The Alternatives

Beep beep beep! That was the sound of Jake’s alarm going off at six o’clock on a Monday morning. The first day of the week. He hates it so much.

Time to get up jake a voice from the other side of the room echoes into his ears.

He turns around after waking up and he sees his brother Julian who is already dressed in his school clothes. He had woken up ten minutes earlier.

Jake felt like he was going to be sick. Sick to his stomach. School to him is like a curse. A curse that is unbreakable. Like the household that he lives in.

“You know I hate it over there.” He told Julian after getting out of bed.

“I know,” Julian replied in an understanding way.

Jake and Julian went to middle school together and it was not the best time for the both of them. They had encountered problems with their fellow classmates on almost a daily basis.

Jake got dressed quickly and headed downstairs and straight to the kitchen for breakfast. As he enters the kitchen, he sees the disappointed look on his mother’s face. He tries his best to get his breakfast without disturbing her. She was holding on to her wedding picture that was in a shattered frame which was broken a couple of years before by his father. He threw the picture on the floor after arguing with her about him yelling at their older daughter, Alice. That incident led to her moving out of the house. while eating cold cereal, he saw his mother slowly crying while still holding the picture.

The school bus had arrived at the house and Jake and Julian had quickly left to catch the bus on time. Jake hated riding the bus, especially on the way to school. Within the past four months, the bus had been late either it had broken down or was stuck in traffic. But what he hated more than riding the school bus was who he rode the bus with. This was why he and Julian sat in the back of the bus. Around eighth grade, he and Julian would take separate buses. But he would still have to deal with the same person throughout those years, not counting the tenth or eleventh grades.

His name is Dylan page or what others had called him the great ugly brute. They called him that because of how menacing he was and did not like approaching him. Jake and Julian were the first ones on the bus and three more students would follow them. Dylan entered the bus, looking very tall for his age and had a bland expression on his face. Jake had first met Dylan during the third week of sixth grade.

Around the middle of sixth grade, Jake learned that one of his friends got into a fight with Dylan who hit him with a textbook a few times. He was suspended for a week and a half. The situation was so intense that the friend had a couple of stitches on his forehead. For the remainder of the year, Dylan would get into more fights with other students. He went into detention only three times that year. Upon finding out that he received detention, Dylan's mother Maria had become very concerned about him.

Once the bus had arrived at the school and everyone exited the bus, Jake and Julian had used another way to enter the building to avoid confrontation with others. We would often use the school library as a safe haven and only a few classes come in two times a week.

“This is nice,” Jake quietly told Julian as he read a history book. They had arrived at the school around seven thirty. Breakfast was at eight and class started at eight thirty.