When you were nine, you found the Lucas Box.
Your dad's company was having its annual father-son day at the dealership ("It all comes down to gimmicks," your mom muttered on her way out the door). You had been wearing down your new Nike's since eight in the morning and you were getting bored.
"Dad," you whined in the certain pitch that you knew would make him wince. Grubby fingers tugged the sleeve of his suit for emphasis. He didn't seem impressed, but his customer patted your head complacently. You rolled your eyes: the customers all seemed to think you were six.
You dad smiled that big smile that displayed a disturbing amount of orthodontially corrected teeth and excused the two of you. He placed his hand on your shoulder and casually led you to his office. "Nathan," he said under his breath, smile still in place, "Don't mess this up for me. Stay here until I come to get you. I have a candy bar in my desk which you can have if you're good, okay?"
Shoulders hunched, you nodded.
"What was that?" your dad asked coolly.
"Yes, dad."
He left you there for four hours.
You spent most of the first hour attempting to find that damned candy bar. Instead, you stumbled upon your dad's stash of thick, imported cigars. That knowledge spent all of two minutes at rest until you finally couldn't stand the curiosity any more. You stole a cigar and lighter and slid under the desk: inhaled sophistication; expelled it with a nervous cough. When you didn't stop coughing, you decided that cigars weren't that cool.
The others drawers weren't nearly as interesting. Papers, office supplies, files—boring stuff.
Then you found the Lucas Box. It was an ordinary green metal box with a lock. It was obviously something important, so the only logical thing to do was to find out. You scoured the desk for keys, any keys. You found seven, but the first five didn't work.
A click, and your whole life changed. It was the copy of a birth certificate you found first. Name? Lucas Scott. Father? Daniel Scott.
Every comment you father made about you seemed to take a different meaning: he didn't want a better son, he wanted the better son.
You spent the next three hours with the Lucas Box.
The Lucas Box contained a number of odds and ends from colorful scribbles to a letter to Santa Claus. You thought of the neat refrigerator in your kitchen that displayed only a hastily written correspondence between your parents.
There was only one picture, though: a boy around his age wearing a football uniform. The boy had windburned cheeks and ash blond hair. He was squinting a little from the brightness of the day, and smiled good-naturedly at the camera.
By the time your dad gathered you from his office and whisked you back home, you knew your father had a son that he loved and it wasn't you.
Your first kiss was with a boy named Shaun Pruitt. It was when you were still in middle school and had to take P.E. as a class course. Shaun always helped pick up the equipment after class and Coach Meyers made you stay that time for hurling a basketball at some geek's head.
After haphazardly throwing all the equipment in their appropriate carts, you dashed to the locker rooms before Coach could stop you. Once you entered the locker rooms, your paced slowed and you peeled off your damp, smelly t-shirt, frowning because you knew you didn't have enough time to take a shower.
When Shaun came in and saw you, he actually blushed and turned his head away like—well, like a girl. You almost expected him to giggle.
Because you grew up in Tree Hill, you didn't know what the term "gay" really meant until a year ago, when Billy L. explained everyone at lunch period in a hushed voice. Billy L. was the first boy in your class who used the word "pussy" in casual conversation.
Even though you knew you couldn't possibly be one of those gays, you considered Shaun as he stood in front of you. He had such a particular shade of dirty blond hair.
You couldn't explain why you kissed him, and in later years, you'd tell people your first kiss was with Rachel Hamilton. Maybe it was the way that his pale eyelashes fluttered low, or the way he rubbed his neck in embarrassment. Whatever the reason, you darted forward and pressed your lips carefully on his, noses bumping just a bit awkwardly.
Shaun froze.
His lips were thin and slightly chapped as if he had a habit of licking them. When those very lips began to move hesitantly under yours, you punched him in the jaw.
If asked, you couldn't say that you remember when Peyton Sawyer had frizzy brown hair and kept her face directed to the ground. You do remember when she walked arm-in-arm with Brooke Davis on the first day of sophomore year sporting a mini skirt and an attitude. Of course, the entire male population of Tree Hill High School remembered that.
You watched her when she drove her Corvette to school with her newly blond curls caught high in the wind, watched her walk through the halls and not seem to notice any of the stares she received. She was confidence and wit and something so very different than the airheads on the cheerleading squad.
On your second date with her, she said all too casually, "So I'm joining the squad." Rolled her eyes. "Brooke's bugging me to and you know how she gets."
You did, so you nodded, but you always liked Peyton a little less.
You dreamed of him:
In a bedroom that was somehow yours (familiar posters and trophies lined the walls) but also not, you were making out with Peyton. Hands tangled in her yellow hair, you bit her nibbled her lower lip until she whimpered.
"Harder." You dad's voice came from the corner of the room, face shadowed in darkness. "You're doing it all wrong, boy."
You bit her lip and tasted blood, felt it roll down your chin in fat drops. She shuddered and orgasmed until the sheets beneath you were damp.
"I could do it better," he said and stood up. Lucas stepped into the light smiled mockingly.
Your dating habits with Peyton became a running joke in Tree Hill. It seemed that the two of you broke up more than you were together. You knew that you took too much, and maybe she even knew that she pushed to hard, but you both couldn't seem to stop.
You imagined that maybe there was something dark inside the both of you that couldn't stand to be happy. So even when you took her for granted, or she said something particularly cruel, you stayed with each other, begged for more.
The sex wasn't bad, either. Horny teenagers might not be the authority on good sex, but there was something angry and desperate and real about her fingernails clawing markers of possession onto your back.
You thought you knew her, thought she was just like you, and for a while you could forget about your parents, or basketball, or Lucas fucking Scott.
You fucked Brooke once. She just found out that her dad was having another affair and you had just been at the receiving end of one of your dad's lectures.
Peyton was visiting her aunt in Virginia.
Afterward, you both dressed quickly and you thought that something in the way Brooke frowned made her look guilty. You drove her home in a car that still smelled musky from sex.
"This never happened," Brooke said in a quiet, firm voice as she stepped out onto the pavement.
You wanted to snarl, "Of course it didn't—couldn't have. Not unless I want to lose her. Not unless you do." Instead, you nodded and drove off.
When Peyton came back, she never complained about the extra attention her best friend and boyfriend showered her with. You knew she wouldn't.
In your sophomore year, you supplanted senior James Riley for a spot on the varsity team. James taught you how to slam dunk when you were a freshman.
After Whitey told you the news, you walked out of his office, face blank. James was outside, waiting to be called in. He leaned against a trophy case, creating a wispy mirror image on the glass. He smiled at bleakly you, resigned to his fate on the bench: "Congrats, man."
James was also the guy who told you that Lucas played basketball, and he played well. Your dad had probably known about it already, and you wondered if Lucas was better than you.
In your peripheral vision, you were always aware of Lucas. Maybe you didn't know the name of ever loser he called his friend, but you knew what he was up to. Except maybe you didn't because apparently he became a fucking basketball star without you noticing.
Since you were nine years old, you withheld from doing anything openly hostile to him. After all, you had everything, and he had nothing. You repeated that to yourself when you saw him walking to school dribbling that stupid worn out basketball, every time your English teacher read something he wrote out loud to the class.
You hated him because you knew if he wanted to, if he tried to, he could take it all from you.
When Peyton called one day, told you that her car broke down and had been towed to Scott's Autoshop, you weren't all that surprised at the coincidence.
She wanted you to pick her up and you barked that she'd have to wait for you or she could get her own fucking ride home.
You went to get her anyway. You parked your car across the street saw them standing together, Peyton with a reluctant smile and Lucas with an amused smirk. It was typical, really. Peyton always knew what you wanted, and Lucas could always take what was yours.
Author's Notes: Yes, I've decided to explore the freaky Scott relationships. It's from Nathan's POV because he was really such a fascinatingly angry character in the first season. This was actually my first attempt at second person narrative. Good? Bad? Ugly?