Disclaimer: I don't own a thing. Josh & Co., own all.
A/N: I decided to axe Marissa out of this story. Angsty 13 year old boys are enough fun, without out throwing in an angsty, perhaps anorexic Marissa..
The next chapter will be much longer, I promise. R/R :)
Ryan Atwood had life all figured out. At 13, life was all about flying under radar, undetectable, invisible, but perhaps more importantly, the occasional shock. The occasional loud blip on the radar, the appearing in a cloud of fire. If you lived under radar all the time people wouldn't remember you, they wouldn't respect you, they wouldn't fear you. But if every once and awhile you did something that opened people's eyes a little wider, made them go a little slack jawed, then the respect, the remembrance, the fear it was all yours. There was something about those strong silent types, and Ryan Atwood had that shit down.
Shocks made you appear to look fearless, impulsive, perhaps slightly on edge. Appear being the key word there because Ryan never did anything impulsive. He weighed every odd, measured all consequences and he almost always knew what would happen in the end.
Hitting Dawn's coke-head boyfriend, Dave was a shock. Full flat out, right in the jaw, all his weight, all his strength. It had taken Dave's breath away, and Dawn's too.
It was a bolt of lightening right there: I'm not a little boy anymore, you fucking want to mess with me, be ready.
Trey walking in to find his on-again, off-again girl half naked on Ryan's bed, with Ryan underneath her was a shock.
To the girl, and all the talk she would spread with her girls it was, watch out Trey's little brother is coming up in the world, and he knows how to handle it.
To Trey, it was simply a warning, to cancel off the kid brother stereotype, Ryan wouldn't be fitting in it anymore.
Ryan never shocked himself, he was way too calculating for that. He knew too well what happened to spontaneous people, Dawn was one, Trey another. And where had they gone?
Dawn had two unwanted children, a husband in jail, an alcohol problem and a long string of unsavoury boyfriends.
And Trey? Trey had a few lock ups in Juvie, an expulsion from school, and a memo 'enjoy the view this is as far as you go, it's all downhill from here.'
Ryan had no such intentions, he was graduating from elementary school tomorrow. Which meant he had four years left, four years to get his high school diploma and get the hell out of Chino. But first he had to survive Chino Hills, and that was a whole different ball game.
Simply flying under the radar may work at home, with Dawn who was never that smart, or in his eighth grade class were most kids were still a little too naïve. But at Chino Hills the boys were tough, the girls were hot, and anyone attempting to fly under the radar was a target real quick. You needed shock, and you needed respect.
Ryan Atwood was a man with a plan, and it would all unfold tomorrow. It would carry him through grade 9 at the dreaded Chino Hills high school.