We walked through the door of the house and right away I knew my dad was mistaken with his earlier statement. The house was small, no matter how you looked at it. The stairs wined painfully as I made my way to the upper level, which held the bedrooms. I could hear the voices of Thomas and Lily echoing from the downstairs kitchen but paid it little attention. I carefully made my way through the various doorways peeking in just barely to see if I had stumbled upon my room. On the top of the stairs was a landing with a window seat that looked out to the darkening sky and the forest that surroundsed the house. I stood there momentarily and watched as the first drops of rain made their appearance. I then continued on my search for my room, which I found easily, to the left of the landing. I walked inside expecting little other than a bed and perhaps a desk.

The walls of my bedroom were painted a pale yellow with a delicate flower trimming following the uppermost border. In the middle of the room sat a mattress on a bed frame without sheets or a blanket and aside it sat a small bedside table that matched the distressed white paint of the bed frame. In the right hand corner of the room was a desk also painted a faded white, and attached to it was a mirror. I had one window that stretched across the majority of the Northern wall and was covered with a lacey curtain. I put my suitcase, which had condensed from the trip on my bed and walked over to the window. I pulled the curtains back and opened my window easily. The smell of the rain, which was falling heavily now, filled my room and expelled the stuffiness it once contained. I breathed in deeply and looked around the small room. It was comfortable and despite its dainty appearance I knew that I could be happy here. My dad came up, without Lily, which I appreciated, and smiled gently at me.

“Thanks for doing this bud, it means a lot.” I smiled back worried that if I spoke my words would come out broken and tired.

“Ill let you get settled then, I already moved the boxes into the hallway and if you didn’t already know your bathroom is just outside to the left.” I nodded and smiled again and waited for him to shut the door.

When I heard his footsteps making their way down the old, creaking stairs I collapsed on my bed and shut my eyes tight. Even if I had a nice room, this was going to be one serious adjustment.

I woke up nearly 8 hours later around 2:30 in the morning. My window was still open and the floor around it was drenched in rainwater. I got up quickly and shut my window. I flipped on the light and looked around, my room needed some work. So, I quietly opened my door and began to shift boxes from the hallway into my room. I spent the rest of the night unpacking things and placing them in their appropriate spots. By morning my closet was stuffed tight with clothes my desk was covered with pens and notebooks and my computer and my bed was covered with a fluffy white comforter. I was placing a picture of my mom and me on Christmas morning, on my desk when my door opened and my dad walked in.

“I see you sorted out well.” He said, too cheerfully considering it was now 6:30 in the morning. “Yup” I said looking around my room,

“ Its almost exactly the same size as my old room.” I continued to say, a bit shocked by the roughness of my voice.

“Well good, I’m glad you’re settling in. Lily and I are going to go get things sorted at the hardware store, you’re welcome to come.”

I looked at him anxiously, “Umm No dad,” I said now looking down, “I think I’ll just explore a bit if that’s ok.” Smiling almost inappropriately for the conversation being had my dad said, “of course that’s fine, there is one thing I want to show you though after you get ready.” He then smiled at me once more and closed my bedroom door.

The house was Victorian style, painted blue with carefully chiseled woodwork. It was old, that was obvious but right away I could tell that it was going to prove to be one of the few comforts I had in this new town. My dad put the car in park and turned to face me.

“So kiddo, this is it. It’s a lot bigger than it seems don’t worry.” He said clearly reading my look of dread.

“I’m sure its great dad.” I said painfully resurrecting a smile. Lily was on the phone with an old friend who had been running the store for the past few weeks, but she turned around to face me as well.

“You’re going to love this town Alexey, it sure is nice to be back.” She said as she began to step out of the car. My dad attempted to make strict eye contact with me then, but I rolled my eyes. Alexey was preserved for my parents alone, and my dad knew that if there was one way for Lily to get kicked out of our family it would be if she continued to call me Alexey.

The name, I don’t really mind. I admit that a more common name like Katie or Jenny may have been preferable, but Alexey I am proud to sponsor as long as people don’t get too hung up on it as they usually do. My name came about even before I was born. My mom, being the photographer she always was would study the works of various famous photographers because she couldn’t afford to go to school. She would spend hours in the library reading everything from fashion magazines, to photographer’s personal profiles. One photographer she became particularly interested in however was a man by the name of Alexey Brodovich, a Russian photographer who worked for Harper’s Bazaar some time in the 1900s. He inspired her so much that she named me, her first-and only daughter, after him .As I aged though and my mom wasn’t around as much to enforce the use of my full name, Alexey turned into Alexa and eventually into Alex.

The only reason I was strict about people calling me Alex and not Alexey is because I felt that since I virtually got to decide my own name, it was more a part of my identity than anyone else’s name, and I left it at that.

Today though I let her slight transgression slide and jumped out of the car and stood beside her looking up at the house more in curiosity than general awe as she was expressing. My dad came up behind us and wrapped his arms over both our shoulders,

“Welcome home girls” he said with a heart-felt smile slapped across his cleanly-shaven face.

Things continued on this way for a few months until August when Lily’s mother became horribly ill. Lily’s mom, Catherine Wright, was 73 and lived in La Veta, a little town on the outskirts of Utah. Lily’s father died a few years prior to her becoming a part of our family, and she had no siblings. So, when Lily’s mom died in early August the few possessions she had and a store, were passed along to Lily. The store that Lily inherited was a tiny hardware store that had been in her family for over 80 years so, naturally, she felt obliged to take the small, barely profitable, hardware store under her wing. Her heroic deed however, proved extremely consequential for me.

My dad was tormented by the decision he had to make, either move to La Veta or stay here in Denver, apart from Lily. As horrible as it was, I knew that I was the deciding factor in his decision to move or stay so once again I bit my tongue in sake of his happiness. My brother was on his own now, consumed by his own life in college. So, we moved on August 23 to La Veta, Utah, and this is where my story really begins.

The Bad Lands, I learned about them when I took a class on western literature. The Bad Lands are a place where cowboys and outlaws alike go to die. The never ending heat, the encompassing dust, the lonesomeness, are all parts of the scenery. Today though, in various corners of the infamous Bad Lands, are fragments of civilization, small towns that know less of the outside world, than Columbus knew of Native Americans. It was in one of these awkwardly placed, towns where I was to reside for at least the next two years.

La Veta, Utah, is where I was placed and it was exactly as I expected. The wind itself was torture, but it was unseasonably wet and rained almost constantly.

La Veta was small, very small. It was also shockingly wet in result of the unseasonable rain. So wet, that with every step you would take you would hear a kind of muffled crunch as if you were stepping on a thoroughly dampened sponge. As we drove through the town I sat in the backseat of my dad’s old black Range Rover with my head pressed lightly against the window. This was my life, this is what I left behind all my friends, my house, my school for, this is what I did for Lily and my dad. The more I thought about what I had given up the more evident it became that the heroic one in this situation was less Lily and more me, to put things bluntly. The reality of the situation, as I said, was actually quite tragic and as I looked around for some sort of hint at advanced civilization like a mall or movie theater, I was less than shocked when I found none.

We drove through the town until we hit a small dirt road that led roughly half a mile into a deeply wooded area; behind the trees stood a white picket fence, which unnecessarily guarded a house. Our house.

The Beginning

My New Reality

I sat starring out my window probably longer than was polite. I looked to the sky for some kind of reassurance that was currently not present in my life. I was hoping for a sign or proof that change was going to happen. I could hear a muffled voice next to me calling my name but the strength to answer or turn seemed beyond my capacity. So, I continued to stare at the colorless sky without thinking of much or feeling much until a hand grabbed my shoulder. I turned slowly to face the owner of the hand without any change in facial expression or thought.

“It’s about time don’t you think?” Said the man looking at me.

Without nodding or even hinting that I had heard what he said I looked back to the colorless sky that was now beginning to feel oppressive. I then heard the man sigh get up and walk out of the darkly lit room, whose window seat I had occupied for the past four days. He was right though, it was time, a beginning was about to be recognized.

After he left I could hear in the distance the hushed sounds of a conversation that was meant to be private. I turned my head to listen for a minute or two intrigued by the fact that for the first time in a long time I held a since of curiosity.

“She won’t come I’ve been talking to her for the past hour and it seems she hasn’t even heard me, should I call the school?” Without straining I heard the other voice respond, “No, no she stills has a bit more time, there’s no need to rush her.” By this time in the conversation though I had, like many times before, become uninterested and turned back to face the sky; nothing was different. The reality of the situation, however, was actually quite tragic, and in order to understand I must start at the beginning, the only logical place to really start.

For 16 years I lived in a one-story ranch house in the Cherry Creek region of Denver, Colorado. The originally red brick of the house was hidden beneath taupe paint and further hidden by a colony of trees, which to my satisfaction, and the satisfaction of my family hid the house away from the street. It had a backyard of roughly two acres that was always in impeccable condition thanks to my dad’s past but not forgotten dream of becoming a horticulturist. We had a pond, bridge and a gazebo to match all painted a dark green and placed so perfectly in the yard that it seemed almost poetic. The house itself wasn’t large, but it didn’t have to be. For 16 years it was just my dad, my brother and I and I was fine with that.

I really do love my mom, but she wasn’t around much and my memories of her stretch no further than the weekly hour-long phone calls we have and the various, but few, holidays she has spent at home. I like to think that even though my dad pretty much raised me, a significant portion of my mom’s personality resides in me. She is somewhat eccentric, but easy going and loving. She looks like me, I’ve been told, but with a rounder face and wider eyes. Her hair is an auburn color and cut short above her shoulders.

She was nearly 30 years old when she had me but she may as well have been 16, based solely on her maturity level that is. My brother, Tyler had been conceived three years before, our birthdays both being August 10^th. By the time she had me though, she came to the unfortunate conclusion that, while she loved us, settling down in the Coloradoan suburbs could never be her future. So, instead of creating a life that she knew she wouldn’t be happy in and a life where her feeling of oppression would inevitably invade our own feelings, she decided to leave when I was only 5 years old. Her plan and dream was to be a photographer, and that is exactly what she set out to do.

Of course my father and brother were devastated as I was as well (even though I just barely remember her leaving), and I suppose there is still a part of my dad that will never forgive her for what she did. Still though, he loved her too much to keep her from the life she truly wanted and so as simply as she made up her mind to leave, he made up his mind to let her.

She called frequently and tried as much as possible to be a part of our lives and even though her and my dad had made their divorce official roughly a year after she left, everyone knew it was simply for practicality not because they stopped loving each other. As the years passed however, my dad grew lonely and as much as I feared a new addition to our family it pained me far more to see my father in the position he was in. So, when he met Lily at an art show and proposed to her only a few months later, I only protested silently. My mom, to my surprise, was extremely understanding even with her lack of a boyfriend, and so my dad, Thomas, married Lily in the spring of my sophomore year and my brother’s freshmen year of college, which he was spending at the University of Denver.

At the beginning life remained almost the same. I went about my ways, trying to finish off the school year with decent grades and concentrating on my own social life. We still lived in my house on Garfield St. and Lily made an honest effort to become my friend. I never had any ill will against her, in fact I genuinely liked her, the only issue was that as her presence in my house increased until her eventual moving in, I found that my dad wasn’t as readily available as he once was.

I suppose that was all fine though, because in all honesty a 16-year-old girl is fairly content with minimal parental interaction, it just took some getting used to.