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Chapter One Shay%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
I woke up on the first day of high school. Sophomore year, I had just gotten my driver's last month too. Too bad I couldn't afford a car, hell, I couldn't even afford a bicycle. I rolled off my inch thick mattress and onto the cold dirt floor.
"Rise and shine Shay Wolfe," Johnny said. I smiled, of course Johnny was up already. Johnny had given my brother Rafiel and I a home and that was all I could ask for. Even though it was hard to call this one-roomed shack a home, it was still a roof over our heads and somewhere to go when we were running from the cops.
I shook Rafiel up and rolled up my mattress. I stuffed the mattress in the corner and stretched my long legs. There was too little room in this shack to leave the mattress out that's for sure. I grabbed an old backpack and headed towards the door. No breakfast for me and mostly likely no lunch either. Food was just too expensive in the town of Middletown. Rafiel had another half an hour before his school started, lucky kid. I looked at myself in the mirror in the corner. My faded blue jeans had holes at the knees and were all rugged, Johnny's black T-shirt I was wearing wasn't so dirty but it was too big for me. The jean jacket I had stolen and was wearing over the T-shirt, was dirty and mangy but I had nothing else. My three-inch long hair was in my face but I didn't mind. At least it hid some of the scars on the left side of my face. I would change but there was just one little problem. I had nothing to change into.
Johnny told me he would snag some cloths from some of his pals for Rafiel and I. I sighed as I began to walk down the trashed road. Other people were up but nobody in my gang was up. Rafiel, Johnny, some other kids, and I had received the reputation as 'river rats' as the police call us. There were only about ten of us real river rats running around on the streets and picking fights. Of course, us river rats were the ones that got in fights (and usually won), drank, smoked, had no parents or family, no home, have criminal records and so forth.
I couldn't prevent being a river rat, it was just what my life had come to be. I carried a knife in my shoe and another knife on my side. I wasn't stupid. Hell, living on the streets makes you cautious. I walked all the was to the Middletown high school, dreading the school day to begin. Middletown high school was centered small dab in the middle of Middletown. The west side was the rough side of Middletown, where I lived. The east side was all just a disguise for all the tourists and rich kids with their fancy foreign cars and resorts.