If You Could Only See

Chapter 1

Shane~

Sitting on the couch, pajama pants cladded and everything, I went over my fall semester schedule one last time. I couldn't believe that this was it. I was only two semesters away from graduating Blaineview College with a degree in business management, and I'd done it all on my own.

Sure, it meant that I had missed out on the hyped-up 'college life', but I didn't mind. Getting my degree and being able to feed myself had taken precedence over getting sloppy drunk and probably roofied. So, yeah, I was a twenty-two-year-old virgin, but I had put guys in the same category as getting sloppy drunk and probably roofied. No, I wasn't saving my lady flower for that special someone or waiting for marriage, either. I just hadn't gotten around to the dating phase of my life yet. I supposed that I shouldn't be so cavalier about my virginity, but I wasn't a big believer in true love or fated destinies. I had learned early on that people were replaceable and that my life was important to only one person.

Me.

Well, me and Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior.

Now, believe me, I wasn't a zealous religious nut or anything like that, but growing up in foster homes, I had prayed to God a lot. Only through His good graces, had I gotten through the system avoiding the deep evils that existed within it.

I wished that I could paint a sad, sorrowful, regretful story of my parents tragically dying in a car wreck when I was young or something like that, but that wasn't the case. My parents had both been drug addicts, and they'd both died with needles in their veins.

I'd been five.

So, I'd already been used to being neglected by the time that I'd been introduced to my first caseworker. Therefore, the systematic neglect hadn't bothered me much growing up, but the physical abuse had been something new. Still, with every lash of the belt and every slap across the face, I had bargained with God that I'd gladly suffer the physical abuse as long as it never crossed over to sexual abuse. He must have heard me and thought my compromise worthy enough because the random beatings had continued, but I'd been lucky enough to survive the rest of the darkness unscathed.

I had spent the first ten years in foster care keeping my head down and trying to remain invisible as much as I could. I'd wanted to belong somewhere permanently and had believed that if I kept myself from being an inconvenience, then I would be able to stay.

However, the system didn't work like that.

I had learned the hard way that, even if a foster family wanted to keep me, unless they adopted me, then they had to comply with the supply and demand of places for lost children. So, by the time that it'd all been said and done, I had lived with six different foster families, the last family being where I'd stayed the longest. They had taken me in when I was fifteen, and that was where I had fostered out of.

They'd been a decent family, and there'd been times when I'd felt like they really liked me. Still, by the time that the state had placed me with them, I'd already planned out a path for my life and not even their kindness could deter me from it.

The second that I'd felt comfortable and secure enough to think that I wasn't going to be moved again, I had taken night classes and had gone to summer school to knock out my high school credits. When I had turned sixteen, I had stopped the night classes, then had gotten two afterschool jobs, but I'd still gone to summer school to knock out more credits.

By the time that I'd been a senior in high school, I'd had two grades under my belt that boasted of straight A's and a healthy savings account. I had spent a lot of my senior year taking independent college courses, and when I had finally graduated, my transcripts had me looking like a genius, even though it'd been hard work that had deserved all the credit.