What do you think when someone says the word, "Home"?A warm loving family? A safe place to hide at when the world is at war? Peace and quiet when you need it? For Fonzie, "Home" is quite the opposite. Home is a deathly cold place of fear and anxiety. A dangerous place where you have to watch your back around every corner. A place you dont want to be. A place of hidden secrets. 

I just left home. Home. That word. I hate it. What do you think of when you say the word ‘Home’? Love? Family? I can tell you what I think of. Sadness. Cold. Unforgiving silence. The word “Home” does not bring warmth to me. Quite the opposite, actually.

**flashback**
The house was silent. Apart from Mother’s soft crying. Father was nowhere to be seen. Fonzie looked down at the carpet. It was dirty. Before, it was never dirty. Now it was rough and hard, and it smelled of alcohol. Fonzie stepped quietly to her mother’s door. The light was off, but her mother’s silhouette was clear enough. The curtains were drawn, but she could just see the moon’s glow through the thin fabric. Her mother’s head was in her hands and she was crying softly. Fonzie knew her mother would soon be gone. She wasn’t a strong women. All she wanted to do herself was disappear, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. It was just a matter of time before her mother shattered, her father reached his limit, and she knew it was just a matter of time before she fell too.

Fonzie stepped away from the crack in her mother’s door and started down the hall. Even in the dark you could see the spaces where the old picture frames hung. Now, there was bits of glass on the floor where the wall met the floor, and dark patches where the wallpaper hadn’t faded over time. Almost all the walls were bare. All of them. All the photos that used to be the light of the halls were gone. All the reminders of what happened. Reminders being him. He was the reason the family had fallen apart. It was his fault, but Fonzie didn’t have the heart to blame him, and she was the only one. Her father abused her because of him. Her mother couldn’t look at her without bursting into tears. The light of the family was gone, and everything went with him.

I am in the car to the airport right now. I’m being sent off to boarding school with Rain. I’m just relieved to get away from that place. Rain’s mother, Evelyn says its for a fresh start, but I don’t believe in fresh starts. If you were me you would understand.

There is only one month left of school. I won’t finish this year, but Rain wants to. The school campus is really big according to Rain’s mom. In the photos she gave us when she told us about it, there is a lake, forest, the dorms are really pretty, and there are multiple school buildings. Apparently one for each subject. Something like that. I’m not particularly excited to go, but I just want to be gone from the town of horror I used to live in.

The thing is, you can leave a place, but that place will never leave you. It will stay with you forever, along with the memories and stories. It’s worse when all the stories are about you, and most of the memories are not happy memories. Its scary how I am 15 and I’ve lived my whole life in Colcheth, but most of the memories I have from there are nightmares. Many them started as happy memories, but now there are just reminders of how my life fell apart 4 months ago.