Disclaimer: Not mines. Anything here mention by name isn't mines.

It's amazing what a change of location can do.

In my hometown, the name Chambers meant you carried a lot of bad things with you. If you had 'Chambers' attached to your name, then you were a shithead leading towards a shit life. But once you step outside of town, it's a different story.

As a kid, I always said I wanted to go some place where nobody knows me, some place where my reputation wouldn't follow me. I had gotten my wish when I had graduated from high school. My mom had shown up for the ceremony in her prettiest dress and even Eyeball had gotten dress up for it (no doubt from some pleading from Mom). What surprise us the most that even Dad had bothered to show up for it, even getting a cut and a shave and putting on his one good suit.

Once the ceremony was over and my Mom had me and Gordie stand together to take pictures (as well as with Teddy and Vern even though we hadn't spoken to them in years), Dad had slapped into my hand a couple crumpled up dollars and quickly left. Eyeball given me fifty dollars, I don't where he'd got them since he doesn't work and I'm better off not knowing where he got it, but when my Mom gave me some money she whisper in my ear when I'm all packed and ready to go to just leave. Leave and not look back and to forget about them in general. It hurt me to hear her say that but I understand why she did.

Dad was never going to change, Mom was at a point where she couldn't leave Dad, and Eyeball had pretty much resigned himself to the world he lived in. I would be the first person in my family to actually make something of myself. The day I left Castle Rock behind me was the most important day of my life. In more ways than one.

I felt like a huge weigh had been lifted off my shoulders. When I had moved into my dorm and had gotten in line to get my books, when I told the lady at the desk my name was Chris Chambers, she merely smiled and gave me my slip to purchase my books. She didn't sneer, she didn't repeat my last name with contempt in her voice, and nobody in the bookstore was watching me like a hawk as I walked around picking up my books.

Just walking around campus, nobody stared me at me or huddle together to whisper something as a walked by. When I went to class, I never felt like the professors were expecting me to fail. Not that every professor here was nice but I never felt like they were waiting for me to fuck up; the teachers back in Castle Rock tended to lap up my blunders the same way a dog would lap up bologna juice. As far as these people are concern, I'm just another guy.

They don't know who my dad is, none of them have heard about Eyeball, they don't know about the milk money incident, or the reputation I had in town. And if they did, they might not have even cared. All that's in the past now and I now have a fresh start.

I missed Gordie. I haven't seen or spoken to Teddy and Vern since that one time Mom took me and Gordie out to a celebratory dinner at the Blue Point and they'd passed by our table. Me and Gord still write and call each other but lately the letters and phone calls are starting to become less and less; I guess that's college for you. But I made a few new friends here, a couple of guys who I have classes with.

One day I was at a diner eating a ham sandwich and drinking a Dr. Pepper when I saw a girl smiling at me. She was real pretty too with long blonde hair that curled at the bottom and her vibrate green eyes. We started talking for a while when she took out a slip of paper and had written her address and phone number on it, telling me her dorm was having a party and to call her if I was planning on going.

She smiled and waved goodbye and here I was grinning like a fool until I looked the number then back at her, and then I realized something. This is the same type of girl who would have never given me a passing glance back in Castle Rock. The same type of girl who would have turned Teddy down if he tried to ask her out (not that I could blame her for it). Now that I think about it, even my new friends with the clean-cut jeans and the madras, were the same people that always told me that I had no business being in the college courses and that I was gonna flunk. The same people who would have probably wanted to be friends with someone like Gordie's brother if he was still alive instead of Gordie himself, simply because he Denny had a better reputation.

I think I've been watching too many Twilight Zone episodes because now suddenly it feels like I've stepped into a world where the same type of people who turned their noses to me back home suddenly want to become my friend, because they don't know about my reputation back in Castle Rock. Because they don't who my dad is or heard about Eyeball or that the last name Chambers carries a bad stigma.

It's amazing what a change of location can do.

As I finish up my lunch, I head to the bathroom to relieve myself but before I flush I take out the piece of paper, stared at it, then rip it in half before letting it flutter down into the bowl and pull the plunger.

The End.