ANOTHER SIDE, ANOTHER STORY

Chapter One

Bell

RING!!!

Over one thousand students burst through the class room doors throughout the entire school building, talking loudly and filling the halls within a matter of seconds. The first day is over. They all made it through, some without homework, others with a bunch of papers for their parents or guardians to sign. Steven Leitch was among one of those students, stepping out in the middle of the crowd with the rest of his sixth period math class. Their teacher, Mrs. Dutton, wasn't the worst teacher ever. But he could tell after just an hour with her that he wouldn't be able to stand much of her annoying way of rambling on about things.

And then there were the two people in his 'group'. Devin and Ashley. Devin was maybe the stupidest junior he knew. Tall, hairy, yet with a charming appearance. He had a dumb opinion to almost everything and when he laughed, he'd laughed with his entire mouth, leaning forward into your face. And then there was Ashley, who wasn't as dumb but Steven could tell right off the bat that she had a crush on Devin. The two talked about pointless things that entire class and she laughed along with him about every single stupid little thing. Steven was the quiet one in the group; he knew it and didn't mind it. Being the quiet one was better than being a retard or a stalker like his team mates.

Steven sighed through his nose, trying hard not to think of such things as he made his way down the hall toward the commons where the doors that led out to the buses usually were. He didn't see anyone he knew along the way, until a group of Mexicans came walking in front of him laughing and holding something. Steven frowned. He had those same Mexicans in his math class and they spent the entire time squabbling over nothing. They seemed to be holding a black notebook or something and were flipping through it with glee.

"Aw, it's in English." One said and the other laughed dumbly next to him.

Steven ignored them and continued his way down the hallway when suddenly…

Somebody screamed behind him. Steven stopped and made to turn around but was shoved out of the way by non-other than Mr. Bailey, the old, squat, black security guard who roamed the school halls.

Steven stumbled backwards to see what all the commotion was about and was shocked to see that the group of three Mexicans who he'd seen laughing had all abruptly fallen dead on the spot, clutching their chests and gurgling foam from their mouths. Steven gasped in horror, watching the scene unfold as Mr. Bailey tried to stop one from jerking around on the floor.

"SOMEONE GET THE NURSE!" Mr. Bailey roared.

But there was a crowd of people surrounding them, all talking and crying out at what they saw over each other's shoulders. Steven saw something on the floor behind Mr. Bailey. It was next to the stairs. The little black notebook that the Mexicans had just been holding. He could see two white words on the front cover, but he couldn't make out what they were.

Looking around, Steven saw that everyone was focusing their attention on the scene. Steven silently moved through the crowd and bent over to pick up the book. And finally he saw what the words there said.

DEATH NOTE

Death note? Steven wondered, for a split second, that if someone touched the note they would die and it would be a reasonable explanation for why the Mexicans had just fallen. But that thought soon died away for such a thing was impossible. He looked over and saw more teachers rushing to the scene. If they caught him holding this it would look kind of suspicious. Such a thing, even if it were fake, he wouldn't want to risk being caught with a strange thing called a "Death Note".

And so he quickly slung his backpack around his shoulder and stuffed the notebook quickly into one of the compartments. It was probably fake, that's what he thought at the time. He could simply just use it as a normal notebook for now. After-all, it was just a silly prank…But then why would the three kids behind him fall to their demise just now? Was it just a coincidence that they were holding a book with the word "Death" written upon it?

He didn't have time to think much more on the matter. The teachers were pushing people away and forcing them to leave. Steven could see fat little Rosie, a Mexican girl, sobbing on the sidelines and staring at one of the faces of the people on the ground. Steven winced, trying hard to rid his memory of that face as he was siphoned through the crowd of students outside to where all the buses stood parked in a line before them.

People were in a panic, talking about the incident that had just taken place a few minutes ago inside. As Steven made his way toward the bus, he knew already that it would probably make the 6:00 news. He hated the news, but he was sure that many of the students would watch it today in order to find out what had happened. But he had been right there. Nothing had happened. They'd all simply died of, what looked like, cardiac arrests, or heart attacks.

It wasn't long until Steven found himself in the third row inside of the bus, sitting there with a blank expression on his face and looking out the window with wide eyes. What were the odds of that seriously happening, though? Three heart attacks at the exact same time to the same three people who just happened to be friends and just happened to be holding a notebook with the word "Death" on it? It was almost painfully too coincidental.

"Steve-O!"

Steven looked up from his short spew of day dreaming to find one of his best friends boarding the bus calling out his nickname: Steve-O. He had many nicknames like this. There was Wemo, which meant werewolf emo. That was back when he had long hair and had a very emo personality itself. And his other most common nickname was Bush, founded by his friend, Catheryne Baker. He'd adopted that name because of the beanie he almost always wore around with the word "Bush" labeled on the front of it.

The friend who was boarding the bus was not Catheryne Baker, however. It was Joshua Zito. Short, untidy brown hair, short, and average build. Every day he rode Steve's bus when in reality his bus was a few wheels behind them. Steve had gotten used to Zito's usual appearance on the bus. Almost every day after school the previous year, Zito would board it and come home with them where they would meet with their other good friend, Luke Bardsley, and hang out around the neighborhood.

Almost immediately, Steven turned to him as Zito took a seat in front, and said "Dude, did you see what happened?" and went on into retelling the story of the three Mexicans falling to their deaths inside the school.

"What?" Zito exclaimed when he finished and to Steve's surprise, he laughed. "Three Mexicans? Ha-ha, yeah right."

"Zito, I'm fucking serious!" Steven said loudly, a twinge of anger in his head that he didn't believe him. Though he couldn't blame Zito for not believing. He himself probably would've thought the story was ludicrous if he hadn't been there himself to witness it. "Mr. Bailey was there and everything, I—"

"Hey!" The bus driver snapped. "Watch your language!"

"Sorry." Steven apologized, only making Zito scoff once more.

The bus driver was an angry old woman who always took forever to pick them up in the mornings before school and yet she was always the first bus in line at the end of school. Steven did not want to get on the bad side of his only ride to Hazen so he forced himself to lower his voice and not cuss anymore.

"Whatever dude, three heart attacks?" Zito asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, three. To the same three people who were standing right next to each other." Steven told him again.

"What?" Zito shook his head. "I didn't see any dead people on the way here."

"They probably took them to the Nurse's office. Mr. Bailey was calling for a Nurse before I left." Steven said, recalling the scene in his head and wincing at the thought of the three dead boys on the floor. He'd never seen something like that before…Come to think of it, he'd never seen somebody die in front of him, period. It was a chilling feeling and it wouldn't go away. For some reason he felt as if talking about it to Zito, to anyone, would relieve him of the cold, uncomfortable sensation but it didn't.

"Why would they go to the nurse's office if they were dead?" Zito asked suddenly.

Steven frowned and looked at him. Wasn't it obvious? "So that they didn't have three dead bodies in the middle of the hallway, duh?"

Zito didn't say anything and simply looked out the window, as if trying to see if he could spot three corpses somewhere on the pavement. Steven sighed and knew his friend probably didn't believe him. Maybe that's why the sensation wasn't leaving. Because he wanted confirmation from somebody else. But he couldn't remember anybody who had seen the three mysterious heart attacks and talking to Luke about it was almost even more fruitless than trying to convince Zito that it had happened.

Three kids don't just drop dead from cardiac arrest at the same time, right next to each other every day. And it even sounded like a lie Steven would make up just to screw with his friends. He'd done stuff like that before and was cursing himself for it in his head. He'd never lie about death though. Wouldn't they know that by now?

…Maybe not.

The image of the three deaths stayed in his head the whole bus ride home. Zito acted normally, talking to his acquaintances in the seats nearby like Benny and Armando. Steven remained silent, staring at the window. He was well aware that Zito had probably noticed this, and when Zito asked "Are you still thinking about the heart attacks or whatever?" it only confirmed to him that Steven was indeed acting as if he was going through some personal drama. But he knew what he'd seen wasn't a lie. Steven had hoped that ever since Michelle, he'd…

Steven sighed and quickly forced himself not to think of that subject. Instead he turned and looked at Zito slowly, giving him a false smile and saying "No, it's alright. I'm fine. Just thinking about…other stuff." Before returning to look out the window.

Zito shrugged and continued to laugh at Benny's ridiculously long hair.

Steven unlocked the front door with a key and opened it in order to allow himself, Zito, and his fifteen year old sister, Amanda, inside.

They all shrugged off their backpacks by the carpet, Amanda quickly walked off to her room down the hallways while Zito wandered into the kitchen moaning about being hungry. Steven didn't bother asking Amanda about the heart attacks. When he'd gotten on the bus she had already been there which meant she couldn't have seen them.

With a heavy grunt, he placed the key back inside the little, black box that hung on the outside of the door knob. He pressed the three buttons and clicked it inside.

"Why do you guys have that thing anyway?" Zito asked.

"So that we don't have to worry about losing the key whenever we go out." Steven responded simply, closing the door. "Only me and my family know the code and we change it every two weeks just in case so there's really no harm in having it out there as long as people don't know the code.

"Well, someone could just smash it open." Zito shrugged.

"If someone was that willing to break into my house I think they'd prefer to smash through the window instead." Steven said, picking his backpack up and setting it down on the coffee table. "C'mon, let's finish whatever homework we got."

After a few minutes, they had settled down in the living room with a slice of pizza on each of their plates and papers being filed out of their backpacks all over the place.

As Steven dug his way through to his books, Zito asked "So how was Government with Shaunesty?"

"It wasn't too bad." Steven admitted. "I got it with that kid, Kyle Hilmes."

Zito laughed. "Fire crotch?"

"Yeah."

"Sucks for you, man." Zito smirked. "You should switch to Crueger."

"I'm going to try and do that tomorrow." Steven said.

"Alright, cool."

Steven slipped his hand further through his notebooks and found himself touching the black front cover of the book he'd found on the ground. Having been so flustered by the three heart attacks, he'd almost forgotten the fact that he'd picked up a book near the scene of the deaths.

And as he looked down to confirm that it really was the book, he saw the familiar, haunting looking letters that spelled out: Death Note. Somehow knowing that three dead kids had just been holding this book and now it was inside his own house increased the chill that ran down his spine as he looked at it.

It was a good thing that Zito wasn't looking, for Steven's wasn't sure what kind of expression he had on his face at that moment. He turned away and dropped the backpack to the ground, the Death Note still hidden inside.

Why didn't Steven show his friend the notebook? Surely it looked cool and it would be a neat little prank book to mess around with. He could simply imagine the fun of writing down all the people's names that they hated into the death note and having a good laugh about it afterwards. But there was something, a strange feeling unlike the chill in his spine, that made him want to keep this death note a secret for now.

He didn't necessarily believe that the Death Note was real. Something like that couldn't be real. Steven didn't have time to think to hard on the matter. He had to focus on his homework. Let the Death Note wait until tonight. He'd look through it carefully and find out what the deal with it really was.

And so Steven focused on his homework. He had to read the first lesson for Government and answer three problems at the end of that chapter. Then he had to do the first three pages in the Lesson One Packet for his Math class. And finally, he had to take out all the yellow, white, and purple sheets that he'd gotten from each of his classes and get his mother to sign them all so he could turn them into the next day without getting them confused with one another. It wasn't too difficult of homework, but it was enough to occupy an hour of his day.

When he'd finished, Zito had finished as well. They both started playing the Playstation 2, the game system that Steven would soon be selling in order to get money for the Xbox 360. But even playing a fun game like Resident Evil 4 didn't completely put him at ease. Every now and again his mind would wander to the scene of the three boys falling from heart attack in the middle of the crowded hallway. His mind also wandered to the Death Note hidden inside his backpack lying on the floor next to his feet.

He had the strange desire to take it out and force Zito to go home but that would be unreasonable. Steven knew a good way to get Zito to go home would be to play a 1 player game and make him watch. It would bore him enough to want to go home, he was sure of it. But doing something like that just to look through a notebook was stupid. He could wait…

But watching the clock always made time seem to go by much slower than it actually was. Steve was sure that Zito didn't notice, but every few minutes he would cast a glance at the clock on the VCR to see what time it was only find that it had only passed a few minutes less than he'd been hoping.

"You're wasting your ammo, dude." Zito said as Steven pummeled another undead zombie with a blast with the shotgun.

"I don't care." Steven mumbled with frustration.

Zito yawned and got up to head in the kitchen. Steven wondered briefly if he was going to get milk or a banana like he usually did. And then his eyes wandered down to his backpack. It was still unzipped. In fact, he could see the black edge of the front cover to the Death Note inside. Would he have enough time just to flip through it and see what was written inside?

He could hear Zito thumping around in the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door and closing it a second later. "No pizza left?"

"Fix yourself a banana split if you want." Steven called while setting down the controller and quietly slipping the Death Note out from his backpack.

He heard Zito exclaim "Alright!" from the kitchen. Steven knew Zito loved Banana Splits. And it would give him enough time to at least scan the first few pages and see what was there.

An exhilarating feeling went through his fingers as he flipped open the front cover to stare down at nothing but a blank, lined, piece of notebook paper. The first page of many, but it was empty of words. Nothing.

Steven looked and was surprised to find white, scrawled writing on the inside cover. It was on a black backdrop and the writing looked like it had been hand written and yet printed at the same time…

Death Note

How to Use

I

The Human whose name is written in this note shall die.

This note will note take affect unless the writer—

The sound of Zito's footsteps drawing nearer told him that he was out of time. As fast as he could, he closed the notebook and set it back down into his backpack. By the time he'd picked up the controller, Zito had emerged savoring the look of his banana split, complete with chocolate syrup spread over it.

"So hungry!" He said, sitting down on the couch and digging into his pre-desert meal with a satisfied look on his face.

Steven continued playing the game, forcing his face not to look angry. There had been a bunch of rules on the inside of that cover. And he'd only managed to read one. So if someone's name was written in the notebook, they died? Yeah right. And what seemed to be the requirement that the second rule was talking about? He wanted to know badly and the temptation to kick Zito out grew but once more his reasoning told him not to. Let his friend enjoy the ice cream. He would read through the entire notebook tonight, that was for sure…

And so time wore on until finally it reached 7:00. Zito yawned, stretched, stood up, and did his usual pre-leave walk to the door, grunting while he slipped on his backpack.

"Going home?" Steve asked casually, turning off the game and flipping through television channels.

"Yeah, Steak-night I think." Zito said. "Seeyah." He walked out the door.

Steven sat there in silence, staring out the blinds of the window from his seat where he could see the outline of Zito's figure walking up the front lawn, onto the road, and out of sight.

He quickly reached down and pulled out the Death Note. This time there would be no interruptions. His parents were home, sure. It would be better if he went into his room saying he was going to finish his homework. His sister didn't care; she was probably too busy on the computer anyway. No distractions.

He gathered up all his homework and stuffed the Death Note in between two of his books. He carried them out of the living room and across the kitchen, down the hall, and finally into his bedroom where he closed the door behind him with his foot so that he could set all the books down on his bed. Without further ado, he pulled the Death Note back out from between his books and flipped it back open to the first page. And once again, he returned his attention to the rules on the inside of the front cover…

Death Note

How to Use

I

The Human whose name is written in this note shall die.

This note will not take affect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.

If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen.

If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.

After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

Steven stared at the inside of the cover with a wide eyed look. If this really was a prank, it was certainly well thought out. But of course, there were hundreds of different questions going through his head at that moment. Were these simply all the rules? There has to be more. He flipped to the back inside cover but there was nothing there.

"This…this must be fake. A joke…" He muttered.

He looked back at the rules and read the words "Heart Attack" and the image of the three Mexican students shuddering in pain before their death came back. They'd died of a heart attack…and if this death note really was the cause of that then their names must be in here written in here somewhere without a cause of death…

Steven began to flip through the pages. Each one looked exactly alike. He wondered what would happen if he ran out of space to write? Eventually that would happen. Unless you erased everything and wrote over it. What was he thinking!? This couldn't be real. It was just a prank—a joke! That's all…

And then he stopped about half-way through the pages. He'd seen something on one of them. He went back a few pages, determined to find what he'd seen and hoping that it wasn't what he was searching for…But…

There, written in the middle of one of the pages were three names.

Anthony Louise

David Martinez

Manuel Escobar

Steven sat there on his bed staring at the names in horror. They'd written their own names in the Death Note. They must've thought it was a joke just like how he was thinking right now. He remembered how they were complaining about it being in English. And then they died less than a minute later…Impossible. This couldn't just be a coincidence. It just was not possible…

But there were the names, as plain as day on the page before him. And the very same three were dead right now. It all fit together and yet it all seemed too impossible to be real. How could something like this exist? It just couldn't.

A Death Note…

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