After All These Years

One by One, We All Come Home

     

     There was six of them in total: Louis Carlson, Jeremy Murphy, Shawn Morrison, Elijah Peters, Sawyer Murphy, and little miss Ella Peters came last.

      As children they did everything together whether that was pranking the others or being over for games and dinner. Living on the same block gave them the advantage of always having friends to play with. They spent their days outdoors, running, playing tag, and riding their bikes. The embarrassment of accidentally ducing their pants or needing to use the blue bucket in the backyard of Elijah and Ella's when the parents weren't home and the doors were locked – the first time any of the boys (except Elijah) on the block were intrigued over what comes along with being a girl. The pain of falling from climbing trees and not stopping on bicycles quite the way they had in mind, knees scraped up and bloody, spending a few extra minutes out of the hour picking out the rocks from their torn skin and waiting for scabs to take place.

     As preteens, they had to ride the crazy terrains of puberty, voices changing and clothes no longer fitting exactly right. Learning how to shave without becoming a bleeding mess but the boys had each other to help and teach different techniques. Ella always had to go to their mothers, which she didn't mind but began wishing she had a girl in the group that was her age she could confide in. Hobbies started to change, still sharing those past common enjoyments, now sports, videos games, and other things that high school has to offer.

     As teenagers they dealt with girlfriends – almost too many to count - and boyfriends, false friends, and rough family relationships.

     Shawn at the age of fifteen got the news of his parent's divorce, it hit him hard, he quickly learned how fast his grades could drop and the group of people he fell into at school could cause him significant problems. Louis, being the eldest of them all took on the responsibility to conjure up a plan to get Shawn back on track to which the rest of the group gladly came upon agreement and did what they could to help out their friend they grew up with. It was the first time any of them heard Ella swear and it caught their attention. Louis was the captain of the school's soccer team for the third year in a row and was so insanely skilled that he had scouts coming to his games to offer him scholarships.

     Jeremy was on the debate team and the honor roll and when came time for him to graduate was given the title of valedictorian but shot it down. He felt that people who end up being valedictorian for their school always end up not going anywhere or doing anything with their lives and he wanted the opposite for himself. Elijah was more concerned with cooking and baking, allowing him to pass his AP math classes with flying colors, than the depressing education system that cares more about memory than teaching anything to students.

     At age eleven, Sawyer fell in love with the stars and the universe. Luckily for him, because he didn't plaster his interest of the world above him, he got away with it without harassment from his peers. He was able to find fairly okay school friends and come across as the perfect teenager there could be with good grades, a fun social life, decent relationships that lasted two months or longer and usually ended up being friends of Ella's. Ella, at age twelve, was considered an outgoing person and had a small group of friends that came from different circles and through the years got cycled through and swapped for others. She went out for a couple sports teams the school offered, thinking she could potentially follow in Louis' footsteps but ended setting her sights on track. She continued with it until she was sixteen when she lost interest in the people around her and the drama they created and refused to be on the team for any longer. Ella was in her last year of high school when she started to notice pressure from everyone, her parents, brother, teachers, and even friends. It was then that she began to run again but this time it was for herself and no one else.