Hello! The characters will probably be a little OCC in this because it's an AU fanfic and they all grew up normally their whole lives. Sooooo, yep. This is my first Max Ride fanfic so if you have any suggestions please leave a review for me. Reviews make me very happy. (:

Enjoy!

My dad won the lottery.

The freaking lottery.

It's not even like we were poor and needed the money; he won it off of the one ticket he bought as a joke.

I mean, seriously?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for having tons of money to buy whatever the hell I want. But does this sudden income give my parents permission to move me to Rivera Falls, to live in a little rich neighborhood with a total of 50 people in it?

Uh, hell no.

I don't care if we now have a couple hundred million dollars; we were perfectly happy living in our cozy three story home in our cozy town. Oh yeah, that actually had people in it that were normal.

Whatever though, right?

At least I've got a roof over my head.

Yip-freaking-ee.

"Max, I really don't see why you're so upset about this," my sister Ella sighs, poking her head through my door. "It's not like we're moving to a different state or anything. It's literally the next town over."

I finish taping up my last box and sit back, leaning against my wall. "The point isn't that we're moving. The point is that I don't want us to suddenly start acting all snooty and stuck-up just because we've got some extra bucks in the bank."

Ella rolled her eyes at me. "You're so stereotypical. Nudge lives in Rivera Falls, and she's not stuck up like, at all."

That's right. Ella's happy that we're moving because not only does she get to have her own walk-in-closet at our new house, she gets to be neighbors with her best friend, Nudge.

Well, technically that's not her name. But real names are too mainstream right now, anyways.

"It's not Rivera Falls, Ella," I sigh. "We have so much money, you couldn't even count it yourself. I don't want it to get to my head."

"Max, you're one of the most down-to-Earth people I've ever met. Trust me, it's not going to get to your head." Then she laughs, leaving my room with a little skip.

I stand up and lean against my window, looking out over the little park across the street from my house. One of the swings is still rocking back and forth, as if someone just left it recently and it hasn't slowed to a stop yet. That's my swing. That's the swing that I always used.

Not anymore, I guess.

I grew up in this house. On the door, you can see the pencil marks from where I measured myself as I grew. On the walls, you can see the markers and sharpie marks from when I went through a "rebellious" stage and decided to graffiti my own walls. On the floor, there are dust bunnies from where furniture was and stains from where I spilled soda.

This room was ugly, but it was mine.

"Max!" my mom shouts from downstairs. "I need the rest of your boxes! The truck will be leaving soon!"

"Coming, Mom!" I shout back to her. My mom is the famous Dr. Martinez, animal vet at the local hospital. She has now entered an early retirement due to the lottery, and it was pretty much a shock to everyone. She loved her work more than air.

I pick up the box with all of my pictures in it, (Yeah, that's right, I have a box with just pictures. I'm kind of a memory freak.) and carry it downstairs, peering over the top so that I don't miss a step or trip. That's nearly impossible, though. I've been going up and down these steps since I could walk.

"Thanks, Max," my mom breathes, taking the box from me and setting it on the others from my room. I notice that she's sporting some new diamond earrings.

Living large, my friends. That's us.

"Just think, Mom. Things would be so much easier if we just, you know, stayed here," I say dramatically, turning to climb the steps one last time. I need to say good-bye to the old place, you know?

My mom sighs. "Max, Rivera Falls is beautiful. You're going to love it."

'Max, Rivera Falls is beautiful. You'e going to love it,' I mouth with a look of disgust on my face since my back is turned to her.

"We leave in five minutes!" she warns.

Five minutes compared to the rest of high school. Not a very tough decision.

I don't look into Ella's room; she's trapped me in there way too many times, forcing me to listen to One Direction. My mom and dad's room is the same. I hate it because it was always filled with books on animals and chemicals and science related stuff. My dad, Jeb, was a scientist. Not exactly sure what for, but I guess I never really cared anyways.

Then, I come up to my room. I walk around the perimeter of it. I've never seen it look so big.

"Max!" my mom shouts. "It's time!"

Hah, I seriously doubt that was five minutes.

At the doorframe, I run my fingers down the measurements that we stenciled in. The last recorded one was when I was 13. Now, at 16, I've grown about two extra inches.

"Max!" my mom shouts, clearly annoyed that I haven't been answering her.

"I'm coming!" I yell back to her, leaving the room and slamming the door one last time for good measure.

Good-bye home. Good-bye room. Good-bye park.

At the bottom of the stairs, the guy from the moving truck seems to give me a reassuring smile as he picks up the last box and carries it outside.

"I swear Max, you need to listen more," my mom says, closing the front door behind us and locking it. She places the key under the welcome matt.

"That's safe," I comment. "Let's just give someone a free house."

"The realtor is going to pick it up in a hour," she tells me, ignoring my sarcasm. "Now, come on."

We walk over to the car and I climb in the back with Ella, who already has her earbuds in. She's bobbing her head to some peppy pop song that I can hear all the way from the other seat.

If she wants to kill her ears, that's cool.

"Ella, please turn down the music," my dad says, turning around in his seat to look at her. She immediately lowers it.

Or not.

He smiles and squeezes my mom's hand. "Let's go!"

As Mom starts the car, I turn around so that I can glimpse at our house for one last time. When the car starts rolling down the driveway and down the street, I can feel it slipping further and further away.

Good-bye normal Max.

Hello Rivera Falls.

So, whad'ya think? Max seems a little self-centered and me, me, me, right now, but that's just because she's really upset about moving. I promise she won't be that way the whole time.

-MarieMMania