The

First

Day

John Byrne

Dedicated to my mom because she always liked to read my writing and she

loves how I am starting to write more stories.

Cover Picture by: www.Flickr.com /

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfiupublicradio/5601192190/

Indiana Public Media.

Photo by:WFIU

My name is Mark and I live in a big city called New York,The city that never sleeps. One day I

heard something going on outside my house and when I peaked out my bedroom window I saw

men putting our furniture in the back of a large white truck, The truck said easy jet on the

side.The next thing I noticed was I was boarding on a plane. I couldn’t believe we were moving

and I loved my life in new york, why did my mom have to make me. For a couple of minutes I

refused to get on the plane but it went so far that my mom was willing to leave me so she

dragged me on and when I sat down I slouched in my seat and read my comic.

We were twenty minutes away from landing and I was sick of listening to babies crying, football

fans shouting and a little kid kicking the back of my chair for the whole journey. When we landed

I took a look at my new home and I knew already that I would not like London. I didn’t say a

word to my mom because I was so annoyed with her but when she offered to buy me

McDonalds I forgot about it. When we got to our new home I unwrapped my Xbox and played it

until ten o’clock which then I went to bed. Tomorrow was a new day and it was also the first

of my new school.

As soon as the sun came in through my bedroom window my mom had come into my

room and gotten me out of bed so I wouldn’t be late for school. My mom dropped me off

at the school and wished me good look. I wanted to have the most friends because I

knew everyone would love me. As soon as I walked through the two huge doors that

were leading into the hall of the school my stomach turned. As I walked down the long

hall filled with kids of all shapes and sizes a lanky boy with tape over his big square

glasses walked over to me.

“Hi my name is Fred what is your name new kid ?”.

“My name is mark”.

“Oh Mark that is a fascinating name”.

I didn’t know what to say so I just walked away leaving Fred standing in the middle of

the hall but as the looks of him he was probably used to it. All of a sudden a group of

boys walked up to me and the guy in the front says

“Hey my name is Jake, I saw you talking to Fred over there haha why would you even

look at him”,

“Oh I wasn’t talking to him he just walked up to me”.

“Well don’t talk to him because we don’t like him”.

“Why” I ask, as the group of boys laugh. “

It’s because he’s a loser and if you’re friends with him, you’re a loser too”.

I felt sorry for Fred but I didn’t want seem uncool so he didn’t say anything. The group

walked off and Mark scurried to his locker and got to his first class without stopping to

talk to any guys or flirt with girls which was quite hard for him but he didn’t want to

create more problems for himself.

At the end of school Fred walked up to me with six books in his hands, that was more books than I had read in six years.

“Hi friend” Fred says, “ I was wondering if you wanted to come to my house and play with some power rangers . “I can’t maybe another time” I say in a desperate way to get out of it, I mean who plays with power rangers at thirteen years old. When I got home I did the pile of homework that I had included calling all the girls phone numbers I got during the day but it turned out that they were all missing one number. I had forgotten about all that a while later but the one thing that was stuck in my head was Fred and how bad I felt for him, I had to cut him some slack but my mission was to become popular and I knew if I became friends with Fred I would go nowhere but down hill. The next day at school when I saw Fred at the main entrance I didn’t want to deal with him so I decided to go around the side and avoid him.As I stood at my locker trying to open it for the third time the cool gang strolls up to me and invites me to sit with them at lunch, Without thinking for a second I say yes and in my head I am thinking ‘could they actually like me’. At lunch I spent about ten minutes trying to find the cool gang’s table. I couldn’t believe how big the cafeteria was, it was about twice the size of my old school’s. The only bad thing was the food, I mean like the fish fingers looked like actually fingers and don’t even get me started on the beans. When I saw where Jake and his friends were sitting Jake waved me over but the bad thing was that Fred was sitting on the floor across from them. I thought about how i would feel if I was Fred, but I wasn’t Fred so I just ignored him and sat with Jake. “Hey Jake” I say trying to be cool, “Oh hi Max” “Eh it’s Mark” “Ok whatever” After lunch Fred came up to me and asked me why I was sitting with Jake and his friends. “Well he is cool and I like him”. Fred seemed confused and looked at Jake. “What’s the problem” I asked. “Jake isn’t cool he’s a jerk” As soon as the words left Fred’s mouth Jake dropped his sandwich, sprinted up to him and knocked him in the jaw. I was gobsmacked but the thing that shocked me the most was that Fred’s lunch money fell out of his pockets. I thought to myself ‘you know how hard a kid has to get hit for loose change to fall out of his pockets!’. Everyone gathered around them and watched Jake’s fists landing on Fred’s face non-stop. I had absolutely no clue on what to do if I just stood there I would be letting down the only nice guy I have met in this school but if I stood up for him I might get my head knocked in as well and I did not want that so I just stood back and watched blood pouring out of Fred’s nose. When I thought it was over one of Jake’s friends handed Jake a pie and Jake shoved it in Fred’s face.

“Jake leave him alone don’t do that” I shouted not knowing what I just said.

“What did you just say”. Jake was now standing right in front of me, so close we are

almost touching. I never noticed how tall and broad Jake was until now and he was

really starting to scare me.

“Tell me what you said” he demanded

“I said leave him alone”

Jake grabbed me by the neck and pushed me against one of the cafeteria walls. I could

feel my heart thumping and every time I said stop he would choke me even harder. I

think I would of died if Fred had not jumped on Jake’s back and pulled him back but he

was no match for Jake. Jake elbowed Fred in the face and Fred dropped to the ground.

The principle sprinted in and grabbed Jake by the back of the shirt and brought him

straight to his office. A couple of minutes later the principle came back and asked me if I

was okay,

“I’m fine” I say to him still holding my neck but then I looked past him and saw Fred lying

on the ground and he wasn’t moving. I got up and scurried over to him and put his head

on my hand.

“FRED! come on Fred wake up”

He didn’t even twitch. A couple of minutes later an ambulance came and brought Fred

to the hospital. The next day was Saturday and I decided to go visit Fred in the hospital

cause I felt absolutely terrible and I felt like it was my fault, Also he risked his own life for

me. When I got to the hospital the nurse showed me where he was staying and when I

walked through the door I saw a huge smile on his face as he looked at me.

“Hi Fred” I said

“Mark how are you”

“I’m fine but it’s not about how I am, what about you?”

“Oh i’m perfectly fine” he says but of course he is not fine, he has a broken nose and

scars all over his face. It was time for me to go but Fred got out of the hospital on

sunday and he invited me over to his house on Monday which I gladly said yes to. On

Monday I saw Jake down the hall, I was shocked that he hadn’t been expelled, he only

had detention for two weeks. Almost the whole day I tried to avoid him but unfortunately

science was the last class of the day and he was my lab partner. In science there was

silence between us until Jake broke the silence.

“Look i’m going to give you one more chance but if you ever try to talk back to me again

you are going to get a broken nose just like Fred”.

“Okay I’m sorry I just felt sorry for him”

“Well don’t because remember if I don’t like him you shouldn’t either”.

It went silent again because I didn’t know what to say. I was starting to like Fred but I

wanted to be popular. Science class ended and I was so happy that school was over

but I totally forgot that Fred had invited me over to his house. After school I saw Fred at

the entrance of the school and he waved me over, when I walked over he said he had a

surprise for me.

“Hey Mark guess what” he says almost jumping out of his skin with excitement

“I rented a tandem for the WHOLE day”

Suddenly I pictured a horrible day that was about to come, What if Jake sees us cycling

together?

“Come on Mark get on”

Everyone started looking and giggling. I am pretty sure that this was the most

embarrassing moment of my life and I didn’t know what to do but then Fred told me to

get on so I did and everyone started bursting out laughing. Fred lived far away from

school, he lived outside the city and also on a huge hill. We stopped at the hill and he

told me to get ready for a hard cycle but I decided to pretend to cycle but half way up

the hill he noticed.

“Mark!”

“Yes”

“Are you cycling”

“No I thought we were taking turns”

“So when is your turn”

“It’s my turn when we start going down hill”

“But there is no down hill”

“Exactly” I say trying not to laugh

We finally made it to his house and it was probably the biggest house I had ever seen.

His garage was probably the size of my house.

“Welcome to casa de Fred” he says

My jaw dropped, I had no idea what to say except for “wow”. When we got inside it

looked like a holiday resort with the two spiral staircases going up to the first floor but

we didn’t take them we took an elevator which went up to floor six also known as the

games floor. I was surprised that they called it the games floor and not the games room

but when we went up their I found out why. Their was a bolling alley, a pool, a jungle

gym, and a couple of game machines and by a couple I mean like ten. After playing on

the games floor we decided to go watch a movie in his cinema, then we went on his

quad bikes, then we played soccer on his football pitch. I was having so much fun at

Fred’s house but the weird thing was I actually had fun with Fred aswell. My mom

picked picked me up at eight and I was actually didn’t want to leave because it was so

much fun.

“ Maybe we can do this again”

“Yes of course”

“Okay well I will see you in school tomorrow Fred”

“ cool I will see you tomorrow”

When I got home I could not stop talking about Fred’s house and how unusual it was for

a nerd to have a mansion. I imagined what Jake would say if he saw Fred’s house and if

he knew that Fred was that rich he would probably stop bullying him. The next day I

heard an argument in the hall way and when I turned the corner I saw Jake pushing

Fred up against the lockers. I had enough I didn’t know who I was going I was going to

stand up for but I just had enough.

“Hey guys stop”

I pushed them away from each other

“Knock it off” I said in my loudest voice

“Well then just leave Jake and and we can be friends” Fred says immediatley

Suddenly I knew that I had to choose between these two people and there was no

getting out of this situation.

“Ugh, Ugh I choose ….............”

My hands started sweating and the name just slipped out of my mouth

“Jake”

After I said it a huge grin was on Jake’s face and when I looked over to Fred I saw tears

running down his face. Jake’s gang came over to me and put me on there shoulders I

was finally popular but it didn’t feel good. At the end of school I realized that I had done

something wrong so I told Jake that he was a loser and I wanted to be friends with Fred

which I ended up getting a black I but I didn’t care because I finally felt good about

myself. I saw Fred in the cafeteria by himself doing homework as usual,I sprinted up to

him and said,

“I’m sorry”.

John Byrne grew up in Castleknock in Dublin,Ireland. He loves playing football and

mostly every other sport. When he started writing he wasn’t sure if he liked it or not but

now he absolutely loves it. He likes to write action books and also a bit of comedy. He

now lives in Warsaw,Poland and goes to ASW.