His Scarred Love

“Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.” -Jeremy Collier ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I slammed my locker door shut for the third time in the last minute and again, hoped it would fall off. No. It didn’t. It never did. My friend Justin laughed and as always, I pretended I didn’t care. I did care though. It made me mad. “You’re bringing the weed for tonight, right?” I asked, trying to take the humiliating spotlight off of me. “Nah man, my sister’s coming back from France. I’m eating dinner with the fam so my mom won’t let me go anywhere.” “Look here at Justin, the mamma’s boy.” I grinned, elbowing him. I wasn’t surprised when Justin ran into me, slamming me against a locker. If I wasn’t so used to this, I would have probably hurt my shoulder. As I collected myself, I continued to grin. I wasn’t afraid of Justin, he probably wished I was, but I wasn’t. As a friend of his since elementary school, I remember when this kid was just a nerd. How could you be afraid of a kid who had once worn overalls and held his mommy’s hand until sixth grade? “Boys!” The young and attractive Ms. Cain called. “Stop fooling around and go to class!” Justin whistled at her as we walked past her and I burst into laughter. Ms. Cain stopped walking, placed her hands on her hips and raised both her eyebrows, clearly not happy. I saluted her before Justin and I did not go to class, instead, we left the building. My name is Nate, well, Nathan. Nathan Evangelos. I’m a student at Riley Parks Collegiate Institute, barely passing the eleventh grade and I’m seventeen. As a guy who has dated tons of time, I’m known for being extremely hot. Dark, dark brown hair falling over my eyes and growing on my chin and tanned skin, both which I got from my dad. I’ve also got greenish brown eyes, courtesy of my mother. I’m a guy who works out frequently, so I’m fairly fit and I’ve got chiseled features that some girls can’t wait to put their lips on. I may sound like I’m bragging, but I’m not. I’m hot, and I know it. Another thing I know is that… well… I’m a bad kid. I’m not embarrassed to say it. I’d even say I’m proud. Yeah, I do drugs. Yeah, I drink, though I am starting to see the unfortunate effects of it on my usually fit body. Something good I do, however, that doesn’t involve any of my normal bad habits is play the guitar. It was something my parents got me into when I was young. It was also something I liked to do, so sometimes I had dates with my guitar when I was bored. But of course, when I entered high school, the amount of time I spend playing dropped almost completely. I’m also failing school. To be honest, the only reason I even step into the building is to satisfy my parents and stop them from nagging at me all the time. But who cares, I live in the moment. This life was the fun sort of life. “Yo.” I called. “Where’s Tristan? Didn’t he say he was going to be here?” Ronan, my other friend with black long hair tied back into a ponytail, dark brown eyes and tan skin, shrugged. “Probably in class, the kids a nerd.” He rolled up his sleeves, revealing his sick ass tattoos. Justin rolled his blue eyes and used his hand to mess up his pretty boy blond hair. “Well we aren’t waiting for his ass. Let’s go.” Though Tristan was my closest friend out of all of my guys, I nodded and decided I didn’t want to wait either. Tristan would understand if we left him. He was good at understanding. Better than all of us. As we walked into the schools parking lot, I noticed the kids who had no classes this period look away. I smiled. They were scared of us, and I was pleased with that. It made me feel superior and powerful. We were the guys in the school that no one ever wanted to mess with. In my opinion, that was an excellent reputation. We got into Justin’s car and spent the rest of the school day driving around and being fools, honking at older beauties who walked down the street and driving at speeds we shouldn’t be driving at. But of course, I had to go home. Especially when I got hungry and realized I had no money on me. When I got home that evening, my mom opened the door. Her green eyes stared at me, a little shocked. Her black, curly hair was in a messy bun so I could tell that she had just gotten home from work but she was wearing an apron and holding a spatula in her hand. “You’re home on time today.” She said. I rolled my eyes and walked past her, into the living room. Throwing my fitted cap onto the floor, I slumped down next to my ten year old baby sister, Cynthia. “You didn’t go to school today?” I asked as I rubbed her head, messing up her black curls. She shook her head and looked at me with her bright greenish brown eyes. “No. I’m sick.” “You don’t look sick.” I said with a suspicious grin. “I think you’re lying to get a chance to stay home and not go to school.” She pouted and crossed her arms. “I am sick!” I laughed at the face she was making and then turned to my mom. “Where’s dad?” “At work of course. The poor man is working his bottom off for you and you run around failing school and making a fool out of yourself.” I sighed. “I asked you where dad was. I didn’t ask you to nag at me.” “Do not talk to me like that young man.” She said, throwing her hands onto her hips. “What do I need to give you to get some respect from you?” I got up and left without saying a word. I walked up the stairs, headed towards my room and ignored her constant nagging. That was the one thing I hated about being who I was. My parents hated me. It was pretty upsetting to know that your parents don’t love you. Actually, I think no one loves me, no one but my baby sister, at least. And that’s only because she’s too young to understand anything. I’ve had girlfriends before, a ton. But I don’t think I’ve ever gone out with them because I loved them. It was really for the sake of being cool, I guess. For the sake of being the guy with the sexy girl. I’ve never felt bad about it, maybe that’s because I know the girls felt the same way about me. But I’m not all that heartless. I’ve been crazy about certain girls before, for more than their looks but as it’s probably expected, those relationships never worked out. And so, I don’t believe in that sort of stuff, giving me more of a reason to just not care. And the fact that I don’t care is exactly why I spent the rest of the evening playing video games and the flirting with a girl who decided to call me and then sleeping. No homework, as usual. No work, period. The next day, my friends and I chose not to go to school. Why? Well, we decided we wanted to play soccer instead. Soccer is always better then school. Well, everything is better than school. The field in front of our school was usually empty during classes, so we had the whole field to ourselves. Which meant we did everything we wanted to do, since there were no teachers watching us. That meant tackling each other, screaming, cursing… things you couldn’t do in a normal gym class. Soon, though, we got bored and decided that none of us wanted to play. Justin kicked the ball to me and I stopped it with my foot. “Nate!” He called. I picked up the ball and looked at him. The sun was high in the sky and I had to place my hand over my eyes to block the blinding lights. “What?” “I dare you to kick the ball through Ms. Duncan’s window.” He grinned. I scoffed. “Are you f*****g stupid?” We left the field and were walking towards the school building. We were going to pass Ms. Duncan’s class. “Nah man, I’m serious. I hate that bitch.” He looked at me. “I swear I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you kick the ball and it smashes through the window.” I shook my head. “You’re crazy.” “C’mon!” Chris, our other dark skinned, buff friend with brown eyes and corn rows, shouted. “It’d be some funny shit.” I continued to shake my head. “No way. I’m not doing that.” “You’re such a girl, man! Do it!” Ronan yelled as he joined the conversation and walked over to me. I pushed him away from me. “Why don’t one of you fools do it? Why do I have to do it?” “I can’t kick!” Justin said, reasonably. Chris nodded. “None of us can, man. But you can, you’ve got the best aim out of all of us.” Ronan pushed me forward as we approached Ms. Duncan’s classroom. “Come on! Do it.” He said. “Plus, there’re no camera’s around here!” “Yeah.” Justin said. “If you smash the window, no one will ever know it was you.” I rolled my eyes, letting my pride get the best of me. These three had just admitted that I have good aim. It made me feel f*****g awesome. “Fine, you bastards. But if I get the ball to hit the window, you owe me a hundred bucks, got it?” Justin nodded, holding both his hands up. “I swear on my mothers’ grave.” I placed the ball on the floor in between Ms. Duncan’s classroom window and myself. I could feel the excitement as my friends began to push me with their words and prepared to kick. And then I did. I kicked it as hard as I could and it blazed forward. Though I was on the soccer team in grade nine and ten, before I got kicked out for my bad behavior, I didn’t actually expect it to hit the window, let alone break through the glass. But when it did, I swore. “Fuck.” The ball shattered through the glass window of Ms. Duncan’s classroom. Things started to go in slow motion as my friends screamed and started to run away the second the glass shattered and the ball flew into the classroom, breaking something else. I heard loud, loud screams… but there was one scream in particular which I heard. A scream of pain. I turned around and ran after my friends.