Chapter One: Two Months Removed

            Eliza Peel was leaving her life behind.  She sat silently in the back seat of the family van as it rocketed down a dull gray highway.  Equally silent were her parents, who were quite exhausted from the quick move from their old home in Detroit.  What seemed like an eternity ago, the Peel family had loaded their meager possessions into the van and left their old home in Michigan behind.  Those same possessions were now surrounding Eliza in the backseat, piled high behind and on either side of her.  Whenever the van hit a bump, Eliza had to grab the boxes and steady them so nothing would break.  It was a long, tiring drive to Virginia, where their new home was waiting for them.  Pushing away the thoughts of friends and teachers and neighborhoods she would never see again, Eliza leaned her head against a large, brown box and closed her eyes.

            Eliza was a young girl, only twelve years old, but had already had her fair share of unhappiness in life.  Many of her parents' friends commented on how pretty Eliza was.  She had long, straight hair which was such a pale shade of blonde that it looked white.  Her eyes were what adults called striking, as they were the grayish color of an approaching thunderstorm.  Eliza also had a beautiful smile, but she didn't smile very often these days, and laughed even less.  She had kept to herself over the last two months, becoming withdrawn from her friends and her family.  Her life had changed drastically, and these changes had been for the worse.  Speeding away from everything she knew, Eliza's sadness grew greater and greater until it settled around her like a dark black shroud.

Mr. Peel had tried to cheer everyone up early on in the trip, but the last two months had simply been too terrible for the small family.  "Don't worry, family," he had begun.  "Things are finally looking up."  He had craned his neck, still grinning, to look at Eliza in the back seat, but she just stared blankly at him with her gray-blue eyes.  Mr. Peel had stopped talking after driving for only a few blocks. Over the last few hours, he had whistled a few upbeat tunes, trying to make up for the lack of radio in the dirty, dented family van.  In truth, Mr. Peel had as much reason as his wife and daughter to be upset.  He had lost his job two months ago, which began the family's string of disasters.  

Mr. Peel had worked in the city's car factory, where he fastened light bulbs into tail lights.  At times, Mr. Peel was incredibly bored with this job, but he had done it for seven years in a row and didn't see any reason to leave.  "Boredom is no match for a chipper attitude," he had often said to himself.  Factory life had made his arms strong and his skin tough.  The money Mr. Peel made was enough to make sure his family was clothed, fed, and under a roof.  Everyone was quite content.

            But then came the day when his foreman, whom Mr. Peel explained to Eliza was his boss, had done something that Mr. Peel never expected would happen.  As every worker in the factory watched, the foreman had walked to the center of the factory floor holding a large bullhorn and a clipboard full of papers.

"Employees," he announced, "I'm sorry to say that our manufacturing company has decided to move its factories to another country, where working with steel will cost less money.  Once you leave work today, this factory will close forever.  I want to wish you all the best of luck in finding new jobs.  We're all going to need it."

            At this point, some factory workers began to boo loudly.  Mr. Peel just looked at the foreman in shock.

"Look, fellas, please, I really am sorry," the foreman said to the angry workers.  "But there's nothing I can do.  This is truly a terrible day."  And it was. 

            The Peel family had never been able to save much money, even though both Mr. and Mrs. Peel were hard workers.  After Mr. Peel lost his job at the factory, the trio was forced to survive on Mrs. Peel's income at Mr. Laver's Dry Cleaning Emporium.  Mr. Laver was not only Mrs. Peel's boss, but he also happened to be the family's landlord.  Their small, gray apartment was built directly behind the dry cleaning center.  In Mr. Laver's Dry Cleaners, Mrs. Peel toiled, removing stains of unknown origin on clothing belonging to questionable characters.  Though Mrs. Peel worked from morning to night, rarely seeing her husband and daughter, the family began to slip into poverty.  Soon enough, Mr. Laver began pinning bright red letters to the Peel's front door.  These notes often had fancy words like "final notice" and "eviction" printed in thick, ominous black letters.

            Slowly, the family's meals changed from steaks to hamburgers to potatoes.  Mr. Peel had always made sure Eliza never went to bed hungry, often by scraping the contents of his plate onto hers.  Eliza noticed that her father wasn't smiling as often as he did when he was working, and his cheeks were much paler.  Sometimes she would tell her father she was full, but then go to bed hungry anyways, because she wanted to make sure that her father had enough to eat that night.  The entire family was miserable.

            Now, riding in the family van, Eliza hoped that those days were far behind them.  But she couldn't be sure.

            Even though she belonged to a poor family, Eliza was a fairly typical twelve-year-old girl.  She had just started seventh grade a week ago, and so far, she had found it quite exciting.  Eliza's class had already done a book report and they had started to multiply fractions.  Much to her delight, school was getting easier and easier for Eliza as she grew older. 

            Eliza once had many good friends at her school.  At recess, the girls would jump rope together, and sometimes play tag with the boys.  Her new teacher, Mrs. Russell, was pretty and laughed often.  When her family decided to move, Eliza had become so sad that she no longer wanted to jump rope or play tag with her friends.  Though she wasn't exactly sure why, she only wanted to be alone, away from her friends.  

            They were all gone now, Eliza knew.  She would never see them again.  Eliza realized that at this very moment, her friends would be in the middle of math class.  Mrs. Russell would be at the front of the room, teaching, laughing, writing notes on the chalkboard.  They were continuing on as if Eliza had never existed.  Eliza had lost them.

The thought reminded Eliza of her Uncle Arthur, who was lost just three days ago. 

In truth, Eliza knew very little of her great uncle, Arthur A. Busby.  She had seen her mother crying alone in her bedroom, and asked her what had happened.  "Oh," Mrs. Peel had said, wiping away hot tears, "Your Uncle Arthur has...passed away." 

It was the first time Eliza had realized that people died.  Up to that point, death had only surrounded characters in books or on television.  Her Uncle Arthur had never taken time to visit the Peel family, nor had he ever invited them to his home.  But Eliza still felt grief from his passing.  She remembered that Uncle Arthur had sent a card to her on each of her birthdays containing a crisp five-dollar bill.  The last though, had included an odd message, inscribed in unnecessarily loopy and twirly handwriting:

Love the life you live,

My dear

Those who live not,

Do naught

But fear.

Sincerely,

-Uncle Arthur

Delusions, Eliza had thought. Poor Uncle Arthur was getting old, and suffering from delusions.  She had folded the note and tucked it away into the bottom of her sock drawer.  The poem had stayed with her, however.

"What was he like, mother?" said Eliza.  "Uncle Arthur, I mean."

Mrs. Peel had sniffed gently and dabbed at her swollen eyes with a soggy tissue.  She smiled and said simply, "He was a lot like you."

"How come he never wanted to meet me?"

Mrs. Peel smiled again.  "Oh, honey, he met you several times, when you were a baby.  You and he got along so well; he would sing these silly little songs, and you would laugh at him, and he would laugh back..."

Eliza could see a faraway look in her mother's eyes, eyes that were beginning to well up with tears again.  "But how come he never came when I got older?" Eliza continued.

Mrs. Peel looked at her daughter.  She took a deep breath.  "I don't know.  There was a time when he wasn't ever concerned with research, when he knew how important family was.  But he was always curious.  Kind of like you, again," she said, with a flutter of a smile.  "But then he decided that his science and his history and his research were not just hobbies.  They became obsessions.  After that, he just stopped leaving his house altogether."

"He sounds like a selfish man," said Eliza.

Mrs. Peel's mouth dropped.  "Eliza, no!  He wasn't selfish at all!  He was...he was just a little...preoccupied..."

But then Mrs. Peel began to cry again, and she said no more.

Eliza and her mother had spoken little since that conversation, and Eliza regretted it.  She loved her parents very much, and knew that they were trying as hard as they could to keep her happy and safe.  Two days ago, when a man came to the door carrying a briefcase, the family learned that Eliza's Uncle Arthur had decided to leave everything he owned to the family.  It was a nice gesture, but Eliza couldn't help but wonder that if there were any other people in the family, would Arthur have left the house to them instead?

The thought had been pushed away quickly by the family's frenzied efforts to pack what they owned into the van.  They were too poor to afford a big moving truck.  Mr. Peel had sold most of the family's furniture, including Eliza's bed that Mr. Peel had made himself, just to buy gas for the trip to their new home.  Eliza didn't have much to pack.  Some books, a few toys, and some clothes.  She didn't mind that she didn't have many things.  Eliza was much too exhausted from all the emotions of the last few months, all the changes.

For the first time in two months, Eliza allowed herself to sleep soundly in the slowly lumbering van.  She slept the entire way from Michigan to Virginia, where their new home, the mansion left by Arthur A. Busby, was waiting patiently for the Peel family to arrive.