SOPHOMORE YEAR

"Welcome, welcome!" Tucker opened the front door with a flourish, bowing dramatically at his guests. His trademark red beret glinted in the light of the entranceway. "Kitchen to the left, bathroom to the right, hot tub in the back."

"What about the bedroom?" a tall, lanky boy smirked. His skin, while not quite as dark as Tuck's, popped against his white collared shirt. He had the distinct look of someone who had only recently grown into his features. Unfortunately, that development had clearly gone to his head.

"Like you need to know," Tuck scoffed, the hint of a smile lingering despite his tone. "C'mon, Adam."

The boy in question, Adam, grinned and entered the hall. He headed straight to the kitchen for a beer.

The party moved on; Adam stayed in the kitchen, sipping beers and leering about the view. Valerie Grey, clad in a bright red bikini and jean shorts, rolled her eyes at him. She was playing hostess despite the fact that this was her first time meeting most of the guests. With four roommates of extremely different personalities, house parties were bound to be... well, diverse.

Adam briefly attempted to flirt with her more directly, but she quickly shut him down. Sighing, he moved from the kitchen. He dropped his shirt on a chair as he did so and, wearing only his blue swim trunks, headed straight for the hot tub.

"Scooch," he ordered, shoving in between two of his frat brothers. They moved to the side willingly.

Across the tub, Tuck's weird goth roommate was chatting with one of her friends. Adam had only met her once and was relatively certain she was named Sam. He'd avoided her since that experience; her rants on his misogyny and conformity had thoroughly turned him off hitting on her again. Still, even he had to admit she looked kind of hot in her black corset swimsuit thing. (That is, once she'd abandoned the floor-length cloak).

Adam had never been much into the goth scene. To be honest, he'd been kind of a huge nerd in high school. Most of his frat brothers had. It was just that for some reason, at their state college, they'd been able to disguise programming and playing Call of Duty for 10 hours as something that was almost cool. That said, the growth spurts and the pockets lined with money didn't exactly hurt their coolness factor.

And they all had a lot of catching up to do on the cool front. Mainly, the girls and parties portion of the quota.

Tucker, Adam noted, didn't seem to have nearly as many problems on that front as he did. He'd apparently gotten with Valerie during high school, though it "hadn't worked out" for some reason. That wasn't even mentioning the sweet piece of ass who'd been tailing him lately. (Tuck insisted over and over again that it was his roommate's cousin and nothing romantic at all - yeah right. "She's just my friend and my best friend's underaged legal charge" was the oldest excuse in the book).

Speak of the devil, Tuck's said best friend was waltzing onto the lawn at that very moment. Danny Fenton was an area of much speculation for all of Tuck's frat brothers. He was decent at video games and kind of funny, but there was a distinct bumishness to him that would've made it impossible for him to be a brother even if he had gone to college. The kid seemed to just sit around, doing nothing but occasionally exploding shit in their downstairs lab.

("A lab for what?" Adam remembered asking. All of them claimed it was an extension of Danny's family business, but the rumor around the house was that it was the cover for a meth lab).

And surprise, surprise, Danny made a beeline straight for his girlfriend. This was another point of contention for Adam. The girl attended a college that was essentially a dedication to all that was rich and snobbish, and she was dating the biggest loser this side of the ghetto?

(Internally, Adam felt the urge to compare the two of them. Goth freak or not, what did Danny have that he didn't?)

The boy looped his arm around his girlfriend's torso, pulling her towards him and planting a kiss on the top of her head. She laughed, hugging his arm to her.

Danny pulled away and reached to remove his high-collared, now wet from her back. As he pulled it back, the hot tub's occupants audibly gasped.

He was known for being clumsy, his arms and legs often covered in cuts and bruises from collisions with chairs and tables and the like. This though... this was different.

His neck, previously hidden by his collar, had clearly defined bruises wrapping around the sides. On his chest, five identical lines slashed across his pectorals. He also had painful-looking marks sprawling across his stomach. All of the bruises were tinted vaguely green; Adam wondered if a doctor had ever taken the time to look at them.

With his chest revealed, his other scrapes and bruises didn't seem so innocent. The frat boy remembered that the last time he'd seen him, he'd been sporting a black eye. His knuckles seemed to be almost eternally bruised and cut. Today, his elbow boasted a blossoming blue-green splotch.

Danny seemed unaware of the attention he was getting and began to climb into the hot tub, still grinning.

"Holy shit, man," someone from beside him whispered. "Where the fuck did you get those?"

The boy's head shot up as if realizing for the first time what he had just revealed. He froze completely, one foot into the hot tub. His girlfriend, on the other hand, seemed to have a lot to say.

"Why's that your business?" she bit. "Last I checked, Danny is entitled to his privacy under sectio-"

"I'm just clumsy," Danny interrupted, smiling easily at the other dude. His momentary panic from before seemed to have ended, and he slunk into the hot tub. As he did so, he reached to grasp Sam's hand. The movement seemed to calm her; at the very least, she stopped ranting about privacy laws.

"Those don't look-" Sam's goth friend paused at the look on her friend's face, which was admittedly less hostile than the look the others received but still intimidating. Over her shoulder, Adam could see Tucker and Valerie approaching.

"Like something any halfway coordinated person could acquire?" Val suggested, her hands resting on her hips. She made an appealing picture, all smooth brown skin and curves. Adam licked his lips, thoroughly ignoring her male counterpart. "I agree, Wendy."

"No," frowned another girl in the tub. She was athletic looking; if Adam had to guess, he'd say she played volleyball. Probably one of Valerie's friends. "They look like someone kicked your ass three times till Sunday. Then knifed you. The sic'ed a bear on you."

The foursome laughed uncomfortably.

"That's a crazy story." Danny's smile was tense, his usual easy-going manner eschew. "Next thing I know you're going to say I was hunting ghosts. Haha!"

"Ye-eah," Adam said; he raised an eyebrow. "Except why would we say that at all?"

"I don't know! Why would you?" Danny rambled. "There's absolutely no reason at a-"

Sam smacked him hard across the back of the head; her expression was a no nonsense one.

"Don't worry, Sam," Tucker laughed casually, turning to his friend. "You don't have to shut him up. None of us wanted to know the details of your kinky sex life anyway."

Sam swore at him, her cheeks flushed, and the tension receded as the two duked it out. Even Danny looked calmer; he laughed and egged his girlfriend on. (The two of them arguing seemed to be something he was quite used to).

Still, the questions hung in the air, and somewhere, deep inside the recesses of Adam's memory, the sight of those green-tinted scars lingered. Somehow, somewhere, they were all adding the moment to an internal catalogue- another piece of gossip for the frat house, another glimpse into the life of the strange foursome.

At the next house party, the hot tub stayed closed.