Snippet #1816786

"Well, we've got our five guys. Well, mostly our five guys. I've still got my doubts about Fred..."

Jack Newton's words elicited a collection of sniggers and uneasy chuckles throughout the group of guys gathered together behind the vast back wall of the high school gymnasium. Jack was the poster boy of every archetypical big, nasty football guy--there always seems to be at least one in every high school. Standing at six feet three inches, barrel-chested and rugged, with a sharp crew cut and a mean glare--the kind of guy everyone wants to be friends with, because they know otherwise he's gonna make life hell for them.

The whole thing had been his idea. His cruel little game, and it hadn't been hard for him and his tight-knit gang of dim-witted schoolyard bullies to rope in anyone else who didn't want to end up spending the rest of their high school years being ridiculed if they didn't take part. One little 'dare', so to speak, borne of the wicked little mind that belonged to Jack Newton.

Before him stood the aforementioned five guys--selected to be the lucky partakers of the dare. Five people who differed from one another in just about every way. On one end, you had Reiner Solan--the 6'2 party dude and resident 'heartbreaker' if the word amongst the girls was to be trusted. And on the other you had skinny little Fredrico Carrera--Jack was pretty sure he'd never heard a word out of him before, though he could vaguely recall shoving the kid's perpetually hat-clad head into a locker....or hell, might've been someone else, Jack couldn't be arsed to remember everybody he shoved into lockers. And between them was another three guys--popular, well-known, outcast, whatever; there was hardly a thing in common amongst them, except that each one of them had been selected to undertake this dare.

And as for the dare itself...

"Hat boy," Jack ordered flatly at Fredrico. "Your hat." Without waiting for a responce he reached out one long, musclebound arm and, with surprising agility, snatched it off Fredrico's head, turning it upside down and holding it out to one of his smirking buddies, who proceeded to shove a few scraps of folded up paper into the interior of the hat. "On each scrap of paper," Jack announced as he went down the line of guys, holding the hat out for each to take their mark from. "is written the name of one girl. One girl who's crazy enough, shy enough, quiet enough, cold enough, or just plain bitchy enough, that the whole dare is to get that one girl to fall for you..." He paused as Reiner, the last person to pull from the hat, reached in, before smirking and tossing the hat back at Fredrico's head. "...well, you all know the goal. All you gotta do it get 'em to say those three magic little words," he finished with a mocking, sardonic tone. "And if you fail, or if you chicken out...well, everyone's gonna know how much of a fuckin' pussy you are." The rest of the guys snickered at the words--hell, they didn't care anymore. As long as it wasn't their head on the chopping block, they could give a shit less what happened to the five unlucky bastards who'd been singled out for it.

"Well?" Jack smirked as he returned to his place, standing before the five, looking over at them.

As the motley little group of guys awaited the answer, in the distance, the shrill call of the electric bell signalled the end of break time. Those assembled began to depart for their third period classes of the day, casting smirks, or pitying glances, back towards the five still lined up, still holding the scraps of paper, each with one name on it.