Score My Heart // Chapter One

“I just can’t believe you’re moving!” Tess exclaimed for the hundredth time in five minutes. “What am I supposed to do without you?” She asked.


“I know,” I replied with a sad smile etched across my face. It was hard moving away from a place you’ve spent you’re entire life in. “I’m going to miss you so much.”


Tess continued to unpack whatever I had just managed to store into my suitcase at a rhythmical pace. And every time she did, I insisted that I had to finish packing by tomorrow night, and she ripping everything I had just put away wasn’t exactly helping.


“I just mean, Ottawa is the only place you’ve ever really known and now your parents expect you to just pack up your things and move to Pittsburgh for the next two and a half years?” Tess said while throwing out my purple pyjama bottoms from my suitcase. “It just doesn’t make sense.”


“That’s true, Tess,” I said while I put the PJs back into the case and continued to move around the room looking for anything my best friend may have hidden from me while I wasn’t looking. “But my parents said that IPBS has a great program for academically advanced students looking to get into Ivy League schools, and you know how much I want to get into Yale next year.”


“Yeah whatever,” She rolled her eyes and gave up on ever trying to fully complete her task of stalling my trip “But Prom is coming up next week and I think Dylan’s going to ask me,” She said while examining the split ends of her dirty blonde shoulder-length hair. “I was hoping you’d come dress shopping with me and then we’d all go together”


“It’s not like I chose this, Tess. I want to stick around, Ottawa’s the only place I’ll ever really be able to call home.”


It was true, for the past seventeen years of my life, Ottawa, Ontario was my home. I spent summers playing road hockey with my two younger brothers --although I was likely the most horrible player in road hockey history-- and winters skating on the Canal and eating Beaver Tails. My friends and I would spend every Saturday night doing our nails and eating caramel corn while we went on and on for hours about last night’s episode of Gossip Girl or 90210. It was going to be tough to leave.


Just then, we heard a knock on my door, it was my cousin, Tyler, who was calling us downstairs for dinner. Tyler had been like a big brother to me my entire life, even though he lived in B.C. At least I wasn’t moving to Pittsburgh by myself. I thought as we made our way downstairs. At least I’ll have Tyler with me to keep me company.


I coughed down the pizza my cousin had ordered for us and headed back up to my room to rant to Tess about how much my life’s going to suck in the Burgh.


“You know what,” she said “tonight is your last night in Ottawa, we should go out”


She’s right. I thought. We should have one last wild night together.


“Sounds like a plan. We should go to Nine for a couple of hours for martinis, I’m in a desperate need for a pick-me-up”


“Okay. Roxanne, you know, Pittsburgh might not be all that bad. Hey, you might even meet some pretty famous hockey players”


Yeah right. I thought. Nothing like that could ever happen to me .