1. First Meeting

CHAPTER 1

FIRST MEETING

TRINITY

My morning started out as a complete clusterfuck.

Someone in the administration office saw T. Monroe on my records and assumed my older brother had to repeat his senior year. Since I shared a first initial and last name with my brother, I was the one put in those classes. It was an exact replica of my brother’s schedule from the year before.

The problem with that was that I was a Freshman and belonged in exactly none of the classes on my schedule. I’d spent the last couple class blocks in the office trying to get it sorted.That meant the first day of school was a complete bust and I’d have to start over the next day as the new girl in all my classes instead of being on equal new kid status with the rest of my classmates.

“Go on to lunch and we should have you straightened out by the time you get back,” Susan Winters called to me. Honestly, I wanted to go home and restart my day. If I could go back a week, to when the school had open house, and I’d have at least one of my parents be available to take me, we would have known about the mix up in advance. It could have been fixed before the first day ever started.

Evelyn, my mom, had been too busy with her new biker boyfriend to take me and no one knew where my dad was, so that left me on my own to handle things, as usual. If my brother had been here, he would have handled it, but he left for basic training at the end of June and then went straight to his next training for whatever job he was doing besides being a soldier.

I missed my big brother.

I also missed my Uncle Bishop, but he was a nomad in the same club as the idiot my mother started dating when my dad disappeared. Bishop, as everyone called him, wasn’t around that much. He had club family in West Virginia and South Dakota who kept him pretty busy. Besides, I wasn’t sure if he even knew that my dad dipped out on us. My dad was his half brother - same mother - and they weren’t really all that close since there was a twelve year age gap between them.

That meant there was no one who could rescue me from this crappy situation and I had to stand on my own and get things done. Thankfully, the middle and high school shared a cafeteria, so it wasn’t like I didn’t know where everything was. I’d spent the last three years using the same space. The difference, when I got there, was that I was mixed in with all the older students instead of being stuck on the middle school lunch schedule, which happened earliest in the day. I guessed the Freshman had a different lunch period too, because I didn’t see many of them.

I got my food and settled in at a table with very few people. It was tough being the youngest person on the first day of high school while being stuck with all the upperclassmen who wanted nothing to do with me or any of the other babies of high school.

It was a small town, and a smaller school, so I knew most everyone there, especially since my brother was friends with a lot of the older kids. Knowing who they were and them knowing who the hell I was were two different things, though.

One person caught my eye as I sat down and I couldn’t bring myself to stop staring at him. He was a year younger than my brother, but still nearly four years older than me. He was tall, over six feet, and while he was skinny, his broad shoulders tapered down into a trim waist. He filled out the back of his jeans really well though, especially for a skinny guy. He had a hat on, turned backward for everyone to see. There was some logo on it, but I couldn’t make it out from where I sat. It wasn’t until he turned around that I recognized him.

John Decker.

He hung out with my brother a bit last year, since Trent was friends with Carson Mackenzie. He had short-cropped brown hair, almost like the military was his destination, just as it had been for my brother. While I couldn’t see them from this far away, I knew his eyes were a brilliant green that made a lush forest in the height of spring envious. Every once in a while, I saw him with a patchy five o’clock shadow on his face and the trace of a thinnish mustache. He definitely looked better with the clean shave, but Momma always said the boys in high school were a lot like the girls, just in different ways. Some girls grew into large breasts and rounded hips while others simply didn’t. Some men grew into the ability to grow thick, beautiful beards while others would never be capable of it.

She hinted that there were other things some of them never grew into, but then laughed with her friend, Wanda, and walked away from me. I was in high school now, and not dumb, so I knew what they were talking about even if it was gross.

I looked down at my chest briefly and lamented the fact that my shoulder blades stuck out further on my back than my breasts did on the front of me. Maybe, I was a late bloomer. Morgan Ashby was already in a D-cup and I barely filled out an A-cup. In fact, my mom refused to buy me bras because she said it was a waste of money when I didn’t have anything to hold up anyway. That didn’t stop my nipples from showing themselves, though. My brother felt bad and bought me a bra before he left. A singular training bra.

Heat filled my face as I glanced down again. It felt like everyone would know that was what I wore under my clothes. Just thinking about it somehow would magically make everyone look and see what was beneath my shirt. I knew it wasn’t possible, still the blush stole across my cheeks anyway.

“Hey, little T, whatcha doing in here?” I turned my back on the boy who unknowingly stole my heart months ago and came face-to-face with my brother’s best friend, Carson. They were only four months apart in age, and grew up as best friends, but my brother started school a year earlier because his birthday fell in August while Carson’s was in December.

“They gave me Trent’s schedule from last year,” I admitted.

“What the hell? Trent graduated.”

I shrugged my bony shoulders. “I don’t know, Miss Winters said she thought maybe he failed and had to repeat everything.”

“She’s a fucking idiot. Susan had to organize the printing of the diplomas.” Carson shook his head and rolled his eyes. “So, what were you staring at over there,” He tipped his chin in the direction of John Decker and his friends and then smirked as fire blazed across my cheeks again.

“Look, I get it. All the girls think he is a handsome motherfucker, but John is too old for you and he’s a player too. Your brother would kill him and me if I let you even so much as continue with the cute little crush you have on him.”

I dropped my chin so that my hair would fall in a curtain around my face to help hide me from everyone in hearing distance of Carson. He wasn’t exactly being quiet as he spoke. Then, the worst thing that could possibly happen, happened.

“No need to warn her away, man. She’s like 12 or something and still looks like a boy. I don’t go for kids, dudes, or duds. You’re wasting your breath on her like she has a chance with me.” Every word sent a knife straight through my young, innocent heart and also did a really great job of shredding my self esteem while it was still there. John laughed and half the cafeteria joined him, because like Carson, he had not been quiet about his degrading declaration.

“Dude, you didn’t have to embarrass her like that.”

“Who cares about some freshman chick?” John asked as they walked away.

“That’s Trent Monroe’s little sister, dickhead.”

“Oh, shit! Should I go back and…”

“And what? You already humiliated her in front of everyone. There’s really nothing to be done about it now.”

“Except to hope and pray that Trent doesn’t…”

They were too far away and everyone close to me had started making fun of “the dud”, so it drowned out whatever else John had been about to say. If my brother had been here, he would have kicked everyone’s asses starting with John Decker, then Carson’s, and then everyone who laughed. It wouldn’t matter that Carson was his best friend. My big brother never allowed anyone to turn me into a laughing stock, not even accidentally.

Unfortunately for me, my ego, and my self esteem, my brother never got to come back home again and my tormentors had free rein over harassing me for the next four years, and John Decker’s words were the ones they used the most to really hammer home the insults.