I was woken by a large crash to my left. I forced my eyes open and pulled myself into a sitting position. As my eyes began to focus, I realised I had no idea where I was. The walls were freshly plastered and a stark white. The sun filtered in through a large window on my left side, blinding me with its burning rays. The room was filled with boxes, large and small. I looked down to see that I had slept on a bare mattress. I remembered what had woken me and glanced around for the source of the noise, and saw emerging from behind a pile of boxes a blonde head I recognised. It was my brother Mikey and he was clutching his foot and hopping, apparently in pain.

“Stupid box,” he muttered, and then glanced upwards to me.

His face went from the palest of white to crimson red in a split second.

“Sorry Gee,” he said, a little louder this time, “did I wake you?”

Of course he did, I thought to myself.

“Nope,” I said, as cheerfully as I could muster, “I was just about to get up.”

“Good,” Mikey replied, “because Mom wants help unloading the truck.”

The truck? I was just about to question Mikey further when it all came back to me. The truck. With all of our furniture and belongings. Because we’d moved house. I sighed, wondering how I could had forgotten. I glanced around the floor for the jeans I had strewn there the previous night, before I had collapsed into a deep sleep on the mattress. I found them, pulled them on, and walked out into the startlingly bright morning, comforted only by the fact that somewhere in the truck was our coffee machine.

***

It took us almost the full day to unload the truck. Our house in Newark had been a lot smaller than the house we were moving into, but it sure seemed to have a lot of furniture. We put all the items in the general area that it was going to be situated, with the exception of mine and Mikey’s furniture. Mine would be going downstairs, into my basement room, and Mikey’s upstairs, into his attic room. The basement was originally going to be the TV room, but after hours of complaining about my room being too bright, I eventually was given the basement. We started on the kitchen first, and it took about an hour to set up. We took a well earned coffee break, and then we moved onto Mikey’s room, and then mine, then mom’s. We called it a night then, and went to bed.

I descended the stairs to my basement room, and immediately decided it was my favourite room in the house. Unlike the other rooms which were all freshly plastered, this room had been painted. It was a dark grey, almost black. The room had four tiny windows, big enough to circulate air but small enough to keep the room dim. I placed my bed against a wall, making it up with my new black sheets. I found the box with my posters, and set to work plastering as many as possible on the bare wall across from my bed. They varied a lot, from Misfits to Bowie to Thin Lizzy to Bruce Springsteen to Queen. They were very colourful, probably the only colour in my room.

I found the flat pack furniture boxes and began to assemble my wardrobe, three small tables bookshelf, desk and easel. It didn’t take long, I was good with my hands. I made an effort to hang up all my clothes, just to get them out of the way. I took a canvas from the box of canvasses I’d brought with me and placed it on the easel which I'd put in the corner beside my ensuite. I took one of the small tables and put it beside the easel. I rummaged in a box until I found my paints and placed them on the table. I moved onto the desk, unpacking all my drawing materials, a desk lamp and a light box. I put one of the other tables beside my bed, and pushed the other into another corner and put my TV on it. I had two armchairs and put them beside my TV. I put the box labelled “bathroom” into the bathroom and collapsed onto my bed, feeling strangely excited. Maybe this place could be better than Newark. Maybe I wouldn’t get bullied. Maybe I would make friends. I fell asleep imagining all the friends I could make and the girls I could get.