"Oh, let a father's curse be on thy soul,
And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb;
Be both, on thy gray head, a leaden cowl
To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom."
— PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
***
JAMES BISHOP HADLEY IS THE EPITOME OF OLD MONEY. He knows this. His friends know this. None of them care. For them, life is in the spaces between yachting trips and exotic vacations, between the pleated skirts of girls and the bruised knuckles of boys. They exist in stasis. Their legacies are endless. Their lives are as assured as they are, planned from point A to B. They've been raised to believe that what lies on the other side of adulthood is a golden plaque with their names on it.
It's a belief that comes crumbling down once Hadley finds out he might not live to see adulthood.
***
a/n: wow. first book on wattpad! exciting! lets hope this gets some reads! hehe
edit circa feb 2017: wow look at the fucking goober I was! anyways content warning for some pretty heavy stuff which I didn't add when i first started this thing because uh i had no idea what I was doing so warnings for:
- depictions of child abuse
- mild gore?
- swearing? is that a thing that needs warning?
- REVERSE RACISM haha jk that isn't a thing that exists
- if there's anything that warrants a content warning, ill preface the chapter with it hehe
edit circa august 2017:
i feel stupid for this because i really should have made his race more apparent but i literally do talk about his skin color like every other chapter but somehow people miss it so i'm saying it now: david is black. he is black. black. please don't hit me with comments like: "OMG I DIDNT KNOW HE WAS BLACK??" buddy, i literally describe his skin color as mahogany in chapter two, and maybe it's easy to miss! maybe not! but i really don't want anyone to think that david is anything but black for any duration while they're reading this. this has been a psa