since I was a kid—leader of this fucked-up pack of misfits—
was not doing it for me anymore.
When I was younger, it felt good to be needed by the rest of the guys. We each had our own story, our reasons as to why we were all as fucked up as we were. And mine? The attention and the recognition I got from the guys was everything I didn’t get at home. It was always, “Be better, son,” “Swim harder, Bastian,” “You’ll never amount to anything, Sebastian.” It almost always came from my father. I was never good enough for him. I was either too privileged, which led to the lecture about his childhood and how he had to work twice as hard just to be where he is today, or I wasn’t deemed strong enough to take over his throne when the time came.
The great Benedict Pierce was a force all on his own. He was richer than sin and was amongst town royalty here in Ferndale. The town royalty consisted of the founding families of Ferndale. And even though my father wasn’t technically a “founding member,” he had amassed so much money that he had no qualms about buying his way in. He bought the town’s fear, their respect, and their admiration. That was Benedict’s biggest downfall, his fear of not being enough. He grew up with nothing, and oddly, his father brought him up the same way he did me, though his circumstances were much different.
My father grew up in a trailer park with white trash parents who swore up and down that he’d never amount to anything. He worked his entire life to try to prove them wrong and gain their respect. That was when he met my mother in Brazil. Born to a millionaire, my mother was an heiress who fell for the lower class. My father had a new goal. Rather than gaining the respect of his parents, he wanted it from my mother and her family instead. He wanted to be enough for her. Until one day he was. Then he wasn’t.
That was the thing about money and striving for success. You could never have enough of it. All the money in the world couldn’t make you happy. That was Benedict’s problem; he’d go the rest of his life trying to prove to the world that he belonged, instead of enjoying what he already had, what he had already built. It was a vicious cycle I could feel starting all over with me, but I planned on breaking it.
Because I would never amount to anything in his eyes, it only made me hate him more. It only made me want to prove him wrong. See, I didn’t want to be my father or have the life he has. I wanted to beat him. I wanted him to look at me one day and see everything I’ve built and then give him the fucking middle finger.
While I may not be as fucked up as the rest of the guys, it did feel good to be needed. To be someone’s leader, the person they ran to when they needed help and had no one else. It felt great for a while, until one day it didn’t. I was tired, tired of cleaning up messes and tired of worrying about everyone else.
We wanted different things out of life. All they wanted to do was this shit: the partying and the fucking, while I just wanted to go to college without carrying someone else’s baggage on my shoulders. The guys hated the fact that Summer was always around because, in their eyes, she was an imposter in our brotherhood. She was the reason they could feel me pulling away. Only it wasn’t her at all. It was me.
We were going to be eighteen years old. It was time to grow up and be adults. I was relieved we were all parting ways after high school and going to different colleges. Our friendship from toddlers to children to teens had grown murky. I’ve seen the guys do things I wish I could forget. Hell, I’ve done things I wish I could take back. I’ve participated in acts I didn’t want to be part of. It felt easier for us to just separate. The Savages couldn’t last forever. Nothing good ever did.
They were my brothers, and even though I loved them to death, it was getting harder and harder to rein them in. We all wanted different things out of