Chapter I: Arrival

Assignment II: Brothers

Loki's POV

As I stepped off the shuttle bus that had brought me all the way from Cancer to Bullworth, New Hampshire, I stared up at the menacing looking gates to Bullworth Academy and sighed. It was going to suck to leave behind my two best friends for an entire year, and having to start over in a different state wasn't nearly as thrilling as I had thought it would be.

I had informed Tristan of my predicament, but I had been forbidden by my parents to have any contact with Sasquatch. They would take away my phone whenever I wasn't in their sight, and I could make calls, but had to show then the number before pressing dial, and was forbidden to text. My laptop had been taken away and locked up, so I had absolutely no way of talking to him. The only thing they allowed me to do was to tell Tristan to pass on to Sasquatch that I was not in any serious trouble and would be leaving the state to attend Bullworth for the next year.

I wheeled my two suitcases up to the gate, which had just been opened by an older woman who, judging by the way she was dressed I guessed was a secretary.

"You must be Mr. Fox. We've been expecting you. This is Bullworth Academy, the finest reform and boarding school in the country. We're happy to have you here. I'm Miss Danvers, and if there's anything that you don't like about it here and want us to fix, take it to someone who cares."

"Tch. Awesome." I griped.

She looked at me sternly. "Yes, well, the headmaster is waiting for you in his study. I'll escort you there."

As we walked through the giant wrought iron gates, I got my first look at the campus at Bullworth. It was enormous, and absolutely DWARFED Cancer Regional. Then again, I reasoned, Cancer only had a population a little over 16,000, whereas Bullworth was sitting at over 130,000 easily. I quickly learned that despite the school's massive size, there were a relatively small number of students.

A large, very muscular strawberry blond boy was leaning against the side of the building. I waved to him, and he looked at me like I was a puppy that had peed on the carpet. Awesome. I could already tell I was going to be very popular here. I ignored the menacing look and followed Ms. Danvers through the front doors of the building. The school interior looked like cross between a high school and an old fashioned English mansion. I had to admit, it was pretty cool.

The school's crest lie in the middle of the first floor. It was interesting to say the least. A bull's head with a nose ring, was on top, and what looked like golden leaves came down around the sides. The crest itself was composed of a fist, a snake, a large rat, and a cracked skull. It read 'Bullworth Academy. Canis Canem Edit'.

"How quaint. What does it mean?" I asked her.

She stopped, looked me straight in the eye, and said "It's Latin. It means 'Dog eat Dog."

I couldn't tell if she was serious or not, but if I were to make an assessment based on what I already knew of the place, I would say she probably was.

As we walked through the main building we saw several kids in leather or denim jackets staring menacingly at some rich looking punks in Aquaberry. Several kids in Letterman jackets threw a football back and forth gently, while boys and girls in nerdy looking sweater-vests with slacks and skirts studied together. Boys in white polo shirts glared at a group of kids dressed in dark clothes who were reading from a poetry book on the other side of the main hall. A very tense silence hung in the air.

We strolled into the office, and she pointed to the headmaster's office. "Go," was all she said.

"Bitch" I muttered under my breath, before walking into the office.

Upon entering the principal's office, one thing was certain. This guy was no stuffy, boring principal like Hattrick. He kept a neat work area, and papers were neatly filed on his desk, yet band posters of bands such as The Used, and My Chemical Romance were pinned to the wall, and an acoustic guitar was propped against the wall. I could tell he liked music from the 2000-2009 era, just like Sasquatch and myself. The newer era of bands just didn't have the same soul as the one before. There was a picture on his desk of his young self. On his right was a mischievous looking boy in a dirty teal uniform with a scar on his eyebrow, and on his left stood a bald boy with freckles, in a brown jacket and jeans. The boy on the right had his arm around the young Principal's waist, and the one on the left had him in one of those 'manly' one-armed hugs.

Another thing I noticed immediately was that he was extremely young. He couldn't have been more than seven or eight years older than me. He had chocolate brown hair in a short fade cut and dark tan skin, and would've looked like a kid if it hadn't been for the professional looking glasses in front of his friendly, if somewhat distracted brown eyes. I sat down in the overstuffed arm chair front of his desk and he looked up from the picture he'd been staring so intently at.

"Ah, hey man. You must be Noah Fox, from Michigan, right?"

I nodded. "Yes sir."

He laughed lightly "Please, call me Pete; I'm a little too young to start going by sir."

I relaxed ever so slightly, and slouched a little bit. "Ok."

"So, did Miss Danvers show you around at all?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"Well, I guess she doesn't really have much time either, what with the planning for tonight. Our previous headmaster just died, and we're having a memorial for him in the auditorium at seven. You passed the boys dorm though, right?"

I nodded again. "Yeah, I saw it."

"Good. I don't have enough time to really get your properly acquainted with the school, although I would if I could. But here."

He handed me a small brass key with a number 5 engraved into it. "Your roommate is already there. He's actually a transfer student too, pretty recent. Just got here yesterday night. You should get to know him a little. You need friends to do well here."

I nodded again, surprised he was so friendly. I expected the headmaster of a reform school to be a mean old bastard in his sixties who spat when he talked and would treat me like a naughty little kid in need of supervision. "Thanks." I said.

He smiled. "No problem. I know you got in a bit of trouble at your old school, but here at Bullworth Academy we give every single student a clean slate when they start, no matter what their past is. I have a lot of work to do, but if you need anything, just come on back and I'll help you as well as I can."

I smiled back. I liked this guy already. "Ok." I waved goodbye, and walked out the door, and out of the main building toward my dorm room. I got to the boys dorm without any trouble, and saw room five was the first door to my right upon walking in. A bunch of pretty average kids were hanging out at a pool table in the common room, though I did see some kids who were a little different too. A tall, really thin kid with dyed neon orange hair and black snakebite piercings nodded at me. I nodded back, inserted the key into the lock on my room, and opened it.

"Hey man, don't you know how to fuckin kno-" he trailed off. I stared at him, and he stared back. Then we ran to each other and high fived.

"NO….FUCKING…WAY," I gasped. Standing in front of me, a whole six foot five, two hundred and fifty pounds, was Seamus Flynn. Sasquatch, my best friend in the world, was my roommate at Bullworth Academy.

"WAY dude, WAY. Tristan told me, and I told my parents that I found this place online. I got expelled too, so I needed someplace to go to school. My dad had heard about it, and thought it might quote straighten me out" He picked me up in a bear hug and I laughed my ass off. Apparently, God wanted us to be together no matter what.

I was beyond euphoric. Nothing had to change. My best friend was gonna be here with me, we weren't gonna have to deal with our stupid parents anymore for a whole year. Life was sweet.

"Man, this is just the ultimate win," I said, lying on the bottom bunk, "you just can't make shit like this up."

He nodded. "I knew we'd get to be in school together, ya know, but I had no clue we'd be roommates! This is epic! Oh!" he said, fishing through his stuff until he found what he was looking for. "I know you had a shitty week bro, so I swiped you these from my dad."

He threw it to me and I caught it. It was a pack of Camel Filters, my favorite cigarettes. He also handed me a bic lighter.

We stepped outside, and went behind the boy's dorm. I shook a cigarette out of the pack, put it in my mouth and lit it. Yeah. Things were definitely starting to look up. As I smoked, he told me everything that had happened for the past week. Christopher and his cronies had bribed Hattrick to stay out of trouble, and were still going on at Cancer Regional like nothing had happened. Tristan was so pissed off about the whole thing; he picked the prep's locker, and put a stink bomb in it.

"It ruined his fuckin tux man, nobody ever has to look at that thing again," he said with a laugh. I laughed too. I finished my cigarette and threw the butt on the ground.

"We got about an hour to kill before we have to be at that memorial thing, you wanna go into town and check it out? I drove here, so I got the Nova too!" Sasquatch exclaimed.

I nodded. That was just the icing on the cake. We had our own car, and our own place, and we weren't even out of high school yet. There was so much opportunity. We could turn our room into a bachelor pad, play xbox until all odd hours of the night. This was living. I smiled, and we fist bumped. Nobody was gonna tear us apart. We were brothers till the end, and I knew that we could take on anything as long as we had each other to help us through.

The thing is, I had no idea of the kind of hardships we were going to have to take on before the year was through. I was going to learn soon enough though, that there's a reason Bullworth Academy is called hell on earth.