Chapter One

I hate love. I hate when people call me dramatic for saying that.

It's not my fault.

I didn't mean to get dumped in a deteriorating booth in a run down diner. I didn't mean to get cheated on by the guy I thought I'd loved for four years. I didn't mean to feel broken and lost and hurt and forgotten.

It's not my fault.

Except according to Mark, it is. I wasn't interesting enough. I didn't love him good enough. I just wasn't enough.

You know when people say, "It's not you, it's me"? And how everyone dreads having that said to them? Well, Mark was kind enough to place all the blame of him cheating on me and dumping me on myself instead of saying it was him. How nice.

When I broke into tears at 7:47 P.M. on December 9th in the corner booth farthest from the door in Mayer's Diner, one of the few decent restaurants located in Eighth Ridge, California, Mark blamed me.

Of course, being terrible with words and apparently equally terrible at relationships, I stuttered out an apology. An apology. After he left me holding back the dam of tears welling up in my eyes, standing in the pouring rain because it wouldn't be a proper break up without some precipitation to mix with your salty tears, he had me believing I was to blame.

It is my fault.

It is my problem.

I am guilty.

So I sat on a bench at 7:59 and decided never to date again. In fact, I would just leave town and never see civilization again. Yes, that would work and I would be happy and never be cheated on again and it would all be fine.

Out of all the lies I'd been tricked into believing, I couldn't bring myself to listen to this one too.

How incredibly inconvenient.

Just like how it's inconvenient I can't go home. Why can I not return to my house? Because it's not mine. You guessed it, it's Marks and he's probably there with some other girl right now.

I didn't realize I was on the bus stop bench until a rickety old school bus repainted to a white with green stripes pulled up. Like everything else here, it was faded and peeling.

I got on. I don't know why. I sat by a man that looked dead. One of his eyes was slightly open. He smelled of homelessness.

There are exactly 61 homes inside the city limits of Eighth Ridge. I have only ever been inside two. My mother's, where I lived when I was a child, and Marks. I will never see one of those again.

There are nine main streets, not counting the endless amounts of rural dirt roads that led to the properties where grandfathers built log cabins and went raccoon hunting with their hounds.

Main Street consists of mostly small businesses. The place where Second Street and Main Street intersect is where the most popular and powerful businesses are. Mayer's Diner is in the lot farthest from that intersection.

There are three bus stops in Eighth Ridge. Main Street and Second, Fisk and Fourth, Amerson and Nineth. I will not get off at any of these.

The bus leaves this town after completing its round three times. I've never left Eighth Ridge.

I don't know where to go. Mother won't understand. Father is not available.

Ako... is gone. My eldest brother was only 16 when he left. He was not fit for the life of a small town boy. Ako wanted more. I didn't understand, since I was nearly ten years younger than him.

He used to write me. Once a week, there would be a letter in our mailbox. With no return address, of course, because then Mother would find him and bring him back. If she could.

I remember he would put a feather inside the letter, every time a different type. The first letter contained a blue jays sky colored feather. The next was a raven.

The last one was a dove. That one was addressed to Mother.

That was 12 years ago, on November 1.

It's 2:11 A.M. on December 21. I cannot sleep, so instead I write. I write about what has happened, and why. I am not a good writer. I am not good at drawing. I don't know what I'm good at. I haven't even graduated high school.

I live in Sunn now, which is thirty-three miles north of Eighth Ridge. I am staying with a man whom I don't know, yet trust for some reason. Perhaps it's the way he smiles like Ako did, or the way he speaks calmly no matter how frustrated he is, like Father.

I met him when I stepped off the bus. It was 11:56, December 12, and I was tired which caused me to make poor decisions, such as spending the night in a strangers house after running away from my home at eighteen years, two months, and six days old. After being dumped. After crying so much my eyes were slightly swollen and refused to cry any more, which I decided was the worst feeling in the world.