"What the hell is going on here!" I heard someone scream in a loud booming voice.

I knew that voice, it had been the subject of most of my nightmares. I shot out of bed at the speed of a bullet being shot from a gun to be met with the most horrific site.

"What in the world are you doing here!?" I screamed, so surprised to find the two in my bedroom in Tree Hill. I jabbed Lucas sharply to get him to wake as he was still somehow sleeping soundly through the din. The two people continued to stare at us as I pulled the sheets up, realising that I had just worn a bra to bed.

"We ask the questions, girl. Who is this fool and what is he doing in our house?" My mother screamed. "Wait, is this his stuff? Does this boy live here with you! Please tell me she is not Pregnant, Ted! This child, she is really one of nightmares. I really should've got that abortion." Her hand moved up to her temples as she gently massaged them.

"What the hell, Mom!" I screamed, not knowing how to react. This was so not how I expected my morning to go.

"Seriously, we leave the girl with her privacy and all the money she could desire only to see her basically turning our house into a homeless shelter!" my father chimed in.

"Ugh! Lucas!" I yelled in a high pitched voice which finally got him to get up. "Also, A) what the heck are you doing here? B) since when do you do things together and agree with each other and C) when are y'all leaving?"

"Very funny, now get dressed. You aren't a prostitute! Gosh, is he a stripper? This girl, I swear to God, nothing but problems!" My mother yelled.

"Brooke, who are they?" Lucas asked, rubbing his eyes and squirming in bed and pulling his boxers up even though they were up.

"Meet my parents," I snarled.

"If you know what is good for you, get out of this house right now, boy!" Victoria commaded in a seething tone. "Ted, just pay him off… we don't need the Davis name dragged through the mud because our daughter thinks it's okay to house homeless strippers!"

Lucas started to move, ready to run out of there, but I gripped his hand. "He is neither a stripper, nor homeless! He is my boyfriend!"

"Then is that basketball net outside for you to play with? And all this stuff lying around? Is all of it yours?" she stated the obvious. "Seriously, boy just tell us a number. How much to make this whole con that you mastered to entrap our naive daughter go away?"

I saw my father bring out his cheque book. I cupped my head in my hands and let out a scream.

"Lucas is my boyfriend, there is no money involved and he isn't leaving. Besides, what are you even doing here? Forgot the way? New York is a little more towards the north," I responded once I had my bearings.

"Very funny, now get out of bed and put some clothes on! God, Vicky, this house is in so much worse shape than I remember. The price for it will go down," my father said, making his way out the door.

"Wha- what is going on? Can you please explain yourselves? You don't so much as make a phone call to me for years and come here unannounced, what is your motive? Wh-what price on what house?" I cried, afraid I knew where this conversation was heading. I so badly wanted to hear them say, it's you Brooke. It's you we came for because we wanted to see how you were doing. However, I knew better than to get my hopes up. I knew they had run out of all chances that I had to offer, failing every single time, leaving me broken and alone, making me doubt myself; leaving me so lost and lame that I was unable to pick up the pieces, sure I would never find them all and be whole again. Yet, here I was desperately needing to hear the words 'we're here for you, Brooke. We came to see our daughter.'

"We're finally selling this money sucking pit!" My mom responded as she joined my father out of the door.

I sat there frozen for a moment before hurtling out of the bed and into my closet to put on the first thing I could lay my hands on.

"What do you mean by selling? Where am I supposed to go? I live here! And this is grandpa's house! In case you forgot," I reminded them after bounding down the stairs and into the kitchen.

"Oh, she is so slow, Ted. Seriously, She might actually do well in boarding school… why didn't we think of sending her sooner?," my mother said, ignoring my eyes.

"Boarding school!? What the heck do you mean! You ca- you can't just come traipsing back here into my life and uproot me to boarding school! Can one of you properly explain your agenda here, please! And for the record, I am not going anywhere and I am not going to let you sell Grandpa's house!" I yelled, as tears formed freely in my eyes and started making a puddle on the floor.

"Stop crying, Brooke. It's unbecoming. We have made up our minds to sell this old dump of a house in the middle of nowhere and we sure as hell can. It still baffles me that we even kept it for so long, although if I am being honest, we did forget we even owned it. If you must know, your dad just got promoted to senior partner and he needs to put in cash into the business that comes with the title so we decided that instead of using our liquid assets… you could kill two birds with one stone with this place. I mean, who even lives here in this dead town? I seriously can't believe you grew up here, Ted. There is nothing but suburbia in sight." She held her temples and rubbed them. "And to get the job of senior partner, your dad had a meeting with his boss - now colleague who was telling us about his daughter who partied too hard, and stupidly got herself pregnant. Not very different from what I am watching here! They got her an abortion, but for consequences, they are sending her to an all girls boarding school in UK. Now, Mr. Tyreman was afraid to send his little girl all alone, you know, to live independently in another country. So your dad said that you would go to boarding school too, rub off on her and be a good influence, help her about. He was so happy, he closed the deal for your dad's promotion right away. Anyway, start tidying, the realtor will be here this afternoon to put the house on the market. And you should be packing anyway, you leave next week. Hopefully, we manage to sell this house immediately. Ted, I'm serious, we are going to meet with the realtor today and catch the red eye tonight. I am not waiting for you to go play golf with your old buddies. Brooke, just move into a hotel for the week, there will be lots of people here to see the place. Appearances have to be maintained. When is the househelp getting here? We need to get rid of that stupid basketball pole first thing!"

"I'm gonna throw up," I yelled, as I ran to the bathroom and emptied the contents of my stomach. I hurled and retched till I could not anymore. Dry heaving, I sat there with my head against the cold tub, crying away.

Just when I was finally happy, something had to happen to pull the rug from underneath me. I could hear my parents outside the door, still screaming. They were reprimanding Lucas, it seemed.

"How in the world did you think it was okay to move into our property with our, underage daughter? Who even are you, some homeless guy she picked up from the streets? Ted, has he been living off on our money!? This is ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous, how that girl behaves! I am so glad she is going to boarding school, maybe they'll teach her a thing or two about manners and class. And that ungrateful child, we give her all this money and freedom, now a private education abroad… and look what she has been up to! Good god, it's like she opened up a homeless shelter here. Where is the nanny we hired for her, Ted?" she screamed.

"Vicky, she is… well, how old is Brooke, boy?" my father asked Lucas.

"Sixteen!" He spat back.

"Sixteen! She doesn't need an external caretaker," my father tried to reason with my furious mother.

"Have the househelp pack all of his things and leave them at the curb. You can pick them up from there. Leave now, you street urchin!" Victoria continued. "Seriously, this God forsaken place always gives me headaches!"

Suddenly I heard pounding at the door.

"Brooke, it's me, open up," Lucas called out.

"No Lucas, just go, please," I yelled out to him, desperately trying to keep my voice to sound less shaky.

"Brooke! Let me in," he yelled desperately, hitting at the door even harder. "Brooke, come on!"

"Didn't we ask you to leave?" My dad called out to him. Lucas angrily punched the door once more before I heard his faint footsteps disappear into nothing.

I just felt limp though. I stared at the door until it hurt to even do that. I put my face between my knees and cried. Why couldn't I be the girl with the happy family and the boy? Why was I always destined to be alone? Why could I never get any control on how things worked in my life? What was I going to do? Where would Lucas go? Why was I required to uproot and just give up everything I held dear to my heart? I finally felt like my tumultuous world had some stability with a sweet boyfriend and an amazing set of really caring friends. And now I had to leave them all and get lost in a crowd of girls in England, be a new kid in a new continent with dull gloomy weather

I didn't know why I did what I did next…. All I wanted was to have one thing which I chose, something I decided for myself. I walked out of the bathroom and started running, desperately.

I just kept running and running, running away from my problems, running away from people, running away from everything that conspired to break me down and tear me into shreds. I wanted to stop thinking, I wanted to forget it all, I wanted to be able to breathe, or was it that I wanted to stop breathing after all?

I lost all my breath as I sat to catch it under the bridge where Peyton and I used to come after her mom had passed away. I lay down in the dirt, my panting giving my brain the empty feeling, the runner's high that it wanted.

I felt tired and light headed once my breath had caught up and that's when I began compartmentalising everything in my head. I was asked to leave my grandfather's ancestral home because it was being sold off. I was asked to leave all my friends, Peyton, Nathan, Haley, Jake, my boyfriend, Lucas. I was being sent away to a boarding school for delinquent girls in another continent and my parents decided to make those decisions and choices for me so that they could get a bigger pay day out of it! Was I an object to them? To use as and when required? To just hang up and forget about when not profitable to them?

It suddenly got too much and without thinking, I jumped into the frigid waters of the fast paced river below with its strong current and jagged rock which had only been sharpened by the swift stream. The sharp rocks cut into my arms and legs, allowing blood to mix with the clear waters. I hissed as I felt pain in those cuts, yet I did nothing to fight the strong stream. I allowed it to pull me with it, moaning as I hit some strong rocks in the choppy current, yet I didn't swim. It was strong enough to pull me down and then it would push me back up. I just wanted to sink and drown, forget it all. It was so cold down there, it made me feel nice. A lot of time passed, and still my body felt heavy like a boulder. I was unable to move, unable to swim.

It was cold, biting cold and yet, my body was numb. It was as if it had completely shut down. The water went into its frenzy, trying its hardest to take me down and I let it. I don't know how long it had been, I didn't care. I wanted to forget and this was working.

My body knew that I could not afford to lose Lucas, to lose the family I had been building here with my friends, that if I was asked to leave, I would not be able to pick up the pieces and continue. Every muscle ached and yet, in my heart, I felt nothing. It was as if it had stopped beating, because it knew what was next.

I continued to be underwater, hoping it would engulf me and end my misery. With every tide that drew me further below, my salty tears mixed with the waters, nobody would be able to tell the difference. The blood made swirly designs, now on top of my head as I kept sinking further below, only to be pushed up by another strong current.

My body had started shivering of its own accord. I had finally lost all control over it. I did not know how long it had been. I clutched my arms and knees together in the deep waters, trying to get some warmth, but the water and wind had their way over me. I refused to move. Maybe, it was time for the elementals to control me! Haha!

My fingers started growing stiff after a while and it felt like I couldn't feel my hands and legs.

"Oh my God! Brooke! Is that you!" I heard a sound in the distance.

However, I was too numb to even get a sound out, my clattering teeth also coming to a stop.

Before I knew it, I heard the sound of a loud splash. I didn't quite register the rest because it all faded to black.