Is It wrong?

i.

The summer before your senior year of high school, your life was abruptly separated into two parts: before Michael Langdon, and after Michael Langdon. Up until then, your life had been peaceful- maybe a little boring, mundane, but peaceful all the same. You'd had a painfully average life with painfully average grades and a painfully average social life, but there was nothing to complain about, living in your modest high-ranch with your father in the middle of the suburbs.

And then your father met Miriam Mead Langdon, a slightly eccentric but nice-enough woman who oftentimes frequented the same grocery store he did. You hadn't had a problem with Miriam; you were pleased to see your father happy after having been single for so long, ever since your mother passed away years before. No, you didn't have a problem with Miriam- it was her son, Michael, that you couldn't fucking stand.

Michael Langdon was everything you hated- cocky, rude, a smart-ass, spoiled. Everyone who met him seemed to fall under his spell, charmed by his smooth talking and boyish good looks, and so he always seemed to get whatever he wanted. There was no question of whether he was attractive, with soft waves of blond hair and admittedly beautiful baby blue eyes, paired with plump pink lips that always seemed to be curled into an infuriating smirk. Girls swooned over him, including your own friends (which you'd gagged over), and boys fought for his approval and friendship. It was beyond nauseating.

When your father had announced that he and Miriam were engaged, you'd been forced to swallow your distaste for the boy who, soon enough, would be your stepbrother. In June they were married, and soon afterwards, Miriam and Michael moved into your father's home. Michael got the once-vacant guest room down the hall from your bedroom, and within a few days it had become an entirely new place; he'd plastered the walls with posters, depicting everything from horror movies to half-naked girls to metal bands. The top of his dresser was strewn with random things he'd thrown there: an empty Jack Daniels bottle, AXE body spray (because of course), an enormous glass-blown bong, a half-empty pack of Marlboro Reds, designer sunglasses. The entire room reeked of weed, sometimes drifting down the hall and into your room, but for some reason your father never mentioned it (which you were sure he would, had it been you who was stinking up the house and not Michael).

That entire summer, you were forced to witness Michael getting away with things you could never dream to: sneaking in girls at all hours of the night (no headphones were good enough to block out the scarring noises that left his room on these occasions), stealing your father's expensive liquor from the glass-paneled cabinets, leaving the house at 1 am and coming back home after sunrise. It seemed that he was able to talk himself out of anything, and if you didn't hate him so much, you might have even said you envied him a little.

The only upside was that you were graduating high school this year; the both of you would be off to college in the fall, and then you'd never have to see his stupid, smug face again. Or, at least, almost never.