Chapter 1
It was a typical Tuesday morning, the rain dripping down in the middle of March. Late as usual, Scott was slowly turning about in his bed, forever postponing his morning routine. First he would get up, go downstairs, eat breakfast. Then he'd scramble out the door, slinging his backpack over his shoulder as he slipped his shoes on. In the two minutes between going out the door and getting on the bus, he'd put on a couldn't-care-less face, fitting in with the world of droopy eyes around him.
As he stepped onto the bus, his eyes drifted towards the two not-quite-adults in the back left corner. He saw them every morning, always in the same place. She was on the right, he on the left, cuddled together, squeezed into the space of one normal person. It disgusted him to see them like that. Not that Scott cared about what happened to them, though he knew they would invariably break up within the next two weeks, when the girl would move onto her next 15-minute romance, but he hated seeing two people like that, not caring what the rest of the world thought about them. And yet, he knew this was only the beginning of another long, boring, miserable day.
Every day, Scott faced the same things. He knew that, after one hundred and thirty-four days, he should have gotten used to all the sights and sounds of high school, but he couldn't seem to acknowledge the fact that he would never be like all those people.
Once he walked through the faded blue door, it was business as usual. He dragged his feet along the floor to the stairs and went up the steps to the third floor, where he joined the rest of his homeroom in the hall. As he flew up the stairs, two at a time, he murmured a barely audible “hello” to the two friends all over each other on the second floor landing.
Before the bell rang, announcing the beginning of homeroom, Scott had the privilege to see, walking through the third floor corridor, four separate couples, each in various stages of the morning “hello, how are you” reserved just for them. He despised them, even though he had never seen them before in the school of over 3200 pupils. Yet he felt he knew them and, in his most inner mind, hated them for being together.
All through the day, Scott saw every type of relationship possibly in existence. He saw the two people constantly entangled in each other's arms; he saw the two who met after every class for two minutes, before having to go to their next class; he saw the two who talked, but never touched, afraid of something unknown.
After his first five classes, he finally got a break. While walking to the cafeteria, he saw a girl dragging her boyfriend along, not wanting to go, but still wanting to please her: so he followed obediently. At his regular lunch table, Scott pretended not to look at the couple sitting two seats down and across the table, looking so content in each other's arms, not caring about anything except the time before the next bell rings. He knew they had been together for three months now, and loved each other dearly. Well, in the way that one could love someone for five months, then break up, and start going out with another person before a week had gone by, as she had a habit of doing. But he'd seen it all before, and tried his best to pay no attention to it.
Scott's last class of the day was always interesting. Not only was it the laid back period right after lunch where nothing ever got done, but it was also the period before school ended, meaning that everyone just sat, waiting for the clock to reach quitting time. Scott only felt worse when the two people sitting in front of him would start flirting, only to be encouraged by the teacher. Or when the person on his left would start flirting with the person on his right. Oh well, he would think to himself, the day is almost over.
Chapter 2
Outside, the weather had taken a turn for the better, and it was sunny out, though more rain was expected later that evening. While stepping off the bus, Scott saw the same two people he had that morning, this time in the front right corner, still cuddled up next to each other. While on his two minute journey home, he had just enough time to see the newly-married couple, for some reason neither at work, taking a walk through the neighborhood. Finally at his house, he opened the door, unslung the bag from his shoulder, and went into the kitchen to get something to eat. He had survived another day at school.
Chapter 3
That night, like every other, Scott had hours upon hours of homework to do. Yet he had no desire to do it. Tired and stressed out from another day at school, he decided to take a nap and work later, when he might possibly be able to concentrate on what he had to do.
Waking up three hours later, Scott looked out the window, only to see that it was raining once again. Refreshed from his nap, he joined his parents for dinner. They talked about all the same things: what happened at work, how the world couldn't get any worse, and how great that latest movie had been. In typical teenager fashion, Scott responded with the uninterested “ehh” and continued eating. His parents, worrying that there was something wrong with Scott, due to his lack of active participation in the dinner-table conversation, asked what was up, if anything was wrong, and convienently mentioned that they were always there for him if he ever wanted to talk.
Once dinner ended, Scott's parents cleaned up while he started to do homework at his downstairs desk. His father made a bad joke, and his mother laughed at it. Then, trying to be quiet, but failing miserably, they started to kiss, not stopping for another couple of minutes, before taking a break and reading the newspaper, undisturbed since the morning.
He always wondered why they had to do that, being so loud and inconsiderate. Of course, it was a given that he couldn't actually do any work for those couple of minutes, but there was nothing else he could do either, so he just sat there, staring at the piece of paper in front of him. Finally finishing the worksheet, almost immediately after his parents sat down to read the newspaper, he went upstairs to his computer.
Scott's first task was to finish up a lab report due Wednesday, third period. But before getting to that, he glanced over at the picture, on his desk, of his girlfriend, who was currently hundreds of miles away, and wondered when he'd get to see her again, and forgive all those people in school who he thought he hated.