Disclaimer: I don't own the OC, I just like it ;)

Please R/R.

The moments stretched out, time became something of a far away dream, as both of us floated in the zone between life and death. We looked at each other, and in the haze our eyes connected, I knew he was thinking about the same thing. He was thinking about the smell of vodka slowing seeping into our life in Chino, and so was I.

That first day back, we became a different family. We came back into it, with everything changed. While Trey and I had been locked up in group homes, while Mom had been out drinking herself into a near coma, our house had sat empty. Falling behind in the rent, yet Trey and I sat in it day after day, skipping school and smoking with nothing else to do, other than watch our lives fall through the cracks as property of California. We didn't say anything about it, because there was nothing to say. I didn't have it easy, and neither did he. But we were Atwoods and if we had learned anything, it was don't complain, don't explain. For years Trey and I had gone to school with black eyes, split lips, bruises and gashes, and we had never said a word.

I suppose it shouldn't have been a shock, to find the window we had been crawling in day after day bolted shut, with an eviction notice on the front door. I suppose after everything that had happened, it shouldn't have upset me, to see our house about to vanish from us forever. It shouldn't have upset me, for my sole belongings to fit in a black duffel bag. But it did. So, I ran from that house, before Trey could see me cry.

Mom came three weeks after the house been repossessed, two and a half weeks after I had started going to school, two weeks after I got my head slammed into the brick wall beside the gym at lunch, a week and a half after I got my revenge, three days after I skipped school and met Trey and we spent an hour at the bus station planning our escape. And we escaped, but not in the way we thought we would. We escaped from group homes, bunk beds, Spanish taunts, warden counsellors, and child services hell. But we should have known that we were simply jumping from one bad thing to another.

Mom had rented a tiny apartment with barely any furniture, it had one bedroom and a kitchen the size of a closet. That first hour back, we sat in the living room, me on the floor, Trey on the couch, Mom in the chair, and we glared at her. I hope she knew, right then, right there, that things would never be the same, that I would never be the same, that Trey would never be the same. That we would be there, everyday, to remind her what she did to us.

As the days went passed, she began to talk of moving, she called it getting away from the "bad air". I'm quite certain she wasn't talking about the Fresno smog, but instead of my Dad imprisoned, her contining drinking habit, our hostility. But she should have known that it wouldn't make things much different.

But we went anyway. Moved over one county, to a new place, to a new house, to Chino.

Chino, to a place that could open all sorts of doors, but close even more. But I didn't know that, I was eleven, maybe I almost believed Mom that things would be different, that we could be different. That I could get rid of the anger I had picked up, that I could get rid of the sharp vodka smell that seemed to permeate everything we owned, that I could go back to being an almost ordinary kid, with an almost ordinary older brother, with an almost ordinary Mom.

Our first night, Trey and I snuck out of our window, to the park a block down, and sat in the sagging swings in the darkness.

"You know Ry, maybe you should quit smoking." Trey said to me.

"Yeah, maybe." I replied, wanting to swallow that everything could be different, yet somehow for me, smoking symbolized something. It symbolized that I was more than an ordinary 11 year old kid, it symbolized that where I had been and what I had done, and that I smoked Marlboros just like my old man.

So I didn't quit.

The first time, I took a drink, it wasn't Trey that introduced me to it.

I was having a horrible time, my new school, was just as bad as the last, the kids, the teachers, the hallways, were all different, but the looks, the attitudes were all the same. My teacher said that I was an underachiever, a slacker, most of the kids steered clear of me, because maybe they noticed that I was different from them. There were a two people in my class, that I could hang out with at recess, one, a girl named Theresa, and a guy named Andrew, but even when we talked about normal things, joked around, there was a gap between us, maybe I was the only one that saw it, but it made me feel alone.

That feeling only got bigger as I constantly came home, to an empty house. Mom said she was out looking for a job, but Trey told me she had some sort of boyfriend, and Trey didn't come home much anymore. So I was alone, alone with the TV, an empty fridge, and half empty bottles making the whole house stink of vodka.

So I decided to see, what made Mom keep coming back for more. I decided to see what made this bottle more important than me or Trey.

I didn't find out that day, all I found out that day, was that vodka burned your throat on the way down, and that after five drinks, your stomach churns, your head spins and pounds and the lights go out.