The Cotton Candy Gang

Chapter 1

The Move

Beep, Beep.

Cara, get up! You are going to be late for your first day of school. You do not want to draw more attention to yourself, now do you? Being the new girl in a class of eleven is hard enough.

Mom, I don’t want to go. I can’t. I hate people, I hate life, and I hate this place! I will never forgive you for taking me away from all my friends and from Jake Wilson! I have liked him since the third grade, and he finally started to notice me. But you just had to take me over a thousand miles away! How could you? Now I have no one, nothing. I am in a boring ASS small town full of country roads and slow people!

Now Cara that is one… Keep it up and you will be grounded. Watch your language and do not be rude. The people here are not slow, they are just different.

Ground me, ground me, ground me. Really? From what? You took everything from me, my friends, computer, iPad, cell phone, video games, electronics, and my home. We have no internet! How can I know what is going on with all my friends, or with anyone in the outside world for that matter? We don’t even have cable; we get two channels, mom!

Well, Cara, where we live, that is all we can get.

This is a total nightmare. There is nothing in this town, no shopping malls, movie theaters, museums, fancy coffee shops, or skating rinks. Nothing.

Well, Ms. Drama Queen, you will have to use your imagination and get creative. There is a drive-in movie theater just twenty miles from here. This town has its own treasures and I know you will be able to find them. Plus, they have a bookstore on Twenty-Third Street, and on Fifth Street there is a grocery store with a couple of tables in the back where they serve hot coffee and the best homemade cinnamon rolls in the state. Anyhow, a little solitude and nature will do you some good. Now we leave in fifteen minutes. If you are late, you are walking. I packed you a sack lunch, a peanut butter sandwich and an apple. I will be in the car waiting. Oh, and after school we are stopping by that little red house down the road that has the sign in the window that says bike for sale. If it is still available, we are getting it so you can ride it to school on the nice days and have a little more freedom to explore.

Ride a bike to school! Are you freaking kidding me? This just keeps getting better and better.

Chapter 2

School

I stood up, squinting my eyes as the sun shone brightly through the corner of my curtain. Staring at the unpacked boxes, I grabbed the first, least wrinkled shirt I could find. It was my softest most comfortable shirt with a big weeping willow tree. At least I got to keep my favorite clothes. I still don’t know why my mom went psycho on me throwing away most of my clothes, saying they are too revealing. I guess I should be glad she is not making me wear some ugly uncomfortable uniform to school. I quickly picked up my stone-washed jeans from the floor and put them on, pulled my hair back into a messy bun, slipped on my black high tops, and grabbed my book bag. In the past, like two days ago, I would be taking an hour to get ready, curling my hair, and putting on loads of makeup. I was so excited when I turned thirteen and was allowed to wear it, but to even be more obnoxious, my mom threw it all away and said I could only have lip gloss. I must be a weird science experiment of hers, or she is trying to prepare me for a convent. She is always trying some new craze. I ran to the car after grabbing my lunch off the table. One thing I can say about my mom is she means what she says, and I really don’t want to walk to school on my very first day.

We pulled up to a small, little, old-looking school surrounded by thick green grass and lots of trees. There were a bunch of picnic tables scattered here and there and a little pond close by. A little duck family was swimming in the distance. It looked like a fairy tale. The colors were so vivid and bright. The leaves on the trees were just changing colors. They went from green to golden yellow to burnt orange to cherry apple red. As I looked around, I saw a couple of kids under a tree talking to one another, some kids walking up to the school, a little girl playing hopscotch, a kid on a bench reading a book, and a few kids riding their bikes. I saw a bike rack off to the left of the school that looked old and appeared like it was barely standing, yet it was half full of bikes