Browler's Creek

Preface

"Olivia, I don't want you to go." My best friend cried.

"I don't want to go either but my parents are making me! You know that I tried everything. I even asked my grandparents if I could live with them."

"Olivia, it's time to go", my mother, who had just loaded the last of our things in the car, yelled.

"Please...don't go." He begged.

I couldn't say anything, seeing him like this was worse than falling, skinning my knee and ripping the band aid off combined!

"Olivia Grace, please, it is time to go NOW" My mom yelled again but this time from inside of the car.

"Don't go." He sniffed.

"I have to." I said.

My mom honked the horn.

"Promise me that you won't forget me, okay?" I asked him.

He continued to hold on as if he were a balloon that might float away the moment he left go.

"Noah, I have to go before I get in trouble. It's already going to be a long enough ride without Mom telling me how happy I should be about this new adventure." I sighed.

The undeniable truth -- I was moving. My Dad had been transferred to New Jersey for his job. At seven years old, moving is scary. Leaving behind everything you know and everything in front of you is mystery. I wasn't really scared I was just sad. The main reason I was so sad, I had to leave my best friend, Noah, behind. Even at 7, I knew that best friends like that didn't come along every day.

Noah and I had been best friends since we were in diapers. We had lived next to each other our whole lives. The same church, the same schools; the same likes, the same everything! We were inseparable – vacations, summer camps, sleepovers, you name it! I'm talking every-waking-minute together! We always said that NOTHING would ever come between us. I could not believe my Dad thought his job was more important than my happiness. How could he expect me to be happy because he picked a job over my best friend!

As if leaving my best friend behind wasn't bad enough, I was moving away from the only place I had ever known; the place where I had spent the first seven years of my life. Away from the place that held every single one of my childhood memories. I was leaving Browler's Creek behind forever, or so I thought.