Yeee, this is a quick update. Thanks so much to my first reviewers ever! You made me very very happy.
Here goes part dos!
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Previously: "Troy!" he barked, obviously surprised. "What are you doing here! Don't you have detention this afternoon?"
"Well, yeah," he explained, "but no one was in the room, so I just figured I'd have to do it another da--wait, how'd you know I had detention?" He asked, stepping closer to the couch, trying to see what was going on. His heart stopped for a brief second and he stumbled backwards when he saw who had been laying, half naked, underneath his father.
"Ms. Lewis!?"
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"Troy!" She exclaimed, sitting up and straightening out her wrinkled clothes. She looked up at him innocently with a barely noticeable hint of satisfaction in her eyes. "Don't you have a paper to be working on?"
Troy was floored. He just found out his father was having an affair with his English teacher, and all she cared about was his stupid paper? Something was seriously messed up. He chose to ignore her comment, more pressing matters were at hand.
"Dad?" he asked, looking instead towards his father, unmistakable traces of hurt seeping into his tone. "Wh-what are you doing? Where's Mom?"
Jack looked uncomfortable. "She's out. Why don't you, um, just go up to your room?" Troy stood there, trying to let the magnitude of the situation sink in.
"But -"
"Now!" Troy jumped at his father's harsh tone, and slowly turned towards the stairs. He glanced once more at Ms. Lewis, saw her gloating smirk, and suddenly realized that he should be angry right now. Very angry. Soon rage like he had never known before was washing over him, bubbling to the surface, threatening to explode...
"NO!" Troy shouted, whirling back around to face the two culprits, "What the hell do you think you're doing? You're having an affair with my teacher? Dad, what are you thinking? You can get fired for that! And not to mention Mom, she'll be devastated." Troy was ranting, pacing back and forth and throwing his hands up in the air. "Did you really think you were going to get away with this? How retarded are you two? I mean, honestly--" Troy was interrupted by a hard fist connecting with his right cheek. He went flying through the air, sliding to a halt at the bottom of the staircase. Shocked, he leaned back against the wall and held his face with one hand. "What's gotten into you, Dad?"
His Dad was the one pacing now, nervously running his hands through his hair and beginning to break out into a cool sweat. "None of that stuff," He waved his hands around emphatically, "you just said is going to happen. Because," He stepped closer, and Troy tried to retreat into the unforgiving wall. Jack spoke again, with venom, "No one is ever going to find out about this. No one. Got it?"
Troy just stared at his father, until his fist slammed into the wall a few inches to the left of his head at lightening speed. Troy jumped, and his hands flew up to protect himself. "Yeah, yeah I got it Dad. I won't tell anyone about your stupid affair." With that, he pushed himself up off the wall and ran to the stairs. He took them two at a time and paused briefly at the top when he heard a small voice call his name.
"Troy," it was Ms. Lewis. "I know you won't tell anyone. You wouldn't want to fail 11th grade english. Colleges surely wouldn't look favorably on that now would they?" Damn. Troy clenched his fists by his sides but managed not to make any comment, just met her cold blue eyes with an icy stare of his own. He walked down the hallway to his room, threw the door open with flourish and then slammed it harder than he ever had before.
He stood in the middle his room for a good minute looking around for something, anything he could break. He wanted to scream and yell and kick and fight; to tell someone how freaking angry he was. A while later after his heart had slowed its furious pounding and the tremors in his hands had stopped he backed up to the wall, slid down to the floor, and began to cry.
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Troy didn't know how long he cried, but it had to have been a while. By the time he finally quit his nose was running and his eyes were red and puffy. It was dark outside. Troy wandered into the bathroom, wetting a washcloth with cold water and holding the soothing cloth over his face. When he took it off, he couldn't help but grimace at his reflection, man did he look pathetic. Not to mention there was already a big dark bruise forming on his right cheek. He touched it lightly but flinched at the contact. A new wave of anger passed over him as he remembered his father punching him, but it faded almost as soon as it had come.
He exited the bathroom and made his way to his bed, grabbing his basketball before sinking down into the mattress. He threw the ball up and down, up and down, almost hypnotized by the ball's perfect spin. If only life could be as straightforward as basketball. Breaking the rules isn't tolerated under any circumstances. The person with the most points at the end of the game wins, no questions asked. Troy could see himself now, calling a referee to come bursting into his living room.
"Yes," Troy would say, "It appears my father's been having an affair. That's not really allowed, is it? Seems like that would be a penalty. Do I get a few points for that?"
The ref would agree with him wholeheartedly, and would leave his father with a dangerous warning: with a second offense, he could be thrown out of the game.
Troy snorted to himself. He was being ridiculous. There was no ref coming to fix everything now, he was going to have to figure this one out all by himself. Taking a deep breathe, he knew what he really had to do. He had a paper to write; and it was going to be a damn good one. He wasn't going to give that woman--that lousy, pathetic, disgusting woman--anything to hold against him.
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"Come on Troy! Is that really as fast as you can run? Pick it up!" Coach Jack Bolton was yelling at his son. It was the wee hours of the morning and the sun was just now making its way over the horizon. Troy's father had pulled him out of bed sometime around 5, muttering about how he had skipped practice the day before and had to make it up today if he expected to play halfway decent this season. Jack leaned casually against the basketball goal, legs crossed and staring at his black stopwatch.
Troy shot past him again. To be honest, Jack had lost count of the number of suicides Troy had done, and he was actually going quite fast. But there's always room for improvement, and his son was going to be the best if it killed him.
"Alright, ten more to go!" Jack heard a barely audible groan but Troy kept going nonetheless. Finally, he was finished. He leaned over on the side of the court, hands on his knees and breathing heavily. His dark brown hair stuck to his forehead with sweat.
"Catch!" Jack yelled, chunking a ball in his direction; he needed to be on guard at all times. Troy barely reacted in time, snatching the ball one moment before it would have come crashing into his face.
"Alright, let's do some layup drills before we call it a morning."
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Troy trudged into school roughly one hour later, his hair sopping wet from his recent shower. He stopped to put some books in his locker and rubbed at his eyes tiredly. He had been unable to sleep the night before, and it had been late after he finished his paper anyway. Not to mention his dad had woken him up for basketball early in the morning, pretending like nothing was wrong.
Troy didn't know what to do. He knew that he needed to tell his Mom. Not that he wanted to; Troy could only imagine the hurt it was going to cause her, but she deserved to know.
"Morning Troy!" A cheerful voice piped up from behind him. He spun around to find the one person he didn't want to see. "You get that paper finished?" Ms. Lewis winked at Troy and gave him a grin.
"Yes ma'am," he ground out, turning on his heel and stalking away before she had a chance to say anything else. The nerve of her! Troy was still fuming when he rounded a corner, coming face to face with Gabriella, the new girl from the day before. She smiled shyly and stepped to the side, continuing down the hall when Troy yelled out to her, "Hey! Gabriella! You headed to homeroom?" She stopped and turned around, blushing furiously.
"Yeah, I am."
"Well, I think you're a little confused. It's this way." Troy grinned at her, pointing in the other direction. "Come on, I'll walk you there."
"Thanks." They started their walk down the hallway together, and for the first time in a long while Troy felt that something was right.
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End of chapter 2, I hope it wasn't too boring!
Review pretty please :)