Foreword

In the not too distant future, there exists a high school. Maybe this is your school, maybe this is my school. Who knows? The point is, this school is made up of two major social classes. Class one: the Preps. The subclasses of the Preps often include the Jocks, Cheerleaders, and general Popular crowd. Class two: the Freaks. The Freaks are simply those who do not belong with the Preps. Oddly, the Freaks do not include the typical “Nerds” or “Geeks.” No, not at all. Nerds and Geeks can be either Prep or Freak. Actually, anyone, no matter what academic status or extracurricular activities might be involved, can belong to either social class, regardless of these issues. Additionally, beauty makes no difference as to one’s placement in a class; hairstyle and wealth are irrelevant.

Sadly, status as either a Prep or Freak is determined solely by choice of clothing. Certain items automatically place one into a specific group.

Any shirt with a brand name displayed on the front: Prep.

Polo: Prep.

Any shirt tucked in: Prep.

Skinny jeans: Prep.

Chains hanging off pants: Freak.

Leather in any form: Freak.

Button-up shirt worn unbuttoned with a T-shirt under it: Freak.

Fortunately, no one at this school has ever shown up wearing a leather jacket and a button-up shirt worn unbuttoned with a brand-named Polo underneath, tucked in to skinny jeans with a chain hanging off. No, no one has ever crossed the line of Prep versus Freak.

Unfortunately, these classes still exist. The Preps are the majority of the school, and the Freaks are the minority.

This is the story one such Freak.

Chapter 1

Now is my time to write a good story. This is my idea of what makes a good story. The main character is a guy. The guy is a loser. It isn’t a good story unless the main character is a loser. Have you ever read a good story in which the main character was a nice, well-respected, popular guy to whom nothing bad ever happened? Of course not. What makes that exciting? Nothing. Which is definitely why this story is not going to be about a popular guy.

I am not popular. I will never be popular. Some people in this world were meant to be popular, but I am not one of those people. I don’t even get along with people who are popular. There’s just something about them that keeps me from getting too close. So, if you are a popular person, please close this book right now because (and please take this personally), well, I don’t like you. I am not ashamed to say that, either. I do not like popular people! And I do not want to be popular. That would be like cursing me even more; I already have to live in the same world with these people. You never hear about bad things happening in the lives of popular people. Sure, they claim that they have tragedies, but who really cares that the quarterback of the football team made a bad play? It’s not the end of the world. At least, not yet.

Ashley Lizer stopped typing. He looked away from the light of the computer screen and rubbed his eyes. He had just begun his English semester assignment, given by Ms. Owen earlier in the day. Usually when given an assignment that wasn’t due for a few months, he would wait until the last week or so and rush to get it finished. But this assignment was different for Ashley.

“This semester, as we read the works of great authors in the world, I am giving you a chance to become great authors,” Ms. Owen had said.

Ashley, who had been halfway asleep, immediately sat upright in his chair.

“I want you to write a book,” Ms. Owen had gone on. The only person in the classroom who did not groan was Ashley. “I want you to make the book look like a real book. It must have a cover, and a dedication, and everything else you find in a book, even an ‘about the author’ section.”

There were more groans from the class. Ashley’s attention was so focused on Ms. Owen that he didn’t notice his classmates’ responses.

“The book must be at least fifty pages, typed, single-spaced.” Ms. Owen was interrupted by the biggest groan of all.

“That’s way too many pages,” a girl sitting in the front of the room had whined.

“Not necessarily,” the teacher said to her. She picked up a piece of blank typing paper and folded it in half. Holding the folded paper up the class, she told them, “This is roughly the size of a page in a hard cover book. You must have at least fifty pages of this size, with one-inch margins on all sides of the page. Don’t forget to include chapters or sections, but remember to make it look as much like a regular book as you can.”

“What do we have to write about?” Ashley asked from his chair in the back of the room.

Ms. Owen seemed pleased with his question. “Anything you want,” she answered. “I would prefer the story to be fiction, but if you can get fifty pages out of an incident based on a true story, I would encourage you to write about that.”

Hearing the groans from the class, Ms. Owen reminded them, “Keep in mind, you have four months to complete this project. That’s less than a quarter of a page a day. Trust me, it won’t be that hard.”

As he sat at his computer, remembering the event that had occurred right after lunch that day, Ashley couldn’t help but smile. Writing a book would be awesome. He would be able to show Ms. Owen, and possibly the rest of the world, how great of a writer he could be. He could even be able to change the world if he wrote a story that was great enough.

Ashley snapped back to reality when he heard his mother’s car pulling into their driveway. She was home from work. Ashley hadn’t realized that it was so late. He had been so engrossed with figuring out a way to begin his book that he had lost all track of time. It was Tuesday. It was his day to start dinner, which, obviously, he hadn’t done. In a few seconds, Mom would come in the house, see that dinner hadn’t been put in the oven, storm down the hall to his room, and yell at him for being irresponsible.

There’s no escape now, Ashley thought as he heard his mother enter the house.

“Ashley!”

Ashley grimaced at the sound of his mother calling his name. It wasn’t the fact that he knew he was going to get in trouble. It was the sound of his own name that made his flinch. What mother would name her son Ashley? His mother, that’s who.

Ashley’s mom, Rose Lizer, had one child before Ashley, Ben. During her second pregnancy, she had done meditations in hopes that her baby would be a girl. Her baby’s name would be Ashley, of course. But when she had a boy, she didn’t seem too disappointed. She named him Ashley anyway. After all, it was such a beautiful name; it didn’t deserve to go to waste.

Ashley didn’t think it was a beautiful name at all. It was bad enough having a girl’s name, but it was even worse when people teased him about it. They even laughed at his mom for being weird enough to name her son Ashley. Ashley’s brother, Ben, who was a year and a half older than Ashley, could see why he hated his name. Ben tried to help Ashley out by calling him “Ash,” but Ashley didn’t seem to like that name any better. He insisted that people simply call him “A.” It made sense. Lots of famous people went by their initial. The only trouble was, Ashley couldn’t think of anyone except F. Scott Fitzgerald. But even then, he didn’t know if people actually called him “F.”

Just as Ashley had predicted, his mom was storming down the hall to his room. As she stepped into his room, she exclaimed to him, “Ashley, I can’t believe this!”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he began, but she cut him off.

“You’re sorry?” she said. “How can you be sorry?” She held up a three-inch tall candle that was shaped like an elephant. “Look what I have!” she exclaimed.

Mom was excited about an elephant candle. That was just like her. She probably hadn’t even noticed that dinner hadn’t been cooked. Of course, his mom could probably go for a week without eating and not notice. Ashley didn’t know whether to be happy or upset about the elephant candle. In a way, he was happy that Mom hadn’t noticed dinner, but he was also upset because, well, Mom just wasn’t normal. Mothers were supposed to teach their children about responsibility and such, and Mom just wasn’t like that.

She was obsessed with the strangest things, like candles. She already had about eighty other candles, all of them shaped like something different. She would sometimes stay up late at night, burning incense and dancing psychotically around the house while wearing lots of beads and listening to some weird music. Neither Ashley not Ben had ever been brave enough to ask her if she were mentally unstable.

“That’s great, Mom,” Ashley told his mother as he tried to act excited about the addition to her collection. “Where did you get that one?”

“Oh, Jerry gave it to me.” Mom blushed. Jerry was Mom’s “friend.” They worked together, and Mom insisted that there was nothing more than friendship between them. Ben and Ashley knew that it was really more than that, but they never said anything.

Ashley liked having Jerry around their house. It made him laugh inside to think that two guys there with him were named Ben and Jerry. And it always seemed to make him crave some Chunky Monkey ice cream. Plus, making fun of their names took some time off reminded himself that he was a guy and had been cursed with the name Ashley.

“That was nice of him,” Ashley said, saving the first two paragraphs he had written on his computer and getting up from his chair. “Let’s go start dinner.”

Ashley and Rose walked through their one-story house toward the kitchen, passing shelves and cabinets full of weird-shaped candles. Rose stopped to add the new elephant one to the top of the piano in the living room. It fit in perfectly with the lions, tigers, and alligators that were already there.

Mom would make an interesting character in my book, Ashley thought as he watched him mom glide around the kitchen while humming “Yankee Doodle.” Her character could be some sort of hippie-type person. Getting more ideas in to his head, Ashley became anxious to get back to his computer and write more in his book.

Author's Note: This story was written several years ago, circa late 2000-early 2001. I was a senior in high school when I wrote it, and it was basically a commentary on the ridiculous social classes at my high school. My apologies if it seems out of date in any way, but who knew that so much could change in just 8 years? Seriously, back then, there was no such thing as emo yet (I kid you not) and goth kids just didn't exist at my school. So don't try to think of Preps and Freaks as social groups similar to ones you see today. They just don't exist anymore.

Oh yeah, and I don't own or claim any trademarks or copyrighted materials. At all. Anywhere in this story. More to come soon, as this story has already been completed (by hand; yes, in my own handwriting). It is just up to me to type it all up and post it up here. Thank you for reading.