I sat there in her room, sitting on the edge of the bed in the room that she lived in for the past sixteen years. Her room just started to become just the way she liked it. The walls were a light green color with grey accents. Her bed was grey with blue bedding. There was a window looking out to the backyard that held every backyard their family threw for birthdays and the summer bbq parties for the past few years. She could not imagine living anywhere else for as long as she lived. I love this room. "I love this house. I love this town." I thought to myself. I looked at the emptiness around her, and she grew sad.

Dad was able to keep the house after her parent's divorce; he said that everything would be better now and that we no longer had to worry. A year after the divorce, Dad said that he started reconnecting with some of his old high school and college friends. For awhile everything was great, people started to come over, their family started to reconnect again. Everyone was finally happy now that mom was no longer in the picture. Then Dad said that he was seeing someone. I felt happy for him. Maybe now he could finally be happy. She was someone from high school, they dated and wanted to try again. I was excited, me and my younger sister, Katrina, thought that we would have a whole family again.

Diane came out to visit us once or twice. Then next thing we knew she was moving in. We didn't really know what was going on. We didn't even know her that well, but here she was, moving in to our home. For awhile it was fine. But then the move happened.

"It is for the best," Dad told me and a crying Katrina in the living room after they just bought a house four hours away from the town and place I have called home my entire life, "This is so that Diane can be more accessible to her job and this can be an adventure for all of us!"

"But what about my job? I love working at Manny's!" This was a store that was super popular in my town and sold high-end clothing. I was able to get a 40% discount there which was practically the best thing on earth.

"You can find a new job, Hannah, there are plenty of places to work where we are going." Dad looked so happy.

But I already looked into this place and there was nothing there: four dying businesses and one pawn-slash liquor store. The thing that the everyone in the high school did for fun was go to parties, get drunk and sell drugs to one another.

Basically, it was a shit hole. We were moving to a shit hole.

Diane thought she was giving us the greatest gift in the world, a place that she and my dad could fix up and make our own. But neither of us asked for it. We didn't want to move away from our family. We didn't want to move away from our friends. We didn't want to move away from our lives.

And yet we needed to be grateful for the best gift in the world. A mom.

I grabbed the last box that was now in my bare room. Tears started to well in my eyes again. I hated this. I hated that my room was empty. I hated the new town I was moving to. I hated the new house that they thought we wanted. I hated everything. I would rather move in with my mom than move away from my life.

But I sat there in the car, watching my life leave me as my sister and I moved towards the unknown.