This is a little out of my writing style, but I wanted to write a one part piece that chronicled the family history of the Atwoods.

Enjoy, and leave a review.

Ryan sat down heavily in his English class. His regular seat, back, left. Far hidden to disguise the fact that he was awful at this subject. Out of his bag he pulled his binder, and the reading book that had taken most of his weekend; Roots, by Alex Haley.

He had resisted Seth telling him that no one actually reads their English books, and finally Seth pleading with him to simply watch the mini series instead.

"We can invite the girls over, so you know if it gets boring, which it will, we can have alternate entertainment. Besides, did you know that it has OJ Simpson in it? How freaking cool is that?"

But Ryan declined. He wanted to do well in English, he wanted to prove all those people wrong who thought he couldn't make it here. He wanted to make Sandy and Kirsten proud. He wanted to hold his head high in Newport knowing he wasn't some underachiever slacker, pulling just average grades at Harbour. He wanted the best. Even in English, his arch nemesis.

He watched from his back row seat as other students filed in and pulled out their books. For many of them the front cover, not even creased; never opened. This filled him up with pride. He had read the book.

His teacher, Mr. Samuels, came in. He was a no nonsense type, yet witty and interesting. Despite his hatred of the English subject Ryan found himself enjoying Mr. Samuel's class more than any English class before. He quickly started a question period on the first three chapters, Ryan even answered a question.

"Alright, I see many of you are well on your way through this book, and some of you have even finished it. Good work. Through this book you've learned of Alex Haley's family history in intricate detail. He researched meticulously, and also through oral traditions, and stories passed down. This is your new assignment. I want you to write the story of your family. Anyway you wish, you can simply write about yourself, your parents, or you can go farther, your grandparents, your great grandparents. Does your family have any famous people, any stories passed down through the generations?"

Ryan felt like hitting his head against his own desk. He felt like throwing Roots across the room. He had just escaped from his family, there was no way in hell he wanted to write about it. There was no short cut out of this, there was no Atwood: the mini-series.

He sat alone in the pool house, the sun had set hours ago, even Seth had gone to bed. He looked at his watch; 1:30. He looked down at the blinking cursor on an empty word processor page. He took a deep breath and began to type.

The truth is, as I began to think of this assignment I was unsure of where to begin. For I now have two families. I have the family that gave birth to me, raised me. But I also have the family that now cares for me. But the more I thought about it, I knew that it would not be right to write about the Cohens. Their history is not mine.

So instead I write of the Atwoods.

I shall begin where every son should logically begin; his father. My father, currently is serving a 12 year prison sentence in a State Penitentiary for armed robbery. I have not seen or spoke to him for 6 years. When I was 10 he disappeared from my life. But there was a time, when I think like every son, I looked up to him.

When I was small probably 7, maybe 8. My father had a job doing short haul truck driving. He would drive down to the warehouses in LA, and haul back to Fresno. He did this route 6 times a week. On Friday nights, when I knew my Mom would be getting drunk, and my brother 4 years older than me, would disappear with his friends, I could sometimes, just sometimes convince my father to bring me with him. Each time, was wonderful for me. Escaping the monotony of my everyday life, and delving into the life of CNB radios, truck horns, night traffic, truck stop diners, and the lights of LA. Watching the skyline of LA, became my favourite sight.

I almost always fell asleep on the way home, but sometimes I would stay awake and sometimes my Dad would talk to me. One time, just one time, he told me his story. A story he never again repeated, a story my brother has never heard. I feel I remember most of it. What I don't I have researched, and what I couldn't research I have speculated.

My father was born in Earle, Arkansas. He was the oldest boy, and was given the name of his father, James Caden Atwood II (but everyone called him JC). He had two older sisters, and three younger brothers. His family had worked on a tobacco farm on that property for many generations. Going back, to at least 1890. They used to be share croppers, but with the help of unions and mechanical farming, the way of slaving poor rural people, both black and white, came to an end. The Atwoods became tenant farmers. They lived in the same house their family had lived in, worked the same land. But were now supplied with farm equipment and enough for their family to survive. But my father hated it there. According to him, his father was an abusive man.

I remember my Dad driving, the dim lights of traffic illuminating his face, he turned to me.

"Now my Dad, he worked with his hands all day long. So if I stepped out of line, which I always did, I'd be seeing those hands. He knew it would be make stronger. What doesn't kill you will make you stronger Ryan." In saying that, he just wasn't describing his father, he was describing himself. I don't know if it was him trying to explaining why he did what he did. The reasons he would raise a hand against me, my brother and my Mom. If it was, it was the closest I ever got to an apology.

He ran away in 1979, at the age of 14. He never looked back, he never contacted them, never wrote them. I have no idea of who my grandparents are, whether they are alive, my numerous aunts and uncles names, their children. I know nothing of them, and I never will.

The Atwoods, must have been English, Anglo Saxon. For their name means by the wood. I wonder why they left England at all. Something stupid and mundane I am sure, for them to leave even the most slummiest of slums in England to come to Arkansas to farm tobacco under near slave like conditions. But that's Atwood luck for you.

My father hitched across the country, and somehow ended up in California. I don't know what he did, or where he slept. I don't know anything about it. For when you are a runaway kid; 14 years old. You do some stupid stuff, I know. That is certainly stuff you don't tell your 7 year old kid about.

Either way, he managed to survive 4 years, and in 1983, at the age of 18, he was working as a mechanic in Fresno California, which is where he met my Mom. Five months later they were married; shotgun. He was 18, she was 17. My brother James Caden Atwood III (or Trey) was born in December.

My Mother is also another hard case, despite having lived with her for 16 years, I know very little about her life. There were no photos of her family in our house, she rarely spoke about them. Of the few times she did, this is what I learned. Her mother died when she was 5; breast cancer, her father had never been around. She was left with no family, no grandparents, no aunts, or uncles. Dawn Jackson became a ward of the state of California. She was pretty, blonde, blue eyed, polite. Something uncommon in the state of California foster system. She stayed with the same family from the time she was 5, to the time she was 14. They treated her well, like their own daughter. But when she was 14, her foster father died in a car crash.

Her foster family was left, with one biological daughter, another foster son, and now a widowed woman with no income. She and her foster brother were taken away (he is now in prison, attempted murder I believe. One time when I was about 9 my mom disappeared for the day, when she returned my brother and I asked her where she had gone, she responded that she had gone to visit our "Uncle Ricky". I never remember meeting him).

At 14 there was no where for her to go, but a group home. Where there was nothing to learn by bad habits. She was out of there at 17, early emancipation. She had been out of her group home 16 days when she met my father.

I don't know as much about her. I know her foster mother used to come around when Trey and I were little. Give us Christmas presents, labelled from Grandma. My mother loved Faye Donaghue like her mother and Faye loved her like a daughter. They kept in touch, for awhile at least.

Faye Donaghue was a Christian woman and had raised Dawn a Christian girl. In the last house I lived with my Mother, a framed picture of Da Vinci's the Last Supper, hung on our wall.

Faye must have been disgusted when my mother and father started their slow decline around the time I was 7. When my Dad left, things went from bad to worse, and I never saw "grandma" again. My mother told me she died. But I often wonder about that.

Back in 1984, there they were, teenagers, married, with a kid, living in a trailer. They are off to the brilliant start, that will send them shinning for the rest of their life together. JC got jobs, and lost jobs with amazing frequency. He was a mechanic, a janitor, on a construction crew, a truck driver, a highway builder, a factory worker. Dawn, my mother, stayed home with the baby, and was expected to have food on the table. But whether or not she could even get that right, I don't know. I know from pictures that my Dad had a trans am, and my mother, an awful eighties hair cut. My Dad looked like a blue collar worker much of the time; jeans, a white shirt, and grease on him. He doesn't look much older than me, and my mother scarcely looks like the woman I remember. She is beautiful.

Four years later, I was born. At this time they lived in an apartment above a book store, my brother was a little terror, my Dad was unemployed, and because of me, they almost got evicted. At least that was the story I heard. Atwood luck, I had it with me the day I was born. I was born Ryan Atwood, I didn't need a middle name, and I didn't get one. My brother had gotten both a middle name and a number, and look where that got him.

From the time I remember, things just went downhill. There were of course, the good times, for all families have them. I played soccer, I rode my bike, we went camping, my brother beat me up, we went to the park. All those sorts of things that little kids remember.

But bad things happened too. But we really don't need to go into that. JC and Dawn got married too early and found themselves too young, with too much of a burden. Its no wonder they turned to alcohol.

When I was 10, my Dad lost his trucking job when some of the warehouses moved to Fresno. He was laid off. My mothers job at a nearby diner did not pay her nearly enough to cover the bills. Money was tight, tensions were high, stress grew. With stress, alcohol consumption increased, which decreased the chances of getting a job. Finally after 4 months of unemployment, my Dad was desperate enough, stupid enough to rob a convience store with a stolen shot gun. He got away with $311.42. They dragged him away at 2am and put him in a cop car. The clerk thought he recognized his voice, as the guy who came in for Marlboro cigarettes and lottery tickets. Then he was gone. Two months after that, my Mom moved my brother and me to Chino, where she promised "things are going to be different now." Chino is not exactly the land of opportunity.

My brother Trey, has always meant a lot to me. Growing up he was my sworn protector. He tried to protect me against a lot of stuff, he thought I wasn't ready for. We shared a room, our whole lives, from the time I was born until he left our house when I was 14. He taught me many things, some I still use to this day and some I wish I could forget. He taught me how to kick a soccer ball, to throw a punch, to drive. He gave me a shirt and a shot of whiskey for my first date, and a lesson in life I will never forget. He also taught me how pick the locks on cars, to roll joints, to make a quick buck by ripping someone else off. He gave me a degree in trouble. Yet even as he tried to protect me, he hurt me in a lot of ways he'll never realize.

On July 13th 2003, my brother and I stole a car. A gold Camero with rust damage and an exhaust system that was dying. It was a mistake from the time by brother swung a crowbar at the window, to the point we crashed it against the side of a municipal building. Yet of any of the things by brother gave me, that night, that final night we would be together as the Atwood brothers from Chino, this one was the most important.

I didn't go to jail. I also didn't go home. Dawn Atwood, has a husband six years into his sentence and a son just beginning his own stint. To her I was another failure in a long line. I was an Atwood, and I had that Atwood luck which would bring nothing but trouble. She kicked me out.

On July 14th the luck that had dragged the Atwoods through the dust of Arkansas, had dragged my father and brother to prison would ignore me. I ended up with the Cohens in Newport beach. A million miles were I had started from, a different environment from anything I had ever known.

I have a new family, but that doesn't mean I have forgotten my family. There are many holes I will never know, entire years dropped into the black abyss, memories recounted, altered and changed by childhood. But that is who I am.

Ryan stopped typing. He looked over at the clock 3:20am. He felt like he had just rode an emotional roller coaster. His memories swam in front of his eyes. For every memory he wrote down, he remembered ten more that he didn't write about. He scrolled up to look at the words. For a brief second he considered deleting it and creating a fictional creation; where his Mom is a WASP, and his Dad a lawyer, or a doctor. He shook his head. That wasn't who he was. He pushed save, closing the lid of the laptop.

It was a week after they were due that Mr. Samuels returned the family history papers.

"I just have a few quick notes about your papers, which were for the most part very well done. Some of you chose to do a third person narrative, while others did a first person narrative. Some were research based, while others based mostly on memory and emotion. Either way, most of you followed a concise trail of thought, and grammar has greatly improved from the last essay. Thank you for letting me into your families, all of you."

Ryan sat at the back. He was sure his was unlike everyone else's in the class. He wondered what Mr. Samuels thought about him now.

"Good work Ryan." The teacher said softly handing him his paper.

Ryan quickly flipped to the last page.

A-. One of the most honest pieces I have ever read. You described your family in a concise, exact and heart wrenching way. It is painfully honest and wonderfully written. You integrated quotes, memories and research in with a good chronological timeline, while also admitting there were many things you didn't know.

Pay attention to sentence structure and grammar.

Ryan sat back. His first A in English. One thing he thought his family would never get him.