Chapter 2

                                    

                                          
I wish that I could tell you about how Cassidy's life improved, her aunt learned to love her, and she achieved mental stability. However, this was not the case. After being prescribed some very expensive medicine from her favorite psychiatrist, her aunt effectively ignored her. Excluding whenever she found it necessary to discuss, in a loud and aggressive manner, all of Cassidy's many flaws. 
                          
And boy did she have flaws. 
                          
The medicine prescribed to her was, ineffective to say the least. Cassidy still spent most of her waking hours in a constant state of fear. Which made simple tasks like shopping or chatting feel like war and impending doom. As you can imagine this made it rather hard for Cassidy to function at all. Throughout her childhood Cassidy had no friends or casual acquaintances. Just her aunt and Chris.
                          
Chris was her aunt's boyfriend that had lived with them since Cassidy was twelve, and he was disapproving of Cassidy's general existence. It seemed he derived great joy from bullying Cassidy in various ways. A significant example would be the time that Cassidy brought home an F on her eighth-grade report card, and Chris locked Cassidy in her room for all of Christmas break, and fed her a steady diet of stale cheese sandwiches. 
                          
However, it could be argued that this F wasn't really her fault. Cassidy was just, no matter how hard she tried, incapable to concentrating or comprehending numbers and words. Classes consisted of throwing buckets of jargon over her head in a vain attempt to soak it in. But try as she might it never really did. Cassidy, mostly due to insistence of her aunt, was kept on the normal academic track. During high school Cassidy experienced the closest thing to happiness in the form of art.
                          
If you could call it that.
                          
Cassidy has developed an unhealthy obsession with boys. The blonde boy who sat in front of her in english. The dark haired captain of the soccer team. Her Sophomore english teacher. After constantly stalking them on social media she would sometimes take another step....
                          
No, not talk to them, take pictures of them. Hundreds of pictures, whenever she could sneak it. Now don't get me wrong, Cassidy's not a mean person. She honestly thought what she was doing was love. Just a different was of expressing it instead of actually having to talk with them. 
                          
But this did bring her at least a little stability in her life and she was able to pass high school with a handful of B's amongst many C's and D's. This meant that she was to be shipped off to college. At least that's what her aunt's plan was, but Cassidy nearly threw herself from the roof when her aunt insisted she live on campus. Her aunt decided she'd better keep her home, as a suicidal niece would be bad press. And so Cassidy was enrolled in a local community college in the city.
                          
Leaving high school did mean leaving her boys behind, but she didn't mind as much. Whether this is due to the more balanced state of hormones or something else wasn't exactly clear. Nevertheless she soon got used to her morning routine of limited self care and a whole lot of coffee. 
                          
Her hair was a light, mousy brown that was cut just above her shoulders that curled and poofed, giving her appearence of a lion in need of a hair cut. Her hazy brown eyes were sunk into her face, and their shadows contrasted her pale skin. Cassidy wasn't particularly tall or short. However, she was worryingly skinny. She's the kind of person you'd expect to be seen wandering the streets after dark looking for the of meaning in life in some twisted lie. 
                          
After busing into the city she then attended her first lecture, American Literature. She loved this class, not because she particularly enjoyed the works of Twain and Melville, but because she'd found a new boy. 
                          
But he's better than all of the others. He was different, special, and worthy of all her attention. His name was Owen, and he was, in Cassidy's mind, the perfect human. He was smart, popular, kind, and very handsome. He wore fashionable clothes that always complimented his rich brown hair and deep blue eyes. In this particular class he sat just a few rows in front of Cassidy, and sometimes she swore she could smell his cologne.