Stuck Between The Pages

Prologue

PROLOGUE: BELONG

I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in.
-Bjork

Keagan's

My entire life, I have been nothing but ordinary. 

My family fits into normal family stereotypes, I get normal grades, I play normal sports. My friends weren't normal and after doing it for so long I became really good at those sports and I started to get really good grades and then my family fell apart. 

But then I learned that those things, they're normal too.

So I was back to square one.

Because I play sports so well- -I'm my Varsity football and basketball team's captain- -people constantly assume that I'm the typical buff air-head. This is something that, when it first started to happen, I would make a joke or correct them but then it just got exhausting. I don't have to prove I'm smart, I have a 4.7 GPA and have been accepted into Yale early admissions as well as a scholarship that has nothing to do with a sport.

I know I'm smart.

The people at this school, however, they're either white airhead jocks whose parents are someone important, kids with rich parents or genius's -sadly the genius department is the lowest ranking population wise.

I'm from a middle class family, I'm a half-Italian half-Asian white-looking jock and I'm smart. This all means I don't stick out in the crowd.

Tell a college board something they haven't heard a few hundred times because I sure as hell can't.

Being a kid of divorce means a few things. 

Every week on Monday, I have to pack my things and my younger sibling's things and drive to either my mom's house or my dad's house from where we were at the other's. 

The next is that my stereotypically hardworking Asian dad instantly got a new wife, so now I have a new baby brother to complete the perfect family image. Because of this, my falling apart white mom became spiteful, so now I also have my mom's new asshole boyfriend to put up with. 

Finally, I became the third and most productive parent to my triplet twelve year old siblings -two boys, one girl. This could be a good thing, because they don't have to deal with my overbearingly weird and flakey mom while also dealing with a Tiger Parent but it's definitely still a bad thing because I'm not qualified to raise children.

Yet I'm still the one that gets them to school every morning. 

And picks them up from school.

And gets them ready for bed.

And goes to parent-teacher meetings.

And their sports games.

And father-daughter dances for my little sister.

I'm doing all this while dealing with my own school. With my own sport practices and games.

All of this, I feel guilty for doing because when I get stressed out I shut down making me seem like the airhead jackass jock everyone thinks I am anyway. The kids don't know how to handle that. I don't know how to handle that.

And I leave my best friend, Micah Rex, along with his friends, Chance and London, at parties.

He isn't just the life of the party or the regular run of the mill depressed teenager, he's a drug addict. An honest to god, work kind, life ending, career ruining drug addict.