Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Proof ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Disclaimer: I own all.

Warning: Tons of name-calling, bad words, and teenagers ending their sentences in a question.

Chapter One

The world was different when a boy had a boyfriend. There was a certain glow to the air, and the sun rose and fell with a dramatic assurance that the next day would begin again with the promise of definite romance. Highlands, Oregon, may have been blanketed in its wintery coat of snow, the high density of clouds blocking out any hope for sun, but it was always warm for Jake James.

The seventeen year old, eighteen in May, was looking forward to school. Frowning at himself in the mirror, he wondered what it was about himself that he could prep or change into feeling more confident in his looks. His floppy dark brown hair was in the midst of being grown out, and had transformed into a sloppy shag. The thin braid he'd had since childhood had bad ends, and he considered cutting it off as he tossed his broken comb aside and examined the mess. Unraveled, the small patch of hair reached his waist, but he'd always kept it in a braid, to avoid girly jokes. He tossed it back over his shoulder and growled as he gripped the sink, staring at his reflection once more.

Olive skinned (which was currently bothered by acne in some areas), with high cheekbones and a slightly hooked nose, his looks were a mixture of his parents'. His dark brown eyes were rounded, hooded with arched eyebrows. He had a pointy chin that was starting to finally mature, rounding out with his age. He made a face, and then sniffed at himself.

With an anxious jerk, he snatched a bottle of cologne from the corner of the sink and sprayed liberally into classic scent areas. Inhaling deeply, he nodded in satisfaction and very carefully placed the item back into its spot.

There was a cluster of pimples along the left side of his jaw, and he grimaced as he struggled to pop them all, layering toothpaste atop of them as an afterthought. Glancing at the clock, he growled again, reaching up to rake at his hair with his fingers and shouting aloud at the toothpaste he'd dragged into it.

In the end, as he was racing downstairs with wet hair, he missed a couple of steps and slammed shoulder first into the wall down below. He cursed fluidly, turning to glare at the stairs for tripping him.

“DAD!” he then bellowed as he picked himself up, adjusting his backpack and tucking his shoelaces into his shoe. “Where's my `board?!”

At his father's grouchy reply from his room upstairs, Jake spotted the battered `board lying underneath the coffee table, and he raced over to yank it out. In the process, he hit his chin with the back wheels and stumbled back in reaction. Tripping over the couch, he sent another bang throughout the house as he hit the floor once more.

His father, Mr. James, gave a shake of his head as he descended the stairs. His son popped up from the floor with an astonishing spring of recovery, giving him a wide grin as he gripped the `board with both hands. Before he could even say anything, Mr. James recoiled back slightly, making a face as he reached up to cover his nose.

“Enough with the cologne!” he growled.

“The hell you say! I smell awesome. And I want everyone to know it, but aside from my awesome smelling-ness, I was going to say one thing. Today is an awesome day, dad. Totally awesome. I want to share my awesome with you, but to do it, you need to open your mind and heart to—”

Mr. James had to shove him away to keep from being hugged. “Get off.”

“You reject my awesome?! Bad things will happen to you, today. I predict diarrhea of the coffee,” Jake warned, but laughed joyfully, dropping his skateboard onto the floor and then sailing toward the front door.

“No skating in the damned house!” Mr. James shouted after him, cringing at the expected slam of body and board against the front door.

He relaxed only slightly when his teenager finally left the house, shouting loud enough to wake the entire cul-de-sac and send wildlife scurrying for the trees. Exhaling heavily, he trudged to the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee, grumbling in that he was still only able to smell Jake's overabundance of cologne rather than the comforting smell of caffeine.

As he sipped, he had to wonder who the unfortunate girl was that had gotten his son's attention.

0o0o0o0

Because the world was a better place being with a boy that had been a love interest for years, every day for GoneDarun was an exciting one. There was a certain sort of joy that immediately enveloped him from the moment he woke up to the moment he went to sleep. Always excited to get up and get out of the house, one could say that there was somebody on Gone's mind that had changed the teen.

In his private bathroom, he concentrated on making sure his hair spiked from his head in a particular fashion. His sideburns had to be absolutely in line, and the small fuzz on the back of his neck had to be splayed just so. Surveying his hairstyle from all angles by using a handheld mirror, he approved of his half hour work. He then cleaned up the gel and hairspray products he'd used, and wiped up the water around his sink.

Glancing at the clock in his room, he made a face and snatched clothing he'd already set out the night before. Dressing quickly, he stumbled into his shoes, tied them tight and then surveyed himself in the full length mirror nearby. Frustrated that he was still short and “elfin” sized, he frowned and worried the already worn material of his pants hems until they fell the way he liked around his ratty school shoes.

At that moment, his father, Go, walked in and gave a dramatic wave of his arms. “It's late. Why are you still looking at yourself? You look the same as you did yesterday and the day before that. I don't see why you spend so much time on yourself, when you're just going to come out looking as unappealing as you did before all the effort.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, I didn't mean that you aren't, well, like you don't have any looks. But I swear, you look the same no matter what you do. Gone, look at your pants—! They look like the ones you bought in eighth grade! Don't tell me those are the very same ones—!”

“They aren't,” Gone growled at him, stomping away from the mirror.

“They're elementary school pants!” Go exclaimed, using a horrified tone. Quickly, he opened the closet door and started rummaging through the jeans that were hanging in color order, gasping at what he was seeing.

Gone slammed the door shut, Go springing back nimbly to avoid having his hands caught. “They are not. But I don't like new clothes, I like the ones I have now! Don't change them!”

“It's ridiculous how I have to fight with you over getting new stuff,” Go complained, following him out of his room. “Look. We'll compromise. Two new pairs of pants for, like, two pairs of those. PLUS shoes! You wear shoes with duck tape on them! Who on Earth still keeps clothes from elementary school to wear to high school? It's not like we're poor!”

“NO! There's nothing wrong with them!” Gone growled, grabbing an apple from the fruit dish atop of the kitchen island, a can of Mountain Dew and a breakfast sandwich that must have belonged to one of the bodyguards. He stopped short when Go snatched the apple and thrust a plate of waffles covered in syrup at him. “I'm not eating that!”

“It'll help you GROW,” Go growled back, covering the path to the apples as Gone tried to reach for another. “You need to grow!”

“FAT. I'll get FAT eating that crap, and I don't have time to sit down and eat those! I can't eat them fast!” Gone's voice, with its embarrassing and unpredicted pitch changes, made him cringe as he protested.

“Why can't you just be a normal boy and eat something messy without worrying about stuff like that? You act like such a girl! If you put in half this effort into doing boy things, being a boy, you'd be just like those other boys. It's useless wasting all your time and effort into your looks—”

“Go, you have a phone call from Chicago,” Jason deGarmo, Go's live-in trainer, interrupted, snatching the plate of waffles out of Go's hands and setting them aside. Go hurried off in search of a handheld, exclaiming over not hearing the phone ring. Patiently, Jason handed Gone an apple and a banana and shooed him out the back door. Flashing him a grateful smile, Gone hurried off, racing around the walkway and into the front of the house, where he could hear Jake screaming at Barton McKinley.

Jason nodded in paternal fashion, green eyebrows furrowing as he wondered what girl had finally caught the eye of the shy teen.

0o0o0o0

Bart growled low in his throat as he rechecked his hair, feeling pissed that Jake had managed to sabotage his hairstyle before he could even show it off. His ethnic features were pulled into a scowl as he massaged inky-black strands back into the `careless' side-swept style he'd settled on earlier this morning. It had taken only a second for Jake to rearrange the careful display by crashing into him with his skateboard upon greeting him. The perpetrator was busy hollering across the street to Chase Bellows, of whom was hollering back while he lugged a large athletic bag from his house.

Bart was trying to tune out all the male screams and shouts, unable to comprehend how the people of this neighborhood managed to survive this chaos. If anybody had been sleeping, they were surely awake now. Using the passenger side window as a mirror, he swept his layers back from his face, and then sighed heavily at the sight of a smudge of dirt on his white bubble jacket. His designer winter clothing was straight out of some hip-hop magazine, with diamonds twinkling grandly at his ears. Currently, he was the most fashionable boy at Highlands High, with some of the male students mimicking some of his styles.

“Will you get OFF me?!” he growled as Chase, six-foot two and steadily growing heavier with his basketball activities, jumped onto his back to administer a feeble choke hold. Long legs wrapped around his waist and thin arms tightened around his neck. He then snarled as Jake jumped onto Chase's back, both teenage boys clinging to Bart like barnacles. “GET OFF! MY HAIR!”

“Sssh, little one. It'll all be over soon. Daddy will take your li—FE!” Chase ended in a yelp, Jake choking him as he slipped from the taller boy's back.

Bart turned away from his car, growing annoyed. He upended both teens from his back. They landed into the snowy slush of the sidewalk with more shouts, Bart's head throbbing in response. He caught sight of a car that had parked nearby, a couple of men taking pictures of the entire thing. With a shake of his head, he returned his attention to the other teens.

“Oh my God…I feel like one of those dudes at the park where all the kids play? Y'know, the ones with diapers and those monkey leashes? Why can't you assholes act more your age?” he complained, jerking Jake to his feet and roughly shaking snow from his frame. Then shook him some more, just because he was feeling frustrated.

“Where is the fun in that?” Chase asked dramatically, brushing snow from himself. Unlike the others, Chase seemed to enjoy his changing voice—he used the pitch changes as a sort of dramatic influence to his words. “Seriously. Got the whole life ahead of me, and I wanna act like an old man ahead of my time? Puhlease. Tell him, J. Tell him.”

“Told you,” Jake said, frowning at his bodyguard. “He totally told you. Live a little. Why you want to be all stuffy at your age? C'mon, here—I'll share some of my awesome with you.”

“His awesome?!” Chase ended in a shriek, clapping his hands while Bart cringed at the octave he'd reached. “Oh, lucky day! You get some of Jake's awesome, Bart-ola! Take it! TAKE IT! No one else can have it!”

“My awesome is so awesome that others will be wanting to be just as awesome,” Jake said, leaning into Bart and catching himself somehow as the other teen shoved him away.

“TAKE HIS AWESOME!” Chase shrieked, starting to hop in place.

“I. Don't. Want. No. AWESOME,” Bart growled.

“Oh, for fuck's sake, take his awesome,” Gone said as he caught up, shoving his banana into his jacket pocket to hand Jake the Mountain Dew and the breakfast sandwich, Jake humming with appreciation as he took them.

“Don't encourage this bullshit—! I don't want your awesome!” Bart yelled, pushing Jake away once more, the teen spilling his opened can of soda and nearly dropping his sandwich.

“What did I tell you about eating those?” Chase asked Gone in exasperation, eyeing the banana he was picking at. “That is so gay.”

“It's not gay if I'm eating it like this.”

“It's still gay! It's a gay object!”

“Ha, says the guy who plays with balls for an `athletic activity'.”

“It's called basketball!”

“So that's what they're calling it, now.” Gone stepped back when Chase moved toward him. “You touch my hair, and you die.”

“You're not scary,” Chase scoffed.

“Bart, it'll only take a moment for you to take some of this awesome,” Jake said low, reaching out to caress the other teen's face, finishing off the breakfast sandwich. Bart jerked away from him in reaction. “What's a moment in an entire lifetime? Do you want to look back at this day and regret never taking my awesome when I so unselfishly offered it to you?”

“I…seriously…don't want your awesome. I want you and your awesome to just…leave me alone.”

“His awesome will make you into a better person,” Gone said.

“It'll only take a moment,” Jake whispered against Bart's face, the teen shying away with another growl.

“GET. OFF. THIS.”

“For fuck's sake, take his awesome!” Drake Bellows, Chase's father, shouted from his driveway. He'd overheard the entire thing while checking on the truck's maintenance system.

Bart heaved a huge sigh, reluctantly staying put while Jake sidled up to him, wrapping an arm around his broad shoulders with a comfortable air.

“You won't regret this awesome-taking,” Jake said grandly.

“I swear, if you do something shitty to me, I'm going to—!”

“…Taking of my awesome is not `shitty'. Here…here it is…”

After starting his vehicle, Drake looked over to see if the teens had at least gotten into Bart's car, but only found Bart in the midst of screaming himself hoarse with expletives as he thoroughly dunked Jake into a nearby snowbank. Chase was doubled over with laughter while Gone was taking advantage of the moment to check his hair in one of Bart's windows.

The entire situation made Drake wonder what an `awesome' might be. He would remind himself later to call Mr. James to find out.