Stormie

Prologue

A quote for this story, for Austin and Stormie: "All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair." - Mitch Albom

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Prologue - December 2009 - Sophomore Year

Samantha

I'd gone to Frank Wilson's Band Camp: "Where amateurs are transformed into the musicians of tomorrow," for one week every summer and winter since the seventh grade.

That first time, my mother told me I had no say in the matter, even though I argued several times that band camp was like the Olympics for dorks - to which my brother had to remind me that I'd fit in perfectly. Throughout the four hour plane ride and two hour drive from our home to this camp in the middle of the woods in Virginia, I continually told my mom that if she left me there I'd cut off both my arms.

It was obvious she didn't care and that she knew the threat was empty; the moment I was out of the car with my bags by my side, she threw me a kiss and drove off. The only thought on my mind had been how far the nearest bus station was. I expected this place to be crawling with pimply, nerdy kids who all shared a common interest in online gaming and chess.

Five minutes after I arrived, someone running full speed ahead slammed into me, causing us both to fall to the ground. That was how I met Austin Phillips, and how I fell in love with band camp.

I counted - he apologized one hundred and thirteen times for running into me that first week at band camp. I left at the end of July with a smile on my face, surprising my mother when I jumped into the car, screaming how I wanted to go back in December when the camp ran another session the week after Christmas. But even thirteen year old me knew to leave out the cute boy with a nice smile who made the camp as great as it was. She didn't need to know that much.

That was eight years ago. Every summer and winter meant Austin; it meant a place where cell phone reception was nonexistent, where I got a break from reality. I could be a normal teen, playing guitar and writing music, passing time playing board games with kids from all over the country and it was where I found a home.

Everything about me was closed off and quiet and insincere. Somehow, Austin got through all the dust and debris; for some reason he cared enough to.

Even though all together he and I had only spent a total of sixteen weeks together over a span of eight years, there was something about him that I wanted to keep with me. His shy, lazy smile, the way he cared for people or the way he got me to laugh when I hadn't so much as smiled in six months.

He had been a constant in my life from the time I was thirteen, which said a lot due to our lack of communication the other fifty weeks out of the year - despite living less than an hour apart.

But it was all ending. Once you turned twenty, you weren't allowed back to camp. Austin became too old in May, I followed in June, and so this winter camp session - this moment was our last.

The Friday night concert had just ended; every instrument was loaded up with our luggage in the lobby and people lazily milled about everywhere. The atmosphere was quiet like it always was on the last night of camp. Most of the kids around me were all my age, something had brought each of us back to band camp long after we graduated high school and had started college.

We were in the upstairs lounge consisting of just a few couches covered in plastic wrapping up on the roof. Someone had snuck beer in claiming to have wanted to go out with a bang. So we all sat there carelessly, drinking and laughing about all those times Angus Lancaster had fallen into the lake and nearly drowned.