PROLOGUE
HAYDEN RYMORE
Why me? Why does everything always happen to me? It's always been at the times when I'm most happy, too, but mom didn't understand that. Nor did Jack's parents. Nobody but us probably knew the meaning of happy, and now I don't even remember the feeling after what mom did. In fact, I don't think I can ever be happy again, let alone feel any emotion except sadness. The story of how I ended up at Rorian Academy for Troubled Students started out like this:
It happened about three months ago when I met this guy at Starbucks. He worked there part time and was the guy that filled out the orders and gave people their drinks. I could tell that he was just like me too, and by that, I mean gay. Yes, I, Hayden Rymore, am a homosexual, another thing that mom doesn't approve of, but quite frankly, I don't give a fuck about what she thinks anymore.
Anyways, Jack and I got closer over the next few months and started seeing each other behind our parents backs. After our first kiss happened, we came to the conclusion that we should tell our parents, and that we would stay together no matter what they thought. Oh, how were we so wrong...
Our parents tore us apart, furious that we had lied to them, and even more by the fact that we were together. Jack quit his job and was sent to military school, while my mother just bawled and bawled wondering why she had to be cursed with a gay son. There's nothing wrong about people like me. We live and breathe like normal human beings. Being gay isn't a disease, either. It's just who we are, but some people aren't accepting of that.
After mom had finished with her whole crying session, she decided to send me to Rorian Academy. I can't blame her for doing so. After Jack and I were forced to end our relationship, I was destroyed. I lost interest in so many of things that I loved to do. I wouldn't talk, I would just lie in bed all day and wonder if I could ever feel happy again. But I always have a piece of Jack with me. Since that day, I wear a necklace. It's a heart with a chip in it, and even though it makes me sad, it makes me think of Jack, and it's the thoughts of him that get me through each passing day.
LACEY HASTINGS
Scars on my wrists and a bottle of pills by my bedside are what life has come to for me. Under my bed inside a box is a gleaming tool that inflicts relief rather than pain to me. The red tide is what I need to get away from it all; just open up a vein and I forget everything. But as every kid says, it was never my fault. It's HER fault. It's HIS fault. It's God's fault and the damn circle of life. Why couldn't everyone just live and never die? Why can't everyone be happy and never have to split up? Oh, right. Life doesn't work that way.
The knife and the pills came into play right after my grandma died. She was my life; more of a mother than mine will ever be. She cared for me and was the one that I turned to when times were tough. Her saying that she loved me was all I needed to get through the day, but I don't hear her voice anymore. I don't hear anyone's voices anymore. Like my grandma, they're all dead to me.
With grandma gone, mom didn't know what to do with herself; she was emotionally distraught, too, but tried not to show it around my brother Mikey and me. My brother being only nine, he didn't understand what it was like to lose someone so precious to him. For the longest time he just portrayed a blank face and would ask so many times in that sweet voice of his why I was crying. I wouldn't say why; I would only sob harder onto his shoulder and pull his tiny body closer to mine. It was especially bad on the nights that mom and dad would fight. Not having a single emotion in his entire being, dad would always yell at mom when she would start to bawl. It came down to one sentence that no kid wants to hear their parents to say: "I want a divorce."
After they split, I found no reason why my obsession with relief shouldn't be known to the household. I cut more frequently, swallowed more pills, anything to get the nightmares out of my head. And that's when my brother found me. Almost stone cold with a bloody knife and glazed over eyes. His screams echoed throughout the house and made mom come running. Even though I was mostly unconscious the entire time while I was in the hospital, I remember her saying that she didn't want to deal with this "problem" of mine. And so, Rorian Academy became my home.
SHILOH DACOSTA
Dear Mom,
I'm running away. Don't try and find me; I know I won't be missed. If you call the cops, they'll never find me. You're dead to me mom, and you caused this. You've tried to control my life. Everything about my life belongs to you. My clothes, my friends, even who I was allowed to love. That's not the life for me. I can't be happy like this anymore. Besides, what would you rather have me do? Run away and never come back like what I'm doing? Or would you rather let me stay here and live in misery only for you to come to my room one day and find your daughter hanging from the ceiling? The choice is up to you. Goodbye, mom. Have a nice life.
-Shiloh
Writing that note was probably the easiest thing I had ever done in my life since the day that I came into existence. Something was always telling me, though, that it was the wrong thing to do. I now know that what I did was the right thing, and now I could never turn back. I knew that my mother could always be a bit controlling at times, but ever since I reached the age of sixteen, that controlling part of her reached the red zone. She dominated my life, one section at a time.
First, she attacked my wardrobe, throwing out anything that she thought to be offensive and rude to society. My band shirts, anything that was dark or or blinding to her eyes and gave her already fucked up brain a seizure. Out in the trash. Bing. Bang. Boom. Done.
Next came my friends. Most of my friends were outcasts, like myself, and weren't exactly your preppy blonde cheerleader type girls. No. My friends were the ones dressing like the way that I dressed and had piercings on their lips or anywhere else. There was nothing wrong with them, but to mom, everything was wrong with them. Out with the trash they went, too. Bing. Bang. Boom. Done. Another victory for mom. A loss for Shiloh.
Last, and what drove me to my breaking point, was who I was allowed to love. My boyfriend was someone very precious to me by the name of JP. JP was smart, funny, loving, everything I ever wanted in someone, but he wasn't good enough in mom's eyes. To her, his choppy light brown and red streaked hair was too long and degrading to all men who walked this very earth. His skinny jeans and V-neck t-shirts that I adored made mom really wonder if he was just a girl in disguise. Bing. Bang. Boom. Done. JP was torn from my life forever. Mom wins everything. Shiloh wins nothing.
That's when I decided to run away. I had heard of this place called Rorian Academy. It's a place where troubled kids go when they had nowhere else, so I left. I packed my bags, left the note, and ran out the door, vowing never to return. I never would, and no one, not even God, was going to stop me.
NICOLAI WISCOTT
It seems pretty pathetic when you get sent to a school for troubled kids because of the person that you are. Seriously. That should be against the rules or something, but dad never did follow the rules when I think about it. In a way, I'm glad that he sent me here. Because here, I don't think that I'll get ridiculed for what I am. Maybe the kids will be accepting. Maybe they'll accept me for who I am. Maybe they'll be everything that my dad isn't.
I swear that my father is a Mormon, or whoever those people are that like everyone to be exactly like them. My father was one of those people. If people weren't white, straight, or had a house and a family, he blocked them out of his life. I fit in every one of those categories, except for the one about being straight. I don't even remember how dad found out that I was gay. Did I leave a note somewhere? Was it a certain way that I looked at some guys? Whatever the reason was, he found out, and right then and there, he thought I was the spawn of the devil. The beatings began as if he thought that he could pound the gay out of me. For five months I put up with the bruised ribs, the broken bones that I had to lie about to the hospital, the bloody noses, and the black eyes. Mom never did anything about them—she just watched, her eyes always wide and helpless like a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding car. I resented her for that.
Then one day after the doctors removed the third cast from my left arm, something inside me just clicked. I didn't have to deal with this. Why was I not doing anything about it? It was these thoughts that set me off and programmed me to be a ticking time bomb.
It wasn't all that long after that day that my father was doomed to be punished. I would make sure that he would never insult or touch me again. But maybe what I did that day was a little drastic. One night, I just happened across this gun that my family keeps around for security reasons in case of a burglar or something. I took the gun and confronted my father. He didn't even seem to flinch. He just laughed and said "a faggot like you could never be enough of a man to actually shoot me."
I shot him. Not through the heart or anything, but pretty close. I must have hit an artery or something because that blood just wouldn't stop flowing. Of course, mom came rushing in and saw what I had done. She dialed 9-1-1, and then Rorian Academy right after that. I was sent out there immediately without even a glimmer of hope of returning. As far as they were concerned, they never had a son at all anymore...
SAXON WULF
You wanna know what's the single best thing that exists in this world?
Sex. Lots and lots of sex.
I think my first time was in Grade Six when I had my "girlfriend" over for a sleepover. I say "girlfriend" because she wasn't really my girlfriend. We were just really good friends so every now and then we'd play this game called Boyfriend and Girlfriend. Before high school, we used to just hold each other's hands everywhere and I would kiss her cheek every so often. I'd get her chocolates and tell her I loved her, but by the time grade eight came around, I figured we could take things to the next level. We had read about and been taught about sex and ever since it was first explained to me, I had always wanted to try it. I seriously think I was born with the sex drive of a twenty five year old.
So that one night I decided to give it a go. She was hesitant at first, but by the time that we figured out what we were doing, it was pure magic and ever since then I've become addicted to it. I guess that's part of the reason why I'm at Rorian Academy now. No, scratch that, it is the reason why I'm here. I reckon I've screwed over fifty girls if not more since I was thirteen. I'm eighteen now. There are even a dozen guys in that mix, too. Don't get me mixed up with those gays, though. I'm one hundred percent straight, but a guy needs some variety every now and again, am I right? Girls get too clingy and want that relationship bullshit.
Anyways, it was around February which was a couple months ago when my mom finally figured out my problem…when she caught me in bed with her best friend. Jeez, older women are so much better. There's just something so sexy about how experienced they are and how they know just what to do. That's probably also why I screwed my Grade Ten English teacher…and my Math teacher for summer school. What can I say? Sex is great.
So when Mom also found out about all this (plus the dozens of condom wrappers under my bed and my secret stash of porn hiding in my closet), she sent me off to Rorian Academy. Not one of her smartest decisions, though. Sending me off to a boarding school with hundreds of attractive girls who need some comforting? I think of this more as a reward than a punishment, Look out ladies, because soon enough you'll be begging me to fuck you.