A/N: The next chapter from Stacey's perspective. I know that it's taking a while, both to update and to get along to the party, but I really want to establish the characters first - that's the story as far as I am concerned and the party is just to bring them all back together! Hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: As usual, I don't own anything.
Stacey
"Sure, Tanya, tell Mr McGill that the figures will be ready for tomorrow's meeting." I replaced the phone on its cradle and went back to what I was working on.
Sure, it was strange, calling my father Mr McGill to his secretary, but it was something that he insisted upon. He said that it was important to separate being his daughter from being a member of staff. Besides, everyone else called him Mr McGill, why shouldn't I? Working for my father wasn't exactly how I had imagined my life turning out. I guess I always knew that I would end up working with numbers and maths in some capacity; maths was my best subject at school and it was what I had majored in at college. However, the truth was that if Dad had not come to my rescue and given me a job, I probably would have ended up flipping burgers somewhere.
College on the whole had been a disaster. I had been so excited to go, as much as I loved Stoneybrook, and even New York, I saw college as an opportunity to escape: escape my overprotective parents and their constant worrying; the sleepy North East where nothing ever seemed to happen; and finally some of the silly little mistakes I had made in high school. So I took myself off to the University of Miami.
The problems started almost immediately. I just wasn't used to that level of freedom; I had always had my parents looking over my shoulder, worrying about what I was eating, where I was going, and with whom. Now I could do what I liked. I got a fake ID and got drunk, as so many other kids my age were doing. However, there was the age old problem of my diabetes, as usual, restricting me, and I soon learnt that I just couldn't drink like my friends were doing. I hated it, I hated being the odd one out yet again, just as I had been all those years before when my diabetes was first diagnosed. I soon worked out ways around it – there were some types of alcohol that caused less problems than others, and then there were the illegal drugs that I started taking. At first it was just a little pot; a friend of mine who used it regularly introduced me to it. That same friend also introduced me to Sean, a friend of hers who lived locally. Sean became my first serious boyfriend and I ended up practically living with him in his apartment during my sophomore year.
Things degenerated pretty fast from then on. Sean managed not only to get me into some harder drugs (cocaine and pills primarily), but he also convinced me to get involved with some friends of his who were "fashion photographers." When he first told me that they wanted me to model for them, I was flattered. Warning bells hould have begun ringing immediately, deep down I knew what kind of guy Sean was, so I should have guessed what sort of people his friends were. Maybe if I had had some of my old friends around – Claudia, Kristy or Mary Anne – they could have warned me. But my new friends were not like them. They were like Sean. So I went along with it, started "modelling." Needless to say, the type of modelling that I was doing was not fashion. It was largely topless modelling, quite a lot of nude work, and none of it was particularly tasteful. At the time I was modelling, I was taking more and more drugs, and of course my school work was suffering badly. Halfway through my junior year my parents staged an intervention, and managed to get me to see sense and put me into rehab. Luckily, they never found out about the photos, as far as they knew, I had just fallen in with a bad crowd. I have always been eternally grateful to them for everything they did for me, but I knew it would destroy them to find out about the modelling. Of course, I know that they photos are out there somewhere, but I hope and pray that they will never see them.
Throughout this awful period in my life, I managed to stay in contact with Kristy and Claudia. In fact, Claudia had a lot to do with getting me clean. She had been to visit me in Miami and seen what was happening, modelling, drugs and all. They know everything, and have stuck by me through it all.
Now, as my thoughts turned back to my old friends, I started to think about next week's party. Watson would be 70, and the BSC would be together again. I would be travelling to Stoneybrook at the weekend, and staying with my mom and step-dad. Mom had stayed in Stoneybrook and remarried four years ago, and I had acquired a new stepbrother and stepsister.
I forced my mind back to my computer screen and told myself to concentrate. Mr McGill would not be happy if I didn't have these accounts read for tomorrow's meeting!
