The elongated Lincoln carrying Lance Roderick drove away silently from the front of Bradley's house like a black ghost.
The surrounding housewives carefully withdrew their heads from the windows and stopped peeping - this neighborhood is not a wealthy area of Santa Monica, the residents are mostly middle-class. The streets nearly have never seen the shadow of an extended luxury car. Thus, the boring and gossipy housewives are very curious about the social circle of the Bradley family, who has just moved in.
That's right, William and his mother Madeleine Bradley have only moved to this community for more than half a year. Before that, they lived in a one-bedroom single apartment. And over the past year, William's part-time job in Hollywood has become more and more on the right track. After having his own agent, Madeleine also signed a better contract with the film studio, they rented a small house in this community.
William closed the curtains to hide the inquiring eyes of the housewives, took a step back and fell on the bed. His right hand raised high in the air, looking at the Bugatti Veyron keys, and couldn't help but feel a little distracted.
Lance Roderick is William's best friend in his life, and now the other party is going to the UK. At least until graduating from college, even if he knows that communication is still quite developed now, although there are no video calls and Internet chats, transatlantic calls can still be made if he wants. However, William still can't help but feel a little lonely and sad.
Those distant memories who were temporarily shelved because he was too busy, William seems to have gone back in time, from the beginning of his friendship with Lance to the beginning and his recovery from self-cognitive disorders, all along with the memories of his new life again as an American teenager.
In his last life, he was born in Beijing, China in 1988, named Qian Renchuan. After experiencing a coma due to a severe cold and high fever when he went skiing in Switzerland at the age of 19, he found himself in Manhattan, New York, USA. At the time he recovered his past life's memories, he was having a fever for three consecutive days after accidentally falling into the swimming pool. He still remembered the time was during 1982.
The double interweaving of time and space, memory and body, past self and current self made William at that time have self-cognitive impairment. For some reason, whether it were Qian Renchuan or William Bradley's memories, they could not co-exist peacefully at first. Childish memories and adult memories are always colliding in his head.
He once sneakily up on a tape recorder when everyone else was asleep in the middle of the night. He then read "The Little Prince" with his head covered by a quilt, and only when the recording was playback, he was amazed to find that he unknowingly read the entire book in both Chinese and English. The two languages were switching back and forth from time to time, as if they were splitting nerves.
This peculiarity also affected his speaking. He was also aware of that fact and refused to talk to anyone, which made his parents worried to point of taking him to visit several doctors. Luckily, this collision of memories only lasted for a week. Somehow, the memories of his past life were transformed into a video tape which he could re-watched instantly every time in his head. If not, William thought that he would become a schizophrenia sooner or later. At least, after this ordeal, his memories and physical abilities seem to have been tempered and improved significantly.
William and Lance became really good friends, they took the same course, day and night. And in just a short period of time, they managed to create a friendship comparable to brotherhood.
Lance is the only heir of the Roderick family, destined to take over the Roderick Industrial Group in the future. When Lance expressed that he would choose for Harvard Business School in the seventh grade, William said that he would go to Harvard Law School in the future. And after graduation, he would apply for the Roderick Group as Lance's legal adviser.
If William's family hadn't undergone such drastic changes in eighth grade, the future of the two of them might have really moved forward like this-
William's father, Edwin Bradley, a well-known hedge fund manager on Wall Street, in the spring of 1992, suffered a huge loss of $300 million in a concept stock because of a heavy position shorting, resulting in a loss of up to $300 million in the fund. He was then sued by investors in court for compensation.
After Edwin's suicide, the Bradley family was left with only Madeleine and William, the pair of orphan and widow. The living environment suddenly fell from the middle-upper classes to poverty.
Madeleine was a painter before she got married, and after marrying Edwin, because her husband had a good income, she became a housewife with peace of mind after she was pregnant with William. She and Edwin actually always had the idea of having another child, so Madeleine has not found a formal job for so many years.
Although the government did not take away the property in Madeleine's name after Edwin's death, Madeleine did not have much personal savings at all. The mother and son were evicted from their residence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan by the government's property clean-up personnel. Let alone renting another room in New York, William could not even afford to pay for the school uniform in the next school year at Calgate School.
In desperation, William decided to drop out of Calgate at the end of the semester, find a new school, and then move to Brooklyn with Madeleine temporarily.
Speaking of which, it was at that time that Lance began to deteriorate his relationship with Taylor Roderick. Because when Edwin Bradley went bankrupt and was entangled in lawsuits, Lance begged Taylor to help the Bradley family. But Taylor Roderick refused to lend a hand, and the underage Lance Roderick could not transfer the fund under his name. Lance could not do anything, and even did not dare to face William for a while.
"Your father is not wrong, and you are not wrong, and we cannot hold a grudge against others for not being generous to us. So don't beat yourself up, my friend." William, recovering from the grief of his father's death, comforted Lance, and they resumed their old friendship from thereon.
Three months later, William and Madeleine couldn't live in Brooklyn anymore, first, the community they lived in was too bad. Madeleine worked in a fast-food restaurant. Three times a month she was followed home when she came home from the night shift. Second, William couldn't find a school he liked in Brooklyn and he was only offered for the scholarship in another school at the pricey New York. Third, Madeleine earned too little, and their lives became more and more embarrassing day by day.
Not long afterwards, Madeleine finally got a job through a friend, illustrating a journal novel for a publishing house. But the job was in Los Angeles. And while she still hesitated to mention it to her son, William got wind of the news expressed support for her mother's decision. Anyway, what is the difference between transferring to another school in New York and transferring to Los Angeles?
So the mother and son moved from New York to Los Angeles to start living again, the new life in Los Angeles made Madeleine and William very uncomfortable at first. The life on the east coast and the west coast of the United States is too different. Not to mention the climates, culturally there are huge differences between the two cities.
The east coast is close to Europe, and it was the first to accept European immigrants, so culturally it is deeply influenced by Europe. New York is more "American-traditional" and conservative, and has hierarchical thinking. New York-ers are also accustomed to wearing suits and leather shoes when they go out, acting like a real gentleman. But Los Angeles are more edgy and free-spirited, open and laid-back, preferring T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops when they go out.
The first year was difficult, Madeleine worked hard to adapt to the work of the publishing house, the manuscript was often rejected due to unqualified, the salary was more in a month and a less in the other. The income was very unstable. She sometimes sitting in front of the window with a wine glass and crying.
For the sake of his mother's mental state, and in order to alleviate the family economy, William did not immediately find a school for himself, he lied to the outside world that he was an adult (thanks to his very good height at a young age), worked a few black jobs, and mostly hid in a dark corner without sunlight to wash dishes and so on. Later, because of his excellent appearance, he was discovered by talent scouts and began to shoot print advertisements for magazines, which brought him to the circle of Hollywood.
After taking a year off, life began to improve, Madeleine not only adapted to the publishing house, but also found a part-time job at a Walmart near her home. William finally also applied for the entrance test to Santa Monica High School in Los Angeles at the beginning of the new school year.
Private schools in the United States range from $30,000 to $50,000 a year, like William's previous Calgate school, which costs $39,400 a year. In contrast, while public schools do not charge fees, but as the best public high school in Los Angeles, Santa Monica Middle School is still difficult to get into. They usually only admit candidates in the school district. But thanks to excellent classroom results (A+ in every course) and excellent extracurricular activities (the football captain of the lower division of the Calgate School), William still successfully transferred.
Now, everything is on track, and although William and Madeleine still miss New York from time to time, the world is so beautiful, and Los Angeles has its own wonderful things, doesn't it?
Thoughts wandered through the memories, and William fell asleep before he knew it.
When William woke up the next day, he felt as if he had forgotten something very important, but for a moment he couldn't remember what it was, so he went to school while thinking about it.
When he got to the school gate, he finally knew what he had forgotten.
…
"Smack!" Claire, the cheerleader of Santa Monica Middle School, slapped William in front of everyone at the school gate.