Only in Youth

Prologue: August 8, 2009

Evan Jane Bexley led a comfortable life from birth through age thirteen. She grew up comfortably as the only child of two doting and loving parents in a small, everybody-knows-everybody town in northeast Texas. David Bexley, her father, worked as a coach, while her mother, Elina Bexley, worked as a fourth grade teacher up until two years before she and David brought Evan into the world. Although both David and Elina worked for a next-to-nothing salary in a small school district struggling to stay afloat most years, both loved their jobs and were loved by their community. When word got around that the two were expecting, there wasn't a soul throughout their entire town who wasn't eagerly anticipating the new life that would enter their small patch of Texas land.

Having been known by everyone since before her birth, Evan grew up a loved and happy child. Sure school came with the struggles of making friends, avoiding bullies, and finding her niche in the social hierarchy, but overall, she enjoyed her life, and was beginning to understand her role in the world her parents had somewhat established in their small corner of Texas. As she grew and matured, so did her understanding of the world around her. Before long, Evan's purpose and sense of self became solidified, specifically in terms of its existence in her place on this Earth, at least until the summer before her eighth grade year.

As seventh grade came to a close, David and Elina wrestled with finding the best way to tell their daughter that the family would be relocating. Unfortunately for them, Evan discovered the news that their summer vacation to Florida was not round trip, rather their final destination. She had been in class during one of the last days of school when one of her teachers let slip that there would be a going away party for Coach David at the end of the day. It wasn't the easiest way to tell a pre-teen girl that the life she was beginning to establish would become a memory in a matter of days, nor was it the best way to begin a summer vacation, but Evan knew that neither her teacher, nor her parents, had any ill-will or malicious intent in how that news would be delivered, and so she forgave them for their choice to move, but never agreed to go willingly.

David and Elina tried to distract their daughter from her dismay in every way imaginable. They spent their days doing all they could to entertain her and their nights trying to make their new house seem like a home. Additionally, they tired to point their daughter toward a variety of summer camps and programs, and looked for any and every opportunity to help her make friends before school started the following August, but it was for naught. Evan denied the permanence of their trip all the way up to her first day of school.

As she trudged down the stairs in a pair of denim shorts cut off about an inch or two above her knees, a pair of black converse sneakers, and an old 'Guns N Roses' shirt that her father had acquired at a concert when he was her age, her mother met her eyes with disappointment.

"Evan, go put on a pair of jeans," her mother stated as soon as she noticed her daughter's ensemble from her vantage point in the kitchen.

"It's a billion degrees outside," the young teen protested. Having lived in Texas her entire life, she'd been exposed to swelteringly dry heat as well as suffocating humidity, but Florida's heat was something else. The air was a thick, fleece blanket smothering anyone who dared to step outside, and the sun merely added to the already inescapable perverse swelter.

"I don't care if it's a trillion degrees outside," Elina continued, "You're not going to be sent home on the first day of school because you left home out of dress code. Go change." In typical teenage fashion, the girl huffed she stomped back up the stairs toward the loft, and then into her room. She ripped off her shorts and begrudgingly shoved her feet into a pair of jeans before she pulled a Houston Texans drawstring bag over her shoulders and continued down the stairs for part two of her morning inspection.