Pain.  One word to describe Maxwell Luke Young’s family life would have to be pain.  That is all he ever knew at home, all he knew how to feel, all he was used to quite honestly.  That is why the sound of a vigorous door slam coming from his mother’s room was no surprise.  He knew that was his queue to leave.  He grabbed his keys and headed for the door, his mother, or what remained of her, stumbling into the room behind him.  She began to speak, but before she could stutter out the words he put his headphones in, those things really were his saving grace.  Everything had become so easy since he could drive, he could just pick up his keys and go, which was a freedom that he exercised quite often.  Maxwell, or “Mac” as he was often called, now drove, he drove to the same spot as usual, the richest neighborhood in his small suburb of a town.  It was merely a quarter mile from his house, but seemingly so separate from his life.  It was gated, but he knew the code to open the gate, it had been the same for years.  He drove, reminiscing on the times he used to have.  He passed houses of old friends, some still in touch but most not.  He drove to a house at the very end of the street, this house embodying the term beautiful.  It was enormous, with pillars in front that were once white but now a tinted green with moss.  He parked out front and walked to the backyard, perching himself on the ledge overlooking the illustrious bay. He often came here to relax, knowing the house was abandoned and the view would help him settle down.  It was a painful place to be, but the music made him think about what was to come for him, and how things were going to turn up for him some point soon.  I mean, they had to, right?
Mac was always a fantastic student in the classroom, and that is what he prided himself on most.  He worked himself harder than anyone he knew.  Anyone besides his best friend Jake.  Jake was like Mac’s twin inside of school, and that is why two two got along so well.  They hadn’t become friends until high school, but since freshman year they took to each other and had really became the only friends they both had.  Where Jake was more of an enthusiastic youth, Mac was more of a pessimistic teen, especially after all he had been through in his younger years.  That is one thing Mac refused to speak of, and Jake merely knew bits and pieces from what he had picked up from the sparring amount of times he had visited the Young household.
One thing Mac wasn’t aware of was his close proximity to someone going through a challenge of their own.  In this neighborhood, adversity and challenge were not common, and if you lived here you were thought of having a perfect life, almost as if you could not fail.  Brooke Stevenson would beg to differ.  She was crying now, something she had become accustomed to in the past month or so.  Her mother was as well, for she had found her father having an affair, and Brooke knew it.  She wanted nothing more than to leave and come back into the loving household as things used to be, but she knew that she couldn’t.  She had to be here for her mom.  Her father was a big corporate superstar with an oil company, and he rolled in tumultuous amounts of money, unfathomable amounts, enough to have three houses including one in the Ridge Estates, without her mother even working.  She worried about what would happen if her parents would divorce.  Would her father leave?  Would her and her mother be left with nothing?  What about college?  These thoughts then lead to what-ifs.  What if her father left and took his big money with him?  What if he left and she never saw him again?  She had seen friends and peers alike crumble after terrible divorces, and she did not want to allow this to happen to her.  Ideas raced through her mind like a Talledega car race, one that she had sat V.I.P. for on numerous occasions.  Tears began to stream down her face now, and she heard the yelling increase.  Would she ever get to attend events like these again?  She began to frantically wonder if mere life as she had known it had come to end for her in that very moment, that very exchange, that very fight.
“You’re such an idiot David, you know that?!” her mom yelled louder than she had ever amplified before, “I’m not stupid either I know what you’ve been sneaking around doing!”  She cried harder now, and this sparked Brooke to cry harder almost simultaneously, even though they were a complete floor apart.  She just wanted her mother to be better, for things to go back to they way they were, but she knew they wouldn’t.  Brooke ran now, so fast it felt as though she was floating.  Down the winding stairwell and through the kitchen, out the front door.  She got in her car and drove, thinking of where she could go.  She thought of the house by the lake, her favorite place to go to as a kid, her and her best friend at the time.  “What was that kid’s name?” she said to herself, attempting to remember what was seemingly so long ago.  Upon arriving at the old, gigantic house, she saw an old car out front.  She thought it was odd but moved along through the backyard to her spot, but as she did she noticed what appeared to be a figure hanging over the ledge in front of her.  “Hey, you!” she yelled, voice raspy from crying too often.  No response.  Although creeped out, she slowly walked towards it, and noticed it was a boyish figure.  It was fall now, and the leaves beneath her crunched musically as she stepped through the yard.  She found herself shaking as she reached out to tap him on the shoulder.  Startled, the boy jumped up and turned around.  This made Brooke laugh uncontrollably, and the boy took out his headphones and smiled at her.
“What’re you doing back here?” Mac said, as he slowly began to recognize the girl.  It was his old grade school friend, and best friend throughout middle school, the beautiful Brooke Stevenson.  As high school began, Brooke had slowly drifted away, becoming popular and cool slowly then all at once.  It was as though the cliques had engulfed her into their own ways, leaving Mac lonely.
“Mac, right?” Brooke said, hoping that was his name because for the best of her she could not remember.  She found herself having a hard time remembering quite often lately, but was more apt to blame it on her lack of sleep as opposed to her newly adopted weekend partying habits, which she was smart enough to know that was not good for her, but she did anyways.
“Yes, you remember me?” Mac was surprised nonetheless.
“Of course, how could I forget all those fun things we did right in this yard when we were younger?” Brooke said, smiling solely to herself.
“Why are you here?” Mac said, feeling lied to.  Here she was after all this time, talking about her unforgettable experiences with him as youth, but she had abandoned him on her rise to high school fame.  He found he was not bitter or even rude, even when he felt like he should be in this instance.  Instead it felt as though her being there had filled a void for him, something that had been missing but was beginning to take form.  In a way, his longing her her was being discovered at this very moment, although he may not know this.
“Just came to relax, have a lot on my mind is all,” Brooke said, staring down at her shoes, as she did quite often when she found herself nervous.  Mac was puzzled.  Thoughts flew around his mind.  Maybe she wasn’t too different from him.  Maybe she was going through things at home, maybe he could understand.  Then he remembered, she lived in Ridge Estates, she had the perfect life, there was no way he could understand.
“Okay, I’ll leave you be then,” Mac said, already walking away.
Brooke found herself trying to muster the words to make him stay, but she thought that was very weird and uncalled for.  She had not talked to this boy in years, besides the occasional group project or exchange in the halls, which she realized were much less frequent now.  She knew that she had not treated him right, and she did regret it, but with all of this family stuff going on all she wanted to do was lay up and look at the sky, and that is what she did.  She lowered her head into the freshly fallen leaves, hearing them crunch as she did, and she felt at peace, for the first time in a while.
Mac dwelled on this encounter often for the next few months of his senior year.  This year was supposed to be different, supposed to be one of the best of your life, but it was no different for Mac, just as he expected.  He thought about what she was talking about, “A lot on her mind.”  What if he could’ve helped, he could have at least tried.  He noticed her eyes and face looked so upset, as if someone had just sucked the happiness out of her life.  She was beautiful nonetheless, something she would always be, no matter what.  He had forever longed for her, ever since their close friendship up until the eighth grade.  He had lost her then and he had seemingly lost his only chance to talk to her ever again.
Things were constant at home, Mac having to leave every now and then and his mother apologizing less and less often.  School was the same incredulous routine.  Mac traveled the halls like a ghost, or at least that is how he felt.  No one noticed him, no one cared.  He had one friend left who had been through it all with him, Mark Adams, but lately he found himself distancing from even him.  Not even Mark knew the extent of his suffering behind the scenes, just how terrible things were becoming, but he did not feel the need to share with anyone.  No one understood him, no one wanted to take the time to listen, and surely it did not matter either way.
Fall and winter flew by, Mac excelling in school as usual, but he knew it was to no avail.  Brooke doing the same, but her situation only grew worse.  Her mother was so depressed constantly and no matter what she and her father did nothing helped.  Brooke learned to hate her father, and the hatred consumed to her to a point of seemingly no return.  She found herself not wanting to return anymore, she just wanted to leave with her mother and have everything be okay again.  She found herself out every weekend, getting drunk with friends, well not really friends, “accomplices,” is better suiting.  They used Brooke for a good time and her money, and she used them to help her get to a place where she could not think about anything for a while.  This was the fastest easiest way to feel better, and Brooke saw no reason to change.
Mac noticed Brooke moping around the halls every now and again, but he figured that there really wasn’t anything that he could do about it.  “I mean, this girl had forgotten you existed after the eighth grade,” he thought smugly to himself.  One day, early summer or late spring, there was no real way to tell in this small suburb in New England, things reached an all-time low for Brooke, and Mac noticed.  It was the day of the coveted pep rally, organized by the senior class.  Everyone looked forward to it every year, and it was a huge deal.  Brooke being the head of the senior class, she had orchestrated it quite perfectly, and she was excited to have something going right in her life.  Before the rally, Brooke went to the bathroom to make sure she was ready to speak to all of those people in that cramped, humid auditorium.  As she was walking towards the bathroom, her phone began to vibrate rigorously.  She glanced at it quickly, seeing that it was her mother, and ignoring it, thinking she did not need anymore crying before this big event.  She proceeded to the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror and feeling her heart race.  Her phone began to ring out again, and again it was her mother.  It had to be important, she thought, she had to answer it.  She answered, but it did not seem like her mother on the other end of that line.  It startled her a little, her mother seemingly unable to speak, her voice was raspy and unclear, and Brooke could barely understand anything that was coming out of the phone.
“Mom! Get ahold of yourself and speak into the phone. I can’t understand a word you’re saying!” Brooke shouted, becoming angered with her mother.
“H-h-he’s gone,” her mother stumbled those words off of her tongue almost inaudibly yet again, but somehow Brooke pieced it together.  He’s gone, who’s gone?
“Who mom, who’s gone?” Brooke exclaimed, needing her mother to elaborate.
Mac was in the auditorium, as was the rest of his class.  The pep rally was supposed to have started ten minutes ago, but the star of the show, Brooke Stevenson, was nowhere to be found.  Something told Mac that he had to go find her, that he could help, and he decided to stop being so afraid and go do just that.  “I mean, what do I have to lose?” he thought to himself.  He slid out of the auditorium and decided to go to the farthest edge of the school, near the exit, that is surely where no one else had looked.
“Your father Brooke, your s***ty father that’s who!” Lizzie Stevenson yelled through her phone, the words almost carrying a sort of force with them.
Brooke didn’t say anything, she couldn’t, she didn’t know what to do.  She was overcome with a salty feeling in her throat, but her mind told her not to cry.  She wrestled the chaos in her head and found herself sprinting out of the school, towards the parking lot.  Keys in hand, she had to go home to her mother.
Mac looked everywhere, bathrooms, stairwells, even lockers, but she was nowhere to be found.  He decided to call it quits, at least this time he had tried.  He was walking past the front door when he heard the jangle of what seemed to be car keys.  He looked to his right to see a collection of hair rustling in the wind, sprinting towards the parking lot.  He recognized that beautiful collection of hair as Brooke Stevenson, and he sprinted out the door after her.  He did so without thinking, as though it were an instinct, but as he did he found himself at a loss for words, what was he going to say?
It took Brooke several tries to get her key in the ignition, but when she did she turned it and was ready to go when she heard a quiet knock on her window.  She looked up to see, Mac Young?  She was more than surprised, but she rolled down her window nonetheless.
“Where are you going, you’re going to miss the rally!” Mac said, noticing the solemn expression on her face.
“I’m, uh, sick, I have to go home,” Brooke said, and she began pulling out of the parking lot.
“Wait!” Mac yelled, “I can help you, whatever it is that you're going through I can help, I want to help, I know it’s tough but having someone there for you makes it that much better, I promise.”
“No, this is something I have to do alone,” she said, and just like that, she was gone.
Mac skipped the rally and went home himself, well not home, but to the spot.  The ledge on that mishandled house that for some reason made him feel more at home than his own house.  He sat, dangling his feet and laying back on the grass, thinking about everything.  Earbuds in of course, he could not be bothered with anything.  He found himself thinking about her again, how distraught she seemed, how he wished he could help.  He dismissed it from his mind, declaring that it was a lost cause, pointless.  He turned to leave, after a mere twenty minutes of sitting there, and he turned to see Brooke Stevenson, leaning against her car, looking at him.  He took out one headphone, and looked back at her
“I’m sorry,” she said, tears streaming down her face, “for everything.”
“It’s okay,” he said, “I understand.”  He was not quite sure what to do, he didn’t want to overstep his boundaries, but he wanted to help.
“It’s just, I have a lot going on at home right now, and it’s hard for me to let anyone in,” she said, sobbing.
“I get it, trust me.  Do you want to talk about it?”  Mac said, nervously awaiting the answer.
“There really isn’t anything to talk about,” Brooke said, looking precautiously at her shoes now.  “My dad cheated on my mom and she caught him,” she said, sobbing softly now.  Mac took a step towards her, almost unknowingly, and embraced her.  The two stood hugging for what seemed like hours, Mac feeling the moist sensation of her tears streaking down his shoulder, but he didn’t mind.
“Trust me, when it comes to deadbeat dads, I am the first to know about how that feels,” Mac said, almost glad he could relate to the struggles of this beautiful girl.
The two sat there in the warmth of the backyard, talking about everything.  This continued for a couple hours, Brooke doing most of the talking with Mac chiming in with his personal experiences, suggesting things and helping Brooke understand her own situation as well as his.  Brooke noticed something odd happening her.  She realized that she felt at home with this nerdy teenaged boy.  More than that, she felt that he understood and that she could say anything she chose to him with no judgment but pure sympathy, which felt exceptional.  Brooke opened up to Mac, and she felt a bond forming almost simultaneously.
Two hours had passed, and Brooke took a glance at her phone, realizing she had six calls from her mother.   She realized she never went home to check on her, and she knew she had to leave.
“Mac I’m sorry, I have to go,” she stumbled the words out of her mouth as she recollected her bag and turned to leave.  “Thank you, this means more than you know,” she said, stopping in stride to turn and look at the bewildered young teen.
“Yeah, it’s nothing really,” Mac murmured, almost to himself, feeling his cheeks swell up.  “Uh, if you ever need someone to talk to, I mean, if you don’t have someone to already-”
“I’ll be sure to come to you,” Brooke said, noticing his nerves.  This is when something amazing happened, she reached up on her tippy toes with the most grace of any human Mac had ever seen, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.  Mac felt as though someone had just shot him at point blank, he couldn’t speak or move.  Brooke now left, and Mac managed to muster up a wave as she pulled away, before sitting back down and thinking about how tumultuous that just was.
Mac found himself wishing that he could stay at that place in that moment with that girl for months, because little did he know that very night everything changed for both of them.  Brooke returned home that night to find her mother passed out on her bed, with no way to know just what was wrong with her.  She checked her pulse and she had one, which was good.  Although Brooke knew CPR, she noticed her mother was breathing, so she dialed 911.  She found her mother's phone in her hand along with a small white envelope.  She removed the envelope from her mother's hand but did not have time to review the contents before rescue personnel came bursting into her home.  She was overcome with fear as her mother was placed on a stretcher and removed from the home.  Brooke traveled to the hospital in her car but forgot about the small envelope in her pocket.  It wasn’t until she returned home much later that night that she noticed it, crumpled in her jeans.  She carefully unraveled it and continued to open it, finding something seemingly from her father.  It was a note, reading, “Dear family, just know I love you all dearly, and the pain I have put you through is unbearable to me.  This being said I must leave you now, on to an undisclosed location.  You do not know how much I wish it could go back to how it was, but I screwed up too bad this time, and it’s my fault.  Brooke, I love you dearly and I am so sorry for this, please take care of your mother for me.  Maybe someday I will see you again, but until that day this is for the best.  I’m sorry, and I love you both more than you know, Dad.”  That’s all.  After all these years of love and happiness he says, “I love you please take care of your mother?”  Brooke was overcome with anger and sadness and she began to cry.  She cried herself home, cried herself to sleep, and really could not stop crying.  She felt lost, like no one was around and no one knew how to help or even wanted to.
The only positive thing going on for Brooke now was her mother’s release, who had merely drank too much and passed out, doctor’s thinking it was a combination of that and stress that knocked her out.  Brooke knew this was no good knowing that she had alcoholic parents and she herself drank regularly.  However, knowing that she was just fine and her scare was nothing too serious was good news.
Mac was skating through his senior year, his home life was getting much more bearable and as a whole, it was making him feel better.  However, he could not stop thinking about that girl.  Months passed, Brooke and her mother becoming much closer to each other and living together in the huge house, helping each other through everything.  This mostly through the aid of the money her father had left, which was a surprise for the two, for he did not forewarn them of this.
Spring was here, and Mac was driving through town on Saturday night on his way home from work at Tiago’s Bistro.  He cut through a neighborhood on the way home, not really knowing why but doing so unconsciously.  It was late, mostly because he barbacked and therefore did not get out of work until eleven thirty.  He was halfway through when he saw it.  About one hundred feet down the street there was a figure, stumbling its way down the street.  Mac didn’t think much of it, until he got closer.  He noticed it when he was about to pass it, it was Brooke.  Mac immediately pulled onto the curb and ran towards her.  She was carrying her keys and when he turned he could see she was walking in the direction of her car.
“Brooke, is everything alright?  What are you doing?”  Mac said, talking too fast for even himself to understand.
“I’m just going home don’t mind m-,” Brooke was about halfway through the word “me” when a solid stream of vomit protruded from her mouth, just missing Mac.  Now he knew that he had to take her somewhere.  Mac grabbed towels from the back of his car and laid them on his back seat.  He told Brooke to get in and lean on the door, and after lots of questioning she agreed.
Mac arrived in her driveway twenty minutes later, and he told Brooke she was home.
“No, no please Mac,” she begged now, “I can’t go home, my mom will catch me.”
“Where else can you go,” Mac said, sort of angered that he drove all this way for seemingly nothing.
“Your house?”  Brooke said, knowing this was a long shot and obviously not in her right mind.
“I’m sorry Brooke but you can’t,” Mac said, too embarrassed of his home and it’s inhabitants to allow her to see.
“I won’t make a sound, no one will even know I’m there, I promise!” Brooke said, not giving up hope just yet.  Mac began to think, she hadn’t thrown up since he picked her up, and she did really need to be safe.  He knew his mother was asleep or out somewhere, and after mulling it over in his head for a while, he agreed reluctantly.
They entered the dark home and found it a mess, which was nothing new to Mac.  There was a collection of things everywhere, trash, cans, but mostly pill bottles.  That is what most did not know about Mac; his mother was addicted to painkillers.  She got into an accident at work shortly before his father left them and she had been prescribed them.   She then got addicted, destroying her marriage and causing Mac’s father to leave, taking his money with him.  They moved from their old house into their new, much smaller one, just Mac and his mother now, who worked two jobs to keep up.  Mac used to live in the Ridge Club, in the old beaten down house with once white pillars and the ledge.  He used to play in that backyard with his father, and he was best friends with Brooke.  That is when everything was simpler, and that is why he goes there to this day to relax, to dangle his feet over the ledge just like he used to.
Mac laid Brooke down in his bed, and he tucked her in quietly, she was already dozing off.  He moved out to the old living room couch himself, both because he didn’t want her to see how old and tattered that thing was and so that she didn’t think he was creepy for sleeping next to her.  He couldn’t sleep at first, worrying about Brooke, but after about an hour he succumbed to the night and got some rest.
They woke the next morning, but when Brooke woke Mac was gone.  She called him numerous times and finally he responded, saying to get ready he’ll be back to get her in ten they had some place to be.  Confused, Brooke redressed but found an old sweatshirt of Mac’s to wear (mostly because her clothes reeked of booze and throw up).  Mac picked her up, breakfast in hand but nothing too big, knowing that she would most likely feel a bit sick.  Next and to the surprise of Brooke, Mac took her to the ledge of his childhood home, where he now told her everything.  He unloaded, he had never spoken of this stuff with anyone before, and it felt amazing.  Brooke chimed in her situation, and the two sat talking for hours.  Noon rolled around, and the two noticed how late it was becoming.
“Let’s go do something fun,” Brooke said.  “Let’s go to the movies or something, how about that new horror movie?” she asked, almost excitedly.
“Okay,” Mac said, cautiously feeling his wallet in his pocket to make sure he hadn’t left it at home.  They drove to the local movie theater, Mac paying for Brooke’s popcorn and ticket, and they sat through the whole movie, oddly laughing at the stupidity of the horror seen on screen.
The ensuing months were crazy, with the two spending all of their free time together.  They both prepared for college, and Brooke stopped partying and instead spent her Friday nights inside watching horror movies and laughing with Mac, which became a hobby to them.  Mac prepared and applied to all of the colleges of his dreams, Brown being top of the list and Brooke did the same, putting Harvard Medical atop hers.  Both loved to shoot for the highest spots possible, and neither knew no for an answer.
It was now nearly the end of summer, and Mac was awaiting acceptance or denial from his colleges as was Brooke.  The two decided that something fun had to be in store for this friday night, since it was one of their last in high school and maybe together, although they did not want to think about that.  They decided to head into town and get a bite to eat before watching the newest horror movie, which was, of course, their favorite thing to do together.  They parked out behind the shops in the back lot and walked the short street to town, hand in hand.  They dined at a small cafe owned by a local family, which was extremely delicious as all knew.  It was not the food for Mac though, it was getting to look Brooke Stevenson in the eyes and marvel at her sheer beauty, something he felt as though he didn’t tell her enough.  He did tonight, sometimes even interrupting her mid-sentence to tell her exactly what he was thinking, which he thought was appropriate.
After they finished eating Mac threw away the remnants and they proceeded to make the short walk down the street to the theater.  They purchased tickets and proceeded to their seats, Brooke very enthusiastic on seeing this new film and Mac not so much, as it turns out horror movies terrified him but going with her was all that was important to him.
The film was actually exceptional to the surprise of Mac, and they were set to make the long journey home.  By this time it was nearly twelve in the morning, and the two were more tired than seemingly ever before, the type of tired you getting after sitting out in the sun all day.  They took to the streets, quite bare because of the time of night.  The night was warm but comfortable, and Brooke wore jean shorts and a tattered old t-shirt while Mac sported a vintage Larry Bird jersey.  Brooke fell asleep as soon as she got in the car, which was a normality as Mac now knew.  He found himself slowly dozing off, but he resurrected himself when he felt himself droop.  His car was quite old, and it had a lot of things gone unfixed since he did not have much money.  The light turned red up ahead of him, and Mac eased on his brakes to come to the light, however, when he did so his car did not slow down.  Instead, he found himself stuck going forty through the intersection.  Pure fear coursed through every part of him, and he looked to the passenger seat to see Brooke lying there asleep.  He undid his seatbelt and extended his right arm across her, placing a kiss on her and then holding her tight in an attempt to brace the impact.  This was the busiest light in town, and with Brooke asleep there was no one to yell to.  Without knowing what to do, Mac embraced her and the dash for dear life, as he saw headlights coming from the left side heading straight for him, he knew this could very well be goodbye,  He whispered to Brooke, telling her how much he loved her as he looked back to the car, speeding right back at them.  Everything seemed to be in slow motion, and it gave Mac a second to notice how odd staring into the eyes of peril felt.  The car neared, and Mac closed his eyes, what awaited him completely unknown.
The End