Chapter 1 – The Invisible Boy

My name is Hagan Kingsley Haddock. I know. I hate my name. My dad is very Scottish and we live in Scotland so he decided to give me the most embarrassing Scottish name he could possibly think of. My mother had next to no say in it. But I do have a nickname that my dad calls me (when he's not yelling at me). Hiccup. I know that's not much better, but it's less Scottish and I like it. I got that name because apparently the first thing I did after I was born was go into a fit of the hiccups. So everyone calls me Hiccup. I think it suits me better.

I'm fifteen years old, and I live with my single father, Stoick, who works for a building company, on a small street in Glasgow. No, my parents are not divorced; my mother was killed in a car crash when I was one. So I have no memories of her, instead I look at the pictures of her situated throughout the house. She's very slim, with a heart-shaped face and light auburn hair, much like my own, except mine's darker and heading towards being ginger. I can't really miss her, because I have no memories of her, but I do wish she was alive. I wish I could see her, because although I love my dad, living with him does tend to get on my nerves. We're not rich, and we're not poor. We get by. Oh yeah, and my dad does get bouts of depression. There are days where he wakes up and doesn't talk to me and I call these dark days. When my dad has a dark day, he spends all day sat on the sofa drinking whatever alcoholic beverages we happen to have.

So when that happens, I spend my days in my room. Come to think of it, I spend most of my days in my room, when I'm not at school. School. I hate that word. I hate going there. I literally don't have any friends, and my school days are made hell when Spencer "Snotlout" Jorgenson and his cronies throw the contents of my locker across the hallway, or they throw my textbooks in the water fountain, or they dump my lunch over my head, and I have had my head shoved in a toilet once or twice. Why me? Well, I'm small (around 5 feet), I have close-to ginger hair, I have freckles, I wear glasses, and I have a prosthetic leg. Yes, you heard me. I have a prosthetic leg*. I lost half my leg in a car accident a year ago. A lot of the time these days they just kick it and the metal vibrates and the shock of it hurts like hell. And my name does not help. Whenever there's haddock being served in the canteen, I get so many insults and jibes thrown my way that sometimes I just want to throw my dinner tray at whoever started it and storm out.

But I don't. I quietly leave the canteen, and when I am out of sight of anyone, I make a dash for the music room. Because music's the only thing I'm good at. Sure, I get average grades in all my other subjects, but music is what I do. I go into the music room, and I pick up an acoustic guitar from the cupboard which, perhaps worryingly, is always unlocked, and I sit on a chair in the middle of the room and just play. My favourite song to play at school is Let Her Go by Passenger, because it has a slightly depressing tone to it, and a lot of the time depressed is how I feel at school. I don't tell teachers, because if I did it would only make it worse. And if I told my dad, well, it would get a whole lot worse, because he'd storm up to the school and yell at our head teacher. Then I'd never hear the end of it.

So, as I was saying, I spend pretty much all my time in my room. It's the third biggest room in the house, after the lounge and my dad's room. When I had it redecorated a couple of years back I chose to have it painted a dulled-down cerulean blue. Blue is my favourite colour, and it's also the colour of mine and my dad's favourite football team, Rangers. It's one of the only things I have in common with my dad. The floor is laminate, but I have a rug in the centre of the room in the shape of the Rangers crest. The bed (with its Rangers bedspread) is on the back wall but in the centre of it and facing into the centre of the room (my rug is by the foot of the bed.) My bedside table has a digital alarm clock, a framed photo of me as a baby with my parents, a Rangers coaster which often supports a Rangers mug of coffee (yes, I'm fifteen and I drink coffee. Let's face it, I need the caffeine.), a little plastic box of guitar picks, and whatever book I happen to be reading at the time, because reading's another thing I love to do. The book that is currently residing there is The Maze Runner by James Dashner.

My wardrobe and chest of drawers are on the far left hand wall of my room, and my wardrobe is covered in old and new Rangers posters and my league tracker. We're currently second in the Championship, so we should get promoted at the end of the season.

Anyway, on the wall above my bed is nothing apart from my reading lamp which is fixed to the wall and turns on and off with a switch next to my headboard.

The wall opposite my bed, just right of the door, is covered in not Rangers posters, but posters of all my favourite rock bands. Yes, rock bands. The other thing I have in common with my dad. We both love bands such as Guns N Roses and AC/DC, but they're old school. I also love newer, more recent bands. These include Foo Fighters, Fall Out Boy and The Automatic (Not Accepted Anywhere is the best album EVER!). Finally, the wall to the right of my bed is where I lean all my music stuff; my Sigma acoustic guitar, my black and white Fender electric guitar, my guitar amp, my guitar tuners, and my violin. Yes, I do play violin. It's a Strunal polished mahogany, and it's my prized possession, along with my two guitars and my keyboard. Next to my violin resides my bow, next to that resides my Yamaha keyboard which I use on its piano setting only, and next to that stands my one microphone on its tripod stand.

Now I know it may seem strange to you that I play violin, acoustic guitar and piano/keyboard when I like all these rock bands, but I have a very wide taste in music, unlike my dad. As well as all these rock bands, I also love - and when I say love I don't mean I'm a crazed fan - One Direction. I love their music, not them. I like to play their songs on both my guitars and my piano/keyboard. I also like to play Ed Sheeran's The A Team and Thinking Out Loud, Passenger's Let Her Go (as I've already said), and Train's Hey Soul Sister. That is my favourite song of all time to play on my guitar, only I don't play it at school because if someone stumbled across me playing (which hasn't happened yet, but there's a first time for everything) then that would be kind of embarrassing.

On my violin I only ever play Alexander Rybak songs. He's a multi-talented Belarusian-Norwegian composer/singer. He won Eurovision in 2009. He's a legend. I play his songs Fairytale (which he won Eurovision with), Europe's Skies and Into A Fantasy. On my keyboard/piano I play his songs Dare I Say and Disney Girls. So yeah. I love a lot of music. Finally on the same wall is my bedroom window. It is the window I sit opposite and play my guitars and keyboard, and stand and play my violin. It is also my favourite part of my room. I do have a reason for this.

You see, the only upside of my street is the neighbors. Or one neighbor. My next-door neighbor's bedroom window is exactly opposite mine. Before you say anything, I don't look into her room, because that would be creepy; her curtains are always shut anyway. Her name is Astrid Marie Hofferson (I know; a beautiful and normal name! Why...) and she also goes to my school. She's a tomboy/punk, but I still think she's beautiful. She always wears her platinum blonde hair in one thick braid down her back. She has the most amazing blue eyes which are often framed by black kohl. She's taller than me, but is the same age. When I see her out of school, she's always in either an AC/DC or Guns N Roses slim-fit black t-shirt and studded and/or ripped black or navy blue jeans, a matching denim jacket and her trademark studded black Converses.

She's also the only girl in the school who actually manages to look good in our school uniform, which is a navy blue blazer with the school badge on, your house tie, (there are four houses at our school. They are the names of Scottish provinces. They are: Falkirk, Fife, Highland and Inverclyde. In the same order the colour ties are red, blue, green and yellow. I'm in Inverclyde, which is the worst house for everything, and she's in Falkirk, which is the best house for everything.), a proper shirt, not a polo, and a skirt or trousers. The girls have to wear skirts, they don't have a choice.

I've been in love with her since I was about ten, but she's never once returned my affections. She always walks straight past me like I'm invisible. I'm pretty sure she doesn't know I exist. Pretty much all the guys in our year are after her, but she never gives any attention to boys. She couldn't give a monkeys. If a boy tries to talk to her, she'll just bring her fist up next to her face and hit him in the nose without even looking. Which is why I've never tried.

But sometimes, when I'm playing my guitar, I think I can see her shadow sat leaning against the wall behind her curtains, as if she's listening to my music. But that's impossible. She doesn't know I exist. It's like that song, where she's the uptown girl (or she seems that way to me) and I'm the downtown boy that she doesn't know exists. She's probably listening to her headphones. She'll never notice me.

*It's one of those metal and plastic things that people that have had their legs blown off in wars wear.

This is a new story I decided to write, because I wanted to do a story that included music. I do not own any of the songs, artists, brands or teams mentioned. No offence to anyone who lives in Inverclyde! I changed Stradivari to Strunal because Stradivari is too close to Stradivarius and it's definitely not a Stradivarius violin! Also she's never returned his affections because she's never shown an interest in him regardless of whether he's tried to talk to her. Also, I don't think he needs to talk to her; remember, they're next door neighbors, and half the songs he covers are about her, so she may or may not be listening! This is a response to a guest review I received last night. Please review! :-)