Chapter One: Graduation

Weird is the feeling, when you are about to graduate. Even weirder, is when the event is actually occurring.

"Casey Rineheart" the school administrator, or whoever it is, announces my name into the microphone and I take a deep breath, then walk carefully across the stage to shake hands and receive my certificate of freedom from the mundane world of high school, and into my new life as a rising author.

Crownburrow Ridge, here I come. I think to myself as I exit the stage after getting my photo taken with the principal and catch my friend, Sarah's smile and big thumbs up that she gives me, her diploma already in her other hand. I smile.

"I can't believe we just graduated!" She exclaims with excitement.

"I can." I reply back with not as much enthusiasm. She frowns.

"Oh come on, you honestly can't tell me this wasn't the best four years of your life, can you?"

I think back to my ex boyfriend, Tyler, and all the moments of going to the theaters to a movie we didn't know and weren't going to watch anyways just so we could make out in the back. Or going out to eat and just end up having sex in a motel room somewhere or his car. Thinking back on it now, I didn't have that much fun, and it wasn't as worth it as I thought it used to be to sneak out all of the time.

I fake a smile and do what I always do to hide my inner mental struggles, lie.

"Yeah, you're right. These past four years were amazing!"

In a way, they honestly were. They weren't horrible, I just...didn't feel like it was very fulfilling. Like something has been missing.

We hug and do all the girly squealy shit that typical girls do when they graduate and all the years they grown up together come rushing back to them do. Crying and blubbering and saying they are going to miss each other, even though most likely, only one of them is going to really mean it. While the other one is decided in moving away, so her depression doesn't kill anyone else, more than it did her brother, who should be here too, watching his baby sister graduate.

My older brother, Dewey, died two years ago, when my doctor diagnosed me with depression, and told my family that getting me to smile a lot and making me happy, would help make it go away.

They tried, they really did. The only issue is, depression affects not only you, but everyone else around you. It sucks the light, life and happiness away from everybody. It did from my family, and even more so from Dewey. Being the oldest sibling, he took it the hardest, and he blamed himself for what I went through.

He felt as though he was a horrible big brother that let me down, and in the middle of May, last spring he left us a note. That note I still kept after the fact, cried when the police tried to take it for evidence and they eventually gave up and let me keep it to grieve; I pulled the note from my pocket and unfolded the tapered edged paper, and read the words for the millionth time that I had long since memorized.

"Hey Casey K,

Went out hunting for the early morning, I'll catch you one of them morning doves you like, one of the white ones and I'll tie ya' a pretty red ribbon around its foot the way we always did when you were allowed to hunt with me. Wish ya still could lil' sis. Love ya to the moon and back, always will. Miss you, forever.

Bubba"

I let a tear slip and fall down, but I move the paper before it hits and ruins the ink. He left it on the pillow for me, the day he disappeared. The last words my brother ever uttered to the world's knowledge. The one thing that triggered him to end it all.

We used to hunt together. He'd always catch a white morning dove for me and I'd tie a red ribbon around its foot and bury it in the woods to signify a burial memorial spot for all the hunt we'd catch that morning.

Police drove us out when we called them, ambulance and all driving with sirens on until we got close, hoping they could stop him before it was too late, even though I knew, he'd be gone before we called anyone. He would've timed it just as such.

Found his body propped against a tree, hand to his side at the ground with a pistol in his hand, and his hunting rifle to the side with his bowie knife, had carved my name into the title's butt with a note that said for me to have it.

On his lap he held and cradled, a morning dove he caught, but this time didn't bury and left a note with this one too, a number, to the local taxidermist, and money to pay for it, and a scribbled line saying for me to keep the little bird and have it stuffed, as memoriam to eternalize, all we've ever done together. It didn't soak in until I saw the red ribbon, tied to the foot of the beautiful, dead dove.

My parents walked up to me and gave me a hug. I started crying.

"He should be here..."

"Oh, honey. We know baby girl, we know. We wish he was here too." My mom says gently and hugs me tightly, and starts crying too.

That night, there was a lot of crying in the house. The next morning, there was an ambulance and more crying, but no sirens sounded that entire day.

Mom had passed away in her sleep.