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Chapter One: Call for Help

Rainy days. One of the "many pleasures" of living in Washington State. The glory and the beauty it brings to our unique landscape brings happiness to most. Except me. I hate the rain.

    Why couldn't my mother and father have moved to Florida when they got married? A place where it is always sunny and warm. A place swarmed by beaches and palm trees. A place where you can actually see the beautiful sunrise and sunset. I dream of places like Florida. Happy places.

    My home town Leavenworth, Washington is a place  of overcast with an occasional peak of the sun. A place of gloom and sadness. Leavenworth; population of 1,979. Everybody knows everyone and there is no way getting around it. Slip up one time, and in a split second the whole town will know. And may I say, everyone holds grudges and judges. That's the only thing people feel is "fun" to do in their free time; especially the folks on the south side of town. Their rich mouths love to talk smack about others. Especially my family.

    My father, Commissioner Nathaniel Thomas, has been ridiculed by this town. All thanks going to my mother.  About a year ago, my mother forced a divorce on my father. I never really understood why she wanted to divorce my father. There were never any signs that they had been fighting or arguing with one another. They just seemed like a normal happy couple. Not just to me, but to the whole town. My siblings nor I ever thought that something of this proportion could come out of there marriage.

    A day after my mother told my siblings and I she was going to divorce our father, she left without a word.

I remember my father helplessly crying as he held the three of us in his arms. He was just as surprised and scared as us. Even he didn't know why our mother would leave us. He thought that we were happy and living the life that he had dreamed of, but boy were we all so wrong.

    The next morning, everyone knew. Our name was on every newspaper, every local television, and to everyone with a working phone. I was rather stunned that a divorce story had been so popular in our small town. Usually stories on divorces don't even spread to another person, typically it's only something for the courts to know. However, these stories that were spread around the town were not stories of my parents divorce. It was lies that my mother told those rich mouths. Then the rich mouths contacted the newspaper, the local television networks, everything. And what was put out there will haunt my father forever. Ruining his reputation for something that never even happened.

    My mother told the Rich Mouths that my father hurt her on a daily bases and that he abused us and herself. Which is nowhere near the truth. She told them that he would threaten her until she told him she loved him. Yet, if anyone knew my father they would know that he could never hurt a fly. Even if he is the commissioner of our small town, doesn't mean he's this mean cruel guy. He's the exact opposite. But because of what mother told them, and what got out, now everyone categorizes Father as the cruel commissioner that will beat you silly if you even look at him the wrong way.

    Father has had to go to court many times since then. Once for the actual divorce. Then for custody battle. After that his trial for what he supposedly did to Mother, which luckily they saw that he was innocent. However, that doesn't change the views of the citizens of Leavenworth. They just think that Father bribed the court because he worked there.

    That's why I hate rainy days. It brings back that harsh next morning when my face and my Father's face was all over Leavenworth. It was the day that ruined our reputation. It was the day that brought the overcast of gloom. With scattered storms in between.

"Brin! Time for school, let's go!" Father shouts from down at the bottom of the stairs, as he usually does five minutes before the bus comes.

"Coming!" I shout, quickly jumping out of my seat near my small window. Removing my eyes from the gloomy rain outside.