What if I told you that I have a secret. A big freaking secret, I might add. At least it is to me...

...I've never been in love.

Now I know what you're saying, "What do you mean you've never been in love?!". Really, I've never even had the courage to feel that way about someone.

The one time I thought I might give it a try, I ran out of the classroom door before I even opened my mouth. It was a total disaster.

But you have to understand, I want to be. Everyone around me has felt this magical feeling they all describe. That warm light glow that rises from the bottom of your stomach all the way to the top of your head. To me, it sounds more like they just went over a small hill too fast in their car. But,  yeah, I want to experience that.

My senior year at Westwood high came and went, and all the opportunities sort of just vanished. Everyone moved away over the summer and I was kind of just all alone.

My friend Karmen left for Toronto. Chase, my best friend, went to Sudbury. And I'm stuck here in Ottawa. Gloomy old Ottawa.

"Claire Popper Paisley, get your pouting bottom down here!" I hear my mom call from downstairs.

"Coming!" I respond back.

I close my laptop and rush out of my room and down the stairs to see what my mom's complaining about.

She's got the front door wide open and I see her out in the driveway, opening the trunk of our unexciting mini-van. I take a few steps outside.

"What are you doing?" I ask her, confused.

She looks up at me and scrunches her eyebrows, "What do you think? I need your help getting this new armchair out of the trunk."

"Can't you get help from Rick, from across the road? I feel that he would be more qualified for this job." I tell her.

Her hand drops to her thigh, she's clearly frustrated with me, "No! Now get over here."

"Fine." I roll my eyes.

I quickly run back inside and slip on a pair of shoes, before running back outside to help her.

Slowly and unconventionally, we get the chair out from the back. My mom carried the front and I the back. The whole way up the three steps of our small front porch, my mom is pretty much a backseat driver more concerned with the well being of the chair than mine.

"Be careful, it's an antique," she says as we make our way through the front door.

I huff and continue as she says.

Finally, we drop it in the corner of our cream coloured living room. It blended in with every other cream coloured thing that you could find in the room, which was almost everything.

My mom isn't bold and never has been. If you took a look around our house, you would understand. Every single room has its own monochromatic theme. The kitchen is green, the bathroom blue and her bedroom brown. My room is almost a rainbow compared to my mother's muted tones.

"What do you think Flint is going to think of this?" I ask.

"He's going to love it, sweetheart," she says.

Of course, he will, and secretly he won't tell her that he doesn't.

Flint is my older brother. He moved out when he decided to go to Ottawa U. Said that we were cramping his style. I'm not surprised. I would do the same, but I haven't gotten enough hours at the bakery to be able to save up for an apartment.

Flint offered to let me move in with him and his girlfriend. You can guess why I said no.

I had no desire of watching them kiss in front of me.

"So potato, what should we eat for supper?" my mom asks, snapping me out of my trance.

I shake my head, "Anything is fine with me."

"Of course anything is fine with you, that's all you ever say," she says as she walks to the kitchen.

I kick off my shoes back at the front door closet, then head up the stairs. I stop in the middle and stare at my fifth-grade school picture, hanging in a cream coloured wooden frame.

"You poor potato child," I tell it.

I continue to my room and shut the door behind me.

Quickly, I grab my iPod and earbuds before flopping down on my bed. I look up at the pebbly ceiling and can't help but wonder where the hell in the universe do I fit in.

Maybe on Mars, I think to myself. I could sign up for that Mars mission, you know and never come back. Fall in love with some microscopic bacteria that might one day, in billions of years, become something.

I'm fantasizing too much, or maybe not enough.

God, I need to get a life!

Mom ended up ordering Chinese food. I swear we just had it two days ago. I guess it was the easiest thing on the list.

I sat down at our caramel coloured dining table. There was no hesitation in my reach. I grabbed the biggest servings of everything. I could almost hear the eggrolls calling my name. I hadn't realized it, but I was starving.

My mom walked back into the dining room, she had gone to get two glasses of water.

"It's like you've never seen food before," she says.

"Well, maybe I haven't," I respond with a mouthful of my dinner.

"Sure." she gives me a small smile.

We continue eating in silence, like every other day. Over the past two years, we sort of slowly stopped talking when we sit at the dining table. I'm not really sure who started it, but supper time isn't like it used to be.

I miss the days we spent as a family.

After we had finished, I got up and grabbed our plates. In the kitchen, I washed all of the dishes. I guess I had nothing better to do.

"That's awfully generous of you." my mom says.

I see her putting the leftovers in our refrigerator.

"I guess I just felt like doing them today," I say.

She gives me a smile, "Well I like this version of you."

"This version of me?" I ask.

She shrugs, "The version of you that likes cleaning up after yourself. You don't do it often."

"Sure." I say, "I'm not that bad."

She gives me this look like she was curious, "So if I went up to your room right now, it would be clean."

I start looking around pretending like I didn't just hear what she said. I didn't want to admit that I hadn't even bothered to pick anything up off my floor in the past week.

"Should I go check?" she says.

"No..." I mumble under my breath.

She takes in a deep breath and lets it out. I could tell that she was going to change the subject.

"Anyways," she starts, "are you excited for tomorrow?"

I didn't want to think about tomorrow. I wasn't looking forward to it.

My mom walks over to me and gives me a hug, "I'm so proud of you potato. Your first day at university. I know you'll do great."

She kisses my forehead before walking off to the living room.

Ugh. University. That's right, I was about to start in accounting. I was ready to have the worst time of my life. I didn't even know what I wanted to do this time last year. The deadline was approaching, to apply for university, and I just felt so pressured to choose something. So I chose accounting.

It's not like I'm awful in math, I just don't particularly find myself interested in it. It's what my dad did, and he did pretty well, so I decided to follow in his footsteps.

Flint knew that he would never have done anything if he had done the same. That's probably the one thing that makes me jealous of him. He has guts. He's always known what he wanted to do. And here I am, more lost than ever before.