One in a Million (edited ver.)

“Joseph P Cain! Get your lazy ass up right now mister before your late for school!”
I awoke groggily to the sound an alarm an angry mother standing in the doorway. “Wha? What time is it?” I asked still trying to shake my morning coma “It is almost seven o’clock and I need to go get ready for work.” I jumped out of bed wide awake now. “WHAT?! I’m going to be so late!” mom covered her eyes as my morning wood poked at my pants. “Oh for pete’s sake can’t you wait until after I leave the room?” she said as she shook her head “Sorry, but i’m kinda in a hurry here.” I said as I grabbed my clothes from the closet and headed into the shower.
My mom just shook her head again and left the room. Okay, so first off, yeah my name is Joseph, but only my mom calls me that. Everybody else just calls me J.P. I am 17 years old, light skin tone with light blonde hair and hazel eyes. I am just your average geek in school, A-B average grades, loves books, hopeless with girls, bullied by jocks, yeah just your average wallflower. I come out the shower, dress quickly, grab my backpack and run into the kitchen nearly mowing down my twin sister Josephine. We both fall on our asses and grunt in pain. Physically, she looks just like me, but has a slight build from being captain of the basketball team and the boxing team and the track and field squad and the wrestling team, now she trying to get a spot on the football team with no luck. Even though my sister is a jock she still has good grades and it’s pretty popular around school. she can even be nice to me sometimes.
“Hey Speedy, where are you going so fast?” Jo asked picking herself up from the ground and giving me a hand afterwards. “Stop calling me that, you know I hate that name.” I grumbled accepting the helping hand. “But you know you’d be great for the Track team! you might even be able to start doing Cross country if you’re lucky.” she said “Jo we’ve both had this conversation a million times, I’m out of shape, slow, and get tired easily. I’m not sporting material.” I counted of the reasons as I grabbed a bagel and my keys.
“Maybe if you actually applied yourself to being stronger you’d get there and stop being picked on so much.” I rolled my eyes as we stepped out the house toward the school, we started another tirade about me joining up as we usually do and arrive at school just before the bell rings. We both went to our separate classes, me in english class and her in math class. As soon as I stepped into the room, however, my (somewhat) good morning ended abruptly. “Mr. Cain, would you please tell me as to why you are late to my classroom again?” a sharp voice asked. I turned around to face my teacher. Ms Garfield looked like a nice enough person but unfortunately, looks can be deceiving, especially in her case. She is the toughest teacher we have in the whole school, which is saying a lot. She gives out twice the amount of homework and is always keen on giving three-paged essays. Thankfully, english is my favorite subject so I can deal with the work quite easily. Despite having the patience of a bull with anger issues, she is definitely the most popular teacher in the whole school, made famous by her smoking hot looks and giganteum ass where the long locks of her brown hair occasionally get stuck in between.
I sighed as I wished I was able to just sit down quietly with the hassle. “I am sorry ma’am, my alarm clock didn’t wake me up again.” she snorted in disbelief and rolled her blue eyes at me. “You know if you’re going to make up excuses, you could at least make them good.” I sat down and kept quiet, it was safer that way. With no more incidents for the rest of class, my next three classes passed quickly.

Finally it was time for lunch where I can finally relax. I quickly grabbed my tray and hurried out of the cafeteria, towards the school gardens. I looked around to see if anyone was following me. Once I was sure no one had tailed me, I put my tray down on a table like contraption that I built my first year here. It’s a pulley that takes my tray up to the top of the great oak tree where I was. As for me…that’s a different story. I jumped onto the lowest branch on the tree and pulled myself up. from there up, it was easy. I moved through branches like a monkey, swinging and sliding until I came to the heart of the tree. There was a slight curve there where if you relaxed, seemed a bit like a comfortable chair. I slid down and sighed as I pulled my lunch up. I relaxed because no one ever came to the school gardens anymore since it was abandoned five years ago. Everything in here died without someone to take care of them, well, almost everything. I had ran in here my first day of school when a pack of jocks were chasing me around at the last bell. I quickly scrambled up the tree and tried to make myself as small as possible and the bullies left laughing about their success as they went. Ever since, I’ve been coming here everyday just to relax and kick back once in a while. It’s really nice over here, especially in the afternoon, where you can see the sunset better than anywhere else in town.
I sighed as I realized I needed to get down before lunch ended. I climbed my way down from the heart of the tree. No soon had my feet touch the ground when a voice sounded behind me.”Huh, nice spot you got here nerd.” I jumped then cursed as I recognized the voice, It was the football team star player, Derrick Cohen. He’s 6’4, three hundred and fifty pounds and is nasty. He somehow gets away with picking on me everyday at school and nobody ever believes me because they think he’s an angel. I turned around and face the Jock and his posse, every single one of them just as big as he is, just dumber.
“So this is where you go hiding during lunch? And here I thought you enjoyed the time we spend together.” I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows at that statement “Wow, Derrick, you actually thought about something? I’m amazed.” Derrick growled and pushed me against the trunk of the tree, I tripped over one of the roots and landed on my ass while the Cock-heads (Excuse me, Jock-heads) laughed at my pain. “You know it’s funny, we wouldn’t have even thought of this place, but thanks to a little tweety bird, you’ve got nowhere to hide, runt.” Before I could ask who snitched, Derrick threw an uppercut that left me seeing stars. While I was down he and his goons kicked and threw punches. They stopped once the bell rang and walked inside laughing at how puny I was. I stayed on the ground crying softly as I bled. Finally, I picked myself and limped home, Not caring whether or not I missed classes or not. I walked inside and washed up. Thankfully, nobody was home, mom was still at work and Jo wouldn’t be home for another hour so I took of my bloodstained clothes, threw them into the hamper and collapsed on my bed where I slept until Jo came home.
“J.P! Are you here?” I groaned and covered my head with the pillow. Eventually, she found me on the bed and breathe a sigh of relief. “There you are, I was worried sick! you had just disappeared and nobody knew where-” She stopped and I heard a sharp intake of breath. she must’ve seen my bruises. “Oh my god, what happened to you?” she asked silently. I moved my head out of the pillow slightly so she could understand me. “Derrick caught me at my hideout. Somebody told him where I went during lunch.” “Who would?…oh….oh my god” I couldn’t see her face but I could hear her tone well enough that it made me pull of my pillow, despite my pounding headache, and look at her face. Now, keep in mind that twin telepathy stuff is utter bull, but since we know each other so well, we can still read each other like a book so when I saw her face, It didn’t look like a surprised face or a i’m-going-to-kill-someone face, It looked like a guilty face. “Jo,” I said keeping my anger in check “You wouldn’t happen to know who told Derrick where I was, do you?” she kept her head down and refused to look at me. “Josephine,” now she glanced up, because we only used each others full name when we’re pissed and right now, I think I qualify as pissed. “Did you tell Derrick where I was?” Jo said nothing and kept her head down for awhile and all you could hear was the rain that was pouring down heavily. Finally Jo looked up with tears in her eyes and spoke. “I-I came to him during gym and-and I had asked him to let me-let me sign up for-for football, and he-he said he would talk to his coach if I would tell where was you we-went during lunch so he-he could ask for help on a report he was doing for english….” She stopped there and burst into tears.
I was so mad, I was seeing red. Instead of comforting my little sister, I grabbed my hoodie and stormed down stairs where I grabbed my boots and headed for the front door, Jo on my heels babbling about how sorry she was and how she didn’t mean for this to happen. She paused when she saw where I was heading. “W-Wait where are you going?” she asked her eyes still swimming in unshed tears “Out.” was the only reply I gave. Before I stepped outside, I turned back to face her, fury written all on my face. “I would have rather been beaten to death by Derrick and his pack of thugs then you stabbing me in the back.”
I went outside and slammed the door in her face and started running from the house, not really going anywhere, just running away from the hurt, from the pain, from the betrayal. I kept running, past the houses, past the shops until I couldn’t run anymore. I stood in an open field heaving and huffing til I could catch my breath. Once I did, I screamed. I screamed into the open air, into the storm yelling until I was left empty. I just collasped in the field on my knees, looking up at the sky. “I’m done with it all,” I said the the clouds ” You wanna make life for me so unbearable, just end it already, please.” The storm grumbled and rumbled, almost as if it didn’t like what was going to happen next. I stayed there, tears falling from my face as I wished the world would just disappear. Suddenly, the sky glowed with white light as a bolt of lightning struck down and hit me directly on the head. Once again I opened my mouth and screamed, not in anger, but in pain, as every part of my being felt it was being tortured cruelly and then melted. I kept screaming even when the lightning had long faded from the sky and I sat in a circle of flames. Finally I just collasped into the ground as my vision faded into blackness. The last thing I remember was hearing someone call out my name as I faded into nothingness.

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