A/N: Kind of a slow start, but give it a try.

Chapter One

The moon was bulbous and yellow and the old saying about it being made of cheese made sense tonight. Clouds swirled around it, mingling with smoke from the crackling bonfire. The night ambience of crickets, soft breezes, and stirring leaves was interrupted by adolescent voices and a small boombox that played "vintage" tracks selected by my good friend Daphne, who sat with her back against a tree and Roderick Werstein trying to impress her with the story about that time he had to pull his friend's truck out of a swamp. Liam, my boyfriend of three months, sat against what remained of a dead tree, and I sat between his legs with my head on his chest, a marshmallow roasting at the end of a skewer I held. A few of our other friends sat around the fire, and the lake rippled against the bank twenty meters away.

This is what I would remember later of what was once home.

"I just think your parents are being dense about this. You could easily just live with Daphne for a few months, you don't have to be shipped off to your aunt's. Have you even met her?" Liam said, his voice rumbling against my back through his chest.

"Once, when I was eight and we visited for a week in the spring. The house is beautiful, but the aunt is vile. Aunt Elisa yelled at me the whole time and scolded my parents for letting me wear a pants. It was all ridiculous."

"It sounds like it," Daphne said, her Irish accent standing out as it always did. I glanced at her, at her auburn ringlets and hazel eyes reflecting firelight. "If you need to, just sneak off the train and come live with me."

I laughed. "I wish I could, but Mum and Dad would call Aunt Elisa and ask about me, which would spoil the plan. No, apparently, I'm meant to go there or something."

"But the day after your eighteenth birthday party? They couldn't wait, say, a week?" Liam protested, squeezing his toned arms tighter around my midsection. I shrugged.

"It's not their choice. Dad has that class to teach in Philadelphia, and Mum has to go make sure her old friend from Liverpool has someone to watch her newborn child. They both think I need the country setting to 'get my mind off of things' and 'separate from the city.'"

They had no idea how far from this world my mind would venture.

Dawn breached the sky in golden streaks of light, reaching for the high, puffy white clouds. My eyes hadn't moved from the window as the sky had gone from dark, to stony blue, to periwinkle, to the first carnation pink rays, to its now yellow glow. With a sigh and a yawn, I finally sat up and slung my legs over the side of the bed and started getting ready. A suitcase was already packed, and my clothes were set out. I had another two hours before we had to leave, but I couldn't sit idle any longer. It was only three months, but it was my last summer with my friends before uni. I didn't want to spend it like this.

I didn't have a choice.

A shower later, I dressed in a Ramones tee and a snug red jacket with fringe along the end of the sleeves and the hem at the bottom, bottomed by dark denim jeans and black Chuck Taylor's. I grabbed a few books from my shelf and a MP3 player I rarely used and tossed them in my bag, and then started on drying my hair, rather reluctantly.

Once I was ready, I ventured out to the kitchen and sat down to eat breakfast, my own cooking. I prepared a bagel with strawberry cream cheese and then cooked some eggs, and added a cup of fruit and a mug of chai tea I'd just gotten. I mentally noted to add the box of teabags to my bag for the trip. I glanced at the window, realizing this was the moment I'd remember, the last morning in my house (for three months, anyway).

Three months can be a long time, however, in which much more could happen than I would ever imagine.