So this is my new story. For those few of you out there who have read my other ones, I must apologise for not updating Sisters. 2008 was a busy and stressful year and I have been more focused on this story.
I would like to thank one of my best friends (EJ), who is my muse and insperation. I aspire to be like her in many ways.
So without futher ado I give Cradle to Grave
Disclaimer- I do not own One Tree Hill
Chapter One- Chaos
Cradle to Grave would best describe the relationship of the spectacular six. Their mothers all met in the playgroup at the hospital and they were destined to be friends from the beginning.
Lucas and Nathan were born first on July 5th, then Jake on July 9th, then Brooke on the 10th, Peyton on the 11th and Haley on the 16th. They were all uniquely special with there talent or gift, they were the closet people you could ever meet; they were a clique who rarely fought unless it was life changing. That's why people used to say cradle to grave, friends forever no matter what.
You couldn't pin point the exact moment there extraordinary friendship fell apart. Most say it was freshman year of high school, some say the summer before sophomore year. Either one of those was slightly correct, it was freshman year that their extraordinary friendship started to fall apart and by that summer they were barely talking. They all had succumbed to the peer pressure that controlled the high school clique system and these six best friends had all joined their group. This story begins in their senior year, when they came together for one final moment...
Nathan was the big man on Campus, girls through themselves at him and boys aspired to be like him. He was captain of the basketball team, "boyfriend" to Rachel Gantina (a term that was used loosely) maintained a C grade average so that he could stay on the basketball team and so he wouldn't have to ask Haley to tutor him, he was MVP and had a scholarship to go to Duke in the fall. The only person he was close to was his brother Lucas and sometimes he associated with Brooke. He missed the friendship the group had, he missed the camp outs and the movie fights and even though he would never tell anyone, he missed Tutor girl, Broody, Tigger, Goldilocks, Singer boy and Hotshot and their summers of six.
Lucas was the hotshot basketball star, with a soul. He was a writer, but no one knew that he was the soulful writer who wrote secret stories about those camp outs and movie fights his brother missed. Lucas was planning on following his brother Duke and major in English even though he was meant to be the basketball NBA star like his brother. Lucas sometimes wished he could rewind back to when they were freshman and they had fun times, and it didn't matter who you were or what your friends were good at.
Jake was a loner, he maintained a C average sometimes getting a B. He wasn't popular, nor was he a nerd; he could be defined as middle class in the cliques system. He didn't have many friends and he quit basketball after freshman year. His parents couldn't afford him going to an "out of state" college so he was going to Tree Hill Community College. Jake wished there was someone in his life that he could tell about his parents fighting and his college issues, Haley used to be good at that. But he was going to graduate soon with no best friends and no girlfriend. The sad thing was he didn't care anymore. (A/N: No Jenny in this story)
Brooke was a cheerleader, she was popular and preppy. Basically she was the female version of Nathan. She was a "friendly" girl, if you know what I mean. She'd been with countless guys, could get people to do her homework for her and was still really liked by the student body. She was the Senior Class President and could control anything and anyone but she was scared of loneliness. She missed being 'Tigger' with her friends and missed her parents. She was scared about leaving the safety net that was Tree Hill High. She just wished that she could go back to the way things were when she was young, naive and she was going to go to Savannah School of Art and Design with Peyton (now she was going to live in New York to see what would happen), or when she practised her French with Haley or her singing with Jake, doing English with Luke and PE with Nate. She knew it would never go back. She just wished.
Peyton was an artist, she hung out with the people who were just above nerd status and they were the emo/ gothic group the ones who tended to were black and slit there wrists, she didn't really do either of these she just drew weird artwork and listened to weird music, music that her, Haley and Jake used to bond over. It would all be over soon and Peyton would go to Savannah School of Art and Design she would excel in the areas she was good at and become something great. She would make knew friends and get married and move away from the place that she called "Tree Hell". She would leave her father and would visit him and her mother's grave regularly. But there would be no more emptiness, because that would stay in Tree Hill at Tree Hill High forever buried in the walls and lockers and the faces in the photos that she kept in the box underneath her floorboards, the ones she would promptly burn before the fall.
Haley was a nerd, affectionately called tutor girl by the six, it soon was being used as a derogatory term by the popular group and then in turn by Brooke, Nathan and even Lucas. Haley joined the tutor program, maintained her 4.0 gpa, got straight A's, was in line to get Valedictorian and would become a freshman with a scholarship at Stanford in the fall. She didn't have a lot of friends mainly just Marvin "Mouth" McFadden and Antwon "Skills" Taylor, who didn't care who her friends were before or when she corrected there grammar. She missed the group but the way they had treated her had turned her off even trying to be friends with them again. Haley though had many secrets that she was hiding secrets that only Mouth and Skills knew secrets that her six ex-best friends could not know about.
Six friends who had decided there fates, college or work, then marriage happiness and forgetting there past. But one march day fate had other plans for them, for this day was the day that friendships will be confronted and lives will change. Six friends whose destinies will be forever intertwined, Cradle to Grave...
The day they all came back to each other was not there finest in fact it was one of the scariest days that they would face and something that no 17 year old should ever have to go through.
Who can determine how much time is enough to actually alter life, for six people there lives are about to be changed in a matter of 10 minutes. There lives will become bitterly intertwined again in a force of fate that will forever change the way they saw each other.
~OTH~
"Today we are ready, The Crucible" the teacher explained.
"The Crucible is a story about fear, the fear that is manipulated to control emotions. The Crucible also demonstrates that fear can make us do stupid things, fear can consume us or lives if we let it".
While the teacher prattled on about fear, Nathan Scott looked at his brother and promptly rolled his eyes. His brother copied the motion. In thinking about it, he was intensely listening to his teacher talk about fear. Lucas Scott's fear that controlled him was the fear that people would find out he loved school and wanted to major in English, he was a Scott though and Scott's don't do this.
As Lucas looked around the room and he found the eyes of all his former friends, except one. While thinking about their former friendship the door opened to break that silence. In walked in the ever studious Haley James, as she took her place Lucas knew that her reason for being late to school was going to be a topic of major speculation today.
Lucas wondered why they were starting a new topic today. They only had a few more weeks left of school so that meant that what they did now didn't really matter, because they already had there college acceptance letters and just had to maintain there grades until graduation, easy for him hard for his brother.
Lucas Scott was broken from his thoughts by a boy standing up in his seat with a gun and then everything went black.
~OTH~
Haley James was never late, even with her impossible schedule she was always on time and never skipped a beat. Today though had gone from bad to worse and as she proceeded in the building for English class she was not in the mood for what lay ahead. Staring with her late arrival.
As she arrived and was promptly told to take her seat she saw out of the corner of her eye something she would later regret not picking up on, but after the morning she had had it was impossible to for her brain to even think straight, then as she got out her books ready to take her notes a loud ear piercing sound went of from behind her and all she saw was chaos, as she grabbed her former friends hand.
~OTH~
Brooke Davis applied her make up in her car this morning, she was late, because her alarm clock was tucked away in her desk draw from waking her up on the previous day. Walking away from her car, another present from her absentee parents, she sensed that today would be different. The smell was different, the air was thinker and the storm clouds were covering the Tree Hill sky line as she entered the building for English.
Not really listening to what the teacher was saying, her thoughts drifted to the big sale that was happening at Macy's this week and how her and Bevin were going to head to after school. Brooke was broken from her thoughts though by the pulling of her hand to the ground by a former friend of hers.
~OTH~
Nathan Scott rarely listened in class, but he was making an exception today. Something in the pit of his stomach told him that today was different, his fears confirmed by the beautiful Haley James walking late to class, god he missed her most.
His train of thought was rapidly broken by his older brother fainting in front of him and that's when he saw it the thing that was going to change there lives forever.
~OTH~
Jake, sat there not taking any notice of what was going on around him. There was a very scary vibe be sent out today and before Jake could even think about the vibe a shot was fired and someone behind him went down and the look on Nathan's face said that it wasn't a random person.
~OTH~
Peyton Sawyer sat back row centre for as long as she could remember today was no exception. She always minded her own business, she was conspicuously listened to her I-pod every lesson and there was not exception today.
Before she was even aware of what was going on there was a shot and then Chaos.
