Page 3 of All of My Life

At least, that’s what I liked to tell myself.

However, the truth was far more complicated than that. The truth was always much more complicated if you were brave enough to look below the surface. Luckily for me, no one was interested in putting that much effort into me. Could be my fault, could be theirs; nonetheless, it wasn’t anything that kept me up at night. There were plenty of other things that kept me up at night, love and popularity the last things on my list of personal concerns.

Still, living in Carver, Connecticut wasn’t the worst thing in the world. If people knew the truth, they’d wonder how I could possibly think that, but it was true. I lived in a city that had no poverty, no living assistance. If there was crime, there was very little, and definitely none where I lived. My neighborhood was lined with manors, mini-mansions, high-rise condos, and nothing that anyone making less than six figures a year could afford.

I had also been blessed enough to go to Carver Elementary and Carver High, a school district that had provided the best in academic education. It had the best teachers, tutors, and educational materials. The Carver High School District had been designed to produce the best of the best when it came to the financial minds of the future. When I graduated in three months, it was going to be with the best grades possible.

On paper, there was absolutely nothing to complain about when it came to my life. My father, Thomas Morgan, was a city councilman, and since Carver was a rich city, he did very well for himself. Well enough that we lived in the community of Carver Hills, had a couple of vacation homes, and my father even had a small boat that he vacationed on.

As for my mother, though she could afford to stay home, Fern Morgan worked. She owned a few hotels and was every bit as wealthy as my father. When she wasn’t running her business, she was being the perfect accessory to my father’s political career, and they appeared to be the perfect couple. Still, that could be said for a lot of the married couples in this city. Carver, Connecticut was all about wealth, success, image, and keeping secrets buried deep enough to pretend that life was perfect.

I was also an only child, which I considered a good thing. Not all people were meant to be parents, and it was unfortunate when those people didn’t realize that about themselves. Having children was about more than just creating the perfect Christmas card each year. Your every move after having children mattered. Every decision that you made, every emotion that you showed, every word out of your mouth, even every meal that you cooked mattered. Everything that you did as a parent shaped your child into becoming the person that might end up finding the cure for cancer or might end up running the prison yard; that’s how important parenting was.

As for me, my parents had raised me to be a survivor. I had watched them and had learned how to do whatever you needed to do in order to beat whatever odds might be stacked against you. While some people might be born into privilege, that didn’t mean that things would always stay that way. Fate was a fickle bitch, and your entire life could change at the drop of a dime. All you had to do was turn on the news to see the truth of that.

So, unlike most folks, I didn’t judge people that kept their heads down. I didn’t judge people that minded their own business. I didn’t judge the people that didn’t speak up or raise their hand in class. I didn’t judge people that chose meekness as their way of life. Sometimes, those people were just trying to get through life with as little drama as possible, and there wasn’t anything wrong with that.

So, I liked to believe that I’d taken a more practical approach to my life, and I was hoping that the decision would pay off later in the future. If I could keep my wits about me, then intelligent decisions would be made, not emotional ones. I had learned early on that emotions were pointless, bringing value to nothing. They didn’t solve any problems and often made a situation worse. Now, that wasn’t to say that I didn’t have emotions, because I did. I felt things just like everyone else, I just didn’t let my emotions override my logic. I would always be the character that escaped the murdering psychopath, not the character that was only good for crying and bringing more theatrics to the scene.

I often wondered if my life would have been different had my parents both not been only children. I had no aunts or uncles, so I hadn’t been raised with any cousins to play with, grow up with, or learn from. As for grandparents, my father’s parents were deceased, the sympathy always a hit during election time, and my mother’s parents lived in France for whatever reason.

The dynamics in my household were also very simple; my father was the boss. Though my mother was just as successful as he was, and though she could make it on her own if she chose, behind closed doors, she did what he said, and it’d been like that since as far back as I could remember. If there was one thing that was agreed upon by all in my household, it was that appearances were everything. Honestly, appearances were probably important to every citizen in Carver. The illusion of perfection was the cornerstone of Carver’s reputation, so it probably wasn’t just my house that people swept their personal dirt under the rug and kept it there.

As I crossed the perfectly manicured lawn of Carver High towards the front doors, the hairs on the back of my neck began to stand up. Though most people would feel concerned by the eerie sensation, I was used to it. I no longer looked around to see where the uncomfortable feeling came from. I no longer worried about what it meant. Addressing it when I didn’t have to would only bring drama into my life that I didn’t need or want. Yeah, that statement contradicted a lot of my past choices in life, but I was fine with being a hypocrite. Again, I was all about surviving in this life, so let people think that I was weak. After all, they weren’t the ones living my life, were they?

Shaking off the weighted sensation, I made my way through the front doors of Carver High, the enclosed monstrosity making me feel like I was trapped inside a prison. Unlike open-ground schools, there was nowhere to hide here if you found yourself needing a moment. Unless you sat by the windows in class, you couldn’t appreciate the sunshine or the rain. There was no fresh air to be had anywhere on campus, except for our food court. Carver High came with a standard cafeteria, but because every student here had more money than sense, there was also a food court that offered other options.

Making my way to my locker, that was another thing that echoed how wealthy this school was. We didn’t have standard lockers like the rest of the nation, no. Our lockers were doubled in size, utilizing all the extra space in this outrageous building. Walking into Carver High, you could easily mistake it for a college university, though it really was just a high school for teenage assholes.

No one said anything to me as I made my way down the hallway, something that was my fault entirely. If anyone spoke to me, it was because we’d been paired up in a school project or something like that, and they’d absolutely had to. Apart from that, everyone honored my request to be left alone.

Well, almost everyone.

No matter what, horrible people were everywhere, and it was hard to escape them all. Those positive-forward thinkers like to believe that if they eradicated bullying in school, then lives would be changed for the better, but they were wrong. There were just as many adult bullies as there were teenage ones, and that was just a fact of life. Everyone was damaged to some degree, and those that believed otherwise lived a life of unicorns and rainbows, and good for them. Who was I to say that living in denial wasn’t the way to go? Dreamers were definitely a lot more happier than realists.

Placing my backpack in my locker, I grabbed my laptop and American History book from inside, reminding myself that I only had three more months of this left. I just had to keep my secrets for a little bit longer, and then I’d be free. I knew that things were going to be hard, but hard never scared me. Maybe it used to when I was younger, but not anymore. In fact, hardships showed us what we were made of, and I was okay with that. I wanted to be more than what I was.

My entire body froze when I felt his warm breath on my neck. I had no idea what he was doing, but I knew that this wasn’t normal. Over the years, we had mastered ignoring each other, and he rarely acknowledged me in public, if he even acknowledged me at all. It was a small act that I had considered a favor, even when he was sitting quietly on the sidelines as his friends harassed me. Years ago, I had made it clear that we’d never be friends, and though he wasn’t special in that regard, he had taken it personally, never letting me forget it.

I was caught in disbelief when I felt his hand wrap around the back of my neck, the pad of his thumb running up and down the delicate column. I kept my face forward, not wanting to acknowledge all the eyes that were probably on us right now. Now, while I wasn’t necessarily scared, I was wary. I wasn’t a fan of the unknown, and that was all that there was when it came to Chasin Carver. He was the only person in this entire town that had no governor, and everyone knew it.

I bit my lip when I felt his body press up against mine, heat enveloping every inch of me. I could feel my heart begin to beat erratically inside my chest, my eyes shutting tightly, trying to grab my bearings. Whatever Chasin was doing, I hadn’t woken up this morning prepared for this.

When I felt his lips press up against the side of my neck, my teeth broke the skin of my lip, my entire body left trembling as Chasin walked away, leaving me to wonder what the fuck was going on.

Chapter 3

Chasin~

I hadn’t meant to kiss her, and if she hadn’t been wearing her hair in a ponytail I might not have. I also wasn’t going to stay away from her anymore. Four months of not going anywhere near her had almost driven me insane, and I still had only three months before school was over, giving her the freedom to escape me for good.

Thirteen years ago, I had walked into Mrs. Stone’s kindergarten class, and even at that age, I had known how powerful my last name was. So, instead of going to play with the group of boys or going to meet some of the girls, I’d found myself walking over to the lone girl, looking at a picture book. Her dark brown hair had been braided down her back, and she’d been wearing a blue Care Bears shirt underneath her dark blue overalls, and they’d been rolled up high to show off her light blue socks.

It was telling how I could remember our exact interaction thirteen years later. For years, the scene had played over in my head at the most random times, and if I were being honest, it still did. I’d never had my five-year-old feelings hurt before, but Jett Morgan had hurt them deeply that day.

“Hello,” I said as I sat down next to the pretty girl.

She looked over at me, her different-colored eyes a little too big for her face. “Hello.”

---