A Normal Start to an Altering Day
athlete: [ath-leet]; noun; a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.
4:30 AM.
Every day for the past three years.
Every day of his high school career, Ethan Meek had stopped his alarm at 4:30 in the morning. He didn't hit snooze, he didn't roll over and fall back asleep. Every morning, whether it was raining, snowing, sunny, cloudy, cold, hot, or somewhere in between, Ethan Meek got out of bed at 4:30. He walked into his closet and pulled on a pair of gym shorts and an old T-shirt, laced up his $500 sneakers, gulped down a protein shake, and went for a run.
It wasn't difficult for him at this point. When you had done something for the past 1,095 days, the 1,096th day was hardly a struggle.
He ran around his neighborhood, passing by the windows of the ultra-rich that lived around him; the community that he fit into. The lights in almost every house he passed by were on, since the rich didn't stay rich by sleeping in and taking naps. They became and stayed rich by working hard for what they wanted, and working hard meant working early.
After running for five minutes, he would pass by Caleb Halpon's house and his best friend would join him, the two maintaining a steady pace with each other as they ran in silence. They had been like brothers since kindergarten, and they had gone on their morning runs together every day for the entirety of their high school careers. Since freshman year, neither had missed a morning run; they had gone out whether they were sick, tired, vomiting with the flu, or hungover. There was nothing that couldn't be cured by a good run.
After all, they weren't the basketball team captains for nothing.
They ran together, on the first day of their senior year, the year that they were set to rule the school, and yet something felt off.
They both knew what it was, but neither felt the need to address it out loud; after all, boys hardly feel the need to address any of their feelings out loud. Ethan had everything in his life set out: he knew what he wanted to do, he knew that he was well-liked by everyone in the school, and he had a beautiful girlfriend who he cared for deeply.
Caleb had all of those things, except for the latter. He had lost his long-term girlfriend over the summer, and there was little Ethan could do or say to make his best friend feel at ease with everything; he had to get used to the fact that he would be without a girlfriend for the first time in his high school life.
More than that, he would be without Sasha for the first time in his high school life.
They ran for the next hour, circling around the neighborhood until they arrived back at Caleb's house, dropping him off before Ethan would run to his own home, letting himself in through one of the three garages and trying his hardest not to make any noise.
He would hop into the shower at 6:03 and get out at 6:07. He pulled on whatever clothes smelled the best, brushed his teeth and hair (with separate brushes) and was downstairs eating breakfast by 6:15, which was the exact time that all the women in his family would waltz down the stairs from their respective bedrooms, complaining about whatever they felt was worthy of their time that morning.
Kayla Meek, Ethan's mother and the parent that he did not feel spite towards, was usually the one doing the most complaining; she worked as a therapist for the highest-paying clients in West Virginia--of which there were many--and the confidentiality that every one of her clients believed they were entitled to was breached every morning at the breakfast table.
19-year-old Jodi Meek, who had graduated from high school two years prior and was currently working from the basement as a fashion designer, would come down the stairs just seconds after her mother, complaining that her mother complained so much. Kayla would turn on her eldest within seconds, threatening to take away her basement studio if she didn't start paying rent and acting like an adult.
She would forget about the threat a few seconds later when 14-year-old Nichole, a freshman at Ethan's school, walked down the stairs, complaining about Jodi taking all of the good cereal or about her mother eating the last of the french toast.
Ethan was the one who was complained to, the one who sat at the kitchen table and listened to all the women around him complain about one another, to one another, or with one another. And as they all left to drive off in their personal cars, or be driven to, to wherever they needed to be, they would all remind Ethan of the fact that he would be a wonderful husband to his future bride. He was so used to comforting females that it was hardly in his nature to even talk to them in any way that would upset them.
After the women had left, Robert Meek, the patriarch of the family, would saunter down the stairs, ensuring that his wife and daughters were gone before pouring himself a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper, ignoring his son as he went. There was no reason for them to communicate; Ethan had no plans to continue into his father's business and instead had pursued basketball in high school, and therefore was the ultimate disgrace to his old man.
Alexander Meek, the baby of the family at 11 years old, would come down the stairs after Robert had finished his paper, finding only Ethan at the table. He would ask his older brother's advice on whether what he was wearing was "cool" or not, and then leave to be taken to school by the second chauffeur, who was not off taking Nichole to the high school.
And then Ethan would leave at exactly 7:07, climbing into whatever car was left at the house and taking it to school, ignoring the fact that the car didn't have a school parking pass and simply writing his name on a sticky note and placing it on the dashboard. The school board and police officers knew better than to give Ethan Meek a ticket.
He would go to his locker and arrive at homeroom at exactly 7:23, joining his basketball buddies and pretending to be interested in what they had to say. Scarlet, his gorgeous girlfriend of two years, would walk into the homeroom at 7:26 and sit down next to him, give him a kiss, and join in the conversation with the rest of his friends.
Ethan Meek's life was exactly the same, every year, down to the minute. Everything was the same, everything was perfect, and everything was unchangeable.
Until a dark-haired girl with tan skin and sparkling green eyes walked into his homeroom on the first day of his senior year, changing his life--for better or for worse--forever.
Welp. Here we go!
-Katherine