Chapter 1: Some Problems Never Go Away

I awoke to a loud alarm clock with 6:00 in bright red lights. I sat up in my bed and rubbed my eyes. "God I hate high school", thinking to myself. I got up, got dressed, gathered my things, and walked out the front door only to run into my brother Jason. He was talking on the phone to one of his girlfriends.

"Yeah babe, ill see you there" Jason said in a suggestive tone. I looked at him with a sickened expression.

"What do you want fag?" He said to me as he hung up the phone. "You're re-taking senior year, maybe this time you might want to focus more on you work and less on being the school slut." I answered back. Jason stared me down for a minute and finally walked away.

I instantly walked into the garage, I didn't want to spend anymore time in my house than I had to. I got in my car, it was nothing special, an old 80's Chevy that was bound to break down at any moment.

On my way there I got a call on my cell phone. It was Andrew,

"Hello?" I asked

"Yo yo man, what it do?"

"Why do you talk like that, you know you're white, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. The gang and I are hanging down at school. Where you at?"

"I'm on my way"

"You better get down here, or you'll miss all the fun"

"What?"

"You'll see" and with that, Andrew hung up.

"What the hell was he talking about?" I wondered as I pulled up to the student parking lot. I walked up to the courtyard and greeted Crash, Coco, Crunch, Andrew, Jessica, and Val. Since we were at the top of our class, we were the first to pick what classes we would take. The bell rang, and everyone started to walk to their respective classes, except me as I stopped Andrew.

"What "fun" were you exactly talking about?"

"Everyone is waiting for you and Val to get back together"

"We're just friends now…" I was frustrated, I still loved her, but she didn't want to be with me anymore, I just walked away after that.

I sat next to all of my friends in class and we all talked about how our summers went, but I couldn't take my attention off Val. I looked at her, wishing we could still be together, but I had to respect her decision. She looked at me and we stared at each other, while everyone become silent and turned their attention to us, we instantly broke our eye contact and joined in with the group.

I then turned my attention to Coco, she was staring angrily at someone. I knew who she was staring at, Nina. She recently ran away from her home with Cortex and was attending our school. Their was still hard feelings between the two after the whole doominator ordeal. Suddenly I herd Andrew yell, "Hey Nina!"

"Shut up, Andrew" Coco whispered at him. Suddenly everyone went quiet again. I got up and walked towards Nina.

"You know you can sit with us if you want" I said. She didn't answer back, but got up and fallowed me back to our group. I sat her down between Coco and myself and the two looked away from each other.

Andrew came up behind Nina and Coco and put an arm around each one and said, "Hey, why cant we be friends?" The two girls looked at him with anger, and Andrew tiptoed back to his seat.

"Come on you guys, you need to get over this, we're all friends now." I got no response from neither Coco or Nina. "Ok, either you let me help or I can just have Andrew come back and have him help."

"I'm sorry" Nina mumbled under her breath.

"What?…." Coco responded, stunned. "My uncle made me do what I did, and now that he's not here anymore, maybe we could be…friends"

"Nicely done Dr. Phil!" Andrew blurted in.

"Andrew, Shut up" I said back to him. Just then, the ball rang and we all walked to our next class, as I passed Crash, I saw him shaking in anger. He was staring at Jason, his arm around the waist of the head cheerleader, Tawna. As we passed Jason, he saw Crash angry at him, he knew Crash liked her. So as he passed us he gave a smirk to Crash. It set him over the edge. They both stopped and looked at each other eye to eye.

"You got a problem?" Jason asked, chuckling a bit. As he said that, he pushed Crash backwards, almost making him fall. That set me over the edge, so I walked up and got right in Jason's face.

Everyone stopped and crowded around us to see the brother vs. brother showdown that was about to happen. I already hated my brother, now to see him messing with one of my friends it was finally time to fight. What Jason did next was unbelievable; he slapped me across my face. Without hesitation, I hit him right in jaw, but before he had a chance to retaliate, his football friends held him back.

"Perfect opportunity" I thought to myself, before I could strike again, Crunch had me in a full nelson refusing to let me go. He pulled me back as I struggled to get away from him.

"Just wait Jeff!, Just wait!" Jason yelled at me.

"Come on!, let's see what you got!" I yelled back.

Finally, we were separated, and we all continued to walk to class. "I'm sorry guys" I said out of nowhere. It wasn't like me to get worked up like that, or to be that confrontational and they knew that.

We kept walking when Val stopped me, she knew of all people how Jason got under my skin like that, "Don't scare me like that, I know that's not you" Val said as she hugged me. "I know…I'm sorry" I replied as I hugged her back.