The world ends when Nathan is fourteen.
Expect it doesn't, because everyone is still living, and breathing, and bleeding.
It feels like it though, when he looks back on his life. It's the beginning of the end, and perhaps that's an even worse thing than the destination.
He's a kid who's too tall and talks too little. He does average on most of his classes and below that for some. He is wrong in every way that someone can be right.
People let him know that.
It make him angry, and really what other reaction can you expect when an already volatile kid is pushed over and over again.
He's fourteen when he breaks some boy's nose because that child's taunts are becoming much too common.
The gym teacher pulls him off the bleeding student. There's red on his knuckles and his shirt.
Combine that with his enraged yelling, and what a sight he must have been.
Sean Prescott is called; his presence making Nathan instantly stop his complaining.
His father gives him no time to defend himself before he grabs Nathan's arm and informs the principal that his son will not be attending the rest of the day.
That same arm is broken when Nathan returns a couple days later. He claims it was an accident, nobody lacks the self-preservation to go against that.
Or maybe they just don't care enough.
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It gets worse a year later.
The reason why is because of a stupid fight with his father that he had long since forgotten the reason for.
Nathan's in the local mall, pacing back and forth as he shouts at his phone; his dad being on the other side.
That would be bad enough, but he was never really good at controlling his rage, so one triggering word too many causes him to smash his phone in anger.
The thing is, when the heir of a company worth millions of dollars has a temper tantrum in public, everyone will know within a hour of it happening.
That's what happens.
And not long later, Nathan is in his room when his father storms in. There's a pill bottle clutched in his hand, it soon gets slammed on Nathan's desk.
The rules soon follow.
Once a day, he is to take one. The bottle is to be given to his dad every three weeks to get refilled.
Not a second after announcing this to his soon, Sean Prescott rushes out of the room, leaving his son to glance at the medication despondently.
Nathan picks it up and checks for the label to find none; he never figures out what those pills were, but he does know that he hates how they make him feel.
Sometimes he wonders if it's better that he never identified what it was; what his dad thought was wrong with him.
It probably is.
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It's at the age of sixteen that he meets Victoria Chase.
He's at some art gallery in Seattle, founded by another rich family who's wealth is only outclassed by his own.
His family sponsors them, because of course they do. His father wants his name linked to any promising candidate.
One more event that he doesn't want to go to, and nobody notices when Nathan slips away to the emergency exit.
He can never decide whether the view here is better or worse than Arcadia Bay's. There's nothing more artificial or alive than a thriving city.
His hand goes into his pocket, opening a cigarette box and bringing out a single one. Nathan then places it in his mouth.
Next he moves to withdraw his lighter, only to find air in it's place.
It's not until he is finished swearing does the person who snuck up on him raise their voice.
"You need something?"
Nathan turns around, standing there is a girl in clothes that are just as expensive as his. She's holding a pink lighter in her palm.
The fingers of her other hand are handling a lit cigarette. She brings it to lips, inhales than exhales.
"You offering?"
The girl raises an eyebrow, "No, I just like gesturing with a lighter in my hand."
Nathan considers a reply, then decides to just hold his hand out. Cool metal is soon placed into his grip.
The night goes on like that, and they talk about nothing important, but he's laughing.
By the time his phone starts receiving calls from his father, Nathan has only learnt three things about this girl.
Her name, which implies something he hadn't thought of.
Her number, which is soon added to his contacts.
And that she is someone that he wants to know more about.
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He's seventeen when he accepts that only one person will ever understand who he is.
Photography is something that he picks up like a disease; it's all around him, so it's only expected that he will catch it.
He enjoys it though, if admittedly in the darkest possible way. His love for it is only slightly lost when people start bullying him for his supposedly sick photographs.
However, eventually the insults became frequent enough that Nathan hides the photos that he takes, so no one will ever see them.
Nobody but Victoria that is, she understands his work; she's the only one who praises him instead of labeling him as disturbed.
"Everything person has a style." She tells him over a phone call, "and if they can't appreciate your's, then that is a mistake on their part."
She is also into photography, but she has been since she was a kid, and like his father expected him to inherit the family business, Victoria is expected to manage the gallery that her parents' own.
The best way to prepare yourself for that, her mother said, is to grow up with a camera clutched in your hands.
As such, she was taught how to capture an image rather than how to have fun. Nathan thinks this reflects his own childhood quite well.
That's probably why they get along so well. Two messed up rich kids who never had the chance to actually be a kid.
You know you're broken when only the broken love you for you.
He goes to Seattle that summer break, and they stay up for hours past the point where everyone else fell asleep.
She's so alive in his photos; the spark in her eyes is captivating. It's such a contrast with his other subjects.
Nathan may prefer the non-living to photograph, but she will forever be his favourite model.
Victoria takes photos of him too, and Nathan doesn't know how she makes him not hate the person in those images.
Somehow they end up going to a liquor store, neither is surprised that the other has a fake ID. Nathan buys whiskey, Victoria buys tequila.
It's probably a stupid idea to climb the roof of some building in a random park, but they do it anyways.
The sun rises, during their time up there, and Nathan wonders if this is what happiness feels like.
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He is eighteen when Rachel Amber comes into his life.
That year he started attending the new two year senior program at Blackwell; a program that he didn't know Victoria was taking until he saw her in one of the hallways.
The people here are so simple, they go onto their knees in front of the people with influence, and then bite at anyone that those people point at.
There's a few exceptions:
Hayden Jones, who somehow seems to more intuitive than most of the idiots around them, even when he's stoned.
Dana Ward, who's one of the few girls from the Vortex Club that would never lower herself into becoming Victoria's slave.
Of course Victoria, who Nathan has only become closer to since they've started attending the same school.
The most intriguing of these outliners is a girl from California named Rachel Amber.
She fits.
She fits where he doesn't, and he wants to. God does he want to. She's an actress at heart, and he's there in the audience, wondering what he's doing.
Rachel was a shapeshifter though, always bending to others' needs, never listening to her own. She was who you wanted to be, but not who she wanted to be.
This trait shows in the photographs he took of her. Unlike Victoria who was characterized as alive, Rachel was the embodiment of perfection.
The thing is, everyone's idea of perfection is different, and it can kill someone if they endlessly try to meet that many relentless expectations.
Even if it wasn't the end of her, it might have been, if that honour wasn't taken by someone else.
Nathan knew she would end up a target the second that he laid eyes on her. Mark Jefferson probably knew just as quickly.
He had prepared himself for the guilt that comes from drugging someone and photography them without their consent.
What Nathan hasn't expected was that he would be responsible for putting out the destructive yet enchanting fire that once was called Rachel Amber.
His mistake had killed her, and it was killing him.
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He is nineteen when another life is taken by him.
Chloe Price was a girl with step-daddy issues and a record that got her kicked out of Blackwell. She was also attached at the hip to Rachel.
Rachel seemed to have had a soft spot for Chloe too; the topic of the town delinquent was always quick to make the girl defensive of both herself and Chloe.
Nathan never liked her to be honest. She was always sulking about something and the only person with as much of a temper as her was himself.
That still didn't justify what he did to her. Any of what he did to her.
Drugging her was stupid, Nathan was upset and drunk after he had just bought the pills that Mark requested from Frank. They were in his pocket and he slipped them in Chloe's drink without thinking.
He noticed when she was slurring and stumbling too frequently.
Nathan tried doing what he did to so many other girls; this time he gave too little instead of too much.
He deserved the shards of glass that raked his legs when she broke his lamp.
He deserved the texts that demanded that he would give money to Chloe.
He deserved that rush of fear that came with every word that she threatened him with.
What she didn't deserve was dying on the dirty bathroom floor because of some kid with twitchy hands.
Nathan deserved to be locked up, however. He deserved all the names he was called.
He's okay with being treated like a animal, but not what happened to the rest of them.
Not Victoria who taught him that there was some kind of good in this world. No, she didn't earn the title of a monster's best friend.
Not Rachel who was someone that never got the chance to learn from her mistakes. No, she didn't earn a shallow grave dug in a dirty junkyard.
Not Chloe who was too alive and real for the everyone else. She didn't earn her fate; dying by herself with the thought that she was truly alone.
Not Maxine who watched him murder her apparent childhood friend through tears eyes. She didn't earn the burden of having to burry someone that close to you.
There's nothing he can do to change any of that, though.
Nathan just hoped that they knew that he was sorry.
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I find myself alone when each day is through.