The first student in four years to be expelled from MainRidge High School was Jacques. Returning home that day was not a task for the faint of heart and required a lot more courage than Jacques had bargained.

"Time and time again, I warn you, and you do not listen!" Jacques' father scolded him.

"Pa, I -"

"There's no excuse!" he screamed again, "I warned you about those friends of yours! You're shameful!"

Jacques grew up in a single-parent household. However, it had never really felt that way to him. He was the youngest of five brothers, and all his predecessors had paved a golden road. That road, they expected him to walk as well.

Things went south when he turned fifteen. Jacques had gotten involved with the wrong after-school crowd. They had introduced him to cigarettes, alcohol, and porn. Being the youngest, Jacques always had to fight to be heard at home, but not when he was with the guys.

"Just one pack!" Jacques argued with one of the older boys named Robert.

Robert was around nineteen years old and, like Jacques, did not finish his formal schooling. 

Robert responded harshly, "Listen here! You wanna get cigs you gotta pay up, you hear me?"

Jacques only stood five feet and five inches tall at the time. He puffed up his chest, trying to match Robert's aura.

"I don't do favours, pretty boy." Robert spat, ending the conversation.

Jacques' best friend at school, Anders, knew of everything he had been doing to make money long before his expulsion. One of those things was selling broken CDs to people.

"You're gonna get yourself killed with all this!" Anders whisper-yelled at Jacques one evening through his bedroom window.

Jacques stood on the grass, peering up at him, "You know I'm not that kinda guy - "

"Are you, Jacques? You said that last time!"

Jacques widened his eyes.

"So that's how it is, huh? My only friend, throwing me -"

"I'm not throwing you under the bus, dammit!" Anders tried to keep his voice low in order not to wake his foster parents, "You're taking this too far!"

And so the saga began.

Slowly but surely, Jacques became more and more in love with cigarettes. He was that one, wayward son. To worsen things, at eighteen years old, Jacques got sleeve tattoos. That was the last straw for his father, and he kicked him out of their home. Jacques still had everything (in his mind), not because he had 'friends' but because he had Brooke.

Brooke was an interesting case. With no parents, she was able to get involved in the wrong things. Brooke went to a different place every night, relying on kind strangers to help her navigate the world. She ignored her brother at home, who was willing to love and protect her. Odin had so desperately wanted Brooke to see him as her beacon of safety, but she ran to other things instead.

Brooke was a party girl - she was the entertainment. Luckily for her, she appeared older than her age, so she got away with several things. Once she turned eighteen, she began stripping at a local club. Only three people knew of this - Jacques, Nadia, and eventually, Odin found out. All those nights at work, she'd witnessed and endured things that no young woman should have to. The thing that broke her the most was losing her virginity at work. That incident would forever leave her at seventeen in her state of mind.

"Why are you now getting back?" Odin opened the front door for Brooke the same night it had happened.

Brooke had mentally shut down. She couldn't express herself, except through anger.

"Just shut up, Odin!" she exclaimed.

"Shh! You want our Aunt to wake up?" he locked the door hurriedly and turned to her, "Please tell me what's wrong. Is it Jacques? Did - "

"Oh my God! Why are you so obsessed with him? It's nothing!"

Brooke kept it to herself - something that rendered her emotionally broken. It was the chapter of her life she'd never read aloud. She knew how to cover it up - with makeup and by a charisma that lit up any room. That became her hiding place, and Brooke would never look back. She grew used to being the centre of attention and thrived off of it. Everyone thinks that the quiet ones are the most broken, but no.

To her dismay, Jacques would never open up to her as much as she'd wanted him to. Brooke believed that he confided in his cigars, and the puffs of smoke that left his mouth were all the secrets. Yes, that was it.

She loved him immensely - every shortcoming and every fault she'd ignore until that no longer worked. Brooke couldn't reach him - she didn't know how to. He was too closed up, and their relationship would fall apart whenever he couldn't smoke. That often occurred as Anders still tried now and then to ween Jacques off of tobacco. It wouldn't work.

"Brooke deserves better than me. Odin's right. I hate to say it." Jacques held his head and told Anders when they were nineteen.

"You aren't a lost cause. Not yet. We can fix it." Anders gripped Jacques' shoulder and squeezed it.

In the end, what brought them all together was their yearning for a new life that they could build out of nothing.

"What are we gonna do now?" Jacques questioned Anders hopelessly.

"What we've always wanted," he replied excitedly, "We're making our lives our own!"

And they'd go on to do just that.