Valley High School, Dayton County, Nebraska. Friday, June tenth. Last day of my junior year, summer vacation was about to start.

“Grades, people, grades,” Ms. Anderson intoned. As usual, the class was noisy, and our homeroom teacher raised her voice. “Calm down. We all know that it’s the last day of school, so settle down. I’ll be calling your names out in alphabetical order.”

It was just past nine AM, our teacher called once more for quiet, and the class members, most of whom had been talking about summer vacation, where to party, who to date, and what movies to see, dulled their roars to quiet murmurs. 

All of this was old news to me, the gossip, that is. I didn’t have a girlfriend—what else was new—never got invited to any parties, had very few friends I could talk life over with, and I’d seen most of the decent flicks over the past year. Thank you, internet service, and thank you, movie theaters. Those two things made up for the long, lonely nights here.

While Ms. Anderson called each student up to her desk to get their yearly grades, I sat quietly, waiting for my name to be called. It wouldn’t come for a while, so in the meantime, I amused myself by checking my scores on every subject I’d taken. 

I’d already figured them out, according to the test scores I’d gotten since last September, so if I’d calculated things correctly, overall, I’d have a ninety-three percent score in my scholastic subjects, putting me at the top of the school’s brain list.

No, wait, I’d be second. Brian Clark, a senior student, had scored an overall ninety-five percent. He’d gotten himself a scholarship to a university in Omaha, our school’s first-ever scholarship deal. Good for him. Me, I had one more year to go, and then I’d think about my options. At that point in time, I didn’t have many. 

Getting a scholarship to study library and information science would truly rule, but without a way of paying it back, I’d be working into my forties to get the necessary cash. Maybe longer.

In the meantime, I ran through my scores. Chemistry—eighty-nine percent. English Literature—ninety-four percent. Physics—eighty-eight percent. I went through the list, and all were great…but then came Phys-ed—fifty percent.

That last part bothered me, but as someone who stood five-six and weighed around one-fifty with no discernible muscle mass, I could barely climb ropes, couldn’t vault, only managed to swim five laps before flailing around and having to get someone to pull me out, and never got a hit during baseball. In short, I excelled at all my studies and sucked at sports.

While athletically, I was a washout, when it came to running, I was quite fast. Not good enough to make the track team, but fast enough to outrun almost anyone who wanted to lay an ass-kicking on me just for the hell of it.

And there were those who wanted to kick my butt, no doubt. Two of them were lounging at the back of the classroom, and they were half-asleep—Charles Morton and Mark Antoine. Both dudes were in the realm of six-two and two-twenty. That made them the biggest and strongest members on the football team. 

Unfortunately, neither of them was overly bright, and combined with mean dispositions, that made for a dangerous combination. They were the leader and co-leader of the Unholy Four, a more than wicked quartet at Valley High that everyone hated.

Charles—he insisted that everyone call him Chaz in a pathetic attempt to be hip and cool, of which he was neither—was the more dangerous of the two. Charles had contributed to the hazing of another student earlier on in the year, something that involved them chasing after the poor dip in Mark’s pickup truck.

“We didn’t mean to hit him,” was Charles’ excuse. No one knew whether he’d been driving or if Mark had. It didn’t matter, as the guy they ran over ended up in the hospital for three months. 

So that meant the leader of the pack was a primate with the IQ of a donut hole, and his best buddy had the IQ of a very small donut hole. The only reason neither of them ended up in jail was due to the fact that Charles’ father was the sheriff of this tiny backwater town and paid the injured kid’s parents off.

Mark Antoine, the other idiot on the Unholy Four team, was a running back with a habit of fumbling the ball on key plays. Either that or he sometimes got caught out of position. His daddy was also a deputy and close friends with Charles’ father. 

Oddly enough, as scummy as their fathers were—and the apples didn’t fall far from the trees—neither Charles nor Mark liked their parents very much. I’d often caught the fathers bawling out their sons for some dumbass thing they’d done. In turn, Charles and Mark often derided their fathers as being too uptight about life.

Oh, and Sheriff Morton was divorced. He had a bad temper, and from what I’d heard, he often drank heavily. Rumors circulated that his ex-wife had been abused and left him about eight years back. It fit. He wasn’t nice to anyone. 

Linda Grubb was Mark’s girlfriend and co-conspirator. She had the body and the beauty of a Hollywood starlet and the black heart of Lizzie Borden. Whatever damage her boyfriend and his leader wanted to do, well, put her down for it. 

Her mother ran the local library, the only one in town, and Linda often bragged about her mother’s position in society, as well as the fact that her mother had visited Italy six months back. “Rome, Venice, Milan. All the best fashions are in Milan, and my mother promised me a new Italian-made outfit.”