Chapter one
It was just after midnight when the older model car, with its headlights turned off, moved quietly across the gravel parking lot of the Red Cedar High School. The parking lot, adjacent to the small football stadium, was about two hundred yards from the main building of the high school and was out of sight from any prying eyes that might be out and about at this late hour. The driver of the old car parked it next to a tree line on the far side of the parking lot.
After he parked the car he took a final long drag on the marijuana cigarette held between his lips, passed it to the teenage girl sitting as close as she could get to him without being in his lap and said, “Take the next to last hit, Kaitlin, and then pass it back to Manny. After you’re done with it, Manny, toss it out the window, and let’s get ready to rock and roll, ‘cause it’s show time.” The three other teenagers in the car nervously laughed as each of them considered what was about to take place.
Brent Ackler, age eighteen, was the driver of the car and the star quarterback of the Red Cedar football team. At the end of the football season Brent had been named to the North Coast High School All Star team. Three weeks ago he’d received an offer of a full athletic scholarship from Stanford University. The scholarship offer was the answer to his prayers and hopefully would open the door to a possible career as a pro football player.
Kaitlin Mosley was the head cheerleader of the six girl high school varsity cheerleading squad. She and Brent had been in love with each other since the first day they met back in the sixth grade. She was a beautiful young woman who came from a wealthy family that lived in a large house located on a cliff overlooking the small Northern California town of Red Cedar. With long blonde hair, lips smeared with an overabundance of bright red lipstick, and a body that would match a movie star’s, she was in the nightly dreams of every boy in the school. All eyes were on her whenever she wiggled her way down the halls of the school, chomping loudly on her ever present wad of chewing gum.
Manatu “Manny” Sanwapatu, age seventeen, was one of the two people seated in the back seat of the car. He was a scary looking massive young boy, standing 6’4” tall and weighing two hundred seventy-five pounds. His parents had moved from Samoa to the local area several years earlier when his father got a job on a commercial fishing boat that worked the waters around Red Cedar. He was a member of the football team, and as a junior he’d been selected as the all-league defensive player of the year. He was famous for his ferocious take-no-prisoners style of play, which during the last season had resulted in no less than four opposition team members being carried off the football field with either a broken arm or leg.
William Bird was the fourth occupant of the car, sitting in the back seat next to Manny. Two months earlier he had turned fifteen. William, as his mother called him, was a frail looking skinny young boy who barely weighed one hundred ten pounds. His father had left his mother and him when he was three years old. He’d been raised by his overly protective mother who worked out of their home as a seamstress. He had thick rimless eyeglasses, spoke with a slight lisp, and wore his blonde hair piled high atop his forehead in an outdated pompadour style, which his mother dutifully combed for him every morning before he left for school. William was the classic sort of nerd-like young boy who often finds happiness in working with computers, and like so many others, William was an acknowledged expert in all things related to computers. He could build them, fix them, hack them, and make a stubborn computer do just about anything he wanted it to do. Once he’d even been called to the office of Miss Martinez, the school principal, to fix the school’s master computer when it stopped working, and the service technician couldn’t come to the school for two days to fix it. His reputation as a computer guru had spread far and wide. This somewhat dubious honor for the young teenager had resulted in his getting his hated nickname, Nerdy Birdy.
Brent turned in his seat and said to William, “Okay, Nerdy Birdy, it’s time for you to do your thing on the school’s master computer and fix the grades for Kaitlin and me so we can get admitted to Stanford. That acceptance letter I got from them offering me the football scholarship said I had to have a 3.0 grade average and Kaitlin needs the same. I swiped the keys for the school’s front door and the principal’s office off the school janitor’s master key ring this afternoon, had duplicate keys made down at the hardware store, and then real quick like returned them to the key ring old man Wilson has hanging on the wall in his office before he even knew they were gone.
“All you got to do, Nerdy, is change a couple of my grades on the master grade transcript list and up some of them to a B plus. Ya’ gotta do the same for Kaitlin ‘cause she wants to go to Stanford, so she can be with me. Fortunately her old man’s big shot alum from Stanford, and she’s guaranteed to get admitted as long as she has the required 3.0 grade average. We’re both a little short on reaching that goal, so that’s why we decided to call on your expert abilities to give our grade averages a little boost.
“I brought Manny along to give you a little help in building up your courage, so you’ll be able to get the job done without any foul-ups. Manny, give Nerdy a little dose of persuasion, so he knows what he’s in for if he doesn’t cooperate with us.”
Manny placed one of his massive hands on the back of William’s neck and slowly began to squeeze it. As he increased the pressure, William let out a painful yelp and began to quietly cry.
“Make him stop! He’s hurting me really bad. I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to die if he doesn’t stop,” William said, crying out in pain.
“Okay, Manny, that’s enough. Let him go. Now listen to me you little dork, all four of us are going to go into the school, and you’re going to fix our grades, or else I’m going to turn Manny loose on you with no restrictions. You understand?” Brent said.
“I can’t do it. I’m too scared. If my mother ever finds out I did what you want me to do, I’ll be grounded for life. Please Brent, take me back home. I’m already scared she’s going to find out I snuck out of the house to meet you after she went to bed. I thought you said you wanted to be my friend, and that’s why you wanted to meet with me tonight.”
“Let me tell you something Nerdy. Getting grounded by your mother is going to be the least of your problems if we get caught. You’re looking at a couple of years in Juvenile Hall if you screw this thing up, so you just gotta’ suck it up, be a man about it, and go into the school with us. Manny here is going to be with you every step of the way to make sure you don’t do anything stupid, like try to run away. Don’t forget, he’s got plenty of experience in how to break arms and legs.
“Now let’s go! Stop crying and whining, Nerdy. It ain’t gonna’ do you any good anyway. Just stay cool. We’ll be in and out in five minutes, and you’ll be back safe at home in your loving mother’s protective care in less than half an hour.“
Brent opened his car door and the three other teenagers followed him as he walked towards the main building of Red Cedar High School.
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