Spoiled

Everyone that knew me before 9/11 thinks I'm dead.

That's what he told me. And looking back, it makes sense.

Mike showed up at my high school second semester senior year. He was like most of us: overly intelligent, under stimulated, moody, and invincible. You know, a teenager.

But, there was something else. I couldn't put my finger on it then. He was from New York, so I figured he was the way he was because of what he went through up there. He just sat as close to the back of the class as possible and kept his head down. Like me.

I'm not exactly sure when we started hanging out, we just did. He never talked about what happened, but I knew he no longer had a family. I didn't ask questions. I also assumed he had moved away so people wouldn't ask questions. Why he choose here, I couldn't guess.

When people learned about his "situation", they were overly nice to him. Word spread fast. So pretty much everyone became Mike's best friend.

He had his 9/11 settlement money and a small one-bedroom apartment near school. We hung out after class and sometimes on the weekends. I was just as board as he was most of the time and just went along with whatever he suggested.

We usually watched movies, played the 360, or just dicked around on the Internet. But when we did venture out, our trips seemed completely random, usually strange and sometimes just plain pointless. But again, I didn't ask questions.

Guess I didn't see the "big picture" till I was up to my eyes in it. And at that point, I had nothing better to do, so I thought what the hell. If I knew how it was going to play out, I would of killed Mike the second I met him.