Friday nights were always the best night in Homewood - not because you're out of school for the weekend but because here that's when the lacrosse players took the big field miles away from our high school. Everyone shows up, and the bleachers are full.

In retrospect, Friday was suppose to be a happy day.

Once there was a game. Booze. Teenagers drinking booze. A pool and a hot tub filled with curious boys and girls. This is true. It seemed harmless. Until two, distraught girls ran from out of the house hysterically crying and everything stopped. Suddenly, who won the lacrosse game didn't matter, who was sitting next to who in the jacuzzi, what Top 40 song was playing, nothing normal mattered - two naked teenage girls were standing in front of everybody bodies shaking, with fear. That mattered.

"Jennifer's dead!" The girl on the left who look significantly worst than the one of the right, blurted.

There was a sense of calmness before the screaming started, before the tables were turned over and beer bottles crashing onto the titled floor scarring those feet who dared to flee. Before, people started ditching the party, there feet were scarred and they'd run on bloody heels.

This was a tragedy - for the people of Homewood, Homewood Academy and the Homewood Academy lacrosse team.
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Family is definitely a universal term, but I'm pretty sure just about every family in Homewood failed to grasp the very meaning of it.

Family is strong love.

Strong love doesn't easily break.

In fact, it's impossible, strong love doesn't break.

It wasn't until I met the Preston's that I was able to construct this theory, some time ago, because at the very least they were not a family. In fact, I don't know what to call them- a group of friends living under the same roof, no, because friends don't let friends slowly kill themselves.

Enemies, absolutely not, because an enemy needs a partner to continue their feud with or else they'd be arguing with themselves.

I mean there were a lot of clear errors, number one being that their sixteen year old daughter was severely depressed. As soon as you met Jennifer you could see it.

"Are you sure this is legal?" I cried to Jennifer, sitting in of green grass down the hill from her house, which was just down the street. Basically, we were neighborhood friends because outside of these gates, Jennifer and I barely spoke.

"I'm sure you're a cry baby." She declared, while looking up to the sky. Getting lost in the clouds.

She was a certified bitch, but it was hard to hate her. What we were engaging in was in fact illegal but she had her family to prow her out and I had mine.

Jennifer's eyes were never clear, she would never allow you to know what she was thinking since she hid behind dark clouds and bottles of old scotch. Despite all acquisitions, Jennifer was smart, she knew what she was doing and she knew exactly what she was talking about. I didn't bother trying to get know her because I already knew who she was. And sometimes I can't help but think...that's what killed her.

I certainly didn't imagine a world where I'd have to live without her. But I have and I am.

She was the girl everybody wanted to know, but everybody failed to save.

Her looks made her and as brilliant as she was, her mind eventually killed her. Jennifer's mind was made up long before her parents got to know her. I mean, almost seventeen years in this world, and her parents failed to realize the one thing that might have had a hand in saving her - acceptance. But I guess no one is going to accept you until you accept yourself, right?

You get your own self together within these gates. By yourself, and that's how you grow. Perfectly.

Out of all the things her parents were they weren't stupid, oblivious maybe, but never not aware of their select surroundings and that's why I think a lot of people think they may have seen this coming.

They didn't.

They never would.

Like I said, Jennifer Kinsley Preston, was long gone seventeen years ago.

So the moral of this story is that monsters don't sleep under your bed anymore, they sleep in your head - hiding, plotting, for the perfect moment to reveal to you that you're the only one that's known they were ever there. They've been there this whole time.

Perhaps, you already knew that.