No Escape

Chapter One

Lily Tucker walked off the school bus sweating; but instead of removing her sweatshirt, she pulled the sleeves down as far as they could go and her hood up to cover her head. Not only did the article of clothing cover the bruises and scars on littering her skin but having the comfort of the sleeves to hide in made her feel better. Kids nowadays were so cruel. They thought of the stupidest shit and picked on someone that had never in their life bothered them and thought it was the most entertaining thing in the world. The bus ride that morning sucked. Even though there were no assigned seats on her bus, she had apparently sat in someone else's spot. The only reason she had was because her seat was already taken. That wasn't good enough for the person who normally sat where she was though. They made a huge fuss out of it, claiming it was a "false sense of entitlement" and that they would get diseases from sitting there in the future because it had been "poisoned with slut."

It was completely stupid, but it still made Lily want to curl up in a ball and die. Dangerous thoughts started to creep into her mind, and she shook her head in an attempt to rid herself from them and made her way to the schools' library. The library was Lily's sanctuary from everything in life since she was little. It was quiet and gave her time to pull herself together for the day without any interruption. It was time she enjoyed every morning. Her favorite part of the day. The books gave her an escape from the life she was supposed to be living. It helped her forget.

Lily didn't have any friends, mainly because she found it difficult to make and keep them. Somehow, she managed to isolate herself from everyone and it was second nature for her now. No one wanted or tried to befriend her, and she was better off. Even though life this way was lonely for her, she liked things better that way. It made life the smallest bit easier.

She had a nose in a book when she heard a voice from around the corner complaining, "why are all of these books so damn shitty? School pushes reading the second we're in the system and the second we get the hang of it and figure out what we like, they hang us out to fucking dry! It's like they don't want us reading anything! Who likes reading this stuff anyway?! It's so outdated."

Rolling her eyes at what she had heard, Lily continued reading the book she had picked up. She couldn't help but to wonder what that guy was thinking. It wasn't like had schools had all the funding in the world. All of it was spent on sports, anyway, leaving nothing extra for the arts or library to be kept up to date with a decent amount of variety. They were lucky they had this much in the first place!

When the owner of the voice rounded the corner, she got annoyed at the blob in her peripheral vision and turned her head to see who it at been. It turned out that was a huge mistake.

Jackson Tyler was a senior, just like Lily. All throughout their school years' they had been in the same classes together up until middle school. After that she didn't seem him much anymore. Sure, they passed each other in the hallway every once and a while. Lily steered clear of him though.

When they were younger, Jackson always had a book in his hands. It was a rare occurrence to see him without one. He was always reading in his downtime: during class he would rush to finish his work to continue reading where he had left off, at lunch he always seemed more interested in the characters than his friends' stories, in the hall he was too preoccupied with the plot in the book he was reading to even glance up to see where he was going. It was surprisingly comforting to know that he hadn't completely dropped the hobby, when everything else about him seemed to have changed.

Now he towered over just about everyone in school. He was at least six foot and had gained a lot of muscle weight. His face had thinned out since their elementary days and his hair was styled the way all guys had been recently. Lily was extremely intimidated by the guy. When they moved onto to the world of middle school, Jackson had started to change. He always seemed tired and as the years went on it became less and less likely that he was reading anything besides his textbooks. He started to fill out his tall frame with muscle and he always had this closed off and impassive expression on his face. Everything about him had been hardened.