Ethereal Love (Book 2 LS Series)

Chapter 32

Skipper's POV

I gather my courage again, re-opening Will's note and finding the spot where I stopped reading last time. I'm so confused, I have been since yesterday night's blank slate event, and I need something to occupy my mind just a little bit.

If I focus, I can remember little bits and pieces, but not nearly enough to make a chronological chain of events that I can follow inside of my mind. I attempt to push away the thoughts, and settle down to read.

I remember once, you told me that you knew nothing about me. At the time I blew it off... only because I didn't want to have to explain my past to you. I thought you might look at me differently once you knew about the not-so-pretty secrets of my childhood.

I know better now. I want you to know, so you have something other than this piece of paper to hold on to.

I was born in February of 1956, in Lafayette Indiana. My real father left when I was a young child (something we have in common, and something I didn't figure out until I was a little younger than you). Up until then, I thought my mother's husband, Bill Bailey, was my father. He was from England- he brought X to live with my mother and my other siblings.

X and I got along well, I guess. I learned to play the piano. We had good times as boys. My mother had a restaurant in town, while Bill Bailey sat around, getting drunk off his ass and throwing bibles at us. He was extremely religious, something that drove me to my strong belief in science. One minute we had TVs, and the next minute they were gone, and 'sinister.' He beat my mother. I studied medicine because it took everything in me to understand the material. And if all of me was focused on learning, then none of me was listening to my mother crying in the next room.

Things were relatively acceptable, until I was fourteen, and X was twelve. I was rooting around in some old insurance papers when I discovered my father, William Rose Sr. I had many names as a child, including that of my step father, but at the time I was called 'William Bailey.'

Once I learned that Bill Bailey wasn't my father, that everyone had been lying to me my entire life, I adopted my father's last name (which I later legally changed), and I went insane. Even medicine couldn't distract me from the rage growing in my heart. I assaulted Bill Bailey, I assaulted my classmates, I assaulted myself.

I was arrested over twenty times. It was for stupid things, battery, public intoxication. I spent about a total of thirty days in jail, over all. Around that time, I was diagnosed as Bipolar. I didn't care what happened to me, I didn't even care for science anymore. Everything was pointless.

I got arrested for the twenty-fifth time when I had just turned fifteen. That time, I didn't get off so easy. I was ordered to leave Lafayette, or I would face time in prison.

I ran away in the cover of the darkness on the night of February 8th, 1971, two days after my fifteenth birthday. I took a train to Chicago, the nearest city, with nothing but the clothes on my back, a few hundred dollars, and my library of medical books. I used that money to hitchhike and bus ride all the way down to Los Angeles, where I met a goofy six-year-old kid named Saul Hudson, someone you know as Slash.

I found him stealing from a music shop, some little black kid with hair bigger than his body. He took a liking to me immediately, following me around like some sort of lost puppy. I didn't like him at first- he had a British accent at the time. I told him to lose it, and he did, no questions. It reminded me too much of Bill Bailey and X, who had taken on my last name to avoid questioning. He took me back to his house, where I met his mother.