"To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal."
-Malcolm X
BETRAYAL
Andrew's dad and been so proud of him for weeks now. Andrew had announced to the family that he was attempting to try out for his school's basketball team and his parents could not have been more supportive. Andrew's dad had bought him the latest basketball gear and even offered to help Andrew practice for basketball training, which Andrew seemed to excel at. As the days progressed and the date of the basketball tryouts Andrew was supposed to go to, he grew more nervous and more nervous about it.
As time went on, his parents seemed to be pushing him to be the best harder and harder each day. Giving him basketball tips, driving him to the park, where he was forced to play basketball for 4 hours straight, even if Andrew had plans that day.
Andrew thought about that a lot in the days leading up to the 26th, where Andrew was set to play as "vigorously as possible", as Andrew's dad told him. Not to mention that his parents constantly told themselves that if Andrew became a star basketball player, then the focus of their lives might be shifted from being "the incest family" to the "all-star basketball family".
His parents constantly told him that Andrew was scheduled to go to the gym right after school, and tell the coach that he was going to tryout. Every single day he was told that, it was almost like it was burned into his head. When the day finally came, Andrew was almost determined to get into the basketball game, to please his parents for once. When the final bell rang, his rushed as quickly as he could to the gym, when he was stopped by Amber, the girl who leaked the information about his brother and sister.
"Hey Andrew!" She said in a bubbly voice.
"Uh…hi..what's up?" Andrew replied in a shaky voice, who looked as if he was growing impatient.
"Oh, nothing, it's just that my older brother is gonna drive me and some friends to the movies to see the new James Bond, are you in?"
Andrew stopped completely. Of course, he still wanted to please his parents by going to basketball tryouts, but this might be a good time to integrate himself with the cool kids, as he was still struggling to recover from the leaked information. was this a good idea? Could he trust Amber?
"Um…uh…" Andrew stuttered out.
"My brother's buying us drinks…!"Amber said in a convincing manner.
"Ummm…sure?" Andrew finally spit out.
Amber's face lit up when he finally said that.
"Great! My friends are waiting at the edge of the parking lot, I'll take you there!"
Amber took his hand and lead him through the doors of the school out into the sunshine. Andrew thought to himself that he would just tell his parents that he didn't make the tryouts. Andrew followed her to an empty part of the parking lot, where a group of four kids were anxiously waiting in a used minivan, with a 20 something looking guy in the driver's seat.
"Oh god, finally! We've been waiting for ages for you!" He said to Amber.
"Chill out, James, I had to invite my friend Andrew!" Amber replied to him.
"Hey, Andrew! Why don't you take shotgun up here with me?" James said to Andrew.
"Oh..um.." Andrew stuttered. He was having some second thoughts about this. Would his parents be okay with him riding in Amber's brother's car?
"Come on, Andrew, are you coming or not?!" Amber shouted at him from inside the car, her already having climbed in. Without thinking, and using logic, he ran over to the passenger car door, opened it, flung himself in and shut it.
"All right, let's get a move on!" Amber's brother shouted.
James put the car in gear, and drove the car out of school property. Andrew was quiet most of the time, having thought relay over and over inside of his mind, thinking about what he'd just done, possibly throwing away a chance for his parents to be pleased with him eternally?
Could he really trust Amber, the same person who had told everyone that his siblings were romantically involved? He was thinking so hard, he didn't even notice when the car zipped past the local movie theatre. After about 20 minutes, Andrew started to wonder when they would get there, and noticed that everyone was getting pretty silent. They had driven for so long, they were in the part of Charleston, where virtually nothing existed except for farms. Andrew looked back at the passengers of the car, who were looking ahead, at the road, except for Amber who was smiling at him. Suddenly the car came to a full stop in the middle of the desolate road.
"Hey everyone, can everyone get out for a sec?" James asked.
Immediately, everyone got out of the car in an orderly fashion, except for Andrew, who remained in the car, a little bit scared of what was happening. Suddenly, the car door opened, for Andrew to find James' face, looking a little bit mad.
"What's the matter? Daydreaming of how you're going to fuck your sister?" James said menacingly at him.
Andrew felt like he had been shocked, figuratively and literally. James pulled him out of the car and threw him onto the side dirt to the road, and started to kick his stomach.
One of the boys from the car lunged at him and elbowed him in the shoulder, and started to punch his face. The pain felt unreal, almost like in a dream.. A girl rom the car ride pulled out her phone and started to record everything that was taking place, while finally Amber, approached him, ordering the two boys to stop beating him up. He went into her bag and pulled out a permanent marker, uncapped it and leaned towards, Andrew's badly beaten face.
"You know, you should just do everyone a favor and kill yourself." She said menacingly.
She pulled the maker to her forehead, where she started to write something, which didn't matter to Andrew, who as still trying to recover from the beating he had endured. When Amber pulled away from his forehead, she pulled out a phone, and took a picture of his face, with something written on his forehead, which she showed to Andrew.
On his forehead, was a big, "INBREEDER" written on his head, along with multiple cuts and bruises along his face, which made him look as ugly as possible. Amber let out a laugh, and got back into the minivan, which made her friends and brother follow. Andrew was still in a horrible haze and had an unbelievable headache which as too much to comprehend what was happening.
By the time his got to his senses, Amber and her friends, were lone gone, leaving him alone in the middle of nowhere, with nobody.
Andrew lunged forward blindly, jolting his eyes open, to find his sister leaning over at the foot of his bed, with her smiling, reassuring face that he wasn't reliving that horrible day.
"Hey Andrew, glad to see you're awake!" mabel cheerfully said in his face, which Andrew felt up immediately to find it was unharmed.
"I just wanted to say that breakfast is ready and that you should get there before it's gone!" She again said in a happy trance. She then planted a kiss on Andrew's forehead, and skipped down the attic stairs. Andrew took a few seconds to take in the legitimacy of reality and safely confirmed on his own that he was safely confined in the house of his inbreeding siblings.