Moonless Night

Chapter 1

Moving is never easy. Not even when you're moving back to an old town. Leaving your home. Your friends. Your life. Everything. Moving means giving up what has become important to you. Everything changes as you leave your life behind.

That's what I had to do.

I had to move to the town I lived in sporadically as a child. I stayed at my father's house during the summer since I was seven. But as I grew older, I gradually stopped visiting. Less than a month ago I hadn't even considered coming to the little town of Soronts Lake, a small town on the border of the United States and Canada. With a tiny population of five thousand, there isn't much around.

I never would have considered my ever living there if the accident had never happened.

Before, I lived in Los Angeles, California. I didn't exactly love living there with the heat and severe UV rays, but it was home. The home where I had my friends, my favorite stores and restaurants, cute boys, nice clothes shops, the beach -- though I wasn't very fond of the heat, even the mean girls teased me for my never tanning skin despite all my time in the sun. I missed all those things, but they could be replaced. What I miss the most is irreplaceable.

My mother.

She's the reason why I have to move in with my father. Or, rather, the lack of her is the reason.

A month ago, there was an...unfortunate accident. My mother was killed in a car wreck. At the time, when I was first informed, I couldn't believe it. My mother was so...so cautious. She was a great driver, too. She would never be careless enough to allow herself to die in such a humiliating fashion.

That may sound a little unusual , but that's how my mother thinks...that's how my mother thought.

My mother was a model when she was my age, but when she had me, she quit and became a bookstore owner, yeah, don't ask me how she chose that when she still had a perfectly nice body.

Anyway, the accident was a major shock to me. This may sound harsh, but I would've preferred it if my mother hadn't left the house that day to get me that cold medicine. That day I was sick - which was strange in itself since I never get sick - she went to the drugstore to get me some Tylenol, then she was hit. A drunk driver ran a red light, he survived though with only minor scratches.

I don't blame him of course. It's not his fault my mother was out there. Technically, it's mine. She was out there to help me.

Despite that little fact, I don't blame myself either. I was sick, there wasn't anything I could do about that.

Now I'm moving to Soronts. The complete opposite of Los Angeles. It's overcast ninety percent of the time, raining over half of that time. The sun isn't even visible through the thick gray clouds. I didn't -- I don't like the sun much, I actually prefer the rain but my feelings for it are practically nonexistent.

Besides the weather, which I don't particularly like or dislike, there isn't much in town that bothers me. Not the fact that there are only 346 students at the highschool, or how there aren't many stores, or how the nearest one is in the next town, miles away.

At least that was all I expected when I first arrived. I had knew my life would change when I moved into Soronts, but I hadn't expected it to change quite like it did. It began on the day I first arrived, it was drizzling as I drove through town in my new Volvo, a gift from my mother on my sixteenth birthday last year. I passed the old neglected sign that said Welcome to Soronts. Earlier, I was texted the address of my father's house, though I remembered it vaguely.