The Chosen (Contender #1) - SAMPLE OF NOW PUBLISHED BOOK!

Chapter 4

5 months earlier

Cade stared at the lined paper in front of him while the teacher's voice droned on. It was strange to be in class, in this place, but he supposed the state had to educate them. 

They even had a uniform—the blue shirt and pants worn by most of the students. A far cry from the uniform he had worn at his old school: a striped tie, shirt, and blazer.

Still, Cade found it hard to concentrate. Life at this new school so far had been one that oscillated between moments of anxiety and mind-numbing, soul-crushing boredom.

This lesson was a prime example. With the teacher at the head of the small classroom, he felt safe enough. But he wasn't learning anything new. His expensive private school had been light-years ahead of what they were teaching here. The teacher was currently outlining the very basics of the American Civil War.

Cade wasn't going to let himself fall behind, though. They had each been provided with a shiny new textbook. The class hadn't even cracked it open that month—Cade was pretty sure many of his fellow classmates could barely read anyway.

He'd heard that the vast majority of juvenile delinquents were functionally illiterate, and knew that many of the kids here would classify as such, having been sent by court order, like he had, or because they weren't a "good fit" in mainstream schools. It had seemed impossible when he'd first discovered that, but now he saw it in action, in front of his very eyes. The reality was startling.

The teacher had barely used the whiteboard, though Cade could see the faded remains of what looked like a half-dozen examples of the male anatomy someone had drawn there in permanent marker.

With nothing better to do, Cade was slowly reading the textbook from cover to cover, working through the exercises and questions inside. There was nobody to mark his work, but it distracted him from his boredom.

He made sure to sit at the back of the classroom so nobody would see what he was doing, and he always scrunched up his work and trashed it when the lesson ended. So far, he'd gone unnoticed. He was doing the same with his textbooks in other subjects, but in history, he was on the final pages.

History was his favorite subject, mostly because his father was a college history professor. In fact, it was Cade's high grades in history that had led to his being offered a scholar- ship to attend the private school.

Even with the grant, his parents struggled to make payments, but they always beamed with pride whenever Cade came home from the dorm each weekend. Of course, that had been before the incident.

Cade was finishing an essay on the Great Depression's impact on international politics when a throat was cleared in front of him. He looked up, and suddenly boredom was replaced with gut-wrenching panic.

Mr. Daniels was standing there, his hand outstretched. The teacher was a bearded giant of a man, with spectacles that seemed to have been stolen from a Harry Potter convention.