Chapter 3: Four Years Ago

An hourafter Val left the house, I continued to ice my still injured face and I was still on so many pain killers that it took me ten minutes to realize that Nina was sitting across the room from me (she was staying at Crash's house for the time being).

"What happened?" she asked

"What?"

"You and Jason… what happened?"

I took me a second to remember, I've tried so hard to forget about my brother it was hard to remember it all. After a while it all finally came back to me.

"Believe it or not, but back in middle school Jason and I used to be closer than brothers. We did everything together. Nothing got between us, but when he was a freshman and I was in eighth grade I hardly saw him and he changed. He got mixed up in drinking and drugs, his football friends wouldn't let him quit.

The next year, he lead the school football team to the State Finals for the first time in twenty years. Everyone in the school put the pressure on Jason.

On the last play the score was 7-13, and if he could throw a touchdown he'd be the hero. Instead, he chocked and lost the game. Needless to say Jason was upset and ready to blame anyone, including me.

We also had our stepfather, Jimmy. He already was violent with us, but him being a big fan of our school's football team and watching us lose made him angrier than ever. Jason already got to his room quickly and locked the door. That turned Jimmy's attention directly towards me. He was considerably bigger than I was so it was easy for him to beat the shit out of me.

He stopped for a couple of minutes, but I knew he was going to come back to finish what he started. I was bleeding like a fountain, and some of my ribs were broken so I tried to find refuge in my brother's room. I crawled all the way there to see him standing in his doorway waiting for me, and I extended my hand towards him to show him how desperate I was for help. When I was just a finger tip away from him I heard Jimmy re-enter the room. What did Jason do? He slammed the door in my face with such a force it pushed me backwards.

He betrayed his own brother, left me to get beat to an inch from my life, and turned his back on brotherhood, all over a football game."

"wow", was all she could reply with.

"Yeah" I answered back, while resting my head in my hands. "But, what I hear from Crash you have'nt had an easy time either."

"Yeah"

This portion of the chapter will now be told in Andrew's POV

I was the first to leave Crash's house, I wanted to leave early because Dane Cook's new Pay Per View was on in thirdy minutes. My car had broken down a week ago, so I walked. Halfway to my house Jason pulled up beside me in his red and black Ford Mustang.

"Hey, what's up man"

"Hey?... I can't talk long there's something I wanna watch on TV"

"Why don't you come over to my house and watch it there?"

"Uhhh… ok?"

I jumped into Jason's car, I know him and Jeff had hated eachother, but maybe this was my chance to try and fix things between them.

We had finally got to Jason's house, I was pretty nice. High end furniture, flat screen TV, soft carpets. Jason didn't stay here all the time though; he just shared this place with one of his football friends.

"Hey listen Jason; I actually wanted to talk to you about Jeff"

"Yeah, me too… You know Jeff hasn't always been this violent, and with this thing between me and him has made him kind of… unpredictable. You will never know when he might just snap, so maybe it might be useful if I taught you a thing or two about fighting."

"Ummmm… ok"

"Ok, just fallow my lead"

unloaded a right hand to the side of my face.

"Hey, watch it!"

He didn't stop though; he kept hitting me until I finally blacked out.

The remainder of the chapter will now be told in Jeff's POV

It was about 1:00 in the morning and I was still awake, shaken up by the events of the past couple of days. Crash woke up and came back downstairs a couple minutes later.

"Hey thanks for letting me stay here, there's no telling what Jason could do to me if I was sleeping in my own house"

"No proplem, how are we gonna end this thing with your brother though?"

"I don't know"

We decided to forget about what was going on with Jason and played cards. We talked about cars, sports, whatever could get this off our minds. It was 3:30 in the morning when we herd a knock on the door, so I got up and answered it. When I opened the door, I saw the same white van that Jason and his friends used when they jumped me. When I looked down…

It was Andrew: beaten, bloodly, and unresponsive.

Crash and I picked him up, I could feel both of his broken arms. We laid him down on the couch, it was hopeless to try and help him ourselves.

"Jeff, we need to get to the hospital"

When we finnaly got Andrew checked in, we were questioned by a skinny, grey haired doctor.

"He fell?"

"Yeah"

"That's one hell of a fall, we'll keep him overnight and try to get him to wake up"

"Thanks Doctor"

After the doctor left, Crash started to question me.

"Why did you tell him he fell down?"

"I don't want the police involved in this, Jason can persuade a lot of people to say things to them that will get us in jail instead of him."

"Fine, but we better get to school. We need to settle this."

I regretfully agreed.

Author's Note: Sorry I'm five days late on this and I promise to get the next chapter up a lot quicker.

P.S I got a comment on this from someone named Rhonda Petrie. First of all thank you for your support! And secondly, yes the characters are bandicoots as well.

Keep reading and reviewing!

Your fellow writer,

-A.J Penn