Content Warning: Animal+Child abuse, neglect, extreme poverty and other childhood trauma, bad vibes, crying, tragic backstory with a bit of hope as a complimentary flavor. Bon appetit.

 
 
Before the Fall
"Home"
by beforethefall [Inkbunny]
 

 
I'll never forget the first time I met the strongest person I've ever known. It was a cold February afternoon when I was five. My big brother was hogging the living room TV to play Atari, so I was sitting at the kitchen table eating a peanut butter sandwich and watching Woody Woodpecker on our old black-and-white kitchen TV. Past the kitchen TV, I could see out of the front windows of the trailer, and I saw a new car show up that I'd never seen in the park before. It was a red pick up truck and an old opossum man was getting out and helping a young opossum girl move a few boxes out of the back of it, and into the tiny travel trailer near the trailer park gate. It looked like they were moving in with the kinda' rough opossum guy that lived there.
I can't believe I used to think he was cool, when I was really little.
It's weird that I can remember that the older opossum that drove them there didn't look happy or excited like most people did on moving days. What really caught my attention though was the fact that there was a little boy with them, too, and he looked like he was my age, even! I put my sandwich down and pulled my coat on, and I was out in the gravel lot before my brother could stop me. I ran down to the old pickup truck where the other boy was standing. The poor kid looked like a fish out of water. I could see he was a little scared, so I put my best, most confident big-brother face on and smiled at him.
"Hey dude! I'm Colin Hall! Are you moving in?" I remember asking as the little opossum sized me up. God, he's always been the nervous type, even back before everything else that happened after. He was wringing his tail nervously in his hands as he stood by the back of the truck, just watching the grownups alternate between their serious-sounding talk and moving the boxes. I knew what it was like to feel ignored, too.
"Uhh, hi," he answered. He barely even spoke, it was so soft, and his voice was wavering with his shivering as he stood outside without a coat. "I'm Jerry. Momma says we're going to live here now." He sounded scared, and it just made me want to smile even more and reassure him.
"Awesome! Do you got a last name? You wanna be friends?" I remember asking him, just trying to get him out of his shell, in the vain hope that my confidence would rub off a little. Not that it mattered, since that was about the moment that a big hand came down and wrapped around Jerry's bicep, practically lifting him off his feet as it pivoted him around and nudged him toward their trailer.
"Get inside kid, before you freeze to death. You don't wanna' mix with the riffraff around here anyway." the grownup that I'd eventually learn to be Mikey said as he marched the little opossum up the rickety metal stairs into the trailer. I remember Jerry looking back at me, and I just waved like the idiot I was, like everything was going to be okay, even as I heard my brother cursing me as he marched through the cold to drag me back inside.
I didn't see him again, save for glimpses here and there, until we started first grade that fall.
 

 
Jerry sat two seats forward and two rows to the right of me in Mrs. Frost's classroom. On the first day, when we all got called up front to introduce ourselves, he was so nervous he kept stuttering. He never had a strong stutter but was prone to freezing in stressful situations. I heard from someone, somewhere along the line, that it was just an opossum thing. I'll believe it. Anyway, the other kids laughed at him, and after a few tries the teacher had to step in and shut the other kids up, and sent him back to his seat after saying his name for him.
Our school wasn't big enough for all the kids to be able to eat lunch in the gymnasium, so first, second and third grade ate in their classrooms.  Mrs. Frost let us sit wherever we wanted for lunch, and as our little class settled I saw Jerry sitting alone not far from his desk against the wall, so I went and sat with him. He wasn't eating.
"Hey Jerry. Not hungry?" I asked as I sat beside him. He didn't respond, and just kept looking down at his hands, messing with his fingers. I remember feeling bad for him, he was probably still embarrassed from earlier that morning. "Did...you forget your lunch?" I insisted, trying to get him to speak up. Jerry just fidgeted uncomfortably, and didn't say a word, so I continued, "They'll give you a free lunch if you ask. It's just a cheese sandwich and an apple usually but it's better than nothing..."
Jerry stayed quiet; he seemed afraid to ask, or even speak up after what had happened earlier that morning. Poor guy.
"Hey, watch my lunch for a minute, I'll be right back," I finally said, setting my brown paper bag beside Jerry. I went up to the teacher and let her know what was going on, and inside a couple minutes someone stopped by the classroom with a brown paper bag. It was the usual 'free lunch' that I was familiar enough with from Kindergarten. My family went through some really hard times too, but my big brother was the one that clued me in on the fact that the school would never let a kid go hungry at lunch. Lucky for Jerry. 
I remember that it wasn't until we had just started sixth grade, a few months after Mikey was out of the picture, before his mom was able to actually send him to school with lunch money, new supplies, and all that stuff that most kids took for granted.
Anyway. Jerry and I ate together that day and every day after, to the point that it kind of feels weird to eat if he's not around, now. He never said a word during that lunch, but he ate ravenously, apple core and all, the only thing he spit out was the seeds and the stem. I ended up splitting my bag of chips with him, and he accepted without hesitation. When the teacher escorted us out to recess he sort of froze up again and watched the other kids file out, so I stuck with him until all the other kids were gone, and then grabbed his hand and walked out with him.
Once we were outside, Jerry sort of just paced around nervously on the blacktop, he didn't seem sure what to do. So I paced around with him, and kept trying to chip at his shell. One of many Hall family habits.
"So you do have a last name, huh? Bellick, right? Sorry about the bad luck," I said, offering my biggest 'just-kidding' grin at him. "Can I give you a nickname? You can give me one too," I suggested. I kept giving him space to answer, even when he just seemed to want to stay quiet and watch the blacktop roll by under his feet. This went on for a while, before, in response to one of my questions - or rather, after I'd asked him about what his favorite cartoons were, he said one simple, little thing that made me swear to myself that I'd be there for him forever.
"Thank you for being nice to me. I'm sorry I don't know how to be a friend back."
"That's okay, just follow my lead," I replied. It was my in; now all I had to do was keep him talking. Ten minutes later, I finally got him to agree to let me give him a nickname.
"How abouuuut," I hadn't thought ahead that far, so I stalled for time as I walked backwards in front of him out along the perimeter of the fence, "Belly! Because of your last name, and because if you hang out with me I'm gonna' make sure you have so much to eat that you're gonna' get fat."
Jerry actually cracked a grin and laughed at that, and agreed pretty readily; and so Belly was born. I suggested he do the same for me, and he got good and stuck for a few minutes as I played cheerleader for him and kept reassuring him that there was no wrong answer.
And so I was dubbed "Coll-boy". I never told him this, but it seemed a little lame at first, and as I got older, I realized it made me sound like a male prostitute. But it grew on me quick, and I didn't mind it so much.
It was the name that Belly gave me. Because of that, it was sacred, and unable to ever be changed. 
It was my name.
 

 
By the end of first grade, Belly and I were inseparable. We had other friends sort of come and go from the peripheries at school, but as far as Fallow Acres went, there just weren't any kids close to our ages, so we only really had each other. That was good enough, though. I learned over that first year that Belly's home life mostly consisted of him staying out of the way and trying not to be noticed because he was scared of Mikey, but at the same time, Mikey didn't let him go play outside either to get him out of the way. Weird control freak shit, in hindsight. By today's standards it would've easily classed as neglect, abuse, or both; but back then, it was just called bad parenting. The real abuse started the summer after first grade, though.
I can still remember the first morning I realized it was happening. It was one of those stiflingly humid early mornings that follows the evening thunderstorms that roll over the Midwest in the early summer. The pale gray dust between the gravel of the trailer park's lot was still wet and as the sun came up it beat down and turned Fallow Acres into a sauna as the water evaporated. My brother and I were out on the other side of the fence, rummaging around on the periphery of the woods. We were digging around in the leaf litter and collecting worms to try fishing with in the runoff reservoir across the highway later that morning. We were close to Belly's place so I was keeping a look out for him, when he came outside in a hurry, only to sit on the metal steps in front of the door of their tiny trailer with an awful bloody nose. I remember he wasn't crying, but he looked like he was on the edge of it, hanging his head between his knees as the blood dripped out in snotty strings onto the metal-grate steps and the weedy gravel below.
"Hey, Belly," I called, "Cool nosebleed!" ... I cringe, today, that I said stupid shit like that, but it's just different when you're six; I thought i was lightening the mood. Unsurprisingly, Belly didn't answer. "You wanna go fishing with us? We have an extra pole."
"I don't think I can," Belly said, mumbling - but I was proficient in Belly-mumbles by this point. I also remember that my brother and I could hear his parents shouting and arguing inside. They did that a lot.
"Why not? Are you in trouble or something?" I asked. My brother was doing a good job at acting like he wasn't listening in, but he edged closer to the fence, too.
"I don't know," Belly said, sniffling.
"You should blow out instead of sucking it back in. Just try not to spray your feet," I advised. I got wicked nosebleeds every winter. Still do. "What happened?" Belly hesitated, then bought more time as he leaned over and blew his nose into the gravel, leaving a bloody spatter and earning a few precious moments of time being blood-drip free before the trickle started back up, but seemed slower at least.
"...I don't know," Belly finally said, with a wibbly sort of frown that faltered like he was still trying not to cry. Of course he knew.
"Can I come hang out until your parents are done and we can ask them if you can come fishing with us?" I asked. I just wanted to be there for him, he looked so afraid and alone. My brother wordlessly nudged my arm with his elbow and lifted up the bottom of the fence so I could sneak through without backtracking to the hole in the fence at the back of the park, and I took the opportunity.
We sat together for three hours. His nosebleed stopped after another fifteen minutes or so, and I managed to get him to move to the shade a little further away where it was a little harder to hear his parents fighting, and then got him talking. I remember thinking it might help to try distracting him. Belly has this amazingly strong creative streak, one that only started making sense as I began to understand what it must've been like, in his situation. It wasn't just daydreaming and idle fantasy for him, it was how he would escape from whatever the hell it was that was happening in that little trailer. To him, it was a basic survival mechanism, even if it left him a little out of touch with reality sometimes.
As we sat in the shade of that tree talking about heroic knights slaying evil sorcerers, I noticed the shouting and crying had stopped an hour or so later and things were eerily quiet in the tiny trailer nearby. I asked Belly if he wanted to go ask if he could go fishing, but he shook his head, and said it wasn't safe to go inside yet. I remember thinking, for a fleeting second, his choice of wording was weird before it clicked. We passed another two hours talking; I didn't want to rush anything, and time spent with Belly was time well spent anyway. He's a good guy.
Eventually, the screen door of Belly's trailer creaked open, only to slam shut with its characteristic rattle a moment later as Belly's mom slipped out, lit a cigarette and sat on the metal stairs, dressed in just a t-shirt and panties. I always thought she was pretty, even when she wasn't made up. Still do, actually. It helps that she's only thirteen years older than us. It's just a shame that she wasn't a better mother. She had obviously been crying, and as she took a shaky drag off of her cigarette, she spotted us sitting in the grass and held her arms out to Belly.
"Oh, Jerry, baby, are you okay honey?" it started. Belly, seemingly autonomously, got up and went to her, and nestled into her hug as she whispered to him and doted on him as Belly just gave timid little nods and shakes of his head. She was finally checking up on him, hours too late, and trying to rub the log-since-dried bloodstains out from under his nose with her thumb and a bit of spit. Eventually, she had him sit on the stairs and went inside, coming back out with damp paper napkins to dab at his face and soak at the stains. I remember seeing Belly wince and flinch away from the pressure, the poor guy. We never did go fishing, that day.
The rest of that year and into second grade was much of the same. It wasn't constant, but often enough. A few marks here, a cigarette burn there. He, apparently, accidentally slammed his tail in the car door no less than three times that year. According to Belly's various explanations to the teacher, he had also wrecked twice on his bike - a bike that I knew for a fact he didn't own - resulting in fat lip and black eye in one instance, and a sprained wrist in another.
It almost always coincided with a big fight between Belly's parents, and was always followed up with a lot of extra doting attention from his mom, usually hours after the fact. My mom actually did first-aid for Belly more than once after things went down. 
She's always liked him. Ever since his first visit she was always a little extra-nice to him when she saw him. I think she knew something was up.
I think Ms. Corsaw, our second grade teacher, could see what was going on, too. A couple days after she'd asked him about the sprained wrist, a social worker showed up at the trailer park with the police. They spent a long time talking to his parents and even took Belly aside and talked to him for a long time too. They even let him play with the lights and siren on the police car as they asked him a bunch of questions. I was so jealous of that fact, even as I stood by and watched from our trailer's front porch. Despite the huge blow-up fight between Belly's parents that night after they all left, most of the suspicious injuries stopped.
I wish I could say it got better, after that.
 

 
Belly turned seven in August of 1992, right before we went into the third grade. He was spending a lot more time outside by then, and his mom seemed to encourage us to hang out away from their house more, too. She told me, once, that she was happy Belly had a good friend in such a wicked world. I didn't know, then, what she meant by that. I do now.
Belly had spent the summer making friends with a few of the local strays, but he really wanted a feline buddy that was all his. For his birthday, his grandpa got him a kitten along with all the trimmings; toys, food, litter box, all of it, and promised that if the cat ever needed anything he'd make sure it was taken care of, so long as Belly promised to take good care of it. It was Belly's biggest birthday to that point by miles, and he took those conditions so seriously you'd think he swore a blood oath. It was little orange tabby kitten that Belly named Tigger, and they were inseparable. 
Even if it meant I fell into second place in the best-friend hierarchy, I loved how happy Belly was with Tigger around. It felt really good to see him smiling again and playing more like a normal kid and coming out of his shell as he fell in love with that kitten. Tigger would follow Belly around everywhere, even when we'd go off marching into the woods together, or exploring what passed for a neighborhood around the trailer park in those early days, before we had really become fully free-range kids a year or so later.
Things were calm for a while. For a while, if I squinted just right and ignored the frayed edges of Belly's life from afar, I could fool myself into thinking that maybe the worst was behind Belly, and everything was going to turn out alright after all.
It wasn't below freezing, but it was bitterly cold and alternating between spitting and steady rain that night in December when I saw Belly out in the cold from my bedroom window. He was wandering out in the light under the streetlight in the middle of the trailer court, barefoot in his underwear and a dirty t-shirt. His expression was neutral, and he shuffled in an awkward sort of way that I'd grown to know better than anyone should have to. Something big had happened.
I pulled my windbreaker on and grabbed my red parka for Belly as I climbed out of my bedroom window; it was already late and I was supposed to be asleep. That was the first time I'd ever snuck out of the house.
When I got to Belly he was still sort of dazedly looking around and wandering aimlessly under the streetlight and I urged him to put my coat on as light rain pattered on the water-resistant fabric. Closer now, I could see - and smell - that he'd peed his pants, too.
"Dude what're you doing out here?" I said as I did my best to get Belly to put on the coat, and he eventually let me wrestle him into it.
"Dad's drunk again, and I can't find Tigger," Belly merely said in a familiar flat affect that made my tail bristle. Belly wasn't there, not really. I remember that he'd done this a few other times after really bad nights at home. Sometimes it would be days before I saw Belly come back to earth.
"Oh, no. Hey, it'll okay, alright? I'll help you look for him," I remember saying as I grabbed Belly's hand. He didn't squeeze mine back, and his fingers were clammy and cold. He'd probably been out here a while already. "Did you see what direction he went?" I asked. Belly just shook his head slowly.
"Dad threw him outside," he simply said. Thankfully, there was still enough autonomy there - thanks no doubt to how much Belly loved that cat - that he was able to follow my instructions to split up and start a more systematic search. By some grace of the universe, we both lucked into species that granted us exceptional night vision. It was even better when we were younger, too. We searched high and low for Tigger for nearly an hour in the dark, until we decided he wasn't in the park and snuck out of fence line to scour the woods for the kitten.
We were in the low scrubby brush on the other side of the fence maybe twenty feet from Belly's trailer when I heard something over the light patter of sprinkling rain. It started with a wet, ragged cough a short distance off. The sound that followed I didn't even process until I arrived at its source. Belly was kneeling in the muddy leaves, clutching a limp, soaked bundle of orange fur to his chest.
I had never heard anyone cry like that before. I hope I never have to again. It was the first time I'd ever seen Belly cry, and the dam had broken, finally. What came pouring out was just heartbreak and defeat and sorrow and regret and the sort of emotional agony most don't have to face until they're much, much older.
We were seven.
We buried Tigger in the middle of a discarded tire out in the woods. I used a stick to dig a hole in the mud that couldn't have been more than a few inches deep, and we carefully laid him in there before we piled that mud back in and covered it all up in rocks and leaves from the woods. I held Belly a little longer by our makeshift grave as he cried and just kept repeating that he was sorry that he couldn't protect Tigger until he was hoarse. 
No kid should ever have to shoulder that.
Belly eventually stopped crying, and after a few minutes' silence, he whispered that he was cold and wanted to go back inside, and I helped him up and walked him back to his trailer.
I didn't know then how to stop him, so I just watched helplessly as he went back into that little travel trailer of horrors with a freshly-acquired cold, and a parka that I never did get back. There was no way I was going to press the issue, though.
That was the night that I set my sights higher than just being there for Belly. I wasn't done helping him pick up the pieces whenever I had to, but from that point forward, I was always on the lookout for an escape plan for Belly. Personally, I wanted to simply make Mikey's life a living hell, but I knew that any inconsequential bullshit I subjected Mikey to would simply roll downhill to Belly. I had to commit to the long game, and wait for the right play that would get Mikey out of the picture once and for all.
After that night, Belly never called Mikey his dad again. He never brought Tigger up again either.
 

 
Things got harder for Belly in the months that followed. His grandpa and Mikey had a big fight shortly after we found Tigger; like an actual fist-fight out in the lot, and Mikey got carted away by the cops for a couple days. When he got back, Mikey took it all out on Belly, of course, and Belly's mom wasn't able to stop him, or she'd have gotten it just as bad. That piece of shit had a death grip on the both of them somehow, breaking them down and making them feel helpless and afraid and like they had no other options. That changed for Belly though, as he started finding more independence, and taking more of his well-being into his own hands. It all came to a head one day during spring break, just after I'd turned eight. He was still seven.
Belly, by that spring, had started spending as little time at home as he possibly could, and was exploring further out toward town, and into the industrial area further down the tracks. We'd already started hustling here and there, too. Little, easy stuff; we were just getting started. We'd return peoples' carts at the local Aldi for the quarter that was required to unlock it. We found discarded junk that still worked and cleaned it up to re-sell around the park, and we started dumpster diving for expired food that was still fine to eat - most of the time, at least. We would walk up and down the roads and pick up discarded cans and bottles to turn in at the recycling place. Stupid kid stuff like that. I hadn't built Colin's Big Book of Schemes and Scams, just yet.
It was one of those sunny, warm spring mornings near Easter, where the nights were still cold but the days were almost perfect, and the leaves and grass had started to grow back already. I finished breakfast and went out to the gravel lot in the middle of the trailer park and called out for Belly. I didn't hear any response, so I wandered out to the back of the lot and squeezed through the hole in the fence, before heading into the woods.
"Belly! You out here?" I shouted into the woods, just before I spotted what was once my red parka moving in the distance. It was Belly, and he was carrying a sheet of rusty tin roofing that he'd found god-knows-where toward the beginnings of a rickety lean-to that was coming together under a fallen tree that had come to rest in another tree's branches. I ran to catch up, but I was worried when I saw his expression. He wasn't disassociated, but he was pissed. Like, really mad. "Uh, hey, dude. What's up? Need a hand?" 
"I'm building a new home," Belly said, in that infuriatingly brief way he did when he was upset. I knew right away that some fresh bullshit had just dropped in the Bellick household.
"Cool. I'll help," I said, and I grabbed the piece of tin to help prop it up against the tree, before I started surveying what had been done already, which wasn't much. A few old boards, and a couple pallets had been piled up to make some makeshift, Swiss-cheese walls, but there was a shape starting. "You, uh--"
"No," Belly interrupted me. He knew what I was going to ask.
"Okay, cool," I said. I wasn't going to press the issue. Ultimately, what flavor of trauma he'd been subjected to had stopped mattering after Tigger; nothing could top that bar. "Where you scavving from? Is there more metal?" I asked, surveying the way the tin roofing, propped against the tree, composed almost an entire wall all on its own.
He ended up walking me out to the spot he was acquiring his materials from - an old abandoned steel building we were both familiar with. It used to be a storage facility of some sort. Belly was pulling the rusty panels from a pile stacked against the back of the building. We made quick work of setting up the rough outline of what, ultimately, would become the treehouse over the course of that day. Once that first, rickety contraption of a shelter was put together we both settled in on the buckets we found to use for seats, and watched it getting dark around us. It was getting cold, too, and Belly had pulled the parka back on already.
"Are you really planning to stay out here tonight?" I asked. I was a little worried for him, but...how could I blame him for wanting to, at this point?
"Yeah," Belly said, sounding resolved. He wasn't as angry as this morning, but there was a sort of deep sadness that had settled in its place. "Thanks for helping me," he said after a little pause. Something in that moment reminded me of the first time we met.
"You know you can count on me, man." I remember replying, offering him my usual 'Colin Hall's It'll Be Okay'-brand smile.
"Do you think it's bad to be jealous?" Belly asked me, out of the blue.
"Huh? Jealous of what?" I replied.
"Of you," Belly continued. His timid, neutral expression had started turning down, and only accelerated as he explained himself. "I... I wish I had a home like yours, where my family liked me and was nice to me."
"Dude..."
"Sorry," Belly mumbled, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his wrist. It was only the second time in my life I had seen Belly cry, despite everything. This time, I leaned over and I hugged him, hard.
"Dude. No, no way man, you don't get to be sorry for that. You deserve a better family," I said. I remember how he just sort of slumped into my hug for a second, before he timidly wrapped his arms back around me and let his cheek touch mine. A second later he was squeezing me hard and had hooked his chin over my shoulder as he let out a couple sobs.
The epiphany came to me a bit faster than would've been considerate of Belly's need for a hug, so I waited until his squeeze lightened up a little.
"Hey, I got an idea," I said, still touching my cheek to his.
"Huh?" Belly asked, sniffling still. I grabbed his shoulders and pulled back, looking him in his teary eyes. He had trouble making eye contact.
"... Can I be your big brother?" I asked, searching his expression. He looked confused. "If you'll let me, I mean, I want to be your cool big brother that you don't have now. I promise, I'll look out for you, and be the best big brother. Nothing to hide. No bullying, no bullshit." Belly's eyes were still streaming tears, and he grimaced a little.
"Would you really..?" He sounded so unsure, like I was about to trick him or something.
"Always," I said, as I grabbed him and held him tight against me again. "And forever, dude. You and me are going to be bros and nobody can stop us. I'm always gonna look out for you, Belly."
"I-... I'll look out for you too, Coll-boy." he croaked as he clutched me tight again.
That night, Belly stayed over at my house. I still remember what we had for dinner; two boxes of Hamburger Helper with a single pound of ground beef stretched across them both, and butter bread. Mom even made a pitcher of Kool-Aid for the special occasion of having 'company' over. We watched two movies in the living room; my favorite, Robin Hood, and The Rescuers Down Under, which Belly picked from the bookshelf of tapes we'd copied from the library. Another Hall family tradition.
Later, in my bedroom, we employed the help of a stolen steak knife and, at the ultimate price of a seriously pissed-off raccoon-mom, we became blood brothers and made our pact. I promised him that I was going to take care of him. That I wouldn't let him go hungry, or stay cold or lonely. I promised that we were going to escape Fallow Acres someday, and that we were going to do it together. I promised him I would never leave him behind. No matter what the cost. We were going to make our own happy ending, together, no matter what it took.
We spent the rest of spring break tightening that treehouse up, making it more sturdy and structurally sound, buttoning up the leaks and testing its security. I managed to borrow a few tools from my dad's toolbox, and we scrounged nails and screws and by the end of the week, it was a pretty solid little shelter.
Every day after school, every weekend, and all summer that year, we worked on that place until we were sure it'd be enough for Belly to hide out in any time he needed or wanted to. We found an old couch he could sleep on, and drug it out into the woods to stuff inside. We covered it in a tarp to keep the dew and rain off. We stole the spring off of Mikey's screen door so the treehouse's door would hold itself shut. We lifted a lantern from one of the old ladies' yard garbage displays, and stole tiki torch oil for the fuel so there could be a little light out there. I found an old cooler floating in the runoff reservoir and stripped naked right there beside the highway so I could swim out and bring it back, so Belly could keep some food stashed away from the critters in the woods. One day, we found a big spool discarded by the railroad tracks, where some utility company had rolled out new cables. We wheeled it back to our treehouse where it serves, to this day, as its table. Later came the posters, centerfolds, old hub caps and license plates, the trophies from our scams, heists and cons.
But, none of that stuff is what made the treehouse home. The year after all that came together, and the treehouse was more or less finished, we found Kellogg. The year after that, we found Pussycat. 
We found home with each other. The treehouse was just a place that we could call our own; someplace where we could make those memories that turned us into a family.
 

 
It feels weird, leaving it behind after all this time.
I couldn't imagine where we'd all be if it weren't for that treehouse out in the woods that, ultimately, brought us all together one by one, but I doubt it'd be anyplace better than right here and now. 
Earlier tonight, our rust-bucket van finally threw a rod somewhere in the middle of Kansas, so we pushed it what must've been at least a mile off the interstate and onto the railroad tracks that ran alongside it. We were willing to let a train clobber it for a chance to hop a ride west, but lucky us, someone spotted the van and called it in. No problem, the train stopped all the same.
We've all been so busy preparing for this trip that I don't think Belly actually realized what today is. It's better that way. I don't know what the future has in store for us, but one thing was absolutely certain; we had to skip town before Mikey got out. 

We're going to be okay, either way. Not every story has a happy ending, but if there's anything at all I can do for this crew, it's see it through to the end, until every last hope for the happiest possible ending is exhausted. I owe them all that, but especially Belly. He's been through so fucking much. The universe owes him a little fun.

The box car we're in is drafty, cold, and loud as hell. It's just past 4 a.m., and Belly's drooling on my shoulder, out cold as I write this by the light of my cell phone's screen. Kellogg and Pussycat are both spooning with their guitar bags, the dorks. All we have is a backpack each with some clothes and personal stuff, a few instruments, the notebooks with our songs, and three hundred bucks from our last gig in Aardvark Heights. We've made do with so much less, I'm sure we'll be fine. The only thing we really need is each other.

Escape Key did okay in Aardvark Heights, but we're going to make it big in L.A.. After all, the four of us can do anything.
 
-END-