Simon and Prudence Crumplebottom finished moving the last of their furniture into their new house in Pleasantview, down the street from the Goth family. It had taken a week to get everything sent over and new pieces ordered that were needed. They had already begun sending their two daughters to school. They admired their just-finished kitchen with weariness in their eyes.
"So what do you think?" Simon asked.
Prudence nodded. "I like it. The bedrooms are a little small, though. I hope the girls don't suddenly develop claustrophobia."
Simon laughed. "They're not that much smaller than they were at our old place. I'm sure they'll be fine. As long as we don't have any more little ones, we'll settle in soon enough."
Prudence shook her head. "No plans for that on my end. Though I do wish we could have had a son. Someone to pass on the family name, you know. There's a few distant cousins near here, but I'm afraid they'll just give us a bad name." She stretched and yawned. "Ok, bedtime now..."
"...and job hunt tomorrow."
Prudence found a job at a nearby research facility. They had two openings, and were happy to accept both Simon and her onto the team. It was an ok job for starters, not to mention very interesting, but both had other plans for their lives.
Agnes, their youngest daughter, began begging for a pet immediately. Though they really didn't want to deal with the hassle of a dog or a cat, they gave her her very own guinea pig, which she immediately named Panda.
She was actually very grown-up for her age and enjoyed reading the paper, though it was almost bigger than she was.
"That's some mighty big reading you're doing there," a male voice said from behind her and to her left. She looked up to see who it was.
"Gunther!" It was her new friend Frida's big brother, the one Cornelia liked to talk about all the time.
"Hey there, Agnes! Is your sister around?"
"Hi, Gunther." Cornelia came in from the great room and smiled shyly at him. "What are you doing here?"
"Well, I was hoping you could help me with that English essay."
"Sure thing. The computer's in the office. Let's go on the internet and look up some sources to cite."
Since Victor had only owned a computer for a brief period of time, selling it when he couldn't do much more than play Solitaire on it, Gunther had no idea how to work the internet.
"It's easy, here, let me show you." She clicked on her favorite search engine's button and typed in what she was looking for, and it instantly appeared on the screen.
"That's so neat," Gunther said.
Cornelia stood up. "Here, why don't you play around with it a little while?" There wasn't much room in the tiny office, and when Cornelia attempted to get around Gunther, they got a little too close to one another.
Before she could stop herself, she wrapped her arms around Gunther's neck and kissed him. He kissed her back and they pulled away from each other, blushing madly.
They did manage to get their work done, though with much more touching and giggling than was really necessary.
Afterwards they unwound in front of the television. Gunther's family didn't own one, so he had a lot of fun laughing at the sitcoms along with Cornelia, though he did spend an awful lot of time staring at her than at the TV.
Soon he had to head home. They said their goodbyes and shared another kiss, and for the rest of the evening he kept saying to himself over and over again, "I have a girlfriend...I have a girlfriend!"