But at around the age of six, people had started taking notice of my intelligence, and it was soon discovered that I had quite the I.Q. My parents, being forward thinking people, had begun saving money early on, in hopes of getting me into Blackstone. Everyone in the country knew what kind of futures Blackstone could award people, so when my I.Q. had been confirmed, my parents had started saving as much as they could to get me there.
At first, they had made great progress, but when my sister had come along, so had additional expenses. My father had gone to working nights because the night shift for Dayton police officers came with a differential in their paychecks. It wasn’t until recently that my father had gone back to days. With me graduating soon, he wanted to make sure he was home at night and there were enough officers in the DPD that had been eager to switch shifts with my dad for the differential. And I had gotten a job as soon as the law had allowed me to, and I worked as a mechanic after school for a local auto body shop.
All in all, we had been able to swing three years at Blackstone, instead of the preferred four. But with my I.Q. as high as it was, I hadn’t fallen behind or struggled to keep up. And I had chosen working my ass off to pay for the tuition in lieu of applying for scholarships and loans because I wanted to save that for college. With my grades being what they were, I knew I’d have my choice of colleges, but money would still be an issue. Even if I got a free ride with school, I would still have to find a way to support myself wherever I went. I couldn’t eat textbooks, so to be able to leave BPA debt-free was a real advantage.
One of the many downsides to Blackstone was the sheer number of entitled pricks that attended, though. Even if you put all the scholarship kids and working-class kids together, we were still outnumbered ten to one. It was like fighting against the power of quicksand, only instead of grains of sand threatening to pull you under, you were drowning in narcissistic fuckwads.
They were goddamn everywhere.
Luckily, I’d manage to make friends with enough people that they were able to distract me from all the bullshit around me.
Davion Morrison, a scholarship kid, had ended up becoming one of my closest friends and my best friend at Blackstone. Where I had brown hair and brown eyes, Davion had dark blonde hair and classic blue eyes that made him look like he belonged here. Of course, not all wealthy people were blonde-haired/blue-eyed, but that just seemed to be the coloring associated with the wealthy and elite. I had him by two inches in height, but his presence always mattered in a group setting.
And even though Blackstone Prep was a huge part of my life, my life didn’t revolve around it. School was my first priority, and I worked at the auto shop four days a week, sometimes on the weekend if they were shorthanded, but I still carved out time for my family and friends. I hadn’t walked away from my childhood friends once I started attending Blackstone, nor did I begin to ignore my sister since she was so much younger than I was.
And as for girls, I had learned the hard way that I needed to stick with my own. Oh, there’ve been plenty of girls at Blackstone who have offered to wet my dick for me, because rich chicks really did love to go slumming, but I was smarted than my hard-ons.
While I couldn’t or wouldn’t deny that pussy was the best thing ever created for man, it still wasn’t worth my entire future. I didn’t need some angry father storming the castle of Blackstone, demanding my head, because I sullied his precious, pristine daughter. I didn’t need to get kicked out of a school my parents sacrificed for just for momentary satisfaction. Plus, there were plenty of girls in Dayton who weren’t saving it for their future husbands. If I needed to get laid, I had ‘friends’ for that.
But even with the suffocating feeling of attending Blackstone Prep Academy, it’s done a great job of making sure I never turn into an asshole. I was surrounded with too much of exactly what I never wanted to become. I knew that, no matter what I go on to do in life, I will do it knowing how to treat people right. The plan was law school, but if that didn’t pan out, I had other backup plans in place. But, again, no matter where my life takes me, it’ll be as a decent human being.
My sophomore year, also my first year at Blackstone, I had been handed my first lesson in trusting the people who went here. It had been a hard kick in the teeth to see how fake and uncaring these people really were. But not just to me, but to each other as well. Human emotion was a foreign thing to these spoiled rich kids. They all had one god and it was money. And its archangels were power and status. The Lord, Michael, and Gabriel had been replaced with money, power, and status. And the Devil? He was their confessor. He was the one that kept telling them it was okay to be horrible human beings to one another as long as it begot them more money, power, or status.
I wish I could say it had been just a simple case of having your heart broken, because most everyone gets over a teenage heartbreak, but it had been more than that. Coming from a good life with a good family and friends, I’d never experienced blatant cruelty before. Sure, growing up I saw kids get picked on, but I’d never experienced straight-faced nastiness. And while I hadn’t been naïve even at that young of an age, I just hadn’t expected the harsh reminder of how important social classes were to these people.
I’d had more than my heart broken; I’d had been disillusioned in the most unforgiving way. It had changed me. I had gone from a kid who had always given people a chance to a guy who made people earn his trust now.
It was fucked-up.
And even though I was surrounded by the upper class on a daily basis, I ignored them. I was able to see right through them and only focus on school and my real friends. It’d taken only four months, or so, of being at Blackstone before I’d finally been able to walk through the hallways without registering a single one of them. If you asked me anything about anyone who went here that wasn’t on scholarship or working-class, I couldn’t tell you a thing about them.
Self-preservation.
I was all about self-preservation.
It had also only taken three fights before these stuck-up assholes had finally learned not to fuck with me. Even though most BPA students stuck with their own, there’d still be a few assholes who got off on making our lives hell for daring to be better. However, my father had always been big on protecting ourselves and others. He made sure I could swing my fists if I ever needed to defend myself, my sister, or my mother. I knew what I was doing when I fought. I didn’t fight wild. I didn’t fight undisciplined. I fought like a fighter, and that was something a few of these dicks had learned the hard way.
“Dude, you look like you’re about to tear someone apart.” I turned and saw Davion strolling into the music room. “I thought music was supposed to soothe the wild beast?”
I laughed. I’d been sitting at the piano for a bit, but nothing had been feeling right. Along with a high I.Q., I had a gift for music. The piano was my favorite, and Davion was right; music usually did soothe my demons, but today I was missing the mark.
“What are you doing?”
He grimaced. “Hiding,” he admitted, and I shook my head. “What?” he asked all wide-eyed.
“I told you not to fuck with these rich bitches.”
Davion sighed. “I know, I know. But…my dick’s weak, man.”
I huffed. “So, are you hiding again because she wants more, or are you hiding because now she’s regretful?”