..:w e s : a n d : l i n k:..

Before I begin, I just wanted to give you a little bit of background on this piece. I'm still working on the Four to Stand series, as I plan to get it published sometime in the near future (if all goes well with the Agency, anyway). But, as I was looking through the good ol' "stories to be worked on" binder, I found an idea that I really want to work with.

I have no idea what the title would be, since I've only got the first chapter down. This is only a rough draft, too—if I run with the idea, I'll put it in a Book in my portfolio.

So, without distracting you further, here is the first chapter of a new series (I hope!). Tell me what you think, if you want. Should I use my time on this? All comments are greatly appreciated.

Chapter One

Wesley Warren pulled his shiny new Lexus into the parking lot of Casper Boutlier High School and smiled.

The morning was absolutely perfect, except for the fact that it was the first day of school. But, Wes reminded himself, it was the first day of senior year and things were going to be different.

He got out of his car and was welcomed by the sound of chirping birds and the caress of a warm breeze across his face. His book bag felt weightless as he slung it over his shoulder and began to walk toward the front entrance of the school.

The front steps of Casper High were covered with students: some were smoking; some girls were showing off new clothes and haircuts. His mouth twisted in a grim smile as he observed it all.

Another year of this, he thought. Another year of all this normal, petty high school bullshit.

The sad thing was, he was king of it all. He absolutely hated high school and everything that went on behind its walls, but he ruled it—and everyone knew.

“Hey, Wes!” someone called out. “There he is, the man of the hour!”

Wes looked up and saw his best friend, Charlie Russell, standing at the top of the stone steps, waving his arms wildly. He was in the middle of Wes’s group of guys and girls—but most specifically, Rachelle Hilberg—his girl, Wes’s girl.

She had to have been the best-looking girl at Casper High. Her hair was like a wave of sunlight that tumbled down her back; her eyes were warm, brown, and lit up whenever she smiled. Her body was perfect, beautiful in a way that no other girl in school could compare to.

When Rachelle looked down and smiled at Wes, his stomach twisted and his heart jumped—but in a good way. A great way, actually.

She ran down the steps to greet him with a flying hug and an incredible kiss that left him wanting more. He had just seen her the day before, but that didn’t matter. Wes and Rachelle loved to flaunt their relationship.

“Come on,” she said, grasping his hand and pulling him to the top of the steps.

“Wes, my man,” Charlie greeted, slapping and shaking his best friend’s hand. His girlfriend Taylor hung around his thick neck—sort of like a tree sloth, Wes noted, only Taylor was much prettier than that. She might have moved like a sloth, but her light brown hair and bright green eyes definitely made her something nice to look at.

“This is your year, buddy,” another one of Wes’s friends, Pete Lennox, told him.

“You know it,” Wes replied, returning the handshakes that the boys gave him. “It’s our turn to shine.”

“What do you mean our turn?” Charlie asked. “What are you, Wes, stupid?”

“Yeah, man, don’t be so modest. It’s all you,” Pete said.

Wes rolled his eyes as Rachelle gripped his hand tighter. “He’s right, Mr. Student Body President,” she said, stroking his arm with her delicate hands.

“Soccer Star,” Taylor added.

“Future Homecoming King—”

“—And Prom King—”

“—And Valedictorian—”

“Geeze, guys, don’t be so sure about it,” Wes said coolly, leaning his lightly muscled body up against the stone walls of the school. “People still have to vote for most of that stuff, you know.” Even as he spoke it, though, he knew what his friends were saying was true.

“What makes you think it’s not in the bag?” Rachelle asked, her honey-colored eyes raking his face.

“It’s just…not.” And who says I even want it? he added silently to himself. He looked out over the crowd of kids littered over the steps. A few groups of girls quickly turned away as his eyes passed over them from the top of Casper High’s stone steps.

It was the school’s version of Mount Olympus, and Wes and his friends were the gods. He himself sat on Zeus’s throne, the most powerful and attractive of them all. But for some reason, he just couldn’t grasp exactly why they all worshipped him.

He had the money—his dad was the county’s best defense attorney. He had the right looks, with his mother’s Mexican coloring and his father’s European handsomeness. He had the athletic ability that made colleges across the country eager to give him a full-paid scholarship for school next year.

He knew all that, of course; what he didn’t understand is why all of those petty, physical things made him so popular.

As he was looking over the crowd thinking this, a gray Chrysler pulled up in front of the steps. He turned away from it, not really caring who was in the passenger seat.
Normally only freshman and sophomores showed up with their parents, and he didn’t give a damn about them.

However, it seemed like everyone else did. Suddenly, girls started whispering to each other behind their hands and other guys looked on curiously. Wes rolled his eyes and took on his normal cool-guy demeanor: he wasn’t about to act interested in the arrival of another guy. Most of his friends followed suit—the other guys, anyway.

Rachelle and Taylor were a different story, however. They exchanged wide-eyed glances and looked on with every other female on the front steps.

“Have you ever seen him before?” Taylor asked in her slow, dragged-out drawl.

“No, he must be new,” Rachelle answered. “He’s too old to be a freshman, though. Does he look too old to you?”

“Yeah, for sure,” Taylor agreed.

That’s it, Wes thought, seeing the look on his girlfriend’s face. He let his eyes travel down to the new guy.

He was tall—probably about six-one or six-two, if Wes noted correctly. He had longish ash blonde hair and a lanky body—and that was all Wes cared to notice before the new guy started to walk up the steps.

Link Santos stopped after he slammed the door to the Chrysler behind him. A curving flight of stone steps filled with teenagers loomed threateningly before him. He felt like everyone’s eyes were glued on him, and soon he began to feel a little nauseous.

Nauseous. N-A-U-S-E-O-U-S, he thought to himself, turning the word over in his mind. It was new to him, and for some reason its spelling wouldn’t stick.

Ignoring the stares he was receiving, Link began to ascend the steps. He realized that he had no idea where he was going. Somehow, he needed to find the office—the Barnhart family, who was letting him live with them, told him to go there first and tell him he was new.

But how in the name of God was he supposed to find it?

God—that was new to him, too, but the concept wasn’t. Where he came from, God had a different name, but he figured it was all the same person.

Just ask someone, his mind prodded as he reached the top of the stairs. There was really no one on the landing besides some tough-looking guys and two girls. His instinct told him to ask a guy.

“Hey,” he said, trying to be casual. “Can one of you tell me where the office is?”

Instead of help, however, he got a laugh in return from a boy with dark, curly hair. The others guys immediately started to laugh with him. Link only smiled uncertainly.

“Nice accent,” the dark-haired boy asked. “Where you from?”

“Um…Ireland,” he said, repeating what the Barnharts told him to say. “Sort of near Dublin—”

“What the hell are you doing here, then?” a guy with a neck as thick as Link’s waist asked.

“The exchange program,” Link told him, feeling like a robot that was just feeding back the only answers that he knew.

“Ooh, how special,” a red-haired guy asked.

“The office is that way somewhere,” the dark-haired boy told him, pointing down the steps. “I hope you don’t get too lost.”

“Wes, back off. Seriously,” one of the girls said. She had pretty blonde hair and a warm smile—and she pushed the guy away from him. “Just ignore Wes,” she said to Link. “I’ll take you to the office.”

Link felt his mouth turn upward into a real smile. “Thanks,” he told her, genuinely meaning it. He followed her toward the front entrance of the school, trying to ignore the scowl that the boy she called Wes was directing at him.

“I’m sorry about him,” the girl said, motioning over her shoulder after they had passed the threshold of the school. “He can be a real jerk sometimes. He doesn’t really mean it.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he didn’t,” Link mumbled, trying to keep words to a minimum now that the fact he had an accent had been pointed out. He didn’t want this pretty girl to make fun of him for it, too.

“Oh, you don’t have to be so quiet,” the girl told him, smiling her amiable smile again. “You can barely hear it, I promise—only on certain words. And I think most girls are gonna like it. I’m Rachelle Hilberg, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Link,” he told her. “Link Santos.”

“Well, Link Santos, here is the office,” she said, turning around next to a clear glass door. He could see a heavy desk and a couple of couches inside from where he stood. “And if you need anything else, let me know.”

He nodded and thanked her again. “Um, see you around, I guess.”

“Yeah. See you around,” Rachelle said with a little wave that made his heart jump. “Oh, and Link? Just ignore anything that Wes says to you, okay?”

“Alright,” he replied, his mouth forming a straight line across his face. Rachelle turned and left with her little wave again, and Link watched her until she was out the front doors. Her hips swayed a bit as she walked, and she greeted almost everyone she passed.

He silently hoped that everyone on this planet was that nice—or, at least, everyone in the school. He knew almost right away that it wasn’t true, though, and that Wes kid had been a perfect example.

School on Earth, Link knew, would be just the same as school had been on Mars.

“Wes, seriously. He’s a foreign kid. Why do you have to be such a jerk?”

“Why do you have to look at other guys like that?” Wes asked coldly as he walked down the hall with Rachelle before homeroom.

“As if I’d look at another guy!” she exploded. “Don’t be ridiculous. You are my boyfriend, not anyone else.”

“Okay, so then why did you have to go to his rescue like that, after leaving a puddle of drool on the concrete?”

“I didn’t drool over him, Wes! I told you: Link’s a foreign kid. I’m not going to let some poor, innocent Irish guy wander around the school.”

“Link? His name is Link?” Wes laughed. “What, were his parents part of the Zelda craze, or something? And really, Rachelle, do you honestly think a guy with a last name like Santos is Irish?” Wes asked, the laugh still lingering behind his voice. “Sounds Greek or Mexican to me.”

“Does he look Greek or Mexican to you? Honestly. He looks German to me.”

“I don’t know, I wasn't absorbing every one of his features like you were.”

Rachelle let out a strangled noise. “Wes. Will you stop it?”

“Will you?”

Rachelle stopped, turned around, and planted a big kiss on Wes’s lips just as Link rounded the corner.

“I told you. You are my boyfriend.”

Wes looped an arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. He rested his chin on her head and glared at Link with a twisted smile. Stay away, he mouthed as he stroked her golden hair.

The blonde boy rolled his eyes and walked into the nearest classroom—Wes’s homeroom.

“I gotta get going,” Rachelle said, pulling away just enough so that she could put a light kiss on his chin. “See you at lunch.” She waved and walked away.

Wes sighed and slipped into his homeroom. He saw Link sitting in the very back corner, completely absorbed in a piece of yellowed paper.

“Hey, Wes!” someone called from the back of the room. “How ya doin’, man?”

Wes smiled and greeted one of his fellow soccer teammates, Jack Cunningham, with the same handshake he, Charlie, and Pete shared.

“Ready to take us to States again this year?” Jack asked.

“You better believe it,” Wes said, taking a seat. He didn’t like where he was, though—he was too close to Link, too close for his own good. He felt…unsettled here.

“You hear that?” Jack yelled obnoxiously to the whole class. “Warren here is takin’ us all the way!”

A couple people clapped and hooted along with Jack, and Wes sat and absorbed it all. This is how his life had been ever since he stepped into Casper High his freshman year. It was great for a while, but suddenly he didn’t want it anymore. It was just his place, the role he walked in to. There had been no competition from the start; he did nothing to earn it.

“Settle down, all of you!” the homeroom teacher, Mr. Gunter, yelled at the top of his lungs. The class was startled into submission as the tall, somewhat heavy set man allowed his presence to be known.

Wes glanced back at the new kid with raised eyebrows. Link, however, hadn’t been phased by Mr. Gunter’s outburst and he was still absorbed in his paper.

“You will be quiet in this homeroom,” the teacher was saying. “All talking can be done after the morning announcements.” His eyes traveled to the back of the classroom and landed on Link. “All of which,” he yelled, making the new kid look up, “will be paid attention to.”

Suddenly, the television in the corner lit up as if the announcement gods were paying attention to Mr. Gunter’s rants. Two members of the A.V. staff flashed on the screen, looking blankly at the camera.

There was no way Wes was going to listen to the announcements, though. He hadn’t done it in three years and didn’t plan on starting now. Instead, he watched Mr. Gunter carefully and, when the teacher wasn’t looking, he turned around and snatched the paper out of Link’s hands.

“Hey,” the blonde boy hissed, turning his eyes on Wes. For a moment, he was startled—Link had freaky golden eyes outlined in a darker brown: definitely not like something he ever saw before. He pulled himself away from them, though, and glanced down at the paper in his hands.

The only problem was that he couldn’t read it. He didn’t recognize half of the characters written on the paper, let alone the words. “What is this shit?” he whispered to Link, waving the paper around in the other boy’s face.

Link, however, grabbed it out of Wes’s hand with quick, catlike reflexes. “None of your business,” he growled in his lightly accented voice. “Leave me alone.”

“Excuse me, but do you two boys have a problem?” Mr. Gunter asked, and suddenly he was right beside them. “Do you really need to go to the principal already, gentlemen?”

“No, Sir,” Link replied quietly, shaking his head.

“What about you, Mr. Warren?” the teacher questioned.

Wes shook his head, too.

“The rest of the staff seems to think you’re pretty great, you know, but I really do beg to differ,” Mr. Gunter informed him, practically getting down in Wes’s face. “I suggest you learn some respect before I change everyone’s opinion of you.” And with that, he walked back to his position at the front of the class.

Wes turned and glared at Link, and the other boy returned the stare. He had almost forgotten about the creepy golden eyes in the few seconds that Mr. Gunter had been telling them off, and now he wished he hadn’t turned to glower at the new kid. He wouldn’t let Link know that, though.

In a few moments, Link sighed and turned back to his now-wrinkled piece of paper. Wes turned around and rolled his eyes.

This is going to be a long year, he told himself.