The Guily Ones

No Witchy Business

School had always been a nightmare for me – Not that I had spent much time there.

As a teenager I got passed from family to family within the foster system across different states; I hadn't experienced much of the typical school routine. No one noticed when I was absent, and usually, no one cared.

I remember that in the early years, I actually tried to "make the best of a bad situation" by trying to make friends and talk to my classmates as well as catching up on assignments. But over the years, as sad as it was, there truly was no point to it.  I just became numb to it all. 

I knew I wasn't smart enough to get a scholarship to visit a university and I wouldn't be able to  get a loan. I knew I wouldn't get a job with the opportunity to climb a corporate ladder. The system was rigged and, because of my background and some bad decisions, I already had a record and fallen in with the wrong crowd. 

So why the hussel, right?

For a while, Tom was the only one who placed any value on keeping me on track with  my education, but when things eventually went from bad to worse with the Simmons family for the boys, I decided to run off with them eventually placing me outside the system for good.  

So sometimes I wondered: What would have been, if... 

What would have happened if I had actually finished high school?

What if I would have been born into another family? One that truly had cared for me, enough so, to help me further my interests?

What if I hadn't run off with my first love only to end up assisting in robbing banks? Get a record. Only to have the only family I had ever known, the only man I had ever loved, killed, leaving me behind a suspect, on the run, alone?

I had always figured, I would have been better off. That it had all been due to circumstance that I had ended up where I was. I had figured it had been bad luck. Maybe faith?

But Meg, sitting next to me in my car, babbling on non-stop had me reconsidering things...

Not because I felt inferior to her or because she had brought up school. It was because she had been babbling at me non-stop for a good twenty minutes about legends and theories of gods, spirits, and mythical creatures until I eventually wished my ears would fall off. How could anyone subject the children of this country to this kind of torture day after day? It was horrible!

I learned two things in that twenty minutes 

1) According to her, everything that had happened to me, was allegedly predestined, so I would have ended up where I am right now, drawn to Eric, one way or another (which I didn't believe, by the way)

2) I would have never survived higher education.

We were still trapped in my car on the way back, and every now and then, when her statements became particularly absurd and twisted, I toyed with the idea of pulling over and abandoning her in the wilderness.

Only a small, really tiny part of me held back, again, the same question running through my mind: What if? What if she was right? Even if just a fraction of the things her wild-haired mind had conjured up were true.

I mean, up to a few hours ago, I would have sworn witches were a myth. Then her eyes had turned purple...

The fact was, the last few days had been crazy.

And if I would have told anyone the truth about the real first encounter with Eric in New York way back when vampires had still been in the coffin (so to speak), I probably would have been locked away in one of those nice, white jackets that fasten in the back, right?