Bloodlust

chapter one

-1-

  I live in a town by the name of Luxford; it’s in Pennsylvania and to me it sounds like a rich old person’s home. I think the name of the town is just a huge façade. Luxford sounds like a town with large white houses, rolling green hills and happy rich people. The kids would go to their nice private school during the day where they wear flattering uniforms. During the day dad goes to the luxury car dealership and sells luxury cars to rich families that already have nice cars and mom goes shopping in the small expensive boutiques in town.

  The Luxford I live in is a little different. There’s a nicer part of the town where you have the big white houses and the lush green lawns. There’s also the shitty part of town where the poor people are. The houses are smaller and a run down, the lawns aren’t green and they never have been. Also if you go to the local park at night, it feels like you need to know how to fight. The nice part of town and the not so nice part of town are divided by a small urban section of the town. There are a few apartment and business buildings and a few little shops. There are four schools in Luxford and all of them are based on who has the most money. Luxford Academy is the prep school on the rich side of town, the kids there are all rich snobs in expensive clothing and all the scholarship kids that I’ve heard go there are outcasts. Thompson Academy is the nice public school on the better side of Luxford where the middle class parents send their kids. Norton High is the school on the bad side. The graduation rate gets worse every year and a majority of the kids there end up leaving town as soon as they can drop out. The bad side is ignored and barely a part of the town. It’s just there.

  I go to Luxford High, the balanced school, right between the poor and rich side of town. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a group of friends that will break away from the social norms. At Luxford High, there are all the “standard” groups; jocks, nerds, preps and wannabes, except a lot of them are divided in two by who’s rich and who’s not.

My friends are made up of rich and poor kids that don’t fit in and I’m on the poorer side of things. The girl I love, Scarlet, is on the rich side, so I’m stuck in my little dream world. The poor punk pining for the pretty rich girl never works out. I can hope though.

“Oh my god! Anthony, look who’s on the cover of Shine!” Scarlet exclaims. We’re at some picnic benches outside the school. Scarlet has one to herself and I’m sitting at one nearby with my legs on the bench. Scarlet rushes over and practically shoves the magazine in my face. I have to blink a few times and push the magazine away gently before I can see it. There smiling at me is a polished and way too good looking to be real, guy. “Matt Bremmer!” Scarlet says before I can respond. “As in the Matt Bremmer from A Night in Tokyo with my True Love.” Scarlet holds the magazine to her chest and looks wistfully at nothing, fantasies about the movie probably clouding her thoughts. I shift uncomfortably where I’m sitting. I wish Scarlet would look at me like that, her blue eyes sparkling in the sun and her blond hair shining, but she never has.

“That’s awesome,” I say pathetically. To me it at least it sounds pathetic; to Scarlet I probably sound just as star struck as she does. I’ve been her go-to guy for gossip for years and I’ve perfected all the reactions in front of the mirror so they sound real. I’ve got the looks down too in case she ever decides to look at me instead of ooh-ing over a glossy magazine picture. I hate how fake I am just so I can be her guy to gossip to. Half the time I have no idea what she’s taking about though. I’ve considered doing research and watching all the shows that Scarlet watches but I don’t have the time, or patience, to do any of that.

“I know right?” she asks, “Anthony, you don’t know how much I love him! He’s going up on the wall.”

“He’s wall worthy?” I ask her. Scarlet has a wall in her room, plastered with picture upon picture of guys she thinks are hot. It’s honestly no surprise that I’m not on there. The guys on her wall don’t have piercings or wear all black.