she wants.
I am not that man. And the thing is, even when I tried, no
one allowed me to be. They still wrote the stories. They still made me the one
to watch. I am the man they actually want: the one that needs to be fixed. I am
the man that is exciting and scary and has every possibility of crushing you. I
am that man because they made me that man. And although deep down they yearn
for that man, on the surface, they hate him. That’s why they tell the stories.
And that’s why they laugh when he fails.
When speaking earlier of my dreams to run my father’s
company, I made an oath:
I will never be the person they claim doesn’t deserve
what he was given.
I’m sure when the article goes out tomorrow about my death,
everyone will say that I deserved what I was given. At least I’ll get my wish.
CHAPTER TEN
HUNTINGTON HEERALD
Bad Boy in the Library with the Newspaper
By Ashley Leigh
Teddy caused quite a ruckus in the school library last
week when he proudly walked in and slammed a newspaper down in front of another
student. When she made it apparent that his charms didn’t work on her, he
pulled her from her seat and led her out of the reading area. The female
student asked to remain anonymous, but wanted to tell the readers that she did
feel threatened, and would hope that anyone else who had been terrorized by
Theodore Vincent Stoneguard IV would come forward.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Teddy
I was staring at an article as the new memory took shape. After
heading off to law school, and after my unfortunate, unexplained running out on
Ashley, since my father couldn’t lay the paper in front of me every Sunday
morning, he took to having it mailed to me, opened to Ashley’s column. This
specific article was about how I had bribed a teacher to give me a higher grade
on a paper.
Let me just say right away that it wasn’t necessarily a
bribe. The professor was part of my game night, and offered me a higher grade
if I would be willing to forget some of the losses he still owed. I should have
turned him down. Believe me, I do realize that. In all actuality, I suppose I
deserved a higher grade on that paper. It was well researched, well cited, and
well put together. Looking back, I think he was the one playing me… but I liked
having him in the games, and he was on something of a losing streak. I figured
this option was a win-win.
Until it got back to my father.
I explained the situation to him, but it really didn’t
matter. In his eyes, the truth was irrelevant. What everyone believed to be the
truth was what mattered, and in this case, people believed that I had bribed a
teacher. Thank you for that, Ashley.
So yes, I was angry. I assumed she’d be in the library, as
she always seemed to be, so I grabbed the paper, hopped in a cab, and was at
the library in less than ten minutes.
I didn’t need to look far. In the center of the room was a
long table and she was at its helm, books spread out around her. She was
wearing a hat: one of those knit hats that looks like it should be a winter
hat, but people tend to wear them all day, as if it was some sort of fashion
statement. I don’t know why I was getting so angry about the hat. I think I was
just angry with her, and I was now finding ways to hate every part of her.
Which brings me to her glasses. They were thick plastic blue
frames, and they were falling down her nose. They were just reading glasses. I
knew she didn’t wear contacts; I had been close enough to her, had looked right
into her eyes enough to know that. What kind of a statement was she trying to
make with the blue glasses? It’s not like it mattered if they appealed to her;
it was the rest of the world that had to look at them.
Then she had one of those oversized scarfs wrapped around
her neck. Sure, it was winter, but it was at least seventy degrees inside the
library. Why was she still wearing the scarf?
But