"I am only the picture frame, I am not the painter."

Robin was listening to "Human" by Civil Twilight, through her white earbuds as she attempted to sketch the outline of Jennifer Lawrence's face. This was difficult for two reasons; 1. She was sitting in the backseat of a moving car. 2. She sucked at drawing.

She was traveling home to Oppidum, Oregon from Briston,Washington after staying with her Aunt and Grandmother. I should actually rephrase that sentence, for it is quite disrespectful, I shall say, to call Oppidum Robin's "home". Robin just lived there. It did not, in fact mean that it was her home. She hated it there. Well, it was actually the only town she had lived in all of her 18 years. Then, where would you call her home then, you ask me? I guess the simplest answer to that question is, she didn't have a true home. As you will soon find in the future, she never liked to stay in one place for more than a year.

Robin's phone vibrated. She stopped sketching and turned on her phone, she got a message from Cameron (one of her very good friends). Robin opened it. She had to read it again. Robin had to read it a third time before her brain actually processed it.

A shiver ran down her spine. Robin replied to Cameron's message with one word.

"Who?"

Cameron and Robin's conversation went like this:

Cameron: "He's dead"

Robin: "Who?"

A SMALL NOTE

Robin had an idea who, it just made no sense, and naturally she refused to believe it.

Cameron: "Him."

Robin: "Cameron, WHO? What are you talking about?"

Cameron: "Silas"

ANOTHER SMALL NOTE

To Robin, it felt like she had just swallowed a bowling ball.

Robin did not reply back to Cameron. In fact, no matter how many messages Cameron sent or how many times Cameron called, Robin did not talk to her again for 1 and a half years. After Robin read the last message, she turned off her phone. She felt numb and had a million questions running through her mind. Robin propped her chin up on her knuckles and stared out the window for the rest of the ride back to Oppidum.

The red camry pulled up in front of the shabby house Robin lived in, at approximately 5:30 p.m. Without saying anything or making eye contact with anybody, Robin packed her luggage out of the car and headed straight into her room. She took a deep breath and pasted a smile on her face. She walked back outside, hugged her Aunt and Grandmother goodbye, and they left to go back to Briston.

A STICKYNOTE OF A BACKSTORY

Robin's mother suddenly ran away to San Diego, California when Robin was still very young. Her father died when she was in fourth grade, by being pulled out to sea by a large wave and drowned in the Pacific ocean. Robin now lived with her scumbag great-uncle, who was unemployed, and lived off of the child support her mother sent.

Robin went back inside, into her room and closed the door. She sat on the edge of her bed, and stared at the opposite wall for a very long time.

When Robin snapped out of it, she looked up at the clock that read 7:21 p.m.. She slowly stood up, looked to her left, and with one swift move she grabbed her lamp that was sitting on her bed side table and cast it across the room. She walked to the wall opposite her bed where a bookshelf was sitting and pulled the bookshelf over. Right next to the bookshelf was her work desk, she grabbed the chair which was tucked under it, lifted it up and shattered the lightbulb overhead, then she threw the chair over by the dismantled lamp. On her work desk were a few picture frames of her friends and family. She grabbed each one, one by one and hurled them at the wall above her bed. They made a satisfying shattering sound when they hit her Twenty One Pilots posters hanging on the wall.

Robin then dropped to her feet, glass digging into her knees. She placed her head in her hands. She did not weep, she only took deep breaths. It felt as though she could not take enough air in.

You would have thought that perhaps Robin's uncle would have heard all this ruckus and come barging in to see what was going on, but Robin knew that he was probably passed out from being drunk all the time, in his room.

Robin lifted her head and looked out of her bedroom window. She felt a weird sensation, the usually alluring apple tree in front of her house only looked inelegant. Robin stared at the tree. She felt on the inside, exactly how the tree looked on the outside. She lost the rustling spirit that had always been inside her. The only thing left inside Robin, was a dark gaping hole being filled with fire. She suddenly felt a rage she had never felt before, she wanted to cut down that miserable apple tree, she wanted shatter the dusty window in her room, to add to the collection of glass shards on the floor. Robin wanted to shove a pillowcase over her drunken uncle's head, she wanted to burn her fucking house down.

Robin suddenly sprang up, making little shards of glass fly. She rushed down and brought up her large blue suitcase that she had gotten on her first trip to the coast, and a white cooler. She went back to her room and set them atop of the broken glass on her bed, before unzipping the suitcase. She went to her closet and grabbed an armful of shirts and packed them into suitcase. Then Robin took several pairs of jeans and leggings out of her bureau and crammed them in the suitcase as well. She walked over to the other side of her bedroom and lifted her bookshelf back up against the wall. All her books were now in a large pile, mixed with pieces of glass. She dug through the pile and pulled out a copy of "The Hobbit". She brushed a few glass shards and dust off and placed the book on top of her clothes. Robin then gingerly reached in between her mattresses and pulled out a roughed up, journal looking thing and placed it beside "The Hobbit", before zipping up her suitcase. She opened her closet again and put on her brown leather jacket and a pair of hiking boots. Robin then went over to her work desk and got out a pen and piece of paper. Quickly, she scribbled down a message in sloppy handwriting that read:

"Call my number when you are sober enough to care ~ R"

She stuck a piece of tape to the paper and snuck across the hall from her bedroom to her uncle's room. Robin slowly opened the door to his bedroom, before quietly sneaking in.

Her uncle was lying on his stomach and snoring was snoring loudly. There were countless beer bottles lying everywhere. Robin tiptoed over to his bedside table and taped the note to an empty beer bottle. She then snuck over to his open closet. Robin knew her uncle had a big, glass, jar where he kept all his cash. She quickly snached it, then cautiously closed his door.

Robin went back to her room and set the jar on her desk. She pulled out another piece of paper and scribbled another note that read:

"Thank You ~ R"

Robin ran out of her bedroom and went out the front door of her house. She jogged across the street to her neighbor's garage.

JUDY

Was a kind lady in her late 70's, that had always lived across the street from Robin. During the summer Robin would mow Judy's lawn or dust her around her house and in return Judy would take Robin out to lunch and they would chit chat. Months before, Robin had talked to Judy about how she wanted to leave soon, now that she was 18. Judy wanted to help Robin out as much as possible, so Judy told Robin that when she was ready, Robin could take and keep Judy's Chrysler minivan.

It's funny how people always say elders and teens are a completely different culture, even though it can be true, Judy and Robin were different, they had a special connection. Judy was going to be one of the few people Robin would miss.

Robin flipped open the security pad next to Judy's garage and typed in the password. The garage door opened and Robin hurried in. She stuck the note to the door inside the garage, retrieved the hidden car key from under the green mat resting right next to the door, and then backed the car out of the garage.

Robin parked the car back across the street, in front of her house. She sprinted through the front door and into her bedroom. She packed her large, blue suitcase, cooler, and jar of money outside and set them on the sidewalk. Robin opened the backdoors of the chrysler and started fumbling with the back seats. After 5 minutes she had removed all four of the back seats and left them in her front yard. She picked her belongings up off the sidewalk, and placed them in the back of the minivan.

Robin rushed inside one last time to get her phone charger, and to grab the U.S. atlas she kept in a kitchen cabinet.

When Robin sat down in the driver's seat and started the engine, the time on her phone read 8:56. She slowly pulled out of the neighborhood she had been surviving in for years. At last, tears began to roll down her face. As Robin left Oppidum valley, she felt the sense of relief and anxiety and the same time. She was sobbing so hard, she was recklessly driving.

She had so many things to think about at this moment. What had happened, what her friends were doing right now, what they would do when they figured out she was purposefully not coming to school for the rest of the year, how she would deal with all the calls and texts, how she was going to put up with her uncle when he sobered up. Not to mention where the fuck she was going!

Ever since 6th grade, Robin had always thought, that when she was 18, she would break connections with all her family and friends and go far, far away and no one she knew would ever hear from her again. She imagined herself going on a grand adventure across the United States, then eventually settle down enough to go to college in large city, away from where she grew up, and then travel the world once again after she graduated.

Robin naturally expected she would do all this after she graduated high school. She now realized, since she wasn't going to graduate high school, she wouldn't be able to go to college.

Robin did not care about any of this now. She continued to drown in her own tears while she thought about her Dad and Silas. She also thought of her Grandmother and Aunt, and she decided she would call them in a day or so and just tell them she couldn't stand living in Oppidum anymore and was going to stay with a friend in a different state.

Robin took one hand off the wheel and reached for her phone. She noticed two messages from Cameron. She didn't open them, instead she plugged her phone into her car radio and listened to "Migraine" by Twenty One Pilots on repeat, whilst she drove in the dark of the night. Robin drove for many more hours before stopping again.