If you want to get your emotions going with reading the chapter, go to youtube- type in Any Other Name by Thomas Newman, and play it while youre reading this. It got me as I was writing. Just an idea...


The gun shot rattled inside his head over and over. Jimmy stood at the other end of the gun and his face cracked an evil, satisfied smirk. He was in slow motion running to his father. He fell down and tried to wake up his father. He scooped him in his arms and carried him out of the school.

Lucas felt warm in bed but he could not stop shivering. He had the worse nightmare ever, Keith had been shot by Jimmy Edwards. The dream felt so real that he actually woke up with tears in his eyes. He slowly opened his eyes, he did not recognize the room around him. He felt a small like cord sitting in above his lips but below his nose, it kept bringing cold air up his nostrils. He raised his left hand to feel a tight pinch where his elbow was. His chest felt extremely tight and he felt exhausted, he felt like he had just ran a triathlon.

"Hey." Haley's familiar voice brought him out of confusion.

Lucas turned his head slightly to the left to see his childhood best friend sitting in chair next to his bed. Her hair was tied in a messy ponytail, her mascara looked as if it had been running, her eyes were puffy red, and she looked exhausted too. She pasted on a smile and asked;

"How are you feeling?"

The question had been delicate. He did not understand why she asked it with such frailty. What happened? He gathered that he was in the hospital, but why? Was it with something with his heart?

Haley read her best friend's confused expression. As much as she did not want to tell him, she figured she was the best one to tell him. The best choice would have been his mother, but she was drowning in the grief that would soon take her son, so Haley took it upon herself to tell him.

"Lucas, there was a shooting at school and…" Haley struggled to say the next sentence since she barely believed it herself. "Jimmy Edwards shot your Uncle Keith."

Lucas's eyes widened, "Is he okay?" he surprised himself by how raspy his voice sounded. He slowly began remembering the events of that day, but it wasn't fast enough for his anxities.

Haley seeing his fearful eyes, looked down. She had rehearsed over and over again how she would tell her best friend that the man he loved most was dead, but now the words disappeared. A tear streamed down her cheek as she looked up at him.

"Lucas…he's dead."

The dream he just had, was not a nightmare…it actually happened. His memory replayed the horrible ordeal. He recollected seeing the whole situation go down and hearing the gun shot that claimed his uncle, rather father's, life. Lucas's heart began to race all over again. He could hear a nearby machine start panicking.

"Lucas, you need calm down. After carrying Keith out of the building and handing him over to the police, you suffered a mild heart attack."

The grief was all too overwhelming, Lucas could barely breathe. He went his entire life without a man to rightfully call father. The day he finally could, the man was taken away from him. Every fiber of his being burned with complete anger.

"And, one of the nurses found this in your one of the pockets of your jeans." Haley spoke with even more delicacy. She took a yellow sheet of paper and handed it over to Lucas with a few more tears running down her cheeks.

Lucas reached and slowly took the paper in his hands. He unfolded it and read the form before him. It was the adoption form. As he saw Keith's signature next to the line where the father would sign, he touched it. He couldn't believe the man who signed it was now dead. He looked down where the judge had signed and even cracked a tiny smile at what she had wrote with a big smiley face next to it, About time.

Lucas held the paper so tight in his grasp. The pain was so overwhelming he didn't think he would ever be the same. How was a boy supposed to live without his father? The father he only had for a day...