Girls Your Age 》fp jones

1

Lydia had a habit of constantly reinventing herself in every new town her family moved to. She'd been the stoner girl skipping class to go smoke in the abandoned parking lots. She'd been the perfect all American princess with an ironed cheerleading uniform and straight A's. She'd been the girl hooking up behind the bleachers during football games. Now, she was bored with everything, bored with moving from place to place, bored with herself and bored with how she couldn't just be happy being Lydia. But she couldn't be happy being Lydia because she'd never learnt who Lydia really was. She was a stranger.

The car windows were fogged up as the rain poured down heavy. The only sound in the car was the odd clicking of the indicators and the wind screen wipers furiously doing their job.

Lydia stared at the back of her father's head, his head mostly bald now in his old age. The only hair he had left was frail and looked like one slight breeze would blow it all away. He was bored too. Mostly of moving constantly but also of Lydia. She used to be his sweet baby girl, now she was eighteen and not so sweet anymore. The moves had been rough on her and so had the women that they brought along.

The woman sat beside Lydia's father in the passenger seat, Rachel, tapped away at her phone. She'd been the nicest of the five girlfriend's her father had had over the years since her mother had upped and left.

The 'family' of three were heading to a town named Riverdale. It was Rachel's hometown and she was planning to move back their eventually, before she'd met Lydia's father. It worked well when Lydia's father decided to pack up for the fifth time to get away from the town that reminded him of his ex, and leave once more with two women he called his in toe.

"Riverdale the town with Pep!" Rachel read aloud as they drove past the town's run down welcome sign. She smiled rolling the window down and smelling the sweet air of home. "The town was founded by the Blossom Maple Syrup Industry and it's almost like you can smell the sugar in the air."

Lydia's dad smiled at his girlfriend and how excited she was. He turned to his daughter in the back. "This is the last time kiddo, I can feel it in my bones." His face was still full of a smile. Lydia smiled back but nothing in her eyes told her father that she meant it.

He turned back round to face the road and Lydia pushed her earphones back in her ears, turned her music to it's full volume and leaned her head against the wet window.

Lydia could only slightly hear Rachel naming the house numbers and the people she remembered living there. She went to high school here and she was all the more excited for Lydia to go to the same school. She had told the eighteen year old of all the stories and the things she got up to during her high school years. About how she was on the cheerleading squad with a girl named Alice and had music classes with a boy called Fred, who she'd had a massive crush on when she was young. She laughed at the memories.

Lydia was just dozing off when she felt the car come to a stop and the engine moan into silence. She rubbed her eyes, unfastened her seat belt and climbed out the car stretching. It had finally stopped raining. Her dad was already at the boot of the car pulling out suitcases.

"L!" Her father called for her attention before tossing her the keys to the house they had parked in the driveway of. It was family sized, far too big in Lydia's opinion because they were no family. She grabbed her suitcase off the curb and dragged it behind her to the door.

Pushing the door open she was welcomed into a hallway, the stairs to her right, the living room to her left and the kitchen straight on. By now she had lost the fascination over new houses, after a while they all start to look the same. Lydia, not in the mood to talk or hear her dad's lecture about the house rules for the fifth time, she climbed the stairs and trudged to her room. Her room faced the front of the house. Again nothing special. Lydia found it boring just like every other room she had chosen in every other house she had existed in. She threw her bag on the bed stand, that only held her mattress, and unzipped it, starting to unpack her clothes wanting to already get it over with.

By the time she'd finished it had already grown dark. Looking outside her window she saw movement in the house opposite and a red headed boy walked to his window and closed his curtains, Lydia stared as she caught a glimpse of the moonlight glistening down on his abs. Lydia licked her lips subconsciously before her dad called her down.

"It's almost the spitting image of what my old house looked like." She heard Rachel say with glee.

"We're going out to eat." Lydia's dad said when he heard her enter the kitchen.

"Yeah, a little diner called Pop's. They do the best milkshakes in town." Rachel smiled grabbing her hand bag from the table and swinging it on to her shoulder.

"You're not going out like that are you?" Lydia's dad frowned at his daughter who hadn't changed since they had left Texas. So she stood before him in short denim shorts and a black mesh top. "At least put a jacket on or something."

"I'm fine dad." She moaned already heading out the door as her stomach grumbled at the mention of food.

She looked up at the neon signs of the diner that stung her eyes as she stared for too long.

They walked in and a bell on the door chimed their entrance. "That can't be," and old man looked up from behind the counter, "Rachel Gibbons!" She blushed. "We thought you were never coming back." He gleamed as he walked around the counter to embrace the woman.

"No one can stay away from here for too long, Pop." She smiled up at him.

"You're not the first person to say that. Anyway here, here. You're old table is all free." The old man ushered the family to a booth by the front window. "What can we get you?"

"You're telling me you don't remember my usual Pop?" She laughed.

"Of course I do! You want three all round?" He smiled writing down on a notepad as Rachel nodded.

She turned back round to her boyfriend and Lydia. "Sorry, but you'll thank me later."

"We trust you babe."

Lydia was too busy staring out the window as a bike roared into the car park. A man with a leather jacket hung around his shoulders climbed off.

Their food was placed in front of them. Three cheese burgers and three chocolate milkshakes with a generous helping of whipped cream and sprinkles. But Lydia was too busy looking forward at the door as the biker entered the diner. Lydia stared as the man walked to the counter and started to talk to Pop. Lydia couldn't help but notice how he stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the pastel colours and neon signs.

She watched as his shoulders dropped as Pop left him by the counter alone. He ran a hand through his dark, greasy hair as he turned back around to leave the diner as quickly as he came. She also watched as he climbed back on his bike, rev the engine and stare right back at the girl.

Lydia quickly looked down at her food in front of her, her mouth watering. Rachel and her dad were already half way through chomping down on their food like they had been starved for days.

Her dad swallowed his mouth full of burger before he spoke with a straight face. "So Lydia, who are you going to be in this town?"