Chapter Three

It was Monday morning and Brooke and Peyton were sitting under a tree outside the entrance to their school. Peyton was drawing one of her "weird drawings", as Brooke called them, but Brooke herself had nothing to do as they waited for school to start and this was starting to agitate her.

"Peyton," she whined.

"Yes?"

"I'm bored.

"You're always bored."

"Why can't we do something?"

"I am doing something," Peyton informed her.

"But I can't draw. I can't even colour inside the lines. Let's do something together!" Brooke pleaded.

Peyton finally looked up from her sketch pad. "School will start in ten minutes. What can we do together till then?"

"Talk!" Brooke said excitedly.

Peyton rolled her eyes.

"We can talk about Lucas"

"What about him?"

"You know Lucas, Nathan's brother. Or step-brother. Or half. Well, anyway, he's in our class with-"

"I know who he is, Brooke. Why do you wanna talk about him?"

"Don't you think he's cute?"

"Brooke!" Peyton exclaimed.

"What? He is! And he seems very sweet."

"Brooke, you don't…like him do you?" When Brooke didn't answer, Peyton's jaw dropped. "Brooke! We're only seven."

"So? You can like people however old you are. Don't you like anyone?" This time Peyton didn't answer, and Brooke's mind sprung into action. "P. Sawyer! You don't like Lucas do you?"

"What? No! I don't even know him!" Peyton replied quickly, even though the question immediately sparked comparisons in her mind between Nathan and Lucas.

"Okay, okay. Just checking. Come on," Brooke said as she observed more people arriving and filtering into school. "Let's go in."

Peyton nodded and put her sketch pad in her bag before getting up off the grass. She and Brooke were both silent as they walked towards the main entrance. What neither knew was that the other was thinking about Lucas.

Lucas himself was only just arriving at school, being dropped off by his mother.

Karen smiled at him as he got down from the car, but he remained just as cold as he had been that weekend. "Have a good day at school, Lucas."

"Yeah, right," he muttered. Lucas felt bad when he saw that Karen looked hurt, but he just walked away, paying careful attention to his feet so he wouldn't have to see all the people looking at him.

"Hey, Luke!"

Lucas looked up and smiled. "Hey, Skills! Mouth." They jogged up to him and stood on either side of him, blocking out the stares.

"How are you doing, man?" Skills asked.

Lucas shrugged.

"It'll be okay," Mouth told him. "Everyone will forget about it soon."

Lucas snorted. "It doesn't look like it."

"Lucas?" a voice called from inside the school building.

"Mr. Durham?"

"Could you come into my office for a minute please?"

Mouth and Skills looked at Lucas. "We'll save you a seat."

Lucas nodded, and followed his teacher inside.

Mr. Durham led Lucas inside his small office, and then quietly shut the door behind them. Lucas sat down in the chair on the front side of the desk, while Mr. Durham went to sit on the chair behind it. Lucas liked Mr. Durham's chair because it turned when you sat in it; once Skills had been in the office, and when Mr. Durham had gone outside for a minute Skills had actually sat in it! But, Lucas was too scared to do that. Still, this chair was nice and comfy. But, it made him feel small.

Mr. Durham smiled at Lucas and at first he thought that he was going to ask him about his – urgh – dad. Mr. Durham had gone to school with him and Lucas' mum, but he'd been a bit older than them; he had been in the same class as Uncle Keith and they had been friends then, and still were now. But, whenever they talked, Uncle Keith always called him Whitey. Lucas didn't understand this. He thought that maybe it was because Mr. Durham was very pale in the face, but this seemed like a very rude nickname. Mouth was much better.

"Lucas?"

"Yes, Mr. Durham?"

"Keith told me that you're thinking of not playing basketball anymore; is that true?"

Lucas frowned. Not again.

Lucas sat in Mr. Durham's office and listened to Mr. Durham tell him why he shouldn't quit playing the game, and then left as soon as the bell rang to signal the beginning of school.

As Lucas was walking down the hallway, he caught sight of a friendly face, and smiled.

"Hey, Lukie," Haley smiled.

Lucas made a face. "I told you not to keep calling me that."

"How was your weekend?"

"Only better than the week because I wasn't at school."

"How can you not like school? Oh, right," Haley realized and answered her own question.

"How was your weekend?" Lucas asked.

Haley grinned. "Actually, it was pretty good."

"Oh yeah; what did you do?" As Lucas was completing his question, he saw someone walk by; someone he would much rather have not seen. However, as he averted his gaze he was shocked to see that Haley was not only still looking at this person, she was smiling at them – and they were smiling back!

Haley turned back to Lucas when the person had walked past them. "Sorry, what did you say?"

Lucas' jaw dropped.

"Lucas?"

"Why did you smile at him?"

"At Nathan? Why, what's wrong?"

Lucas stared at her for a few moments before he answered. "That's my brother."

"What did you say?"

"I said that was my brother," Lucas almost spat out the last word. "And I thought we were best friends."

"We are. I didn't know he was, Lucas –"

"So that makes it okay! You were fraternizing with the enemy!"

"You don't even know what that means!"

"Yeah, well I saw it on TV."

"Ooh, you're such a big boy, using big words that you don't understand! And it's 'you heard it on TV' not 'you saw it', silly!" Haley yelled back.

"How come you smiled at him?" Lucas demanded

"I met him on the beach yesterday and he knew me from school so he said hi."

"And you knew who he was and you still talked to him!"

"I didn't know he was your brother! You never told me his name; remember!"

"Well..." Lucas knew Haley had a point here. He didn't want to admit it, but he didn't know what else to say. Maybe he shouldn't be so mad at her.

"And Nathan was nice."

Now he was definitely mad. "Think about what Dan did to me and my mum, Haley."

"Exactly! What his dad did! Nathan never did anything to you, so I don't get why you are so mad at him! And why are you so mad at me?"

Lucas was about to answer – what he was going to say he wasn't sure, but he was definitely going to say something – when they heard a voice say, "Excuse me?"

Lucas and Haley both turned their heads and snapped, "What?"

Mr. Durham looked at them strangely. "Shouldn't you two be in class?"

Realizing that they were far more than just a little late for class, Lucas and Haley ran off to their lesson, which, unfortunately, they had together, so they proceed to ignore each other.

A/N: First if you're reading this, then please leave a review - even if it's only one word (I'm not that fussy)! Secondly, I made a banner for this fic, and I forgot to put the link up for this site. There are no spaces between the link; I just put the spaces in so it would show up.

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