"What are you doing?" Nathan asked, coming out of the house.
"What does it look like we're doing, loser?" Tim called. "We're egging your house."
"Yeah, I guess I phrased that question wrong. What I really wanted to know was why you're doing it and who the hell you think you are."
"We're doing it 'cause it seems like the only way to send the message through to you: we don't want you on the team," Lucas replied, while reaching for a fresh carton of eggs.
"Well you can do what you want, it's still not going to make me quit the team. And if you continue throwing things at my house, you will be standing face to face to some cops very soon."
That was obviously the wrong thing to say, since it only made Lucas and his gang angrier. It was never good to mention cops.
"Oh yeah? Well then how about we settle things before the cops get here, you bastard son?"
Nathan wasn't usually the first one to start a fight, but when someone started talking about his sore spot, his dad leaving him, he wasn't one to control his temper. He stepped up to Lucas.
"What did you just say?"
"You heard me, bastard son."
Somewhere deep inside his consciousness, Nathan realized that starting a fight against someone who had a group of ten people behind him wasn't the smartest idea in the world. His rage got the better of him, however, and he came up to Lucas and punched him in the face.
It took Lucas a total of about twenty seconds to gather himself before throwing the second punch. After that, the little scuffle soon escalated into a full-blown fight as Lucas' friends stepped in to stick up for him. Things were not looking good.
In fact, things would have probably ended badly if not for the siren that could be heard somewhere in the distance. Street fights had been an ongoing issue in Tree Hill, one that the police had been battling with since the 1980s. All of the Tree Hill students had been told time and time again, through principal announcements, police visits and guest speakers, that serious consequences would ensue for anyone caught fighting in the street.
"Dude, let's get out of here," one of Luke's friends said. "He's not worth it."
"Yeah, let's…" Luke said, breaking away from the fight. "But don't for one second think this is over." He gestured towards Nathan.
"I didn't," Nathan said, to no one in particular as he watched the cars that the guys had jumped into rush out into the street. The siren, meanwhile, was getting louder and in a few seconds Nathan could see that it wasn't a police car after all, it was an ambulance driving to the nearby hospital a couple of blocks away.
Well, he had been lucky this time. Not only had the fight dissipated before they could attract attention, it hadn't lasted long enough for him to get a black eye or anything like that. If there was one thing that Nathan didn't want to do that night, it was to explain things to his mother. She was the one person that he couldn't lie to, so if she asked, he would have to tell her the truth. But if she never asked…
Nathan started walking back towards his house to get some cleaning supplies in order to clean up the mess that Lucas and his friends had left behind. After all, in order for his mother to not notice anything different about the house, there had to be nothing different about the house… Nathan opened the front door and headed into the kitchen, to reach for the paper towels and the cleaning solution. Hopefully tomorrow Lucas and his friends would forget about this fight and leave it alone. Deep down though, Nathan knew that that wasn't going to happen. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.