Disguised By Blood [Dylan's Pov]

Chapter 1 (Right Before it all began)

A car horn honked right outside my house. Glad for the excuse to leave my house and the conversation, I pulled open the front door and raced to the car parked on the driveway.

I threw both my bag and my body in the passenger seat and then, slumped into the seat as the car drove off.

“You couldn't have come a second sooner,” I grumbled.

“Hey! Be glad that I pick your sorry ass up each morning,” Brad, my all-time best-friend and teammate, said. “You tell your dad you are off the team for the term unless you get your grades up.”

“Nah,” I said, hoping to not have to say anymore. I had just barely escaped one lecture and I wasn’t ready for another. Especially, one from ‘Brad,The Perfect'. No such luck. Brad looked at me, raising his eyebrows. I knew if I didn't continue he would keep staring at me instead of the road and get us both killed. “That's the conversation you saved me from”

“I can tutor you, you know.” I was probably the only one he would offer to spare his evenings to tutor. Not cause he wouldn't be any good at tutoring but, for the risk that it might decrease his popularity and street cred. He was the kind of guy who had everything. From good grades to amazing skill in athletics whereas I had nothing. Made me wonder why he wanted to spend time with me.

“I'll pass.”

“Dude. If you want to be in the same college as me next year you are going to have to do something.” He had been accepted in some of the top colleges for next year. Some even offered him scholarships. As for me, the only way I was going to get into college was if I was offered a football scholarship which considering I had just been kicked off the team wasn't happening anytime soon. Or more likely, at all.

It wasn't that my dad didn't have the money to send me to college without a scholarship. He just, and I quote, wasn't going to throw away his hard earned money on a ridiculously expensive tution fee so, that I could fail classes in college. The same reason he hasn't paid for me try the driving test a second time. And I got it. I did. I was a failure.

With a grunt, I got out of the car and marched into the school while, ignoring my name being called by Mr. Popularity.

************************************************

Later that day, I am pretending to ignore Mr. Popularity once again as I scout a classroom to waste time in. He should be in the afterschool practice. Practice that I was kicked out off. I thought, bitterly. But, being Brad the great Lancaster, he could get away with skipping practice.

Quickening my steps so as to ditch him, I make my way down the hallway. I pick the emptied chem lab and plop myself on a stool in a darkened corner. Knowing my hatred of the subject, he wouldn't look for me in there. And being dark, it was the perfect spot to fall asleep in.

Which is exactly what I did until, a faint sound of sirens outside the darkened chem lab windows woke me up. I turn my head this way and that, trying to lodge out the horrible dream of which I could only remember Brad’s plea for help and some thumping and clanging that sounded like someone fighting in the hallway.