Preface

"Come on guys, just one more," my dad said. My friends, James and Scott, were helping my father and I build the fort behind my three story house about one hundred feet into the woods. It was a warm and muggy August afternoon in the year two-thousand and four. I was I was ten years old at the time. This was when everything was right. There was no trouble, no sorrow, no nothing. My life was perfect here. This was a time when I found school easy, making friends a piece of cake, and my parents were getting along just fine. This would all change in the years to come. With that, James, Scott, and I helped my father lift the last log into the air a few feet, then he lifted the log the rest of the way to put on top of the other three logs which created our second and final fort.

"Phewooo," my father, John Dennis, sighed. "All done," he said, joyfully. "All right!" yelled my two friends, happily as well. Now that these two forts were done, me and my two friends could start playing games, having snowball fights when winter came around, and faking animal attacks (we would try not to get anyone scared that a real animal was attacking). These forts would be a sacred bond, a symbol of my friendship with Jake and Scott. This was a symbol that i never thought could be broken. I thought these symbols would last forever. I was wrong.