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Ugh. Change of clothes? I scan the car for my bag.
Check.
The jog across campus blurs by, a few familiar faces and the odd wave, a smile as I pass. I’ve been studying business at Sanctum Harbor State University for the past three years. It’s exactly what you’d expect, a lot of brick and white pillars. The classic, stereotypical movie university. The campus is nestled right in the center of Sanctum Harbor, spreading from just shy of the hills where all of the rich folks live to the edge of “The Woods”, as everyone calls the bulk of the residential neighborhoods.
Everything you see is what you’d expect in the Pacific Northwest and a smaller-sized city along the coast.
The campus is near the courthouse, the old square, the gentrified Main Street, and just far enough away from the docks that most people can pretend that the seedier aspect of Sanctum doesn’t exist.
So, it’s pretty much boring as shit.
But that’s the point, right?
Except that Sanctum Harbor isn’t your run of the mill town. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty quiet. Most people have never even heard of it. It’s tucked away in a nook of the coast, ringed by hills and cliffs. Which is why it was a perfect place for pirates and outlaws to start a town a few hundred years ago.
Makes it sound exciting.
Not that there are any ‘pirates’ left, other than people like me trying to make ends meet. It’s the sort of place where people go who don’t want to be found. You see it more down by the harbor, the old shipyard, the darker side of town.
You get a lot of “mind-your-business” looks from the average joe anywhere in Wharfside.
That’s just as true up on the hill. Every one of those silver-spooned tools in their mansions came from dirty money. Scandals, embezzlement.
I mean, I don’t really care, no judgment… but Rachelle says this place has always been a haven for… nonconformity. For the ones who don’t fit in with the rest of the world. Guess I wound up where I’m supposed to be. As long as I can figure out how to stay afloat.
Learning has always appealed to me, so I went to college as soon as I could afford it.
To pack my brain with knowledge, know-how, and just about anything that might help me along my way. It seems like if I could unlock all the useful things—math, business, history, and the rest of the basic stuff people are supposed to know—I could succeed.
Then I can force out all the other things that I've been taught, the stuff that’s been built in. Survival instincts. The hustling “money is power” mentality I grew up with.
You’d think that being used as a bargaining chip for my stepdad would have made me revolt against that sort of behavior, but here we are. I still have to get by.
Ride-alongs with Uncle Tommy and collections with Uncle Mickey showed me ways to play the odds in my favor. I wonder how things would have played out if they hadn’t died. Tommy drank himself to death. Mickey died in an… accident. With my protectors gone, things changed.
So, I learned harder lessons. How to set my boundaries, how to set my rules.
When I'm done with my studies, when I ace the tests, well, more like B- the tests, I immediately get to work on making that dream come true. Every day. Working on the life I swore I would make for myself here.
And if that means I have to break the law, or at least a few rules to get there, then so be it. I can always clean up my act later, right?
“Yo, Michaels!” a familiar voice yells at me from across the quad.
“Hey, Jake! I was looking for you!” It still takes me a split second when I hear that last name, to remember that it’s mine now. A final gift from my mother, a new identity that my stepdad knew nothing about.
I guess that’s one benefit to being married to a criminal. She had access to people who knew how to help you disappear. It was all waiting for me right there at Rachelle's house in a box she mailed to my real father’s last known address.
Jake rubs the back of his neck and gives me a look like he'd asked me something.
“Sorry, I kinda spaced out. A lot on my mind.”
“Iz cool. Just making sure we’re good for tonight? My boy’s gonna meet us there with the lighting rig. Set up at seven?”
“I was hoping for a little earlier…” I whip out my notebook like the nerd that I am. Lists keep my brain from over-cluttering and shutting down. “6:30?”
“Alright, alright. I can make that work.” He walks with me up the stairs before splitting off for his class. “Oh! I almost forgot, Dax told me that Lainie said that Todd told her to tell you to swing by Theta Kappa to see him between classes if you can.”
“Uh…OK? Why didn’t he text me?”
