20-year-old Axel Piatt grew up with a beautiful childhood. There was nothing that could go wrong. He had two loving parents, a lot of friends, good grades, and an impressive talent for drawing realistic portraits, and he was every teacher's dream student. All of that changed his freshmen year of high school, on his fifteenth birthday. He lost his parents to a drunk driver. He was in the back seat, watching his parents take their last breath. His aunt took him in but quickly lost faith in her because she shut down harder than him, for she did lose her brother.
His grades dropped, his attendance dropped, he isolated himself, he became every teacher's worse nightmare, but he managed to score a four-year full-ride scholarship for art. He dropped out the day of his 20th birthday. His birthday was no longer a time of joy, and he didn't care to celebrate it anymore. He couldn't rely on anyone and turned to drugs and alcohol to cope, but not even those could ease the constant ache in his eternally broken heart.
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