The Wish

☆Chapter 5: Origin of lust

Harington High, the prestige schooling edifice for the elites, founded by our dear father, Louis Bermont, in 1956. Mostly notable for its charms and opportunity prospects, its versatility in teaching regiments and diversity in culture makes it one of the highest ranking schools in America today.

Though its initial goal was to make high end citizens even more grand in status and in class, its marketing strategy steadily modified over the decades, now accommodating students from poor households to make something out of them, in hopes of eliciting more candidates and more funds to sustain their luxurious establishment.

One would think that my first year there would be a dream come true, god gracing me with an opportunity few were only able to grasp.

I was lucky for an eighteen years old, having decent enough grades from my previous school, not to mention a tragic life story, which made everyone turn a blind eye on my age. I was a new toy for Harington to play with, a pitiful being in which it exacted god and I, naive and lost at the time as I was, thought it would be the fresh start to a new chapter in my life. Never was I to know that I was already setting myself up for great disappointment.

The moment I step foot inside this so called "paradise", any shred of dignity that I had was trampled and toyed with beyond repair. I was different and the rich snobs made sure to remind me of that on a daily basis. They saw me as a germ, a vermin that needed to be exterminated and destroyed.

I was their new punching bag on whom they unleashed all their frustrations upon and I slowly became an empty vessel, feeding into their guilty pleasures.

It started with notes being left in my locker, then things getting vandalized and then came the shoving, the pushing, things I would rather forget, initiating the cutting.

If they broke me, I never showed it. I was numb, having to take care of my sister, dealing with Nilah, the bullying at school, everything in general. My existence was bleak, gray. I was a zombie and at the edge of falling apart all over again.

I guess it aided my predicament in some way, as they eventually got bored of my expressionless reactions and moved onto greener pastures. But they had one more trick up their sleeves that I would never see coming.

The day that I met Reed was an event that should have never occured in the first place. There was a downpour of rain outside, as the streets and sidewalks accumulated masses of water, forming miniature versions of lacs.

It was dark, as the clouds soared through the skies, distorting any light that may have tried slipping through the cracks. Students, one by one, started leaving the school's premises for the day, returning home to a life of stability and wealth.

That day, I had left home early, not bothering to take an umbrella with me after a stupid argument with Nilah broke out.

The outcome would be me, needing to walk home in the downpour of hefty rain water, but that didn't bother me. Rather, the weather was a refreshing twist to the heated day I had experienced, that was in desperate need of dowsing. The pinnacle was yet to come.

Not wanting to return home just yet to the witch's den, in order to meet the devil's wife in person, I had decided to stall a little under the rain, enjoying the way each trickle of water bounced off my skin, sauntering about, as if I had all the time in the world, while passing pedestrians and other students, who scurried by for shelter, without a second to waste.

Trailing behind a group of girls, I would listen in on their conversation, the way they bonded, talked and laughed with each other, under the tiny, red umbrella they shared and tried visualizing myself in that group, that lifestyle, that normality.