"Hey Duke!" I look over and see Cameron, my one hopeless cause. Ever since we were nine, I liked her a lot. By a lot, I mean fierce love and no other one sort of mush. In the fourth grade, I kissed her when we were on the swings and got a whole bunch of teasing from my friends. Ever since then, I ignored it and pretended that it never happened. That was the biggest mistake of my life. Walking towards me with her friends, Amber, Alex and Nat, she's wearing a dress thing and looks really good.
"Hey", I say, unsure of what to do, "How's life?"
"Oh, life's great" she says is a tinkely voice, "how are you doing?"
"haha, I'm good… we won the last football game, did you see?"
"Bayport Prep's rising football star, eh? One day you'll realize there's more to life than sports". "and, of course I saw you score the winning touchdown, I'm a cheerleader, remember?" Feeling really stupid as I watched her walk away, giggling with her friends, I turn to find my friends, bracing myself for the jokes about my inadequacy with the opposite sex.
"Ay, Duke, you going to the party tonight?" Nolan shouted at me from across the hall.
"Definitely. Where at?" I yell back.
"amber's. At seven. Cameron's gonna be there! " He sings in a mocking tone. "You looove here, don't you?" stoically, I grab my football stuff from my locker and head down to practice without another word. I decide that I'm getting pretty good at this ignoring thing. Walking behind me towards the changing room, Nolan keeps teasing me with crude graphic scenes that "might" go down at the part. Every time there's a party, he always starts off with…
"you know she's (not) single so/but you might as well go for it". As if. She's the golden girl and I'm just another sweaty footballer. I just really hope she doesn't go for that douche victor. He's only my backup, but he thinks he's the best quarterback that's happened to the world. What do girls call him these days? Oh yeah, Kyo or something. But, then again, they call me Mori, so that can't be much better.
Almost at the change room, Nolan's reckless taunting stops. As his goofy grin turns into a maniacal sneer, I follow his gaze until it lands on a short, blonde figure.
"hey, duke, ain't that your friend?" Nolan taunts
"yeah, what about?" "come on, let's leave". The short boy, Darwin is a really good friend of mine. A while back, he saved my life in a really sketchy part of town. Although we're not really public about our friendship, we are really close. Ever since the incident, I've devoted my life to helping him.
Cameron"so girls, what do you think?" amber coos, her house is like perfection. It has professional interior design and a maid that comes clean up every day.
"OMG it's amazing", I reply, she brought in literally, barrels of different types of needlessly expensive beer, humongous speakers and a loaded turn table. Did I mention that her house has an eighties dance floor? The tiles actually light up!
"so; party planning. Who's gonna get off with whom?" alexys starts. We do this every party. We plan for which boy we're gonna go with and which route we're gonna take. Every time, they pair me with duke, but every time I either chicken out, or he's chatting up some other girl! That I don't even know! I realize that I am cheer captain and look really pretty, but I guess duke doesn't go for that type of thing. Other boys are always willing, but duke never even looks my way.
In grade four, he kissed me when we were playing on the swings, and said he liked me a lot. That was the best moment of my entire life. Afterwards, he pretended nothing ever happened which I don't understand because he was the one that kissed me. My friends say he likes me, but every time I look over, he's the same calm, cool and collected.
"yoohoo, cam, you there? Natalie's singsong voice brings me out of my daydream. "so this time you are going to stick to the plan." "so, you're going to wear those calvin shorts we bought at the mall that time with that one tank, keeping it simple." "You then drink a couple glasses to loosen up because honestly? You never flirt properly when you're sober." "then, you've gotta…" I tune her out as I start feeling miserable for myself; another party, another chance with duke that I'm going to mess up. That's when I start hoping that the beer will start flowing soon.
Kaoru"Hikaru, Kaoru, Jove is ready to see you." As my brother and I slowly start walking towards the door, we glance at each other simultaneously, both pretty nervous. He hesitantly grabs the handle and starts to turn the knob. Before he could push the door open, it was yanked from his and two bald goons pulled us in opposite directions into separate doors. Scared speechless, we let the men rough-handle us into the doors and watched as they slammed them shut in unison
"hello there". Hearing a voice, I turn around to see a skinny man draped over with what some would call bling bling. "my name is Jove, You must be young Kaoru". I gasped, Jove was the boss of this entire gang's drug trade. That's why we're called the JMG hood. Up until now I had only been working small time for them, delivering coke and such. I've never had treason to be punished by Jove, but the whole time, it was lingering in the back of my mind. The reason why he requested to see us.
HikaruBeing dragged from a dark room, I could smell the fumes coming from within. I wonder if Kaoru is going through the same thing as the good brought me inside and closed the door behind us. Now I remember why we were brought here. Nervous about what the goon was going to do, so I tried to sidestep him, but he grabbed the front of my shirt and almost slammed my head down onto a table. In fact, I thought that he did. Instead, the back of my head was soaked into a basin of some sort from which the fumes were originating from.
Ash*dialogue in French*
"Oy ash!" A brunette boy rushed over to a dark silent figure with ash blonde hair. "The prof just kicked me out with some dt. Wanna go do some bike work?" without even a shrug of his shoulders, the blonde boy started walking at an even pace. He didn't care anymore. Nothing mattered anymore. What was the point? There was no point. Not since his brother died.