Prologue: The Scapegoat
I did not kill J.T. Or maybe I did, indirectly. If I had just turned around a half-second sooner...
Whatever. It doesn't matter. As far as the world was concerned, I did kill J.T.
Now, I'm sure you all know what happened. You've all heard the Degrassi students' stories. And yeah, they had it rough. But I bet you haven't heard mine.
You see, Degrassi and Lakehurst had merged into one school. Some sort of fire. If you ask me, which you didn't, I think it was arson.
Lakehurst was better about it all. Some of them avoided me like the plague, and understandably so. A simple rule of survival, really: Stay away from Johnny, stay un-beat up. My friends and I still talked and all, but I saw how they looked at me. I know why. There was enough evidence to prove to a court of law I was innocent, sure- but it seemed there would never be enough for my peers. I heard them whisper as I walked down the hall, I saw the heads turn. "Wasn't that the guy who killed that one kid?" "No, that was his friend." "How do you know? No one was there that night..."
The Degrassi students, on the other hand, needed someone to blame. Some way to get "revenge." And as Drake was safely tucked away in jail, I'd become the scapegoat.
They were trying to make my life living hell. And guess what? They were succeeding. They wanted to punish me.
Did they think I was not being punished enough as it was? I mean, there's the obvious- grounded for life by my parents, even though I was innocent, near daily detentions from fighting so much (the Degrassi students just went to "grief counseling," whatever that was).
Did they think I didn't lie awake every night, haunted by thoughts of that manic gleam in Drake's eyes? Did they think whatever sleeping-pill-induced rest I did get was not filled with nightmares of switchblades and blood?
Because Drake didn't just shatter his own, J.T.'s, and J.T.'s friends' world with his switchblade. He shattered mine. And I wasn't sure I could pick up the pieces.