Chapter 1: Apothecary

Damn, I thought. This sucks. It was Friday night and I was stuck sitting in The Apothecary bored shitless. I had this part time job working at a local pharmacy working the check out counter and doing an occasional delivery if someone needs a prescription dropped off. Not that the job is bad actually. It is easy and pretty stress-free work for a high school student who just wants some spending money. The problem wasn't the job, but the fact that I was missing the football game at my high school. Everyone went to the games. If you weren't at the game then you pretty much don't exist at our school. All of my friends were there and I am stuck in the store doing nothing.

I have a pretty cool group of friends, but one thing I have to say is that we love to rag on each other mercilessly. I think it is actually how we acknowledge that we like each other. In a weird way, it seems that the harder everyone picks on you, the more they are actually showing affection towards you. At least that's how I like to think about it since I am on the receiving end of the brunt of the jokes and other stuff that those clowns pull.

My name is Jeff Dugan. I was a high school junior at Woodmont High School at the time of this story. I am a pretty average guy, I think. I'm about five-eleven and weigh in at about 200 lbs. I have a darker than average complexion, dark brown hair and blue eyes. I could stand to lose a few pounds I'll admit, but I am not really obese and I go to the gym at least four times a week with my friend Larry Adelson. We hit the free weights for couple of hours and try to bulk up a bit so we look good and feel good about ourselves.

Larry was a senior and we have been friends since I moved into the neighborhood when I was about ten years old. We've had our ups and downs over the years, but we always make up after a fight and are probably better friends each time. All the other guys in the "group" are seniors except Tom who is also a junior. Tom and I met during our freshman year and have been great friends ever since then. I said before that I get the brunt of the crap from my friends, and Tom gets some as well because we are the younger guys in our group of friends. Tom doesn't get as much crap as I do, because he's six-three and has always been bigger then most of our friends. I just grew into my body size over the last year, so I was always the little guy that every picked on. It didn't bother me too much because the guys were older and I was happy to part of a group of friends as tight-knit as ours.