CHAPTER 1

"Mom! Dad! Anyone home?!"

Marcus James walked into his house and called out to the empty house, waiting to hear a response from either parent but unsurprisingly, not getting one. It was 4 pm so his dad was probably still at work and his mom probably out running errands or sitting in the horrendous traffic of downtown Vancouver, Canada rush hour. That didn't dampen his spirits at all though. At this moment, absolutely nothing could. It was a Friday afternoon and not only that, but school had just ended for the school year so the summer had officially begun! He was no longer an 8th grader, but was instead a grade 9! Finally, he was a high school student! But not before he got 3 whole months of a blissful, relaxing summer vacation, to do nothing but hang out with his friends, sleep and chill out.

As Marcus walked into the living room, he threw his backpack on the ground and collapsed on the sofa, pulling out his phone. Almost immediately, he heard a loud DING as a notification popped up on his screen.

New notification from… Robert Daniels

Marcus smiled. Not even an hour since they had left school and he was already getting a message from his best friend and teammate on several sports teams. He clicked on it to reveal a message…

Bro get to the park now! We're having a big Rugby game at 5!

Finishing reading the message, Marcus sighed in satisfaction and bliss. It truly was the summer. Rugby was Marcus's sport. He had been playing for as long as he remembered, and he absolutely adored the sport, and so he quickly shot off a response and ran up to his bedroom to change. However, just as he was halfway up the stairs, he heard it…

It was loud. It was unmistakable.

BANG!

Marcus jolted awake with a start, and his eyes snapped open. His head whipped around for a few moments as he tried to remember where he was. It took him a few moments, but he remembered that he was on an aeroplane, flying from Vancouver to his new home south of the border in Ohio. He let out a loud sigh and groan, putting his head in his hands and leaning back into the uncomfortable seat. Nearly 4 years had passed since that traumatic day, and not once had he fallen asleep without the horrors seeping into his mind. He wasn't an 8th grader anymore. He wasn't living in Vancouver either. But every time he closed his eyes, he transformed back into that terrified kid, hearing the gunshot for the very first time.

17 years old and turning 18 in 6 months, Marcus was a traditionally attractive boy. Or at least he was deep down. His mop of caramel hair was extremely messy and dishevelled. His piercing hazel eyes were filled with a combination of exhaustion and pain. His chiselled, muscular physique was hidden by the oversized, ratty hoodie he had on.

"You okay?"

Marcus glanced sideways and looked at his father, Louis, who was sitting in the seat beside him and staring at him worriedly, clearly having seen his son's struggles. He knew exactly what his son had been dreaming about, for it was the exact same event that had been plaguing his own nightmares every night for the past few years. The worst part was that he had absolutely no idea how to help his son either. He himself still hadn't fully gotten over what had happened, so he was definitely the wrong person to be giving advice. And no therapist Louis forced Marcus to go to seemed to have any kind of positive effect on his son either. He was stuck, out of ideas, and he was praying that this change of scene would do his son well in moving on from the traumatic events of the past.

Marcus nodded at his father, but didn't say a word. In fact, he remained completely silent for the next few hours as they landed at their new home for the first time. They had flown into Columbus, Ohio, but his father's new job had relocated to a nearby city called Lima. Marcus had no idea what to expect from the city, but for a city with a population of only 40 thousand, he didn't expect much. This was only for a year, he told himself. This was only for a year, before he finally graduated high school and would be able to leave and get as far away from everything as possible.

BANG!

Marcus' phone immediately slipped from his grasp, and his blood ran cold. He knew exactly what that was. He could've recognised it from a mile away. And for a moment, he was rendered immobile in fear. His brain screamed DANGER but his body refused to cooperate. It was almost like he had been frozen in a block of ice, desperately trying to escape it but somehow unable. It took him nearly an entire minute for his body to catch up to his mind, and he finally managed to sprint up the rest of the way upstairs, making a beeline to his parents' room, terrified about what horrors inevitably awaited him there.

"Mom?! Dad?!" Marcus' heart pounded as he called out for his parents again, praying that he would get a response, any kind of sign that whoever the gunshot had been fired at was okay. Marcus had absolutely no idea what he was running into. For all he knew, this was some kind of robbery and he was only jeopardising his own life by running in. But Marcus didn't care. He hurled himself upstairs like a whirlwind, and he flew over to his parents' room. As he reached the door, he paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. Was he really prepared to see whatever sight awaited him inside? The answer to that was unequivocally no, but that didn't stop Marcus' trembling hands from slowly turning the doorknob and entering the room.

As he entered his parents' familiar bedroom, for a moment, things were eerily silent. All of the birds outside had abruptly stopped singing at the sound of the gunshot. The room seemed to be completely empty, with no intruders that Marcus could see. But as Marcus edged his way across the room, around the king-sized bed and over to the right hand side, the side his mother had slept on since the day she had married his dad, that's when he finally saw it. There she was. Lying motionless on the ground, her eyes staring upwards in a glassy eyed stare, a pool of blood slowly forming beneath her unconscious body.

Tears almost instantly filled Marcus' eyes as he looked down at his mother and whispered.

"Mom…"

After that moment, Marcus had little recollection of what had happened next. He remembered screaming. He remembered sobbing. He remembered not making it to the bathroom before vomit crept up his throat. He remembered calling 911 and then calling his dad, pleading with him to come home immediately. But the moment he remembered most, the moment that would be branded into his mind for the rest of his life, was when he slowly picked up the note resting beside his mother's head and read the final words his mother would ever say to him. Not a note, but merely just 4 words: "I am so sorry."

The next couple of weeks, Marcus went into complete survival mode. He went through the typical stages of grief. The first was pain and shock - for the first few days, he couldn't accept what had happened. He had refused to believe that his mother was dead. This had to be just a bad nightmare, something he would wake up from at any moment. Any moment now, his mother would be shaking him awake, telling him that he needed to wake up as he was late for school. But no. He eventually came to realise that this wasn't a nightmare. This was so much worse. It was reality.

After around a week from his mother's death, Marcus' shock wore off and instead was replaced by anger. An inferno of rage coursed through his veins, burning his body from the inside out, unrelenting and excruciatingly painful. His mother had quit on him. Quit on his father. Quit on their family. She hadn't given a reason And the only goodbye she had given, the only words he had left to remember her by: I am so sorry. He HATED her for what she had done, so much that he was unable to even see a picture of her, hear her name, without feeling fury bubble up inside him, threatening to erupt like a volcano.

That led him into his third stage of grief: depression. Eventually, as his anger slowly started to wear off, it was replaced by an aching dull so powerful that it felt like every step he took he was being doused in frigid, icy water. It was unrelenting, unforgiving. Every morning, Marcus would wake up, he would lie in his comfortable bed. He would see the sun's rays shine through the blinds. He would hear birds cheerfully tweeting and chirping outside his window. And for a moment, everything would be fine. But then he would remember, and it was like a crushing weight would slam down on his chest and clamp around his heart. He was never going to see his mother again for as long as he lived. She wouldn't be there for his graduation. For his wedding. For the day his first child was born. She was gone and she wasn't coming back, and that fact was a thousand times more painful to process than any tackle he had ever felt in nearly a decade of Rugby, any injury he had ever suffered his entire life.

But the hardest part of all of this came around a month after his mother's death. Up until this point, he had trapped himself in a bubble, isolating himself from the rest of society. However, around a month later, he came to the dreaded realisation that despite his mother's suicide shaking his entire life, tearing his entire life to shreds, everything carried on as normal. His father returned to work. He was expected to return to school after the summer like nothing had happened. He was supposed to sleep in the room that was less than 10 metres away from the spot where his mother had taken her own life. Expected to pretend like all of this never happened and get on with his life again.

That summer felt like it would never end. He didn't feel like he was even living at times. He felt like a ghost, held captive on this earth while wanting nothing more than to leave it once and for all. Then September came around and high school began. The years that he had been so excited about prior to that day, dragged on at an excruciatingly slow speed. Freshman year. Sophomore year. Junior year. Who even cared anymore? Days rolled into one, he felt like he was in some kind of never-ending hell loop, so Marcus was almost happy to hear about his father's job relocation. He was hoping that he'd be able to get a fresh start for his senior year, in a town far, far away from the city and house that had become his prison for the past three years.

Emerging from the plane shortly after, Marcus remained silent as he and his father picked up their bags from baggage claim and got into an Uber to take them to Lima, where they would be living for the next week. As Marcus sat back in the vehicle's seat and stared listlessly out of the window, he felt the now familiar ball of steel wrap around his heart and slowly constrict him like a boa. Reading a sign up ahead that said "Welcome to Lima", the teenager looked for the first time at the city that he would be spending his senior year in. It definitely wasn't much to look at, but it seemed to be exactly what Marcus wanted: the exact opposite of everything he knew back home in Vancouver. A small town in the middle of nowhere. Away from his old friends that since his mother's death, only looked at him through goggles of pity and sympathy. Away from the house where it had happened. This would be a completely fresh start, and it would be up to only him whether he made the most of it…