't know if I'm allowed in here." I whispered. "This is like a damn hotel!"

"Glad to hear you've got it well off. My mom's been crying all day because she feels bad. She didn't know they'd make you move." Will sighed.

I opened my mouth to reply, but just let out a sigh, leaning against the desk.

"Will tell your mom that there's nothing different she could've done... Okay tell her that I've eaten more today in my travels than I had all week, and tell her that although I may hate it here, tell her thank you because now I've actually got a home." I sighed, pushing my hair back from my face.

"I'm not going to tell her that you hate it there." Will laughed. "But I'll pass on the message."

"Thanks." I mumbled.

"Now anyways, can I call you back? I'm on my way to Jackson's." Will said as I heard a car door slam over the phone.

"Yea absolutely. Tell him I said hi." I laughed.

"He hates you."

"Exactly."

"Goodbye." Will said before hanging up the phone.

I quietly replaced the phone before sneaking out of the office.

When I got back to my room, I sat down on the bed and pulled my sketchbook out of my bag.

I dug around to find a pencil and continued on the drawing that I'd started on the plane.

The tip of my pencil had barely touched the paper when a door in the side of the room opened and a girl came out of the bathroom with an armful of clothes.

"You must be Zoe." She said, dumping the clothes on my bed. There was an awful lot of yellow and blue plaid. "School uniforms." She explained, sensing my confusion.

"All of this stuff is too small on me... You're skinny but you're tall... I'll have mom order some new stuff I guess. But this should work for the week until she can get more." Lauren told me.

I just nodded.

"Do you play any sports?" She asked, resting her hands on her hips.

I shook my head, carefully turning over my sketch book.

"I'm Lauren by the way." She suddenly said, sensing my awkwardness. "Cheryl's daughter."

"Nice to meet you." I managed. "I'm Zoe."

"Yea, I figured." Lauren nodded, rubbing her hands together. "Well, here's some uniform stuff. If uh, if you need anything, I'll be just through the uh, the bathroom."

I nodded. "Thanks."

"Anytime. And also, I figured we should uh, have like a system for the bathroom?" She said awkwardly. "I've never really had anyone staying here but uh, I guess just like, knock?" She offered.

"Knock to get into the bathroom, right." I laughed, nodding my head.

"Sounds stupid I know." She shrugged. "But uh, do you shower in the morning or the evenings?" She asked curiously.

I frowned, unsure how to answer that.

"Uh, I don't really have a pattern." I muttered. "Whenever my friend's parents were at work I guess."

Lauren furrowed her eyebrows, giving me a confused look.

I didn't feel like going into the whole 'I'm homeless' speech, so I quickly moved on.

"Do you like, use the bathroom at a certain time to shower?"

"Yea I shower at night." She nodded.

"Okay, okay no problem I'll shower in the mornings." I offered.

"Great. Okay then, I'll be in my room." She said before quickly turning around and leaving.

I sighed, sitting back down on my bed as the door to the bathroom shut.

I turned back over the sketch book and continued drawing.