Mark Cohen sat in the chorus room at his school on a February morning, reading. It was particularly cloudy and gloomy, and so was Mark. He was the only one in the classroom at the time, he always gets there early.

"Hey Mark!" shouted his best friend, Roger. Well, he wasn't the only one is class anymore. Mark sighed.

"Hey Roger, what's up?" Mark asked, trying to perk up his voice.

"Well, there's word that we're gonna have a new kid in our class. I heard that he transferred from a performing arts school in some other state so he's supposed to be really talented, but he got expelled for re-wiring all the fire alarms to go off and they couldn't be turned off for the whole day and school was cancelled for a week because firefighters were destroying stuff in the school searching for a fire." Roger said excitedly.

"Sounds like someone you'd definitely get along with." said Mark, laughing.

"Well, we'll see." He replied. By now, a lot of the students were in the room, sitting in their designated seats. Roger went to his seat in the tenor section, while Mark stayed in the baritone section.

The teacher, Mr. Wood, came into the room with a student walking behind him. All of the kids in class stopped talking and looked at the teacher.

"Good morning class, I want to start by introducing a new student, Thomas Collins." He gestured to the new student, who had a grin on his face and stood with confidence.

"Hi." He said. The class just answered with feeble mumbles and groans.

"Oh c'mon class, you have to try to speak loud to sing loud, so speak loudly like you do when you're in the halls talking to your friends." Mr. Wood said. The mumbles and groans were at a higher volume, but there was still a tired and bored tone to it. Mr. Wood sighed. "Mr. Cohen, could you please pull up a chair for Mr. Collins to sit at?" Mark mumbled "sure" and got a chair from a stack and placed it next to his chair and the new guy sat.

"Hey, call me Collins." He said to Mark.

"Just Collins?" Mark asked.

"Yeah, my name's Tom, but I don't really like it, so just call me Collins." He replied. Mark shrugged.

"Sure. I'm Mark." Collins nodded and smiled, which made Mark smile back. He practically radiated charisma and charm, which made Mark feel weird, so he looked away and paid attention to the teacher for the rest of the class.

When the bell rang, Mark picked up his stuff and hurriedly left the room.

"Mark, wait up!" shouted Collins.

"Hey Collins." Mark replied.

"Uh, I was just wondering if I could see your schedule, if you have it." Collins said.

"Oh, sure." Mark replied, digging through his pockets. He hadn't looked at his schedule in months, but always kept it with him. He took a folded piece of paper out and gave it to Collins.

"Thanks." He took out his schedule and compared them. "Looks like we got Gym next." Collins said. "Can you show me where it is?" he asked.

"Yeah, just follow me, but this school is really big, so you have to be careful not to lose me in the crowd." There was a flood of students going up and down the halls, not caring if they bump into each other as long as they get to their destination and Mark and Collins was just a part of the traffic.

When they reached the boys' locker room, Collins went to the small office where the gym teachers were as Mark went to his locker. He carefully looked around and saw the other guys taking off their shirts and pants and putting on their gym clothes. Mark started to have a weird feeling in his stomach, like the feeling he got from Collins earlier.

"Mark?" he snapped out of it and saw Collins trying to talk to him.

"Oh, hey. What'd the teacher say to you?" he replied.

"He told me to pick a locker and put on gym clothes from the loaner closet." Collins replied, holding up a shirt and shorts. "So I'm picking this locker." He pointed at the one next to Mark's. "Great!" Mark said a little more happy and excited than he wanted to say. Mark put his binders and books in his small locker and tried to quickly put on his clothes.

After he closed his locker, Mark just stood up and walked around to the mirrors that were in the locker room, waiting for Collins to finish changing. He looked into a mirror in front of himself. He always thought that he looked skinny and weak and very pale, especially in his gym clothes. He could see Collins in the reflection of the mirror and saw him take off his shirt. Damn, he's got abs. And muscles. Mark thought to himself. He got nervous and could see himself turning slightly red and feel his palms sweat. He turned to Collins. "Um, Collins, I'm just gonna go to the gym and wait, if that's alright." He said. Collins shrugged.

"Sure." He replied.

Mark rushed to the gym and took a deep breath. That was…weird. He thought.

After a few minutes, the class assembled on the gym floor and Collins was introduced to the class and was sat next to Mark for last name alphabetical order. There were warm-ups and any make-ups or extra credit done afterwords like a regualr day. And then:

"Alright class, today we're gonna do the mile, then pull-ups and curl-ups. Remember to do your best because it's gonna be a big part of your grade." said the gym teacher. Mark, along with the whole class, groaned.

Next class was Biology for Collins. He had to go upstairs while Mark's next class was Algebra so he had to stay downstairs.

When he entered the class, he was introduced to everyone as in the previous classes and was seated next to some guy who really looked liked a punk.

"Hey, I'm Roger, I saw you in chorus class, you were sitting with my friend, Mark." the guy said.

"Yeah…I remember you, and call me Collins." He said. There was a pause of awkward silence between them. The teacher was on the phone with someone, and everyone else in the class was talking.

"So…Collins, I heard you were kicked out of some performing arts school for a big prank that you did." Roger said, breaking the silence between them. He wanted to hear from Collins himself if the rumors were true. Collins smirked.

"Oh yeah, I rewired all of the fire alarms to go off, it was pretty cool. I got a lot of equipment from the techies in the theatre department; I was a bit high that day." Collins replied, proudly.

"Theatre? So, there must've been a lot of really hot girls, right?" Roger asked, coolly.

"I wouldn't notice, I'm gay." Collins, said, like it was the most casual thing you could say. Roger was taken aback a bit.

"You're gay?" He asked.

"Yeah…" Collins said, lifting an eyebrow and giving a slight glare at Roger. "You got a problem with that?" he asked, in a tone that made him seem a bit threatening. Roger shook his head.

"No, it's just that I don't really know many people who would admit to something like that that easily." He replied. Collins rolled his eyes when Roger said "something like that" Collins didn't really think that it was such a big deal.

"Well, I'm pretty confident with myself." he replied.

"Oh…okay." Roger never met someone who was gay before. He always thought they were extremely girly and had high-pitched voices and were really scrawney. But, Collins, he seems so cool, so reckless, so confident that he easily admits to being gay and getting high without any second thought or a worry what people would think. He's the anti-everything that Roger had thought about gay people, and was someone that he and Mark could hang out with.

Mark. He was raised so conservatively. He would probably never accept Collins. But still…

"Hey Collins, even though you're new, you think that you'd wanna hang out with me and Mark sometime?" Collins paused for a moment to think.

"Sure, sounds cool." He replied.

At this time in Algebra, Mark was sitting in his desk, regrettably thinking about Collins. He remembered all of Collins' very good scores in gym, especially since it was his first gym class. 7 minutes and 32 seconds for the mile, 11 pull-ups, and 82 curl-ups. He was really athletic, really talented…and really good looking. What? Did I just think that Collins was good looking? Mark rubbed his eyes and tried to clear his head.

"Mark?" asked a loud, but young voice that was the Algebra teacher's Ms. Morris.

"Huh?" Mark asked a bit dazed. The students laughed. Mark forgot that he was actually supposed to be paying attention to the lesson.

"I asked you to answer the question on the board." she said, pointing to the lengthy algebra problem. Mark looked at the board for two seconds and knew the correct answer, easy math for him.

"Um, 29?" he asked.

"Correct, Mark, you seem a bit out it today, is something wrong?"

"No, um, I'm just a bit a tired today." Mark responded. It's a good thing he was smart. Ms. Morris raised an eyebrow, but continued with the lesson. Mark let out a silent sigh of relief, and tried to concentrate.

Okay, that's the first chapter. I have more that I'm working on, so please review if you want.