This Place We Call Home (discontinued)

Prologue

Thirteen. The simple, yet complicated year of the teenager. You can see the world with new eyes. You can finally be treated like an adult. No more "but your still just a child." No. Those times are over. Because you are a teenager. Not an adult. Not a kid. A teenager.

In most kids’ life, that year of being twelve stinks. You're on the brim of being a teenager. But you're still being treated like a kid. But, you're still lucky. Since where I come from, being a teenager, your life is pretty much over.

There is a lot of explaining to do, so I feel like it would be best for everyone’s' sake to start at the beginning, before I was born, when my parents were looking for a house. A small, comfortable house near the ocean was all they really wanted. So when they came to Cattyville, they thought they hit the jackpot. Thought. Of course they didn't know the secret of this place when they moved here. No one had the guts to tell them as the moving truck came into town. But they would find out by themselves, soon.

I think the thing that scared my mother the most was that there were no teenagers in this place, which she thought was a little odd. When you live in a town where there is only little kids, life feels... strange.

And my dad, Mr. Softy, thought it was pretty weird that mothers and fathers would almost constant be crying, like there was something missing in their life. This was true, of course.

All the puzzle pieces came together when they finally asked a woman sitting in the park why she was crying.

The woman just thought my mom and dad were crazy. Every time I would ask, dad would tell me the words she said, over and over again.

"Someday, when your child grows to become a teen, and they go away before your eyes, and you will understand the pain." and with that she ran away, with tears streaming down her pale face.

A reasonable person would think that woman was crazy, maybe a little over tired or something. But my parents believed her. In some crazy, mixed up way, they believed her. And it's true. Where I live, when you turn thirteen, you disappear.