Page 1 of To Love or to Lose
Prologue
The ancient Greeks believed everyone was born with four arms, four legs, and a head that shared two faces that were once attached to each other in perfect unity. Until one day, the two beings were ripped apart.
They believed the soul torn from you—your other half, per se—was your soulmate.
I believe it’s bullshit.
There is no sound argument to the facade that two bodies could have ever worked together as one, let alone continued to function just as perfectly once separated.
No rationale could force me to believe every person’s main goal in life should be to seek someone else in order to fulfill themselves, because even though many feel they need something more than half of the soul they were originally given, I have always felt complete and content with myself alone—even if I am only a half of what should be whole, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Fairwood, Connecticut is an old money town filled with the richest of the rich and the snobbiest of the snobs.
It’s a town where everyone either sends their kid to the glamorous private school residing there or doesn't bother living in Fairwood at all.
All residents go on spring break every year, and most have houses either in Cancun, the Hamptons, or some other beach town built exclusively for the wealthy.
And even though drama runs rampant among the busy streets lined with designer stores and overpriced coffee, nobody bothers to mess with anyone who lives in Fairwood because there’s a ninety-nine percent chance their mommy or daddy is a lawyer.
This may be a large reason why every day feels the same at Fairwood Preparatory Academy, and why the kids who attend the prestigious school will likely fall into one of three categories.
At the top of the ladder, you have me—this isn’t my ego speaking, it is simply the lay of the land—along with every other kid who takes almost every AP class possible and dreams of becoming a doctor or a lawyer.
The next rung houses the kids who are averagely intelligent, but don’t care to show or prove it. Most of them have a job at their daddy’s company waiting for them anyway.
The bottom rung of Fairwood doesn’t exist to many, mostly because many do not exist within it. Kids who fail—or do not attempt to succeed whatsoever—do not last long at Fairwood Prep. They come and go, and most of them end up at the public school a few towns over, closer to Hartford and farther fromthe money-driven fiends. Ultimately, they join the kids who smoke weed under bleachers at football games and spend their weekends participating in illicit activities at the drive-in.
The point is, Fairwood is an easy town to categorize because most of the people in it are wannabes striving to be a slightly different, less exciting version of someone who succeeded before them.
And while I’m known for my intellectual abilities, I don’t bother mocking up a rebuttal to those who have tried to outrank me. They are the same people who want to become the best version of themselves, and they think to do that, they should aspire to be someone like me, which is simply not feasible.
Being around these people—being in Fairwood—has forced me to destroy parts of myself in order to prevent others from having them.
I don’t want people to attempt to stretch their intelligence to combat mine.
I don’t want others to know I wasn’t born to be brilliant.
I would do anything to hide that it could be possible for someone who is clinging to the second rung of the metaphorical Fairwood ladder to achieve the type of perception I have.
Maybe that’s me being selfish and wanting the glory of academic achievement all to myself, or maybe it’s my attempt at saving the rest of my peers from becoming so indulgent in their own brain power that they can no longer discern between what is real and what is all in their own head.
Either way, it doesn’t matter, because Fairwood will never be different.
September
Chapter One
266 days until graduation
Logan Callaghan has to be one of the richest people I have ever met, and I wouldn’t say I’ve really met him yet.
All I know about him are the basics: he’s the oldest and only son of the Callaghan family, and he’s in my year at school.
Given his age, it’s unlikely he’s the rich one, but based on the Mercedes he drove to pick me up from the airport, I can assume he has inherited a bit of his parents’ wealth.
I also already assumed through countless emails and phone calls with the Callaghan family before my arrival that they were, at least, wealthy enough to afford another kid for an entire year, but I could have never imagined this.
Logan and I made small talk the entire drive from the airport, and he pointed out key features of the town once we got closer to his house.
