Free Ace's Fall by Erika van Eck

s tage o ne:
     
    Experimentation
     
     
    w hen I was growing up, I never thought I’d become a drug
addict. I mean, who looks at their future and thinks, “Yep, I’m
definitely going to try every drug imaginable to get rid of this
hole in my chest.”
    No one thinks that.
    If they do, then they had a way
shittier upbringing than I had.
    I grew up in Beverly Hills.
That alone probably speaks volumes. My family had money. But the issue was
that there was no support system. I don’t think back too much to my childhood. I remember
glimpses before my parents died, and there isn’t one positive
memory in the bunch.
    Sad, isn’t it? I’m not
saying there weren’t any good memories. I’m sure there were, but
for some reason, I can’t summon one. The only
good memories are of Nate and some of our more entertaining
nannies. The only thing I remember about my parents was
their obsession with my and Nate’s appearance. I can recall one
instance when I fell from the tree in our backyard; I couldn’t have
been more than five. It was a rare occurrence when my mother was
actually home. I ran to her crying because I saw blood and it
freaked me out. She ended up being more concerned about the damage
to my clothes than to my injuries. After that, I wasn’t allowed to
step foot outside. She said if I was going to act like a pig then I
didn’t deserve outside play. Just goes to show you the kind of
mother I had. My family may have been wealthy with money, but they
were in no way wealthy in family values.
    Their passing was a tragic freak
accident. They were on the way home from a charity event when my
dad lost control of the car and it flipped twice before a tree
stopped them. They died on impact.
    I never cried. Even though I was a child when it happened, I don’t ever remember being
sad from their passing. I was only angry that they left me before I
could see the “nice” side of them. In part, I guess you could blame
how young I was and how entitled I grew up. There were times when I
thought something was wrong with me for not crying.
    Nate took it really hard.
He went through a
whole year where he didn’t talk. If he
wanted to communicate, he’d write it out on a pad of paper. He
eventually grew out of it, but there has been something off about
him ever since. I guess you could say the same about me.
    We ended up moving in with Grams
because she was our only living relative. Grams accepted us with
open arms, and she gave us the motherly attention that we craved. I
was sure my mother was at one time nurturing to us—I hoped so
anyways. Even before my parents passed, I used to imagine them
having different reactions to our situations. For instance, when I
fell from the tree, instead of my mother making a huge deal of the
fact that I ruined my clothes, I imagined her cleaning me up and
wiping away my tears while she softly sang to me. I eventually grew
out of those daydreams and just became a bitter guy.
    My father was a lawyer for the rich and
famous, and I didn’t see him much. My parents fought a lot, their
memories were riddled with their nightly arguments. The wall
muffled the yells, but they always ended with my mom throwing
something, crying hysterically, while my dad grabbed his keys and
left. Their yells frightened me, but the second my dad left, Nate
would be there hugging my mom and drying her tears. He was ten. She
never hugged him back, but she didn’t deny him either.
    At one point in a
very short time in middle school, I considered myself straight
edge. I refused to let peer pressure have any effect on me. That
was one thing about myself—I was stubborn as shit. Other people did
not easily sway me. If anything, I swayed them. I guess you could
say I got my persuasion from my hotshot lawyer father.
    Instead of submerging myself in girls
or drugs like my other classmates were starting to do, I fell in
love with music. All kinds of music, though my main love was rock.
I loved how there was such a rawness to