Two Whales on a Lonely Road

"This sucks," Lucas said, kicking a pebble as they walked by the side of the road.

"So you've said," Nathan replied, still figuring out how on earth he was going to explain this to Dan. "If you have anything helpful to add, I'll be glad to hear it, but for now please shut up."

"It's going to take hours to get home this way."

Nathan groaned. "That. Wasn't. Helpful."

Lucas glared at him. "Well, excuse me for living."

Nathan glared back. "I thought that was supposed to be my line. Isn't that your beef with me, that I'm alive?"

Lucas stopped and gave the question far more consideration than Nathan had intended. He'd actually thrown it out rhetorically. "That's what it used to be. I was mad because you were this tangible living proof that Dad cheated on Mom. But not anymore. You're just taking everything away from me, one thing at a time. I can't let that happen."

Nathan stopped and clutched his hair. "How many times do I have to tell you I'm not trying to take your life?! Seriously, stop and think. Dan didn't really have any choice but to let me stay in your room at first. And I'm not trying to steal your father, I'm trying to get to know mine. I've gone my whole life without a dad, and I want to learn what it means to have one. Now, I'm sorry if that's cutting into Dan's Lucas time, but that's not what I'm deliberately trying to do."

"What about Peyton? And Haley?" Lucas challenged. "Why did you go after them?"

"I didn't, nimrod. If you'll remember, Peyton came up to me in that courtyard, not the other way around. And Haley volunteered to tutor me to help me get caught up to a new school. I didn't even know she was a tutor until she offered, and I really didn't know you and her were friends until like a month later. Seriously, what is up with that? If she's really your friend, why won't you talk to her in school?" Lucas mumbled something. "Speak up! Dan does that too when he doesn't want to answer a question. It's very annoying."

Lucas took a deep breath. "I said, it's her idea."

Nathan started. "What? That's... why?"

"She says she doesn't want to associate with me in school because she doesn't want all the baggage that goes with being in my crowd. She says we're all obsessed with image and she doesn't want to be identified with that way of thinking."

Now that he said it, Nathan realized, it made perfect sense. He couldn't imagine anyone less obsessed with image than Haley. Of course she would dictate the terms of their friendship to Luke. "That sounds just like her. All this time I thought it was you being a jerk, when it was her being independent."

"Yeah, that's Haley. Noone tells her to do something she doesn't want to."

"I've noticed," Nathan agreed. "Are you? Obsessed with image, I mean."

Lucas brooded some more. "If I weren't Dan Scott's son, I don't think I would be. You gotta understand what it was like before the divorce. They were one of Tree Hill's elite couples. Even if Dad wasn't this big jock high school ball star, he'd still be one of the biggest businessmen in town. Yeah, he doesn't own it, but Susan's getting old and everyone knows he basically runs the joint. He had to project a certain image, so Mom and I did too. The reason she decided to start up that cafe was she got so good at cooking from all the business dinners Dad was always making her throw. She said if she was going to work as a cook she should at least get paid for it. So yeah, I guess I am, but even after almost 16 years, it feels artificial to me." He paused and the two walked on in silence for a bit. Suddenly, he said "I'm not, you know."

Nathan stared. "Not obsessed with image? But you just said..."

Lucas laughed, and for just a minute even in the moonlight, Nathan could see why Haley was sticking with him. "No, not that, although I can see why you're confused. I'm not the lucky one. You said that, at Tim's party when I made that lame joke about your Mom's ashes."

Nathan privately rejected the word joke, but let it slide. "You've grown up with all this money,
and two parents, neither of whom is dead, by the way, while me and Mom struggled to scrape by alone. How is that not lucky?"

Lucas shrugged. "It was great, at first. They were in love once. Everyone used to tease them about being high school sweethearts and happily every after stories, but it was really true. I saw all my friends' parents getting divorced and used to think 'that'll never happen to me.' But Dad...
he's just so competitive, and as soon as I was old enough to do a sport he'd put me on the team. And it always had to be the best spot too, like this whole two guard thing. I was a pitcher for Little League, did you know that?"

Nathan nodded. "He's got the picture in the living room."

"Oh yeah, forgot about that. Anyway, I was nothing great at pitching, but there was no one much better, and what Dan Scott wants, Dan Scott gets. But there was this one kid on one of the other teams, amazing hitter. He moved away last year, but the whole time he was here noone ever struck him out. So we're in a tough game, couple of runners on base, and this kid comes up to bat. I do what I'm supposed to, I walk him. Well Dad, he was furious. He saw it as a cop-out. He grabbed my arm and kicked me. If he hadn't been holding me I'd have ricocheted off the wall. My childhood is full of moments like that, although that was hands down the most violent."

Nathan was in shock. If someone had done that to him in Little League, his mother would have ripped off their testicles with her bare hands. "What did Karen say?"

"She wasn't there. I told her I'd caught a bad pitch in practice. She still doesn't know the truth."

Nathan thought back on his own Little League experience. His team hadn't been very good, but
they'd had fun. Except... "Every year for the Father-Son game, Mom would get the husband or boyfriend of one of her friends to stand in for me. And I'd wonder what it would be like to have him, my real father, playing instead of this stranger. I'd pray and pray that he'd just show up one day, this Dan guy my Mom had told me about who was so great at sports, and take the stranger's spot and everyone would say 'That's Nathan's dad'. The rest of the time was fun, but I always hated that one game." He stopped, uncertain of what to say next. Lucas said it for him.

"But you had fun. I hated every minute of it. Just remind yourself, the father you were praying for is Dan Scott, who kicked his boy so hard he limped for a week. As fathers go, you may have been better off without."

They continued on in silence, but finally Nathan couldn't let it go anymore. "Lucas, I'm sorry. I have a confession to make."

Lucas grinned at him. "You mean about deliberately going after my spot? Yeah, I figured that was your plan when you asked Dad for help on three-pointers. He was all excited about your 'serious commitment to the game'."

Nathan gawped. "And you didn't try and stop me?"

"Well duh, I never thought you'd make it," Lucas responded, giving him a playful punch. "Dad was disappointed with me of course. Said I should have defended it more aggressively."

"Seems to me that when Dan's disappointed is when he's the hardest to cope with," Nathan observed. "Think you'll be okay?"

Lucas tossed it off. "Before, I'd have said no, but he's got you to make his dreams live on, so
I'm good."

Nathan stopped as if struck. "Oh. My. God."

Lucas stopped and stared. "What, did you get bit by a snake or something?"

"No!" Nathan exclaimed. "I've just realized something. This sick war we've had going on for months... It's Dan! I mean, it's other stuff too, like the cheating and Peyton and Haley and shooting guard and Sun Tzu, but you said it yourself. He's so aggressively competitive, and
there is nothing in the world he cares about more than basketball. Think about it - all those comments about your game slipping and how you didn't deserve two guard anymore? Heck, that was absolutely one of the first things he ever said to me, the day he came to get me when Mom was killed. And he's been giving me all this attention, like a new toy, making you jealous. He was setting us up to compete with each other! Maybe he was just trying to build that competitive instinct, or maybe he didn't even notice what he was doing, but there's enough of him in us that when all that other stuff got in the mix we fell for it like a couple of big fat whales! I can't believe how stupid I was!" He was clenching and unclenching his fists.

Lucas' jaw dropped. "I can't believe I didn't see that. I've known the man my entire life, and it's exactly the kind of thing he'd do."

"You know how competitive he is with Keith..."

"...always putting him down with all those digs about his 'little shop'..."

"...bringing up fights they had in junior high..."

"...he just saw us as another pair of brothers that should be adversaries! Stupid stupid stupid!"

The two boys stood stock still by the side of the road, staring at each other as they realized where the source of their problem lay. Lucas was the first to deflate, sinking to the gravel. "So now we know. The question is what to do about it."

Nathan considered, and then threw up his hands. "I have no idea. I wish he hadn't taken that book away, there probably was something good in there. But we can't let him keep manipulating us like this. We have to come up with a plan."

"Agreed. We should pull a Haley and pretend nothing's changed," Lucas suggested. "That would at least give us time to come up with something better without letting him know something is up."

"I don't know," Nathan said. "I don't want to have to go on pretending we're at each other's throats. It's very... tiring."

"Good point. And I don't think I can think of anything else to do that would invoke the b-word. So, how's this... We tell everyone we have agreed to put our differences aside for the good of the team until the end of the season. He'll eat that up, and it'll get me out of the 17 kinds of trouble I'm going to be in when Mom hears about this."

Nathan groaned.... "Oh man, I'd forgotten about the fight entirely. Yep, repercussion city, and that's a good plan. It'll get Whitey off our backs too. We can decide what to do next if we ever get home."

"Deal," Lucas said, holding out his hand. Nathan, after a moment shook it. "Now, I have just three questions for you. What in the hell is Sun Tzu, what book are you talking about, and why are we whales?" Nathan started laughing and couldn't stop. "What?"

"Nothing... I'm just feeling a very long way from home. A whale is casino-talk for someone rich who is sure to leave a lot of money behind. It's sort of like when con artists talk about a mark. I'll just buy my own copy of Sun Tzu and explain the rest later."

"Why not now?"

"Because," said Nathan, pointing toward the car driving toward them slowly and flashing its high beams like a maniac. "I think our ride is here. Let's just hope Whitey called Karen and not Dan."

Luckily for them, he had.