Jason wakes up to his alarm clock blaring at seven in the morning. He gets up with a groan and shuts off the alarm with a heavy sigh. His room is a mess; clothes are thrown everywhere. Some are clean, some are dirty. He grabs random clothes off the floor and heads in the direction of the bathroom to wash away the sweat and exhaustion. He looks at himself in the mirror. His black hair is sticking to his head. His light brown eyes are rimmed with red as if he had been crying. He has dark shadows under his eyes. Jason has been plagued with nightmares for a month now and it's always the same nightmare over and over again. He gets in the shower and turns the water temperature to cold, stopping the memories of the nightmare in its tracks. After he's sure the nightmare is forgotten he turns the water hot and washes away the evidence.

Out of the shower he dresses in the random clothes he picked off the floor and heads downstairs. His mother has left him breakfast even though she gets up early to go to work. It’s always been him and his mother since he can remember. He asked his mother were his father was, but all she ever said was that he died in a fire. She looked like it was something that recently happened with all the pain he saw in his mother's eyes. Jason doesn’t like to see his mother get hurt so he never asked again. He looks at his watch and it reads 7:50. He heads out to get to school on time.

It’s a chilly morning but he ignores it. He looks around and sees no one out and about. Everything looks the same as it usually does except there’s a cable van parked in front of the empty house at the end of the street. What type of cable is working at 8 in the morning when people are barely waking up. He chooses to ignore it and takes off running to reach school on time. He'll get detention this time for sure if he doesn’t make it on time.

He turns the last corner and sees the school ahead of him and checks his watch. 8:10. Yes, he'll make it in time. He's running by an alley when he is suddenly pulled in and pushed into a wall. He cracks his head on the wall. When he looks up there’s only blurry outlines and he can’t tell who it is until the person holding him by the collar speaks.

"Look what we have here boys," the voice says and shoves him.

"What do you want Blaine," Jason says. His vision is starting to clear up and he counts how many people are surrounding him. Great, he won’t be able to get out of it without getting hurt. He could take three of them but not five.

"Nothing we're just checking in and seeing how you are doing," Blaine says and smirks.

"You know most people do that by going up to someone and talking to them not grabbing them and shoving them against an alley wall," Jason says. He gets punched in the stomach and doubles over.

"You should stop being such a smart-ass so much and maybe you'd have friends,".

“and why would I want friends?”

“Maybe to have fun once in awhile, if you know what I mean.” Blaine smirks.

“Oh, I know what you mean. and what makes you think I would want that type of fun.”

“Who doesn’t want to have fun once in awhile.” Blaine smirks and the group snickers. The school bell rings in the distance.

“I think we’re late for school. We should probably go.”

“Are you telling me what to do Price.”

“No,” Jason flinches away from Blaine’s raised fist.

“Good”.

“We’ll continue this after school,” Blaine calls back. . He got out of it a lot better than he expected. He picks up his book bag and waits 3 minutes before he begins to walk to school, just in case one of his friends stayed behind.. He doesn’t like to make friends because he knows he will eventually lose them to their constant moving. It’s much easier for him to not get attached to anyone than to deal with the pain of losing them. He's learned the hard way before.

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When he gets to school the gates are closed. "Just my luck", he enters through the office and tries to make it through without being spotted. Of course that’s the opposite of what happens.

"Mr. Price," a voice calls, “were you going without stopping to say hello." Jason turns and sees Dean Quinton smirking at him.

"I was going to class, sir," Jason replies. He was already getting detention there was no need to make it worse than it already was.

"I see that, but school starts at 8:15 not," he looks at his watch,"8:34."

"I got a little delayed"

"Well that is unfortunate," he says” no matter, you've been coming in late quite often and that means detention for you today after school."

Jason doesn't try to fight it he knew this was coming so he just let it happen. His mom was going to kill him for getting detention for a dumb reason like being late. No he won’t tell her that, he'll tell her that he got detention for defending a girl who was being insulted.

"You can go now," Dean Quinton says handing him a detention slip.

Jason hurries to class just to have something to do. He's in his junior year of high school and everything has started to bore him. He still gets straight A's even though he sleeps for most of his classes. Sleeping during classes is the only time he gets to sleep peacefully without his nightmares plaguing him. He sits in his desk in the back of the class and starts to nod off once the teacher starts to speak. He continues to sleep through all his classes and it’s the end of school before he knows it. He heads to the cafeteria to serve his detention only to find the room deserted with only one person inside. He already dreads this detention and its barely begun. Dean Quinton is waiting for him when he gets there with a smile on his face.

"I'm glad you could make it Mr. Price," he says. Jason knows that detention would normally be rescheduled if there was only one person in there but Dean Quinton finds enjoyment in his misery.

“I had nowhere else to be so why not," Jason says and sits down as far as possible from him as he can.

Jason spends three hours sitting on a hard chair not being allowed to do anything besides staring at the clock. When the big hand on the clock hits five o'clock he shoots out the door and runs head first into a man wearing black from top to bottom with only his eyes showing. They were a dark brown with a band of purple surrounding his iris.

"Sorry", Jason says and leaves before he hears a reply from the strange man.

He runs straight home and gets there without encountering Blaine and his group. The cable van is parked in front of their house and his mother’s car is there as well."We already have cable. Are we switching?". His mother is already home and she is going to kill him for not calling her saying that he got detention.

"Mom I’m home, sorry for not calling," he yells as he enters the house. There is no reply.

"Mom" he calls again. Nothing but silence. That’s weird. He searches around the house. He finds her car keys and some manila folders from her work on the kitchen table but not her.

"Mom," he calls again heading to the backyard. She is not in the backyard, but the shed door is open. He thinks she won’t be there but he might as well check since she is nowhere else. He opens the door and stops suddenly. All the blood drains from his face at what he sees. His mother is laying in a pool of her own blood. "Mom", he whispers for the last time.