Disclaimer: Lost and all of its characters do not belong to me, the events that take place are purely fictional and are not to be taken into the timeline of the actual tv series.
Ben had just left his house a little over an hour early for school which was only a ten minute walk from his house. His father had woken him up from singing as loud and slurred as he possibly could, drunk out of his mind no doubt. He hadn't even tried to fall back to sleep and just proceeded to get up, get dressed, eat breakfast and leave. On his way out Ben had gone so far as to give his father the most highly disgusted look he could manage. Not that he would even remember later, hell he might even drown on his own drool before Ben came home from school. He turned the corner where the perfect line of identicale sickeningly bright houses came to an end.'A prize inside' he thought 'a prize inside, each a different kind'. It was a randomly weird thought but he supposed it made sense in the way that all the houses were different on the inside at least.'Yeah, yours especially' Ben forced that train of thought out before it could settle. He finally looked up from his feet which he just now noticed he had been dragging all the way here and noticed he had also just reached the school. Looking up he saw a group of all the girls from his class staring down at him from the steps, their looks were blank and Ben could feel a nervous smile creeping up his face. Most of the girls began giggling seeing this and when Ben felt himself blushing all the girls laughed, he was a very shy boy, especially for a boy who was barely fifteen.
One of the girls parted through the crowd and stepped down to stand level with him, though even on the same level she had at least three inches on him. Ben thought she had the most beautiful blonde hair and her vibrant green eyes really showed, her eyes were like his."I didn't know you were going to join the music class Ben" she said with her honeyed voice. He often wondered if his mother looked like Annie when she was younger, not that he would ever know, the only picture he had of his mother was where she and his father were sitting happily together. Ben had never seen his father look so happy and secretly, even to himself, knew that he never would and it tore him apart inside."Ben" Annie asked again gently, he snapped out of his gaze and thought for a moment, Ben honestly hadn't had a clue about the band joining this morning nor was he interested but in front of a crowd he hated to look like a fool.
"Yeah, It just didn't seem like a big thing to talk about" Ben answered modestly.
"Ooohhh, looks like communication issues already" came a voice from the crowd. Sure enough it was Troy and right on queue to ruin the rest of his morning.'Well we all know what your doing here you, warped pervert' Ben thought with almost a sarcastic laughing tone ringing through his head. Troy was a tall boy with brown hair in the cheapest cut money could buy and he had black eyes to accent it. He wasn't really what one would call a bully but an A class nuisance. Troy seemed to have only two purposes in life, flirt with every girl and annoy every other male in sight. He stepped down and towered over Ben, head and shoulders above him then seemed to size him up. Troy then reached down and slowly plucked the glasses from his face. Ben didn't try to stop him or snatch them back, he knew that if it got to that point he would only succed in amuesing that jerk or worse, break his glasses and have to wait a month to replace them. Troy seemed a little dissapointed in this but wasn't about to give up yet.
"Man Linus, you must be blind to have glasses this thick". Troy said smearing them by measuring the width using his finger and thumb. In truth they were only reading glasses and Ben only wore them when he was outside or reading, of course. Ben looked to the crowd of girls still standing on the steps and could see that all of them were going to stay there and watch this to the end, he could almost hear the bleating.
"Troy quite acting like a four year old and give him back his glasses, they're expensive to replace". Annie said her tone no longer honeyed but like the stillness before tide.
"Oh you'd know eh" Troy asked with a devilish grin "so intimate you already know the price of his glasses, tell me does he know your bra size"
In the moment he had lowered his hands and was distracted Ben grabbed his glasses back out of the taller boys losened grip. Troy seemed dumbfounded at first and then angry, despite all this Ben couldn't help but to put in his two cents right before the school doors opened."Piss off, Troy" then they were all ushered into the new music room that they had only built up in the last month. It wasn't a very impressive room at all, it still had to be painted and carpeted and it was quite crammed, it was almost like they only expected two or three people to show an interest. They all moved in and took their seats, Ben moved as close to the back as possible and continued wiping his glasses clean with the tip of his sleeve. Troy had really pressed hard and Ben continued wiping his glasses while everyone else was assigned an instrument. Some time later Ben looked up to the sound of giggling and realised that the music teacher had been hovering over him and asked a question while he had been cleaning his glasses."Maybe you need hearing aids too Linus" Troy called out and the room burst into laughter again. The teacher turned to address Troy fully and Ben replaced the glasses on his nose."Troy I'm not going to put up with your immature behavior for a whole semester this class is a privilege not mandatory consider today your first grade, fail and your out, understood?"
"Sir, yes sir" Troy answered with a complimentary salute, the smile never leaving his face.
The music teacher looked disgusted but turned too give his attention to Ben once more."So, Ben did you have an instrument in mind that you would like to play" he asked."I don't really care" Ben answered honestly, in fact during the time he was wiping his lense clean he had been thinking of when and how to drop out of this 'If there is an instrument that keeps Troy ten feet away at all times I'll take that' Ben thought hearing the laughter again. The teacher seemed to be considering something then finally spoke."Ben, would you be interested in trying out the piano?" he asked "I'm willing to give everyone a chance at it but only five are going to be the pianists and it will rotate since we don't have enough instuments for everyone as it is" he added so this wouldn't start an arguement.
"Well I suppose" Ben answered quietly.
"Hey I wanna try the piano" Troy whined from across the room.
"You will get a turn" The teacher promised.
"Hey teach, I need to use the washroom" Troy said.
"Can it not wait" the teacher asked through barred teeth.
"Sure, but I pitty the guy who will have to hose down this seat tonight" Troy answered smugly
The teacher seemed to think over the options for a few seconds then said "go then" and dismissivaly pointed to the door. Troy slouched out and Ben was happy to see him leave 'with that kind of posture he's going to look like a hairless gorilla when hes older' the thought almost brightened his day, almost. Ben followed the music teacher over to the piano and took a seat on the wide wooden stool. It felt so strange to sit down with a wood structure in front of him but to have nothing on it except for little strips of ivory. Ben knew how to read the notes off by heart because of a book one of his teachers had given him in fourth grade for reading over one hundred books when the rest of his class had struggled with twenty five. Regardless of knowing the notes Ben had never actually practiced on a piano or even seen one. In all brutal honesty his father tried to spend as much time away from him as possible and never spent his mony on any luxuries whatsoever with the exception of beer. So as a result Ben didn't even know what a computer was until he turned nine and was shown one by his fourth grade teacher. He was so humiliated when his teacher asked who hadn't used a computer and he was the one and only. Then to add insult to injury his father never signed the permission form, that was one of many things he missed out on in his short life.
The teacher rearranged Ben to sit with the right posture quickly and asked if he knew where to put his feet, Ben nodded, the book had taught him that too. The teacher then turned around to address the entire class and told them to just practice getting a sound from their instuments, there was eye rolling all around. It stopped in a few moments when they all tried and there wasn't a sound in the room unless spit and gasping counted."Not so easy is it?" the teacher asked with a smirk "Ben feel free to experiment with the keys, nothing compares to hands on experience". Ben always did believe that popular saying and just tested out the keys at first. When the rest of the class started getting the hang of how to use their instruments he continued to play a few simple tunes he had learned from the book. After about fifteen minutes of headsplitting noise the teacher (Ben wished he'd at least give them a name to call him by) called for everyone to stop for a moment.
"The process you have made in the last twenty minutes is excellent and now I would like to first get down some base rules and then hand out instruction booklets". He talked for ten minutes on the importance of keeping the intruments clean, not dropping them and for those who had reeds not to lose them. He went on for another ten minutes about gum and how very thoroughly it would destroy the instruments when he caught someone in front chewing it. The teacher finally got around to the point of handing out instruction books to everyone and called Ben up first. Ben walked up and received his book casually while the teacher called for the people with Flutes to come up. He was just reading the front page when he sat down and felt something filled with ice liquid burst under him. The room went silent except some high pitched insane laughter that Ben could recognize as Troy. The teacher screamed for Troy to get out and went out the door after him to tell him off. Ben in the meantime got uncomfortably off the stool and slunk to the corner of the room and sunk down on the hard floor with teeth chattering and limbs shaking. For the most part the room stayed still except he noticed that Annie and a few friends had gotten up and were collecting papertowels. They each got a handful and came over to Ben who was, at the moment, very confused.
"Ben, come on" Annie said raising him to his feet by the upper arm and gently guided him to the door while one of her friends opened it for them. They walked into the hallway and immediatly heard a clear difference of just how loud the teacher was screaming at Troy. Ben would have loved to stay and hear it but Annie gently guided him the other way towards the boys washroom. She opened the door for him, which wasn't really necessary but still a nice gesture, she then handed him the bundle of paper towels and he quickly waddled in. Ben cleaned up as best he could and even wrung out his pants over the toilet but they remained ice cold and damp, he finally gave up and shivered while slipping them back on. He didn't know what to do once he got back out of the washroom though 'No way are you going back in there looking like you should be in diapers'. Just as Ben was about to disappear back into the washroom and think it out he heard the teacher's footsteps and turned his head to see if he was headed in his direction and sure enough he was.
"Ben we need to get you to the office, they're should be a change of pants there for you" The teacher said quitely so the rest of the class couldn't hear.
"Okay" Ben answered in a voice just as quiet. They walked through the empty school in complete silence except the echoeing footsteps that surrounded them. Whenever Ben walked through an empty hall he liked to imagine the groups of people who had walked through these very same halls before him. He liked to imagine that he was stepping on ground that famous people had stepped on, was taught where they were, grew up where they did, earned honour role like others before him. Then he remembered. 'This is a Dharma school, no one has ever been here except for us now, no one worth remembering has ever even heard of this place, there is no history in this place and perhaps never will be.' When they reached the office the teacher fiddled with the lock for five minutes at the very least before the door opened, it wasn't difficult to see that he was a new addition to the staff. When the door finally did open the teacher stepped in ahead of Ben and quickly led him to the sick room. Ben followed him hastily, he was uncomfortable no matter what but at least standing still he wasn't increasing his discomfort. He watched as the new teacher pulled the drawer open and saw that it was empty, 'damnit, guess what happens now'.
"Ben I think if you run that you will make it to your house before everyone arrives" the teacher said standing again with a trace of guilt in his voice, probably for not having any other way for him to get out of this embarassing situation. Ben nodded and was about to head out the door when the teacher stopped him."Here" he said handing Ben a note "It's a sick note, give it to your parents and you can stay home for the day, I wouldn't imagine that you'd like coming back after that... incident".'He will know soon enough' Ben heard but he still nodded and smiled a little then walked to the door but once outside he took off in the direction of home as fast as he could. He was a very fast runner and made it home in no time at all, literally in only a little over two minutes. He turned and saw that his father had unfortunatly sobered up a little and wasn't out cold like he had hoped.
"Why the hell arn't you at school" his father asked then looked close and saw the stain."You better not have pissed yourself, if you fuc-"
"A kid put a water balloon on my seat" Ben cut in before his dad spun himself into one of his ridiculous, childish rages. His father remained quiet for a moment then looked at the note.
"What's that" he asked impatiently. Ben merely handed it to him and watched as his eyes scanned over it and his face hardened, he was not pleased.
"Fine but your not goofing around go to your room and study or something" his father said as he crumpled up the note, shot it at the garbage and missed. Ben didn't see if he picked it up or not, though he did hear the unmistakeble sound of his father snapping open another can of beer. Obviously a hangover wasn't satisfying enough for him. Ben walked into his room and happily changed into dry, warm clothing then picked Eight out of her cage and began stroking the albino rabbit softly behind her ears."I wish you were dead" he said seeing his fathers face in his head and hearing his mocking, miserable voice 'but i'd never be so lucky' he thought. A bitter knowing smile crept across his normally passive face, it may not be tomorrow or soon, but the old drunk had to die sometime and sooner was always better.
Authors Note: This story is going to be edited in the next few days so that the grammer and spelling are correct.
ps. This story has potential to become a trilogy, it really depends on the reviews though and what everyone wants.