Prompt: Born This Way – give a new character a BTW shirt or update an original character's.
Character: Jake Puckerman
Words: 530
Date: September 19, 2012
Jake knew exactly three things about Lima, Ohio. The first was that his older brother Noah had graduated from high school there. The second was that because of that, it was the last place on earth he wanted to live. And the third was that it would cost him exactly $150 to fix the window he had thrown a chair through when his mother told him they were moving there.
Noah Puckerman may have known nothing about Jake, but Jake knew enough about Noah from his father to know that he wanted to be nothing like his half-brother. The rest he learned from the internet. It wasn't hard. He googled Noah Puckerman and William McKinley High School, where Jake would soon be forced to live in the shadow of a person he'd never even met, and immediately found a hundred YouTube videos of the school's show choir, New Directions. He scrolled through them all until he stopped on a recording of the club singing Born This Way.
"I'm With Stupid," Noah's shirt said with an arrow pointing downward. Jake slammed his laptop closed. Of course Noah was exactly like his father. He wouldn't be surprised if the guy already had a kid or two floating out there, ruining the lives of every girl he'd knocked up. Well Jake hated his father and he hated his brother. He'd make sure from day one that everyone knew that he was NOT his brother.
In fact, if he had a t-shirt for Born This Way, he'd plaster it right on his shirt: NOT MY BROTHER.
He picked up his guitar case and strung it on his back, slamming out the front door without so much as a goodbye to his mother. If he needed a hundred and fifty bucks, he'd better start earning the cash now. He walked the ten blocks to the Columbus Underground where he stopped for a cup of coffee before setting up shop across the street. He pulled his guitar out of his case and took it into his lap, setting the case out for passersby to toss in their loose change. The little coffee shop had every right to call the police, but the fact was, he was talented and he brought in business.
As he sang, he once again cursed the move to middle of nowhere Ohio, where there would be no street corner fit for a city busker. He'd have to audition for that damn New Directions and hope that his brother's loser friends weren't all as bad as they seemed. He strummed the chords of his guitar, realizing that without thinking he had started singing Born This Way.
Give yourself prudence
And love your friends
Subway kid, rejoice your truth
In the religion of the insecure
I must be myself, respect my youth
He smiled at the spectators who dropped coins in his case, his smile covering the anger inside him that never ceased. When he sang, that was the only time it went into hiding. Whether that would be enough for him in the days to come, he had no idea. The demons he fought were only just starting to come out and play.