Three and a Half to Four (Voltron)

Keith Gerald Kogane

Chapter 1

In their New York public high school, having a gym class was mandatory for all of the four years that the children were jailed there. What's worse than just High School? Being a legal adult and being forced to play basketball for forty-five minutes, sweat like a pig, undress, and redress, and then go back to learning precalculus. This reality was far too real for Keith Gerald Kogane, who had started school a year late due to his father abandoning him in their southern home one Sunday morning before church, him missing about a year of school due to being in between shelters and foster families, and his loss of interest in everything.

In the same gym class where Keith resided held another senior but on a completely different spectrum as he was.

Soccer, basketball, baseball, handball, you name it, Lance McClain would see Keith from across the gym and challenge him, one-on-one, mano-a-mano.

On this day, they were a toe-dip into the volleyball unit.

Lance entered the locker room with his best pal, Hunk, with an explosive push through the door. He happily pranced to his locker smiling and mouthing the words to the poppy song blasting in his headphones. Hunk tried to make himself small and rushed into the corner where his locker was but it was no use, he was six foot three and had a wide chest and abdomen, there was no such thing as hiding for him (having the loudest best friend didn't help either).

"I'm so hype," Lance yelled over the sound of his music, "I think we're picking teams today."

Hunk sighed and began to take off his sneakers, "I don't think you should be so happy, Miya said that they assigned everyone to teams and she got stuck with a bunch of freshmen." Lance continued to jam out to his music while kicking off his sneakers and his jeans, rummaging through his locker and clenching his black basketball shorts in his fists.

"I can't wait to wipe that shorty Keith off the court," He shouted, bent down, and pushed his ankles and calves that poked brown hairs all about like a cactus into the shorts.

Keith, of course, was assigned the locker on the opposite side of the bench, from where Lance and Hunk's lockers were. Keith could hear Lance's yelling from the first floor, so when he arrived to change he could not be surprised.

Keith rolled his icy grey eyes and looked past Lance to the half dressed Hunk. "Hunk, please control your Lance."

Hunk snickered shrugged his shoulders. Keith smiled and allowed his cross-country duffle bag to smack lance in the waist.

"Hey!" Lance finally ripped off his wireless headphones, "Why do you think you're so great?"

Keith folded his arms, "I don't." He then laughed and started to untie his huge beat-up black boots, "Though, you sure seem to think so."

Lance's shoulders hunched up, "NO! God, you're so weird???" He took his gym shoes and threw them into his locker, slammed the door and locked it.

Hunk and Keith looked at each other and laughed as Lance pulled his gym t-shirt, repping their school, and stomped away without realizing he had no shoes on.

Keith paid Lance no mind and began undressing. Keith was the type of person who was too lazy to go get a haircut regularly, thus, he currently had long hair in the back of his head and he had haphazardly cut his own bangs just to get them out of his eyes. His hair always still fell into his eyes anyway.

Hunk had perfectly tanned, brown skin from spending summers with his Dad in Hawaii. He wore a double XL Gildan school gym shirt while Keith wore a medium and had to untuck his hair from the back neckline. They heard Lance's fumbling back towards them again.