Stevan Ciracio (Part 2)

The world began to spin, and everything seemed to be falling apart right before my eyes, only able to watch it all unfold.

While I had known that my father's political career was undoubtedly over, I didn't think that he would take any money from me as he was wealthy enough to run away.

Looking back, if I didn't have the constant support of my friends and family, I would have probably just ended up losing my mind entirely.

Unlike me, though, my paternal grandmother was not as lucky as I was, and she had no one to rely on when she received the news. Her husband was already dead after all.

Why my father's side of the family didn't offer her any support?; it was because they had become detached from reality, preoccupied securing connections they had made through my father as they could no longer rely on him to keep said contacts; it was disgusting to watch.

Their actions hit my paternal grandmother especially hard as from the little I talked to her; I could tell that she believed that her family, although rough around the edges, cared for each other and just had a hard time showing it, she probably hoped that they would take after my paternal grandfather.

However, despite being raised by what was arguably one of the most honorable and respected people in our neighborhood, power seemed to have gotten to their head.

So with no one there to support her, her dreams crushed, her old age, and deteriorating health, she became sick and had to be moved to a hospital.

I had always heard that the elderly tended to get sick once they either succeeded or failed in achieving their goals or their loved ones died. It's just that I had never truly believed it until I stood next to her in the somewhat run-down hospital near our house.

I can't remember everything that happened then, probably because my brain tried to suppress those troubling memories. But, from what I could recollect, I spent most of the time getting my paternal grandmother to tell me about her childhood.

Unfortunately, her condition was becoming slightly more unstable as time passed.

The staff who had been put in charge of taking care of her urged me to leave the room immediately before speaking about something I don't remember anymore.

Before I left, I remember her telling me that everything was going to be okay and that it was never good to keep hatred in my heart, that all it would do would be to ruin my life and destroy me from the inside.

While at the time I nodded at her with sincerity, it didn't take long for me to begin obsessing over getting some revenge.

The following day, the news came that she had died and that her funeral would happen in two weeks. At the time, I didn't mourn for her, though, as I was too focused on planning what I would have to do next to get to my father and make him pay what he was due.

I was no longer any better than him, in my eyes at least.

From what I could tell, it was already confirmed that my father had made his way over to California after running away; it was 'not known' how he got US citizenship. Based on what every other Peruvian politician did, though, it was clear that he had used his connections to pay off some less than reputable people to get through.

Having a location, all that was left was to get there, which was pretty easy thanks to the fact that I was still a kid at the time. Meaning that as long as I could get the money to attend a California university, I could track him down; once they were outside of their country escaping, politicians were terrible at covering their tracks, mainly because they didn't have to anymore.

Regarding which university I would try to get the scholarship for, it didn't matter which school I got it for as long as it could cover enough of the cost required to get there. So with a plan in mind and an unreasonable goal, I turned myself into a shut-in and began working on becoming a valedictorian during the Peruvian equivalent of high school.

Time went on quietly once more without much else happening after my grandmother's funeral apart from having to cut expenses and live more modestly.

As for my life, it became a constant cycle of me memorizing things for a week, taking a test, forgetting it, and repeating the process with different information with almost none of it sticking with me; on the bright side, however, once I got good enough at it, I could squeeze in a small amount of time for hobbies.

Just like that, after finishing off primary school as well as possible and studying like crazy during the Peruvian 'Secundaria,' I was able to graduate as a valedictorian. And although I was not able to get a scholarship to any university in California, I had managed to gather enough money from grants to move to California to study at CSUN with a little extra help from the money my mother had started saving up after the divorce.

For what felt like the first time in forever, things finally began to look up for me, and I had already bought a flight to LA by the start of August with the mentality that the more money I could save, the better.

Plus, since my school year ended in December, I had seven months to get a job and make some extra money to spare; unbeknownst to me, though, things were about to change, and not just for me.