Chapter 1: New Beginnings

            I could’ve been angry at my mother for making us leave everything behind, get a “fresh start” as she called it, but when I saw the fire in my father’s eyes as we left the courtroom, we couldn’t pack our things and move fast enough. My parents had just gotten a divorce; my father loved Mr. Jack Daniels more than my mother, and he was a mean drunk, I can recall a fat lip or two I didn’t deserve. But with divorce comes custody. I was eighteen, so I went as I pleased but for my eleven year old brother, Tyson, it was a different story. As the burn of defeat singed my father’s face, we practically ran out of the courtroom.

Our moving truck could barely navigate the steep mountainside. Dreary Oaks, Montana, was our new home, a secluded town with no more than a couple thousand people. My mom felt the “everybody knows everybody” atmosphere would be a nice change from bustling Chicago, Illinois. Aside from being two-hundred miles from the nearest video game store, I’d actually always liked the idea of a small town community.

We got a steal on the new house. It was ivory white-aside from a slight green tint, a three story, four bedroom house that seemed like a vine covered mansion compared to our cramped apartment. It had a separate three car garage, a balcony off the master bedroom, a screened-in back deck, and a huge backyard. The house easily should’ve cost my mother triple what she paid for it, but we chalked it up to the fact that the house had been abandoned and was in need of some major renovation. Cheap as it was, mom still had to work two jobs. She had a job as a waitress at the local dinner, and as a cashier at the grocery store.

Of course, I offered to get a job to help, but she told me school was most important and that I needed to finish my senior year with good grades if I was going to get a scholarship for college, I wanted to be a graphic designer which was hardly an option around here. It only being mid-September I still had quite a way to go. I thought Dreary Oaks, Montana, was just a small town where we were hiding from my father. I thought I was going to finish school and be off to college in no time, leaving this speck of society in my dust. I never imagined that I would never leave Dreary Oaks, I never thought this town would be my grave.