Running from Fate

I remember when I was eleven we moved across the country, it was very sudden and impulsive for my family. My father had just acquired this new job the week before and without putting any thought into it as my mom always did, our bags were packed and loaded on the moving trucks and we were gone. A few weeks before this I woke up late one night and heard commotion coming from my fathers study. I tip toed down the hallway so I could hear a little better. My mother, father and an unfamiliar man’s voice were going back and forth about ‘her.’ I heard foot steps rushing towards the door so I creeped back into the closet beside the study. The memory of that night faded away as we rushed to move and get settled in our new home. “This place is AMAZING” my older brother Ben yells as he’s running through the hallway and up the stairwell. Our new home is much larger than the our house back in Cedar Springs. Ben is five years older than me, he’s two years away from graduating and this move was particularly hard on him leaving everything he’s ever known behind. My parents wanted him to love our new home and the opportunities he had here, so they made sure he had everything he asked for when he made list of agreements before we moved. The house had to have a pool or lake, both would be amazing, bigger rooms for us, and a library. The library was surprisingly at the top of his list, he loved to read. The library was beautiful, it was stocked with so many old books I knew Ben would be lost in there forever. It was his favorite place in the house, if you didn’t find him outside he was tucked away reading a book. Ben fit right into his new school, he joined the football team and made new friends. Everything about Shadybrook felt perfect, Ben was happy here, my parents loved how quite the town was and I actually liked my new school as well. I had a hard time fitting in at first due to coming in so late in the school year, and I was the only redhead at Shadybrook Elementary. A girl named Novie soon became my friend and put anyone in the place if they dared to be mean to me. Ben’s senior year his best friend Jeremey basically lived with us until until they left for collage. They Summer before he left they spent it on the lake. They would occasionally take me with them when Ben didn’t feel like I was being a little nuisance. When Ben left for collage everything changed, I was headed into my first year of high school and mom and dad became more strict about who I could hang out with, they were constantly checking my friends to make sure they were ‘of good people, they always loved Novie though. I wasn’t a fighter and had a hard time standing up for myself but she never had that problem, she would go toe to toe with anyone that dare try and hurt me. When Ben came home for his breaks Jeremey always came with him. He would talk to me while my parents took Ben in for ‘family meetings’ we would catch up on what’s new around town, and with them in collage. He was like my brother as well, I thought the world of him until one day he just quit hanging out with Ben and moved away. When Jeremey left collage and moved away Ben came home at the end of the semester as well. He decided to finish his last semester of collage at home to be closer to us again. While I was thrilled to have him back for my senior year, mom and dad seemed to be on edge about everything. While him moving back in with us couldn’t come at a better time as I was heading into my senior year and really looked forward to spending more time with him, it seemed like he was less ‘there’ than he actually was. He was always on his phone, or computer, in our fathers office with him trying to come up with plans for the project they were working on. Two weeks before we went back to school we had a party at the house for end of Summer, wrapping up all of the tourist leaving for the season and things getting back to normal. That night I met Blake. Blake was tall, perfect olive skin and blue eyes, he graduated the year before I did and worked in town at his moms office. We spent every night after that either on the phone or sitting on the dock just talking about life and enjoying one another’s company.