Unloved

You know what’s fucking messed up? Sending someone to the godforsaken arctic over a dumb accident. But that’s exactly what fucking happened to me when my dad called me last Thursday. I still can’t believe that he’s sending me to Norway just because I did some underage drinking in Switzerland.

Well, in all honesty, it wasn’t just underage drinking. I got pretty shitfaced, and I told this girl in a bar I was eighteen when, in reality, I just turned fifteen. Anyhow, she and I did some drinking and some flirting, and then we went back to her place.

Everything was going fucking fine until her husband, yeah, HUSBAND, walked in on us. The dude was so fucking pissed. He started yelling in German and practically threw me out. A few days later, the headmistress, sour old shrew, called me into her office and told me that the woman’s husband had reported me and the school had already alerted my dad of the ’scandalous situation.’ The haggard old witch told me that I wouldn’t be coming back next year and that my dad would tell me the ’other arrangements' he had planned for me, which meant what it always did: a new school.

My dad, the all-encompassing Hollywood director David Lockwood, had never really cared about what I did. In fact, neither of my parents gave a damn about what I did. Giselle Lockwood, now Hunt after the divorce, hated having to be a mother. She thought it would affect her career too much. Neither one of them wanted me in the divorce, which wasn’t a surprise really. I was thrown to a dozen nannies until I could go to school, and then I was sent away to some fashionable European boarding school to be as far away from them as possible.

I’ve been in a record-breaking eight boarding schools since I began going to school, a feat that’s truly astonishing. The press has even nicknamed me the 'trailblazer' since I’ve been kicked out of boarding schools all over Europe, blazing a trail of newsworthy scandal.

I honestly thought that what I did wasn’t even that bad, but, apparently, it was so appalling that even Hollywood money couldn’t buy me out of it. Of course, just because my dad’s money couldn’t buy me out of trouble doesn’t mean it can’t buy into some new trouble, and so I’m whisked off to the far north to some new fancy school. What am I even supposed to do there, make friends with fucking polar bears? But it doesn’t matter what I do as long as I’m not bothering my parents.

Even now as I’m sitting on the private jet my dad sent to escort me to the Arctic, I can still hear his deep, dispassionate voice in my ear.

“I hope you will not cause more trouble, Alexander,” he said, all stern and serious. "Tankesmedis is not a boarding school, so I’ve made other arrangements.” He then went on for another half hour about the 'arrangements' he's made, basically just that I’ll be staying in an apartment in Oslo with someone to watch me 24/7. I roll my eyes through all of it.

When I get to Oslo, the city is fucking sleeting. I can’t see a fucking thing through the fucking ice and snow and darkness. I’m stuffed into a black SUV and brought to the apartment I was told about. Frida, of course she’s named Frida, the housekeeper, meets me when I get there, a tall, lanky woman with gray hair. Her English is intelligible, at least, because God knows I’m not going to learn Norwegian. There would be no point even trying to learn the language. I probably won’t be here this time next year.

The apartment is both swanky and bare at the same time. It's got all of the state-of-the-art shit that money buys, and all of the rooms are designed in that hotel minimalism that makes things feel temporary. It fits me pretty well, though. I always have places to live and never a home. There are floor-to-ceiling windows in every room of the apartment, so I can contemplate throwing myself off the ledge at any time I like. Frida walks around me fussing like a hen, yapping about this and that, like I care. When I finally got rid of her, I locked my master suite door and collapsed onto the cold queen-sized bed made with newly starched bedding.

I can’t fucking believe I’m trapped here. The only consolation for being here in this icy hellscape is that I won’t be here for long. As I lie on the soft, springy mattress, I feel the day’s exhaustion catch up to me. I honestly wish I were drunk right now. I really can’t do this sober.

My mind starts to vibrate inside my skull, and I reach into my bag and pull out a little yellow bottle. The little blue pills inside shook like maracas as I lifted the see-through bottle to my eyes. I’d first gotten hooked on the stuff a year ago. Zachery, one of my closer acquaintances, had sold me a bottle at the beginning of last year. Zach had been the in-house drug dealer back in my last boarding school. He’d called the pills some weird name with too many vowels. I call them happiness. They made me feel a little less like I was going to burn the entire city down.

I only had one bottle left, and it was already half empty. I left in such a hurry that I didn’t even get a chance to buy some more. This was a temporary problem, though. Wherever money was, two things followed: gold diggers and drugs. And I never went anywhere without money. I was positive that I’d be able to find a new dealer before my stock ran out, so there wasn’t anything to sweat over.

I popped a pill into my mouth in one swift, well-practiced motion. I didn’t take it with water, so I felt the pill linger a little near my throat before I swallowed hard, forcing it down. Even before it hit my stomach, I could feel the world quieting down and my breathing slow. My eyelids began drooping heavily, and, before I knew it, the world was dead to me.

The morning came whether I liked it or not. Frida came in strutting about like a chicken, telling me to wake up. I honestly want to tell her to chill the fuck out. The sooner she realizes how pointless her job is, the better we’ll both have it.

I did have to get up, though. I dragged my body into my dumb-as-shit maroon uniform, struggling slightly with the top button of my newly pressed white shirt. All of this was done on autopilot. I only really woke up after the pill I popped in the bathroom kicked in. I counted the last of the pills. I had eight left. That meant a week tops before I ran out, so my first priority today was finding a guy.

I had a driver. That was good at least, because there was no way I was going to walk to this school on foot.

When I got to the new orphanage my dad had his assistant pick out, I saw in large gold letters above the open gate "Tankesmed Lærested," whatever that means. I can’t even pronounce this school’s name. The grounds were much like any other bland European school: old stone buildings, moss-covered steps, lots of fucking grass. It was smaller than a lot of my other schools, since it was in the capital and not the mountains.

I’d been told that all the students needed to attend the first school assembly of the year in the auditorium, but I couldn’t fucking care less about listening to another crusty relic lecture me about ethics or whatever, so I decided to take a stroll instead.

The grounds smelled damp after the sleet yesterday night, and the trees were still pretty bare in early autumn. There wasn’t much to see, to be honest, and the cold air was biting me like a teething toddler, but I still wasn’t in the mood to go to the auditorium, which I had found a while ago.

There was no one about, just me in my maroon blazer and maroon pants kicking pebbles everywhere, wondering how the fuck this was my life. My dad hadn’t even bothered to call after he told me I was coming here. My mom hadn’t called at all. I guess it wasn’t her turn to deal with my shit. They never called unless they had to, or they needed something. I might be a bother as their kid, but I was a damn good prop for magazine photos.

“Alexander Lockwood?” A voice from behind me called in accented English. I turn to find a guy wearing the same maroon uniform as me standing a few feet away.

“Yeah?” I answered, wondering if this guy knows me from a dumb press junket or whatever. People didn’t recognize me like they did my parents, especially my mom, but it did happen a couple times, all in the states, though.

The guy sort of jogged up to me a little, and, up close, I realized how fucking tall he was. I swear he was like seven feet. He had dark black hair and soft brown eyes, and, admittedly, he was unfairly good-looking. I mean, this guy had the fucking face girls would salivate over.

“I’m Paul, uh, Paul Eriksen. The headmistress sent me to get you," he said, coming up to me, gesturing behind him in the direction of the auditorium. I roll my eyes. How the fuck did she know I was missing? How many fucking people are in this bitter hellhole?

“Yeah, I don’t feel like it,” I say to him.

Paul’s eyebrows shot up, surprised, and a playful smile broke on his face, revealing two adorable dimples. “Really? Why?”

I’ll admit that I was a bit thrown by the question. People usually like to lecture, not ask, but I had an answer. “Because I don’t need to hear clichés from that old-as-shit dingbat.”

Paul smiled even wider for some stupid reason. He really was very good-looking, not like ruggedly handsome but more beautiful, like a piece of art. His features were soft and gentle, a little different than your typical Viking, but he definitely had the height. I felt a bit jealous standing, literally, in his shadow as the sun rose in the east.

“But you’ll miss out," he said with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

“On what?”

Paul put his hands on his hips and turned to look back at where the auditorium was. He turned back grinning, and I wished he would get to the damn point.

“We have a bet on how many times Dean Gjerdrum says 'okay' in English," he said, rolling back and forth on his heels.

“So?”

“So, we’re going to drink that many shots at the party later. It’ll be fun. You should come.”

That interested me. A party was somewhere I might find a dealer. I highly doubt these Norwegian kids party much differently than the other snotty Euros. There will definitely be some shit being passed around, and I might just be able to find the source.

“Sure, I’ll go," I said with a shrug. Paul’s pretty face lights up, and he turns, motioning for me to follow him to the assembly. I still don’t want to go, but, for my sanity, I’ll go listen to the resident bore say some boring-ass shit.