I started feeling like the odd one out long before I discovered that my friends were a bunch of crazy homo-erotic nymphomaniacs.

Although we were mostly all around the same age, I was still considered the baby of the group, because of my—supposedly—big blue eyes that made people bend to my whim and my frustrating height (or lack thereof.) Apparently, it was impossible not to see me as somebody they needed to protect and keep a careful eye out for. This was also mostly due to the fact that my older brother Credo usually hung around us with his best friend Angnus—and they weren't anything, if not overtly protective of me.

And once we hit high school, it became apparent they were hiding things from me.

Everybody was always so tense when I walked in the room, conversations were halted, the smell of pot still lingered but it was obvious that the pipes had been hidden out of sight. Suddenly everyone would put on fake smiles and ask me if I wanted to play a board game. No, I did not want to play some stupid game with fake money, thank you very much. I was sixteen—not six.

But, it was clear that maybe they were all afraid to go against Credo, since they were all his friends first and mine by association. So, yeah, maybe there was a slight age difference, if you called seventeen, eighteen or nineteen (Credo's age) to be much of a 'difference' at all.

Dante was the only one who ever really stuck up for me. He kept trying to convince Credo I was old enough to get into a little trouble. He'd sneak me sips of his alcohol and laugh when my nose crinkled in disgust. He'd ask, Vodka burns, doesn't it? Then, once, he let me try drag from his cigarette and again I started coughing and regretting my decision, no matter how hard I tried to act cool and confident.

The truth is…I guess I really wanted to impress him.

I told myself not to look up to him—that's what children do—but I do. I really fucking do. So, I'd try my best to impress him, even if it drove my brother crazy. Even if it drove me crazy, I couldn't help but go out of my way to act confident whenever he was around and every time he'd smile at me and I'd feel somewhat accomplished.

This was around the time that I stopped caring about whatever things my friends were hiding. They were still entirely too tense whenever I walked into the room. They still tried their best to hide anything illegal from me. They still protected me like a child. But...I'd simply lost interest.

Then, sometime in November, my parents went away for a weekend.

Pretty much immediately—their facades went to shit.