by Mia Perry
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Book Two: Run
Prologue
My life is a total misfortune. To start with, I came to this world as an “accident”. My father hated me before I was born. That’s strike number one.
I drive a 1989 Ford Probe GL. It stalls whenever the temperature goes below zero, which is about four months out of the year in Boston. I have to kick the gas pedal, swear, and pray for my luck. On the other hand, I can get a brand-new Porsche any time from my parents but I refuse to. You have to agree, that really sucks. That’s strike number two.
My boyfriend is a professional liar. I caught him in bed with that “my-boobs-are-bigger-than-my-sister’s” fat ass and he blamed me for being in a wrong place at a wrong time. Do I need to make an appointment to go back to my own room? That’s strike number three.
My life is pretty much doomed—you would think so, huh? However, my parents think I’m one of the luckiest girls in the whole world.
Let me show you why…
Chapter One
“Emilie, I believe you can find ways to entertain yourself,” she says with a stern face, looking at me in the mirror.
“But Mother,” I know I shouldn’t have said that but I couldn’t help. Huge mistake. But too late.
The stern-face queen stands up and turns around. “You know what?” Big trouble.
“Okay, okay, Mother,” I give up immediately. As a sixteen year old girl, I’m experienced enough to make a quick judgment. I know she’s going to say how important this party is. I know she will tell me it’s a business gathering to earn the future money for me. And she, my poor mother, has only four hours and twenty three minutes to ready herself for this extremely critical event. She is now absolutely, totally stressed out. My presence will be the last straw to break the beautiful camel’s back.
Do you know how often my poor mother becomes so stressed? At least two or three times a week. That’s how miserable her life is.
Besides, she has many other stresses, too. The major one is the competition. After being the Mrs. Bill Morgan VI for eighteen years, she still worries she may lose her grand title overnight.
Her husband, my dear father, is, of course, Mr. Bill Morgan VI. He inherited some decent business from his father, my grandfather, in the financial sectors, like money and properties in banks, insurance companies, and hotels. The family has a pretty smart focus—the suburban areas around Boston and many other cities. So, they are doing pretty well.
My father works as hard as his father. He works the whole day at the office. Then, he goes home and works again in his home office. And again, that’s for me.
If you think my father is stressed out with all the hard work, you are wrong. He has plenty of energy left after all the hard work. He then exhausts it all on the only hobby he has—chasing hot chicks, which can be those cute secretaries, the “don’t-waste-time-let’s-do-it-now-Bill” new-hires, innocent internship students, or God knows who, when, and where. As my father always proudly states, “You have to keep busy to keep young.”
I don’t know if that’s a true statement. But I know the cool fact—my mother is twenty one years younger than my father. That’s YOUNG.
Well, the fact was, my mother won the competition when she was “the cute secretary”. She bumped out the then Mrs. Bill Morgan and moved into the big house.
That’s why my mother knows how fierce the competition is. She knows a ton of girls are trying to become the next Mrs. Bill Morgan. She has to be on the guard 24/7 to secure her position.
Her bottom line is that her husband can do whatever he wants as long as he doesn’t come home one day and say the magic word—divorce. And again, of course, she sacrifices so much, simply for me.
I came to this world as a big mistake, I guess. My father was always a “roamer”. He didn’t want to have any kids. He wanted “freedom” and hated commitment. So, when my mother told him that she had me in her belly “by accident”, my father surely gave her a sour face.
Does he still hate me? Most of the time, yes. Oh, well, he may not hate me but he does want me to disappear from his world—when he is stressed out as much as my mother. Unfortunately, he is always stressed out.
Sometimes, however, he does show interest in fatherhood. That’s when we get into this nice father-daughter chat for hours.
“Emilie,” he would start with this brief “open speech”, looking at me as if I were a little alien from Mars.
“Father, I have to pee,” I have to get ready.
“Sure, go pee,” his eyebrows lock tightly. Sometimes, I really worry that they may become stuck together forever.
I go pee, get a big cup of hot chocolate or whatever I like at the moment, put on my bunny slippers, and make myself comfortable on my Hello Kitty bean bag sofa. “I’m ready, Father.”
“Great!” his deep bass echoes throughout the room. He sits down in his rocking chair and clears his throat. “Okay, how’s everything?”
I’m smart enough to understand what that means. It means my marks, nothing else. How good is good enough? My father has a “dynamic measurement”. That’s how he runs his business. I have to be better than the Emilie three months ago. That means I’m competing with myself all the time. I can never win. As my dear father puts it, I have to be ready for the competition because one day, I will have to take over the business since I’m the only child.
Our conversation isn’t always that stressful. After the serious part, I can always enjoy a long story without answering a single question. “When your great, great, grandfather came to Boston,…”
“The life was rough,” I smile.
“Exactly,” my father smiles, too.
Our conversation goes from 1770s, to the Great Depression, the WWII, the Internet bubble burst, and all the way to the stock and gold fluctuation at this very moment. My dear father wants his daughter know how the family made all their money and more importantly, how to make more money when his daughter takes over the business one day.
“Do we really need more money?” This is the question I always have during our conversation. But I’m smart enough not to ask.
Never. Unless I want to turn that interest in fatherhood to total cannibalism.
Being a kid in a rich family is odd. First of all, you seldom see your parents. Secondly, when you are lucky enough to see them, you seldom see them smile.
The kids themselves are odd, too. If you see a little kid who doesn’t smile, jump, run around, scream, and mess up things, he or she is from a rich family. They are not kids. They are little tools of their parents. Seriously.
For example, my parents only allow me to play with the “good” kids—the ones who belong to the associates and big clients. These kids are super nice to me because their parents want more money and more opportunities from my father.
These kids are too formal. They are the dwarf versions of the business men and women in downtown Boston. Their dresses and hair styles, the way they talk and smile, and everything else are way too mature. They keep their posture straight all the time. I bet they have to hold their asses really tight to do that. And that must be really tiring.
Slumber parties? Forget it.
Best friends? Forget it.
Girls’ gossiping? Forget it.
These little kids are wearing as big of masks as their parents do. They don’t like you or love you. They only like and love your money.
Most kids belong to a “Family”. For example, I belong to the “Morgan Family”. They live and breathe in the fa
mily. They have to get ready to take over the family business, grow it, and then pass it down to their kids.
Unfortunately, I don’t like this business world thing. I like to have real friends who can share the deepest secrets. I want to be loved by a boy one day because of me, not my family. I want to do what I really like, such as singing a song over my guitar or swearing in a bar.
My marks in high school are high enough for a pre-med program, which my parents are really proud of. They want me to go to a business program and finish my education as an MBA (or some other business shit), which I really hate.
I want to get into an art program, such as studying the rock music. This idea really pisses off my parents. My mother actually yells at me. That’s when I discover she has the perfect soprano voice of a world famous female singer. What a waste of her gifted voice.
My father is pretty cool. He doesn’t raise his voice a tiny bit. He doesn’t lock his eyebrows a single inch. But he makes it very clear: We are paying for your college education. So take a finance program or you are on your own.
For the first time, I made my own decision: To go my way.
My mother almost blacks out the moment she realizes I’m serious. “Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh,” she says. She sounds the world is falling apart right under her designer shoes.
My father is still cool, “Well, that’s your education. Let us know when you need support.” And then he adds, “Financially or otherwise.”
For the first time, I feel like they are my real parents, the man and woman with feelings.
Though not going their way, I’m not a disappointment at all. I get into the Boston University with a full scholarship. My major? Psychology. That’s the science of the study of human behavior and the human mind. I want to find out why rich family kids can hide so well behind their masks.
I can’t wait to begin my own life in the university with no strings attached to my parents. I want to prove I’m strong and independent. I want to find a boyfriend of my dreams, too. One day.
Chapter Two
Two years and three months later.
In the night of January 21, the first big snowstorm of the year keeps everyone home. It’s only 12º F outside.
Today is my darkest day of my life. What I saw an hour ago will be stuck in my head, like a cancerous tumor, for the rest of my life. I’m on a slow death row. That tumor will grow. It will turn into flesh-eating worms to drain my body and soul. It will duplicate itself in tens, hundreds, thousands, and then millions. These hungry worms will eat my flesh and bones when I’m awake and asleep.
My world turned from pink and romantic to a big pile of shit. Seriously, as a “good kid” in the Morgan Family, I’m not supposed to swear, or do anything against the highest moral standard. But at that moment, I did wish I would have had the most vicious magic power to send my boyfriend to the lowest world and burn him into ashes. Or better yet, to tear him apart and feed him to the hungry sharks.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t say a single word. I couldn’t feel or think or do anything logical. All I knew was ten minutes later, I left in my 1989 Ford Probe GL, the car I bought with my own money.
At the very beginning, I didn’t know where to go. Going home? No way! I don’t want to add salt to my wound. My ice-queen mother wouldn’t give me a single ounce of sympathy. My poker-faced father may tell me, “People in the Morgan Family don’t cry” and then go back to his work right away—if he happens to take a break tonight from those Mr.-Morgan-here’s-my-body types of sluts. I don’t think they care at all. They only care about themselves—himself or herself, to be more precise.
Do you know how a lion heals her wound? She lies down quietly and licks the wound. She waits for fate to decide what’s going to happen next. The wound may cure and the lion may hunt again; or she may die of exsanguination and hunger.
Slowly, I make up my mind. I have a clear picture now about where to go and what to do. I want to go to Florida. I want to find a job in Miami. Forget about this psychology crap. After two years of hard study, I can’t even read my boyfriend. It’s absolutely useless.
Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors. Psychology has the immediate goal of understanding individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases.
Thank you, Wikipedia, for this scientifically perfect definition! Can you please tell me how I can better understand my boyfriend with the “academic and applied discipline”? It’s a piece of crap that doesn’t work at all, okay? Maybe I should demand my money back from the university.
When I was at home, I thought only rich men were bad. Now I realize every man in this world is filthily bad! For them, the world is made of male and female. They can smell the next “opportunity” like a shark smelling blood from miles away.
Listen up, girls. If you trust a man in this world, you are nuts. The world is not pink and warm. It’s gray, black, and ice-cold. The world is not full of flowers and kisses. It’s full of shark teeth and crocodile bites.
I will never, ever trust a man again. I don’t need a boyfriend. I don’t need a family. And, of course, I don’t need a better education. I want to find a minimum wage job in Miami. I want to eat all the junk food I really like, and enjoy the sunshine the year round on the beach. Miami is going to be my paradise. It’s going to be the heaven on the earth for the lonely young lady that no one cares or loves.
I don’t see a soul on the highway. I own the entire I-95 on the East Coast. All I need is about five or six hours of driving. I will reach New York in the early morning. I will eat a BIG breakfast there, and then head all the way south.
I still have about a hundred and forty bucks in cash. Plus, I have close to five hundred bucks on my credit card—before I max it. It’s not a lot. But it’s enough to pay for the gas and food for my trip to Miami. I can then find a job down there. Or I can sell this piece of junk (if you still allow me to call it a “car”) for some decent cash.
My car is a total joke. I didn’t buy a car. I bought a “car” without an engine for two hundred and sixty eight bucks and fifty eight cents. It was not my idea, it was my boyfriend’s. He promised to make it work and I really wanted to see the miracle. My guess was, if he could make a car move with no engine, I might save some gas.
Unfortunately, my boyfriend (the smartest mechanical engineering student in my mind) was not that smart. Instead of making the car move without an engine, he found an engine in a big junkyard somewhere outside of Boston. You know those places where the rusty cars are crushed into pieces.
The car worked perfectly for us most of the time. We did many things together, including having hot sex inside. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a girl. I need good sex, too. Did you know that the sex not only gives you a good time but it helps you burn calories and reduces the risk of heart attack? It’s that important.
My junky 1989 Ford Probe GL was really our love nest. It was full of romance and memory. I swore I would never, ever sell this little lovely car. Never for the rest of my life.
Unfortunately, that's all history now. Everything I see, touch, or smell reminds me my boyfriend. I loved him so much but want to tear him apart now. I hate this car! I want to get rid of it. I want to send it to the junk yard and crush it into a million pieces.
I want to get a new car instead. The funny thing is, I can have one without lifting a finger. The moment I touch that magic button on my iPhone, my ice-queen mother will pick up the phone. As long as I can tolerate the half-hour soprano (maybe one hour, max), I will be picked up by one of her drivers. I will get a brand new Porsche (or whatever I want) tomorrow morning. I will become sickeningly rich again.
However, that half-hour soprano is absolutely unbearable for me. If I take that, I will have to take ten, twenty, or a hundred hours more of lessons from my mother. The way she gives me the lessons makes me wonder if she really is my birth mother. I will refuse to believe it, even if she
can prove by the most expensive DNA testing.
Chapter Three
My eyes focus on the road. Driving in a snowstorm is no kidding. I’m a city girl. I have never driven so far away in the night. There is absolutely no light at all. I see mountains, trees, and fields. Only a small farm now and then tells me I’m still in a civilized world.
The snowflakes build a thick wall in the air. I can’t see very far. I can’t tell where the road shoulders are. There is no way to see the lanes. Fortunately, there are no other cars around. I simply drive in the middle of the road. I’m driving at about thirty five or forty miles per hour so I can stop when an emergency occurs.
Suddenly, I smell the gas. The car shakes like in an earthquake. I push the gas pedal all the way down, hoping the car won’t do the usual. Unfortunately, it does. The engine spits out a huge plume of black smoke like what you see in a volcano eruption. It struggles a few more rounds with huge noises, and then goes dead completely.
