Chapter 22
EDDIE
It’s hard to know exactly when I broke bad.
I wasn’t one of these five-year-olds who was torturing the neighbor’s cat. I didn’t have visions of the devil or voices telling me to commit evil acts.
In fact, for the most part, my childhood was as normal as anyone else’s. My father died when I was young, which obviously was tough, but I had a loving mother who looked after me and my younger sister, Cassie. Yes, both of our names ended in IE.
We were born in Boise, Idaho, and lived there until I was thirteen. That’s when my mother packed up and moved us to Los Angeles. She worked as a hospital administrator and had been offered a job in sunny Southern California.
My mother had long wanted to move to LA, but not for the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. Her sister lived in Woodland Hills, and she’d wanted to be closer to her. She used some of her connections to nail down the new job at a hospital in LA, and we packed up one summer and moved.
It wasn’t exactly the easiest time for a young man to move.
I had many friends in Idaho, including a girl I’d just started dating.
And while dating mainly consisted of holding hands at school and occasionally getting to make out or grab a boob, it was still my first girlfriend, and I hated having to leave her.
My mother insisted there would be ten times as many pretty girls in Los Angeles, but when you’re twelve, you’re just happy to have the one girlfriend.
You see, I hadn’t become the Romeo that I’d grow into. That would take a few years.
I now find it amusing that I was worried about one specific girl.
That would be the final time.
Los Angeles proved to be an exciting place.
It is to this day.
Boise has its advantages, and if you like a slower-moving life, it’s preferable to LA.
It wasn’t for me, though. I realized this within six months of moving to LA.
In fact—and this isn’t a joke—right around that time, my mother asked me if I missed my girlfriend in Boise, and I couldn’t come up with her name for a good thirty seconds.
I began thinking that I had always belonged in LA. I’d see the Hollywood sign and dream of making it big. This was definitely the proper town for that.
The problem is that LA also has a history of discarding the people who didn’t make it. Wannabe actors who turned to drugs. Middle-aged waiters who’d never gotten their break. Screenwriters who couldn’t cut the mustard.
So, while I was enamored with Hollywood almost immediately, I knew it wasn’t as sexy as they made it out to be on TV or in the movies.
You often hear horror stories about kids struggling to adapt to their new city or school.
Not a problem for yours truly. I started going through puberty during the summer I moved to Los Angeles, and by the time I entered high school as a freshman that fall, I was several inches taller than the average runt.
I was starting to get more and more looks from the opposite sex, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t go to my head.
It helped that I was coming in as a freshman when students were being fed in from several different schools. So, my coming in from a different state didn’t feel all that weird.
If I’d transferred in as a junior or senior, then I would have stuck out. Instead, I stood out for being taller and more mature than the average freshman. It was a good time to be Eddie Sykes.
And yet, there was still an underlying grudge that I held.
My mother made a measly salary by Los Angeles standards, and we were the family from the other side of the tracks—literally. We lived in a mobile home community that was just on the other side of a set of train tracks.
So while girls found me attractive, some of them would turn the other cheek when I told them I lived in a mobile home community.
And yes, I knew most people called them trailer parks. I refused to.
When I’d get dirty looks about where I lived, I would get livid. This would never leave me.
Even when I got the prettiest girl in high school—and I eventually did!—part of me always felt like the kid from the other side of the tracks.
I wasn’t a great student, and because of that, I started to make a few unsavory decisions.
Pansy Horgan, one of the two girls I was dating at the time, was an intelligent young woman and happened to be in my geometry class.
Knowing I was in deep trouble leading up to the final, we devised a little plan to cheat on the test, which involved her writing some answers on her thighs and then occasionally pulling up her skirt just a little bit.
I sat next to her, which made this possible.
She took some convincing, but if you know anything about me by now, I could be persuasive.
Unfortunately, we hadn’t really thought this through too well, and our teacher, Mr. Fee, caught us red-handed.
I was suspended for a week. Pansy got two days. Apparently, when we were both sent to the principal’s office, she ratted me out, saying it was all my idea. Making matters worse, she abruptly broke up with me over the phone that night.
There was no question in my mind that her parents had put her up to it. I guess you can’t really blame them. They probably wanted to get out of the Eddie Sykes business, and guess what, they made the right decision.
I was only going to get worse.
I remained popular throughout the rest of my high school years, but my grades remained mediocre at best.
If they had a test for street smarts, I’d have aced the freaking thing. No one knew how to handle themselves in a crowd like me. I was smart about life. I learned how to get things done.
But I struggled with standardized testing, which is why I had to attend Cal State Northridge instead of places like USC or UCLA.
I found out that Pansy Horgan got into a prestigious Ivy League school. What a little snot she turned out to be. Ratting on her boyfriend. I hoped she froze her ass off back east.
Not that I held grudges or anything.
In college, I began to become the man I am today.
And I don’t mean that in a good way.
I started to think the world owed me things. I wanted jobs, women, money, and fame to fall into my lap.
I didn’t want to work for it.
Now, keep in mind that these opinions were kept internal. Externally, I was still the life of the party. The guys wanted to hang out with me, and the girls wanted to sleep with me.
And that was fun.
But it wouldn’t last forever. As we got closer to graduation, I wasn’t going to grad school, and my job opportunities were almost nonexistent. Recruiters weren’t exactly breaking down my door.
So I really had no choice but to continue with the party planning that had started at The Fitz. I guess I was making decent money for someone in their early to mid-twenties, but it wasn’t enough for me.
I found out that one of my high school classmates, Gus Farber, had gotten a role on One Tree Hill. Was I jealous? You’re damn right I was.
I thought about giving acting a try. I was good at it in real life, after all.
But after going on a few auditions and not getting a part, I decided it wasn’t for me.
I didn’t like the rejection. I wasn’t used to it in my everyday life.
More bad news followed when I heard that Pansy had graduated magna cum laude from Princeton and was now working for some senator in Washington, D.C.
I was getting jealous far too easily. I wanted to show everyone that I would be successful too. Show Gus. Show Pansy. Show Pansy’s stupid parents.
The problem was that I had nothing to fall back on. It felt like most people in Los Angeles either had wealthy parents or at least a relative who could help them advance. I had nothing. My mother was hardworking but just happy living a lower- to middle-class life.
I was not content with that.
I tried dating a few rich, older women over the years. When I was twenty-four, I dated a thirty-five-year-old. When I was twenty-six, I dated a thirty-eight-year-old.
Some lasted longer than others, but eventually, they’d get a glimpse at the real me, and they knew I was only with them for their money.
I was starting to realize that looks and charisma could only get me so far. People with money frowned upon those without money. And despite a decent job, I was still the kid who lived down by the train tracks. At least, that’s how I thought of myself.
Then everything changed one day.
I saw Lucy Tanner and knew she was the one.
And by THE ONE, I mean the one who’d allow me to finally be rich.