Generation 1, Chapter 13 - Dylan

Dylan's first day of high school sucked. He wasn't really sure why that surprised him. His whole life had kind of sucked lately.

High school was just so different. He'd finally gotten the hang of talking to the kids in his grade, but now he was thrown in with all of these older kids he didn't know, which meant he got nervous, which meant he was even more awkward than he usually was.

Then there were the classes. He’d always thought that high school meant you got to pick your classes, but that definitely wasn’t true at his school. The only thing he got any choice in was what foreign language to take. He chose Latin, which was definitely a mistake.

He realized that when he walked in on the first day of class and the only person he recognized was Nick Landgraab. Dylan sat at the opposite end of the classroom and tried to keep his head down, but his nemesis caught up with him as he headed out the door.

“Dylan! How are you today?”

It went against Dylan’s nature to be purposefully rude, but this was the one person who’d always been the exact opposite of nice to him. “What do you want, Nick?”

“I want a lot of things. World peace, my own yacht, an endless supply of hair gel…”

“A cat that you can scratch behind the ears while you plot world domination? Anyway, what I meant was why are you talking to me?”

Nick shrugged. “I'm more of a dog person, really. But I'll cut to the chase. I want to do you a favor.”

Dylan was wary. “What kind of favor?”

Nick smiled coldly. “Anything. I'm offering you a blank check here. Anything you want, I will make happen.”

“What's the catch?”

“You owe me an unspecified favor at some point in the future.”

“Yeah, no thanks.”

Nick looked surprised. “You're really turning me down?”

“I know what happens when you make a deal with the devil. There's nothing I want that much.”

Nick went in for the kill. “Not even to have your mother back?”

Dylan closed his eyes. Did he want his mother back?  Absolutely. Did he want her back enough to trade away his soul? Absolutely not. “No. It's not worth it.” He walked away without looking back.

Nick narrowed his eyes at Dylan's back. “You're going to regret this,” he muttered softly.

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Dylan had been dreading lunch. Other than Latin, his classes had been okay. He didn't really have friends in them (he didn't really have friends at all), but he didn't have to socialize much.

Lunch was all about socializing. Yes, you ate, but it was also the only time in the day you really got to talk to your friends. Dylan didn't have friends, not anymore, and he didn't really feel like watching other people be happy with theirs.

When he walked into the cafeteria, it was just as bad as he feared. Terry was sitting with his girlfriend, who he'd started hanging out with shortly after he and Dylan stopped being friends. Terry had never outright told Dylan to leave him alone the way Johanna had, but he'd made it clear that he wanted Dylan to stay away from him.

He didn't see Johanna, but he didn't look very hard. He could only take so much humiliation in one day.

Finally, he saw his brother. It was embarrassing to resort to sitting with your brother, but Dylan was past the point of embarrassment. He was just glad he wouldn't have to sit at a table full of strangers.

“Can I sit with you guys?”

Sam looked surprised. “I guess so. You probably won't think we're very interesting, though.”

Dylan shrugged. He just wanted to get through this lunch period alive. He settled in as they continued to talk about post-graduation plans.

Sam, of course, was going to marry Kaylynn as soon as he graduated. He had plans to become a freelance artist so he could work wherever Kaylynn was stationed, since she had joined the military after she graduated high school.

His friends Darlene and Sandi had plans to move to Bridgeport together. Darlene wanted to be an actress, and Sandi just wanted to get out of town. From what Dylan gathered, she’d just suffered a bad break up with her long-term boyfriend, and her parents fought constantly. At one point, she sighed and said, “Johanna had the right idea.”

Dylan frowned at her. He knew she was Johanna’s older sister, of course, but he didn’t know what she meant by that. “What did Johanna do?”

Sandi looked surprised, as though she’d forgotten he was there. “You didn’t know? She’s in France this year on an exchange program. Didn’t you two used to be friends?”

He smiled grimly. “Key words there are ‘used to’.” She just nodded and returned to the conversation, going back to forgetting that he was there.

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The rest of his day went about the same. They didn’t do much in his classes, just got syllabi and played horribly awkward get-to-know-you games.

Nick Landgraab and his lackeys gave Dylan death glares, but he didn’t really care. Any of them could beat him up easily, of course, but they usually stuck to extortion and verbal abuse. Physical violence was likely to get them into trouble.

After school he went to the library. He only really relaxed once he was reading one of his logic books. If only people were as easy as sudoku puzzles.

Author's Note: Terry's girlfriend is a grown-up Chanda Ursine. SP set them up, and I'm hoping they stay together and have pretty red-haired babies I can marry into the next generation.

Now for a couple of questions:

1. Does anybody know of a nice wedding venue I could download? I think I've mentioned that I want to throw Sam and Kaylynn a nice wedding in a couple of chapters, and I'm not great at building. As an example: I built the school in this chapter, and didn't notice until after I'd taken the second picture that I'd completely forgotten to put in lights. I'd like to have a place in town where I can have weddings so that they're pretty. I can probably find one myself, but I thought I'd ask if you all know of any good ones first.

2. This generation will have exactly 20 chapters. After that will be the heir poll, which will probably be open for about a week. Since I've been updating a lot more frequently than that, I feel bad about going a whole week between updates. I wondered if during that time, you might want to see a short series about Sandi and Darlene's adventures in Bridgeport. It wouldn't be nearly as story-driven as the main legacy, but it's been a while since I had fun with Late Night, and I like Sandi and Darlene too much to only show them twice in this whole legacy. I'll probably play it no matter what, but let me know if you want to see it. It'll be a while before we get there, but I figured I'd ask in advance.