Needed You

Chapter One

The problem with Merridge was that people lived to die here. The wealthy owned too much to ever want to leave, and those along the Slipway had so very little they had no choice but to stay. For every child born here, there would be a plot in the cemetery waiting for them for the next eighty years.

Some kids might do well in school - travel internationally on trips, hold on to a scholarship like a lifeline - they might have the opportunity to get out, to experience a life outside this shitty little town. Yet, they always came back. The wealthy ones because there was a fortune they would inherit that they couldn't bare to lose, those along the Slipway burdened with the guilt of leaving the community that kept them alive. Be it for loyalty or money, they always came back.

Twenty five years, and I've only ever heard of one tale of someone turning their back on Merridge for the long haul. She fell in love in college, said yes when he proposed, and she had nothing to come home for. No living relatives, no money saved away. He offered her more than Merridge did, and it was enough for her never to come back. Somehow, that made her a villain in the towns gossip, as though it was a crime for her to have done better than them.

There was another problem with Merridge too - the community was small, and severed. Everyone knew everyone, and half of them hated the other. It made for somewhere that wasn't a nice place to live. Of course, the wealthy, huddled over the bridge, they could hide themselves in their ivory towers, could share their disgust with one another, and do all in their power to stay away from the Slipway. Those people, they did not see much need to cross the bridge, unless it was to cause trouble. Which they did often - not for fun or out of spite, not always at least - but usually because the Eastbridge assholes had done something to piss them off.

In keeping with that, no one in Merridge had thought to separate the children in schooling. There remained, as there always had been, three schools. An nursery, up until children reached six, a primary, where children stayed till thirteen, and a secondary, where they would remain until they were eighteen and legal to leave education. Maybe their parents liked that the rivalries started young. I often thought it might be a way to make sure that Slipway and Eastbridge never found common ground. God forbid Merridge ever became anything close to harmonious.

I hate it here.

There was a moment, a few years ago, where I thought I might've loved it. Loved them. Loved him.

It's best to start there.