The Tree-house

Prologue

Imagine a world with no parents. No one to tell you what to do, what's wrong and right. No one to stop you from doing anything in the world that you want.

Now scrunch up that thought, remove it from your mind, and lock it where it can never be found again.

Because being without parents is not what anyone should ever wish for.

***

I don't really remember much before it happened. I know I had a family, I've been left with a photo album. I also don't know how it happened. I was told they died in a car crash when I was 4, but miraculously I survived what should have been an almost certain death, thank you overly expensive baby seat.

My only possessions, a small blue teddy bear with fluffy fur, and a photo album half filled with pictures of my mum and dad, and half with baby pictures. They are my Crown Jewels, the icing on my cake. They make me, me. Without them I wouldn't have any sense of direction or purpose.

The orphanage I lived in for a while was a little wood cottage with many bedrooms. I shared a room with two girls a few years younger than me. Chrissie and Jess.

They were my best friends for as long as I can remember. They were actually my only friends.

That's why I was completely distraught when I came home from my weekly job of food shopping, to find the only remnants of the lovely cottage; ashes. They found very few bodies buried in ash, but they did find Chrissie and Jess.

I ran away that night. Away from the police, away from my life. The only things that were safe from the fire were my prized possessions, hidden away in a shed at the back of the property. I was 13. Old enough to realise that running away was wrong, but young and foolish enough to stick by my decision.

I walked for miles and miles through the crowded city. No one noticed that I was young, distressed and alone. No one even seemed to care.

And that is why to this day, I stay hidden in a tree-house. Only leaving when it is completely necessary. This is my story.