Trapped

1.

My life was never perfect, my father didn't really love me and my mother was unheard of, I had no family that I knew of. The only family I had was the family I chose. My friends were my only family and I was lucky to have the closest group of friends anyone could ever ask for, but all that changed on a day that I will not soon forget, a day that was supposed to be just another normal day, the day that I met Zac Johnson. And no, this is not a story of how he swept me off my feet, in fact, this the story of how a little push in the wrong direction can turn your whole world upside down.

It was a perfect Friday, I was relaxing on a bench under the old grand oak tree where my friends and I always met up after school. My light golden brown hair was waving in the slight summers breeze that floated by and rustled the leaves of the tree above my head. I was waiting for my friends to arrive. Mr Portview had dismissed our class earlier that day because he was in an extra good mood, so I had arrived there a few minutes earlier than the rest. My cell phone beeped, the vibrations made it slide across the stack of textbooks I had placed it on and I caught it before it slid off the edge. I hoped that it was Angela informing me that she's was on her way since I was starting to feel lonely.

To my dismay, it was a text from my father informing me that he wasn't going to be home that night and he had left money for pizza. I wasn't surprised that he wasn't going to be there, I was used to not having him around, but I could not help the pinched feeling that emerged in my chest when I remembered that he did not care about me. After texting a short, distant reply and locking my screen the school bell rang and the school came to life. Swarms of teenagers of all shapes and sizes burst through the doors. Some of them grouped together and everyone was buzzing with excitement over the weekend. I scanned the cluster of males and females before me searching for a face I was familiar with when two icy hands covered my eyes from behind.

"Hmm, Angela?" I guessed and the cold hands slid off of my eyes.

"How did you know it was me?" She said, sounding genuinely impressed by my skills.

"Because there is only one person I know who still does that and it's you," I answered and she giggled. I turned around to face her and was met by her goofy smile. She had long dark brown hair that spilt over her shoulders, it was almost the same length as my own hair. She also had the most interesting light brown eyes that became hazel toward the inside.

"Hey guys!" a male voice boomed next to me. Startled, I spun my head in the direction of the voice to see who it was.

"Jeremy!" I squealed and hugged him, he was a very close friend of mine. Angela and I had known him for three years, we had gotten to know him when he moved to our school. "What's up?" he asked and plopped down on the bench.

"The opposite of down," Angela said with a huge smirk plastered on her face.

"You always have something funny to say, huh?" Jason, another friend in our group, said with a chuckle when he joined us. There was a moment of silence as we all peeked over his shoulder at the unfamiliar boy that was standing behind him. 

"Hey, Jason!" I said, breaking the silence.

"Hey," Jason said and, after a brief pause gestured to the strange boy that was standing next to him, " allow me to introduce you to Zac, he's new around so I thought I'd invite him over to our group since we got along so well." We all greeted Zac and I invited him and everyone else to come to my place that afternoon because I didn't feel like spending my Friday all alone, again.

Zac gave me a strange feeling, he kept looking at me, almost like he wanted to say something to me but he never approached me so I pushed the awkward feeling away. We all talked about our week and I ranted about my anger with my dad who just seems to hate me, no matter what I do and Zac just blended in, he didn't say much. Later on the two blondes Erin and Megan finally arrived and we all chatted about our plans for the afternoon and everyone agreed to come over to my place.