Chapter Text
Today was not an ordinary day for Shayne Topp.
For starters, Shayne was never driven to school by his father. Then again, Shayne did not normally have fiery red hair, or an ankle monitor. It had not been a good week for him.
Shayne dangled one hand out of the open car window. He slouched lower than usual in the seat, wishing he was in his own car. He liked driving his red pick-up; most days he would take a circuitous route to the school with his windows cracked for a breeze and his stereo blaring. His football buddies liked to race each other for the front most parking spaces, mostly because the first space available for students was right next to the parking space reserved for Ms. Whittle (who was indisputably the hottest teacher in the school). Shayne never participated in the race. He enjoyed parking in the very back of the lot and watching his teammates fight over the “honor” of being the closest car to hers. He figured a lot of the guys dreamt of getting a little extra attention from her, so to speak, but he never saw the appeal. The guys who did were the more desperate guys on the team, like Matt Sohinki. Shayne didn’t need the attention of a hot teacher to be popular; with his own good looks, natural athletic ability, and quarterback position on the football team, he was set.
Or rather, he had been set.
The weirdness of the past week was his own fault- he knew he shouldn’t have gone along with the stupid prank. There was no point putting a live bull in the locker room of their rival team (the Cali grove Bulls) the night before the homecoming game, it wouldn’t help their team play any better. So, when Sohinki and his buddy Wesley Johnson had suggested doing that, Shayne had said no. But Sohinki had not let it drop and kept insisting that as the upperclassmen they had to show the team that ballsy moves paid off, and eventually Shayne had agreed to shut him up. Shayne had met Sohinki and Wes at Cali grove high school in his pick up, and was nervous when he discovered that the two had stolen a male cow out of a pasture. But he still helped them unload the bull and lead it to the school entrance. It was there that it all went downhill for him.
Wes and Sohinki had gone back to their truck under the guise of getting more feed to keep the bull calm, but once they had gotten to their truck they hopped in and zoomed off, leaving Shayne in front of the school entrance with the bull. At the same time, a voice shouted “Hey Quarterback!” from above him, and Shayne looked up to see some of the members of the Bulls football team. “Enjoy the game!” they had continued, and in the next moment he was covered in red paint, which was one of the Bulls team colors.
Then the police had come.
He had been royally screwed. Sohinki and Wes had snuck out of Wes’s house to do the prank and snuck back in successfully, so when Shayne tried to tell officer Bereta that he had not acted alone, Wes’s mother confirmed Sohinki and Wes’s alibi. The farmer the bull was stolen from had only seen one boy and a pick-up truck, and the Bulls football players told officer Bereta they had only seen who they had hit with paint. Shayne had been sentenced with three months of house arrest and 100 hours of community service. Plus, the paint had stained his usually dirty blonde hair bright red, and to top it all off, he had completely lost his parent’s trust. Thus, the rides to and from school.
The school hadn’t let him off lightly either. He was kicked off the football team and given 12 weeks of Saturday detention, as attempted vandalism was against the school’s values.
His fall from social grace was as swift as the defeat of his former football team during the homecoming game. The Cali grove Bulls crushed the Eastern heights Knights, and his status as pariah at school was cemented within 48 hours. “Some senior year this is going to be”, Shayne thought as his father pulled up to the curb in front of Eastern heights High School.
His father looked over at him disapprovingly as he sat up from his slouch and began to open the door. “Try not to do anything stupid, son.” He said.
Shayne shut the car door in reply. He slung his dark gray backpack around one shoulder as his father pulled away from the curb and began making his way up the lawn to the entrance of the school.
“Yo Red Bull!” someone shouted across the lawn. Shayne rolled his eyes and kept walking. “Red Bull” was what most of the kids had taken to calling him in the week following the disastrous homecoming game, especially the football team and the dance team. The dance team was essentially their school’s version of cheerleaders. They danced at every football game, baseball game, and wrestling match. They were just as popular as a stereotypical cheerleader would be, and most of them were just as nasty. Shayne was never bothered by it, until now.
“Hey!” the voice was much closer now. Shayne stopped and turned to face Sohinki, Wes, and a junior on the team, Damien Haas. Sohinki and Wes were grinning maliciously. They were now basically running the football team, and hadn’t yet missed an opportunity to heckle him. Shayne thought that they might have set him up on purpose to get him kicked off the team. Damien however looked fairly uncomfortable; he was fidgeting and wouldn’t look Shayne in the eye. Damien and Shayne had been good buddies on the football team and usually had a great time making plays together, and Shayne was admittedly a bit disappointed Damien hadn’t been brave enough to continue hanging out with him after he’d been shunned.
Shayne sighed. “What do you want.” He said flatly. Wes laughed.
“Just to remind you how big of a failure you are.” He said lightly.
“Our season is tanked without you, Ginge.” Sohinki jumped in, still grinning like the Cheshire cat.
“Isn’t that more of an insult to your lack of skills?” Shayne shot back, and then turned to keep walking toward the school entrance.
“Hey, come back here and say that to our faces!” Shayne heard Wes shout. He could barely make out Damien point out that Shayne had, in fact, said it to their faces. Sohinki was telling him to shut up when Shayne pushed open the double doors to the school’s main entrance.
It was going to be a long Friday.