Deb came into the room of her sixteen year old son, Nathan. "Wake up, honey," she said. "It's time to go to school."
"Mo-om," Nathan whined. "Five more minutes."
"No, not five more minutes. You already hit the snooze button four times. I want you to be downstairs, eating breakfast in ten minutes. If you're not, I'll drag you right out of bed and into school the way you are now."
"Aw Mom," Nathan laughed. "Fine, I'm up." Nathan got out of bed and started getting dressed.
"Good," Deb smiled. "I'll meet you downstairs. I scrambled some eggs for you. You should eat them before they get cold."
"Alright, Mom, thanks," Nathan smiled. "I'll be right down."
Twenty minutes later, Nathan and Deb were out the door, driving towards the school. Every morning, Deb would drop Nathan off on her way to work. After school was over Nathan would walk towards home or to the little restaurant that his mother owned—Deb's Diner—to help his mother out with the customers. Anyways, this time around, Nathan and Deb were already a bit later as they were getting out the door, so by the time Nathan had signed in at the office, dropped his stuff off at his locker and walked into class it was nine o'clock, twenty minutes after school had started. The English teacher, Mr. Roberge, looked at him as he was coming into the door.
"Ah, Mr. Scott, nice of you to decide to join us. Please take your seat and take out the novel we've been studying."
"Yes, sir," Nathan said, not wanting to attract anymore attention to himself. Even though English was one of his favourite subjects, he dreaded going to this class with a passion. The class boring, pointless and the opposite of how English should be taught (every day they'd read a chapter of a book for homework and then write a summary of it in their journal, to be tested on their understanding of the plot once every two weeks). But that Nathan could take. What he couldn't take was the constant bullying from the arrogant asshole Lucas and his friends.
"Well, well, would you look who it is?" Lucas whispered to Nathan, quiet enough for the whole class to hear, but not loud enough for Mr. Crompton, who was sitting at the other side of the class in his desk to notice and do something about it. "The bastard baby. You know, it would have done us all a favour if you would have just stayed home. Or switched schools for that matter."
Nathan was tempted to say something back to the jerk, but decided against it. It would only result in a fight and Nathan had already been suspended twice for fighting. He was smart and got good grades, so it killed his mother when he got in trouble for something so stupid. After seeing the look on her face when he told her that he had gotten suspended again, Nathan made a mental note to himself to try to behave better and not react to Lucas's taunts. It was harder than it seemed, though...
Lucas Scott was Nathan's half brother. They had the same father—the infamous Dan Scott. Dan had been dating a girl from his high school, Karen Roe, ever since the tenth grade. He had gotten her pregnant the summer after graduation and the two of them decided to get married and raise the baby. However, Dan got a basketball scholarship to the University of North Carolina at the very last minute and decided to go and try to balance school, basketball and being a father all at the same time.
Eighteen years old is such a young age to settle down, though, and once at school Dan met someone else. He started seeing Nathan's mom, Deb Lee, behind Karen's back. But it was never meant to be between Dan and Deb and shortly after Deb told Dan that she was pregnant, Deb left her and went back to Karen. Karen was mad at him, of course, but for the sake of the unborn baby decided to forgive him. So that's how it ended up that Dan, Karen and baby Lucas went on to live the nice, good life in the house that Dan's parents had helped them buy while Deb was left alone with a newborn son. Still, she had managed to pull through and open up her own diner, making enough money to give her and Nathan a pretty good life. Dan was as uninvolved in Nathan's life as physically possible in a town as small as Tree Hill. But no matter how bad either Dan or Deb tried to forget about what had happened and move on with their lives, word started going around. Due to some mix-up at the hospital, Nathan's last name had been written down as Scott instead of Lee. The fact that Dan Scott was living a happy life with his family while his other, unwanted son was living in the same town became the topic of over-the-phone gossip for many people. Everywhere any of the people involved went, other people would stare and whisper things behind their backs.
Still, this bothered the adults a lot more than it bothered the kids. Growing up, Nathan was dimly aware that a kid in his grade named Lucas Scott was his half brother, but since the two of them were never friends and neither parent talked about the other boy to their son other than the watered down version of what happened back then, the boys didn't pay much attention to each other or the gossip that was, like all initially juicy stories, starting to die down on its own anyways.
It was when the boys entered high school that the trouble began. Nathan, who had always enjoyed playing basketball down by the river court with his friends, decided to try out for the team. He didn't make it in his first or second year of high school, since he was competing against guys a lot older than him. In fact, the only freshman on the school team was Lucas Scott, but that wasn't surprising. His daddy had probably had a word with the school or something. After all, Dan Scott lived, breathed and slept for basketball and if his son wasn't on the team by the time he entered ninth grade he very well could have died.
Nathan tried out for the team one more time in the eleventh grade. Whitey, who had noticed the talent the boy possessed early on, but didn't let him join the team from the beginning because of the other, more valuable players the school had at that time, finally gave Nathan a spot on the team, along with a jersey and his own locker in the school changing room. Nathan was overjoyed, but some other people weren't. Some other people were very ticked off by Whitey's decision. And those people went by the names of Dan and Lucas Scott.
Dan, who had spent the better part of the first sixteen years of Lucas' life making a top basketball star out of him, couldn't stand the embarrassment of his other son, Nathan, making the team without any of his coaching. He saw it as a fluke on Whitey's part, a joke that had gone too far. But when a few months passed and Nathan continued playing on the team, Dan decided that this needed to be stopped. He drilled it into Lucas's head that Nathan was an enemy, someone that needed to be gotten rid of as soon as possible. Since then, Lucas made it his personal mission to make Nathan's life as difficult as possible. Being one of the most popular guys in the whole school gave him a group of supporters to do it with. Suddenly Nathan became the subject of constant bullying and harassment. Pushing him into lockers, stealing his clothes after practice, provoking him in order to start a fight, what they did was nothing original. Still, it was really starting to piss Nathan off.
All that was going on wasn't something that Nathan wanted or liked to talk about, since it was embarrassing for a sixteen year-old junior to complain about bullying. Nevertheless, it was really starting to get the better of him. He was tired of always putting up with it. Sometimes, he was even tempted to put a stop to it by giving Dan and Lucas what they wanted and quitting the team. But no, basketball was something that he loved to do and Dan and Lucas weren't going to stand in the way of that. Still, something needed to be done about this problem. Nathan just didn't know what yet…
Anyways, the rest of the day went by pretty smoothly. Lucas and his buddies were busy with a party they were planning at Tim's house that weekend, so the only things they did that day was make some comments about Nathan being a "bastard". Pretty mild, considering past events. After school was over, Nathan walked home. He would have walked to the restaurant, but he had a lot of homework that day. Deb would understand—she never pressured Nathan to help her out, he volunteered on his own.
Nathan walked the half-mile towards his house and went up to his room. He was just about to get started on his math homework when he heard a weird sound outside his bedroom window. He looked out and noticed Lucas and a group of his friends standing outside his house throwing eggs at it. Nathan felt the anger rising up in him and went outside to settle things.
