Eastwood Academy

Chapter 47: Pretense (River's POV)

By the time Saturday rolls around, I'm a mass of nervous energy and dread. Today, parent's weekend at Eastwood begins, which means that my father will be on campus, and he'll drag my mother away from her latest French boy toy long enough to show up, too. We haven't spoken since our last conversation at the house, and I'd be happy to keep it that way.

Parents weekend caught me off guard, I'd totally forgotten about it until Tyler's mom called him last Sunday and I overheard them making plans to go out to dinner on the phone. As always, Brooklyn has been a great distraction this week, the time has gone by so fast I swear I blinked on Monday and now it's Saturday morning.

I'm probably the only kid here who fervently wishes his parents would ignore his existence. But no such luck for me. My father knows that pretending to love his kid will, in turn, make people like him, so he'll grit his teeth and do it.

Which means that I have to find a way to keep him away from Brooklyn. My mother, I could stomach meeting Brooklyn. She's so checked out that I don't think she'd do much damage aside from acting like she has a stick up her ass and a silver spoon permanently glued to her mouth, all of which Brooklyn is used to by now after surviving several months at this ridiculously stuck up school.

My father is another matter. He'll annihilate her just to keep me in line if he gets the chance, and I refuse to let that happen to Brooklyn, who deserves so much better. I also refuse to let my father continue to dictate my life when I'm so close to freedom.

I submitted early action college applications to UNC-Chapel Hill, Penn State University, University of Louisville, and Wake Forest University. All of them have great soccer programs. I could get a full ride. I also submitted applications to Stanford, Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and Duke, which, if anyone asks me when my father is in earshot, is where I'll say I want to go. Duke is my first choice, of course. Just like my old man, of course, I want to get a business degree, take over my father's work, and marry the richest girl my family can set me up with. That would please him.

But he has too many connections at all of those schools, or should I say too many minions who will bow to his every whim. If I go to Duke or any Ivy League, he'll continue to control my life. So, I'm going to pray that I get into the other schools that I applied to in secret. My grades might not be a perfect 4.0, but with a sports scholarship, I shouldn't need them.

I haven't told anyone what I've done, not even Tyler or Brooklyn. I just can't bring myself to talk about it. It kills me to admit it, but my father has me so beaten down that I'm afraid to even voice out loud any plans of rebellion.c

I had to get cash out of my checking account from my father and create a new one at a local bank to pay the application fees just to make sure that he can't trace the money to see where it's going. That's how fucking paranoid I am. I highly doubt he'd take the time to check my account, but I can't take any chances.

I just have to get myself and Brooklyn through this weekend without any disasters. Distance is my friend. I'm hoping Brooklyn will be so busy with her father that she doesn't have time to meet mine. Yesterday she told me that she's going to spend today with him, but is hoping that I can meet him tomorrow.

When I heard she had plans for the day I felt immensely relieved because today is the first soccer game of the season. Like parents weekend, this is a subject I also should have brought up but things have been so great lately that I couldn't bear to think about it. Going into the past only causes me pain. Pain that I know will be unavoidable today, but hell if I'm going to drag Brooklyn into it.

I know there will be a moment of silence for Imeria. My usual dose of guilt will kick up to an unbearable level, which will be made much worse by the fact that my parents are present. But at least I can go out onto the field and kick some ass to burn off the tension. Then I'll get my head together and meet Brooklyn's father tomorrow.

Thinking about meeting him has my stomach in knots. Yesterday afternoon when Brooklyn asked me if I wanted to meet her father. It was a tentative offer but she seemed excited at first. I agreed but quickly changed the subject before she could ask to meet my parents. I also may have lied to her again that I don't think my parents will show up because I can't have her near them. It's out of the question.

Brooklyn raised no objections, but her happy mood melted away. She was unusually quiet and reserved for the rest of the evening. Part of me wants to tell her everything, but she already has so much going on. I don't want to involve her in my shit, and deep down, there's a part of me that worries that if Brooklyn is exposed to my toxic family, she'll finally see how fucked up I am and leave me. And I can't let that happen. She's become my lifeline, my salvation. Losing her would be like being asked to breathe with no oxygen. I wouldn't survive. I also have to be careful not to go too deep into these thoughts. The ones that tell me I'm fucking crazy for getting in this deep with anyone again and that all it will cause me in the end is pain. Right now, all I can focus on is hoping that I can get through one miserable day with my parents, that they'll bow out, and I can meet Brooklyn's father and make a good impression on him.

Last year my parents stayed one day. They couldn't stomach more than a few hours in each other's presence. I spent the Sunday of last parents weekend with Tyler's family, chugging mini bottles of vodka that I'd stashed in my pockets and trying half heartedly to pretend that I wasn't drunk.

While Tyler doesn't know the extent of my father's recent threats against Brooklyn, he knows how awful my father can be and is ready to run interference if needed. He did it with Imeria before. My father would have done everything in his power to keep us apart if he thought she was a threat to the time I spent dedicating myself to soccer and my studies. Never mind the fact that Imeria was also a soccer player and straight-A student. I'm really hoping Tyler won't need to do it again. Because if he does, I know in my bones that this time will be one hundred times worse. Even though she's also a straight-A student now, Brooklyn's track record and background would horrify my snobby, stuck-up family. My father would blow a casket and do everything he could to tear us apart. And Brooklyn has a lot more to lose than Imeria ever did.

My phone buzzes with a text from my father telling me he's just arrived with my mother and expects me to meet them at the pain parking lot because we'll be taking the head of the school board Doug Stanton out to lunch. We're to meet him at the restaurant at 12:00 PM.

Brooklyn doesn't know it, but she's one of the only people on campus who actually has the power to destroy me because she also has a connection to Doug Stanton, through her father. When she threatened to go to him about my behavior at the beginning of the year I almost had a heart attack. Anything reported to him is going straight back to my father.

In the past that hasn't been a problem. It used to be the opposite, anything I did my father could get me out of. But over time I realized that for every boon he granted me, strings were attached. Around my neck apparently, because every time he bailed me out my father took the opportunity to tighten the noose.

Even with my father's influence, the only reason I'm still at this school is because the board has taken pity on me because I suffered a dead girlfriend and because I'm the school's star soccer player. But after the fights at the beginning of this year, I'm on thin ice.

My father knows this and is obviously using this lunch to make amends. He wants to show Doug that we're all one big happy family and that I'm now on the right track. He's not wrong; I am on the right track, but I'm just not the one he's thinking of. It's one that leads away from him. To freedom.

I'm tempted to hurl the phone across the room and pretend I never got the text because this fucking lunch is the last thing I want to do. The only bright spot about it is that I can hopefully get my father and Doug Stanton to donate to the fundraiser on behalf of Brooklyn. Of course, none of them will know that I'm putting the donation in her name. I've been monitoring her progress, and she's the only person who has a chance of beating Beth and Gavin. We don't talk about them much, but I know Brooklyn feels extremely hurt that Gavin is friends with her now. I still have to resist the urge to throttle him for double-crossing her.

Taking one last glance in the mirror, I make sure I look as presentable as possible. I'm wearing dress shoes and a suit, which isn't too different from our school uniform, but this one is much nicer. Unlike the casual way I like to wear my uniform, tie hung loosely, and sleeves pushed up, I've made sure that my suit is crisp and immaculate. My tie is perfectly straight, and the suit is pressed to perfection. I've never looked more like my father, and I hate it.