Privileged

Brendan’s life is about to change. After dealing with traumatic experiences throughout his adolescent years, Brendan sees his friend, Aliyah, in a different light. Hoping for his luck to change and searching for ultimate happiness, Brendan and Aliyah embark on a journey together, but will it be everything he’s been searching for?

Warning: this book contains suicide.

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Privileged

Copyright © 2019 Mathew Di-Giusto

ISBN: 978-1-4874-2293-6

Cover art by Martine Jardin

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

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Devine Destinies, an imprint of eXtasy Books Inc

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Privileged

By

Mathew Di-Giusto

Chapter One: The Beginning

Dear friend?

I wanted to thank you for listening. Many people don’t realize this, but it’s a virtue all too often taken for granted. Although we will never meet, I hope you realise you already mean more to me than ninety-nine percent of the people I have ever met. I feel we are eternally connected, for you get to hear my last words. I just need you to understand something you will never understand. For as I write this, I still don’t, and I never will.

I will never forget the first time I felt helpless. It was a beautiful day without a cloud in the sky, and I had been at school all day. I went to a nice school located right in the center of our city. Our city, of approximately sixty thousand people, had a dozen primary and secondary schools. It was the second biggest city in the state.

I used to ride my bike to school with two of my friends, and we decided to stop at the park on the way home to play some football. We grabbed some treats from the local shop and kicked the footy around until seven o’clock, time to head home because of our curfews. I was all of nine, and Mum never let me stay out after dark. There was always a rule in our household. No matter what, we sat down at the dinner table and ate as a family.

Mum was the absolute epitome of what a mother should be. She had a good job and was always home by five to make sure dinner was on the table by seven. She cooked, cleaned, and drove us to all our sports. I did seven, to be exact. Never for a moment did I question how much she adored and cherished us kids. We always tried to take care of the chores to give Mum and Dad some time to relax after long days.

Tuesday nights were different. Mum and Dad were the treasurer and secretary of our football club. They had to step out to a committee meeting. This happened frequently, and I was left in the care of my older brother and sister. Ben was thirteen and had just started secondary school. He got into the best one in the region, and Mum and Dad could not have been any prouder.

Puberty hit Ben in the summer, and didn’t he love it? He went from being this chubby kid whose hair looked like it had a fight with a lawnmower, to the jock of the school with exceptional muscle tone for a thirteen-year-old.

My sister, Theresea, was eleven. She was short with brunette hair and one of the best netball players and swimmers in state.

After dark, you’d never see me out of the lounge room. I slept there as we didn’t have enough bedrooms. I loved it. It was a massive room, and the computer was there. When I could no longer run around outside, I owned the computer. My favourite game was a mythological war one, and I’ll never forget the irony of the level I was playing when Ben came in that evening.

There’s this level where you’re supposed to avenge this hero and his closest kinsmen because as the level starts, they’re slaughtered. No matter what you do, you can never save them. It was impossible. I was about halfway through avenging them when my brother ripped me off the computer chair and threw me onto my bed. He covered me in pillows before throwing punch after punch.

Some people might argue that it was a nice thing to do by putting the pillows down, but trust me when I say they did not soften the blows, not one bit. My sister bolted in halfway during my screaming and tried to pull Ben off, but he lashed out at her. As he pushed her, she fell back and hit the corner of the computer desk, splitting her head open.

Ben never paused. He immediately went back to throwing punches at me. The most upsetting part was seeing my sister cry. It broke my heart. He told us that if we told Mum and Dad, he’d do it again the next time they were out. The saddest part was, it was the truth. We had to lie to save our ass from another beating. Theresea and I patched up our wounds in the bathroom, and when Mum and Dad got home, we had told them we fell out of the tree and hit a few of the rocks in the garden. They were upset at us for playing outside after dark.

These beatings continued. I tried telling Mum and Dad at some stage, but they couldn’t keep eyes on me every hour of the day. I guess you could say with beating after beating, I got used to them, but one day my brother went too far. We lived in the suburbs, which made it lucky for me. I was outside racing my scooter around the pool when Ben came home from his girlfriend’s house. I knew something was up, and I always knew when I was in harm’s way.

You see, later in life when Ben was diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder, it all became a bit clearer. One of the ticks for when he feels the attention is not on him is to take it out on whomever the attention is on. Apparently, I was my parent’s favorite, and I never heard the end of it.

When he was upset, he bit his bottom lip, and you could see it in his eyes. It makes me sick to my stomach still thinking about his grey eyes and seeing nothing but anger. He chased me around the pool for what felt like a lifetime before he finally caught and tackled me. He dragged me over to the pool, laid me down beside it, and started pushing my head underwater. I don’t recall too much of the incident other than the breaks in between him forcing my head underwater. They got shorter and shorter. I was screaming loudly hoping to get the attention of my neighbors, hoping to get the attention of a savior. Luckily for me, my prayers were answered.

A man named Kevin popped his head over the fence and told Ben if he didn’t stop, he’d come over there and show him how tough he really was. Kevin stayed with me for twenty minutes until my parents arrived home. I was hysterical, an absolute mess, and it was agreed that Theresea and I were to not be left alone in the house. We had to go to Nan and Pop’s after school from then on. Although it was a major inconvenience on everybody at times, I always enjoyed heading to Nan and Pop’s. It could have been where my mother learned it, or to be so caring could be the duty of every grandparent in the world, but they had one agenda, to spoil Theresea and me.

Chapter Two: Three Thousand, four hundred and eighty-two kilometers.

I was eleven when my parents came and dropped a bombshell on us.

I’ve been offered a position in Victoria. It’s a really exciting opportunity, but we need to know you kids are okay with it before I take the role.

Dad explained this in a very calm manner as if the job had been on offer for months and he had practiced his speech every night since. The rest of the conversation that night went on for hours, and we were given a week to decide. Many factors affected our decision to move, one of them being that my brother had been expelled almost a week before. Mum and Dad thought it was appropriate to get him out of his environment. After a long week, we decided to pack up and move across the country. Three thousand four hundred and eighty-two kilometers, to be exact. We went from a three-bedroom one-bathroom house, to a seven-bedroom four-bathroom house. It also had a study, a theatre room, and a pool, all made possible by Dad’s new job. They paid for a lot of it.

Our first few days in Victoria were hectic. We went straight from the airport to our grandma’s house where we were met my dad’s side of the family. They were a big family. Grandma was one of eleven kids, and trust me when I say each one of those siblings went on to have quite large families, too. Not to mention their kids followed suit. Almost everyone was a new face to me. No one ever made the journey to Western Australia. It was too far away. Crossing the Nullarbor Plain was a pain, as it was seventeen-hundred-kilometers of just desert. Not a tree, just a few shrubs and very rarely a roadhouse. Western Australia. You could take a plane to New Zealand in half the time it takes to fly to Perth.

The rest of those first days were then taken up by shopping. We bought a new couch, a microwave, cooking utensils, beds—pretty much anything you can think of got an upgrade. At the end of the week came our present to help us adjust to our new lives. Ben got a promise of flights every school holiday’s back to Western Australia to be with his girlfriend. Theresea got a laptop and an upgraded phone plan to keep in contact with all her besties. As for me, I chose one of the best computers around, along with a comfy desk and chair.

I continued with my love for gaming by purchasing a new game and locking myself away in my room all summer, only seeing the light of day at the start of February for school. I struggled to recognize myself when I emerged from that room. In two months, I came out a chubby teenager twenty kilograms heavier with long, uncut, scruffy hair and a bad case of facial acne. After being in isolation for so long, I didn’t even know how to hold a conversation anymore.

The first day of school was the easiest. I had hoped just to fit in like I did at my old school. I didn’t realize that confident, sporty kid had gone into hiding. I went to school thinking how easy it would be to make friends and enjoy my schooling. Jesus Christ, have I ever been so wrong? All the friendship groups were already decided. They’d either gone to primary school together, met at orientation, or connected on the bus ride there.

I rode to school, locked up my bike, and walked into school with my head down. There were large groups of guys and girls, all talking having a good time, some even playing some down ball on the courts. Everyone seemed to know each other. As for me, not one person. I sat up the back of my homeroom in the corner with my head fixed in my book. As homeroom began, my teacher, Mr. Jones, called on me to stand up.

Everyone quiet, please. Although all of you are new to our college, many of us met on orientation day. Well, one student, however, didn’t get that chance, and he stands before me now. Brendan has traveled a long way from Western Australia, and I want you all to make him feel welcome. You may take your seat now, Brendan.

Could you ever just smack someone in the face? I’ve always been a docile kid. I never got in anyone’s way and kept to myself, but as Mr. Jones continued, Tom, the college hottie, leant back in his chair and whispered, Oi, Brendan, maybe you could have run here. Might’ve helped.

I never said a word, just sat quietly and listened to the people within earshot snicker at the cheap shot at my weight. I certainly wasn’t prepared for what high school had planned for me. Days went by, even weeks, but high school just got harder. At the start, I was optimistic about the possibilities of having friends and forgetting about Western Australia. Instead, my lunchtimes were spent hiding away in the library so they couldn’t find me. I would always run to my bike to get out of that hell and back home to my serenity as soon as possible.

I was seven weeks into my first year of high school. I remember clearly because my parents gave my dad’s old phone to me for my birthday. My first mobile phone, it was six months old and a brilliant little thing. A new present never leaves a teenager’s side for days, and my phone was not going to be an exception. Tom caught me using it between third and fourth period. That was a bad mistake. He and his little rat pack followed me into the library and cornered me before taking my phone. They laughed as one of them threw it to the next guy. Although I was big, I was a year younger and gave up a good half a head to these guys. James, Josh, Mitch, and Tom were very big boys and didn’t even care.

The words are still clear as day in my mind. Fuck back off to where you came from, and You could catch this, Brendan, if it was a cake.

One of the library ladies came to my rescue but arguably a few minutes too late. My pride and dignity were tarnished. I wanted to leave and never return. I still had two more periods which I begrudgingly moped to.

I just had to keep asking myself, why am I here? Why do I deserve this? High school isn’t for me. Just grab your bike and ride home. It’s hard to explain, but our school is on a hill. The seventh-year building is right next to the path I ride home. However, I lock my bike up near the twelfth year building down the other end of the school. Normally, I would stroll through the school, unlock my bike, and begin to cycle home. Not that day. I sprinted as fast as I could, choking back tears. I needed to be by myself for a while. It took me eleven minutes to get home at full pace, but that day I wanted it done in under ten. I began my ride down the hill. I was suddenly hit in the stomach at full speed with a solid tree branch. It was the rat pack. I fell over the handlebars, off my bike, and I couldn’t move. I was in shock and too much pain.

The bike was on top of me, and there was nothing left of my helmet. My backpack had broken open, and my books were everywhere. My arm felt like it was broken, and there was blood flowing from both my arms and my head. I was unable to see properly due to the sun shining directly in my eyes, but I recognized the voice. I felt a swift kick to