Lesee...oh, yeah. WARNING: This story contains: homosexuality, heterosexuality, cursing, violence, and slow updates. You don't like any of those? Then step off and find something new.

---

River stared out the window. There wasn’t really much to look at though. All he could see was highway and cars. Oh, what a glorious sight! Not. He let his head rest against the cool glass of the window and sighed.

Next to him in the driver’s seat, his mother, Melissa Curtis, saw that and frowned. “I told you I was sorry about this,” she said to him quietly. He buried himself deeper under his coat in response. She pursed her lips. “I need this job, River. We both know you would have gotten into another fight anyway and would have gotten expelled. This is for the best.” She gave him a wan smile. “And you already have that scholarship for the Chicago Art Institute. We’ll be closer to it now.” Her smile faded when he just continued to look out the window.

In the back seat of the car, his younger sister, Jenna, popped her gum and sneered. “It’s your fault anyway,” she said in a snotty tone. “If you hadn’t been getting into fights, mom wouldn’t have taken the job.”

Their mother’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel. “It’s not his fault!” she said hotly. She frowned at Jenna in the rearview mirror. Jenna looked away and glared heatedly at nothing.

Melissa flicked a stray piece of hair out of her face and said to River, “The reason why I’m accepting this job is because it pays better.” Jenna snapped her gum and River continued to glare out the window.

---

It was two hours later when they pulled into the driveway of their new house. It was a cute little house with light blue paint and windows on each side of the front door. A tree about nine feet high stood on the front lawn, filled with green leaves.

Melissa stepped out of the car and smiled. “This is our new home.”

Jenna glared at the little house, then at her mother, and then at River, who had just stepped out of the car. “This isn’t home,” she snarled. “Home is the apartment back in New York.” Tears gathered in her chocolate brown eyes. Then she whimpered, “Why did we have to leave?”

River frowned and said, “Stop crying over it. We’re here and we’re not going back, no matter how much you cry.”

Fury warred with the sadness in Jenna’s eyes and she screeched, “This is all your fault! Just because you didn’t have any friends there, it doesn’t mean I didn’t!” She then buried her face in her hands and started to sob.

Melissa ignored her daughter’s sobs and went up the small set of stairs that led to the front door. She took a small golden key out of her pocket and unlocked the door. “Jenna,” she said, “go pick out your bedroom.”

Jenna threw her a glare but it was weakened by the fact that she had tears running down her face and her lower lip was trembling. She ran into the house.

River raised an eyebrow at her mother. Melissa turned, saw the raised eyebrow, and said, “Don’t you dare give me eyebrows, young man.” His eyebrow went a tad bit higher. She glared at him, but it faded a moment later when she sighed. “What?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t comfort her.”

Melissa shrugged. “She’ll get over it eventually.”

“What a nice mother you are,” came his dry response.

“Hey,” she snapped. “She has to learn tears won’t get her anywhere. Just like you have to learn fighting won’t get you anywhere.”

“Ah,” he murmured. A humorless grin crossed his face. “So, instead of keeping us there and making me learn my lesson, you whisk us away to parts unknown.”

“We’ve already gone over this,” she muttered. “I don’t want you to ruin your scholarship to the art institute- which you would’ve done if you had gotten expelled for all your fighting. Plus, my new job’s out here.”

A bitter tone tinting his voice, River said, “But Jenna’s right. You wouldn’t have accepted to move here for your job if I hadn’t been getting into fights, right?”

Melissa sighed, closed her eyes, and nodded. A chuckle came from River. She opened her eyes and stared at him. He was walking away from her and straight into the street. “Where are you going?” she asked.

He stopped and half-turned to look at her out of the corner of his eye. “Going to go look around. See what’s here.”

“You’re going to get the leftover bedroom then.”

Pausing, he seemed to turn that thought around in his head, before he shrugged and started to walk away again.

---

About an hour later, while sitting on a park bench, River decided that the city of Hammond was disgustingly quaint. They could have moved straight into the heart of Chicago- since that was where his mother’s job was-, but she had decided to go back to the place she had grown up. Hammond, Indiana. A small town on the border of Illinois and Indiana. A place not even an hour away from Chicago. A place where it seemed noting exciting would happen. A place just left of Nowhere.

River’s head thunked against the back of the bench. New York was nothing like this little town. They had lived in Manhattan. Stuff had always been happening, there had always been noise, the streets had always been filled with either people or cars.

It was going to take a while to get used to the lack of noise.

He brushed a few stray black curls off of his face and stared at the empty blue sky. There was barely anything in Hammond. Around their house were just mostly other small houses. But two blocks away was the local pool, the park, and the local library. A few blocks after that was an elementary school. And then, he had to go a few more blocks before getting to the ‘main’ street of the town. Calumet Avenue. The places that lined the little place were little shops, an ice cream shop, the local pharmacy, and a strange European cuisine restaurant. At the end of all that was an overpass.

He had gone over it of course. And that was where the ‘city’ part of the town started. Shops lined the streets but two blocks later, Hammond turned into Munster, Indiana.

A frown turned his lips down. He did not like this place. He just had to keep reminding himself that he had only one more year before he would be able to move to Chicago and start going to the Chicago Art Institute for graphic designing.

A smile almost started to form before he remembered where he had to go for his year there. It was a place called Gavit Middle and High School. He had seen pictures of it on the Internet, and gods, did it look grungy.

With a groan, River stood, shook his head to clear his head of Hammond and Gavit, and started to walk back to his new home.