1 A horrible ceremony…

Sometimes life is unfair, but really that's just life. No matter the day, no matter where life is pretty shit, well that's what Jacob thought anyway.

Walking down the same dirty hallway, the very one he had seen for 4 years straight. Pushing past and through a crowd of meandering morons he made his way to the auditorium, well his school would like to call it an auditorium but really it was the old gym that they just put bleachers in for events.

Jacob never liked coming here; it smelled of old sweat and quite frankly he couldn't stand the people that surrounded him, not that he hated all people no, just the ones that sat near him.

In highschool no matter what grade you find yourself in your friend circle and who you will associate with comes down to three factors, Money, which he currently had non of, looks, he sorely lacked in that department, and of course how could you forget charisma, a skill which as it turned out Jacob also lacked. He was abysmally average in everything.

Some might say Jacob was so average it was a God given talent, not Jacob though he didn't believe in God, or any god for that manner. Growing up in an orphanage does that to you, because in his eyes if there was a god he was an evil one, because his life was pretty shit.

He was born into a very stable family, two parents, both with solid jobs, no other living relatives, and a decent house, but when he was 3 years old his parents died in a plane related accident. Well the word accident really doesn't do it justice, at first he thought they died in a crash but no they both died in a freak conveyor belt accident, yes that's right conveyor belt. Jacob didn't learn the grizzly details until he was 12. Apparently getting your arm stuck inside one of them doesn't end well.

After his parents death he was put in an orphanage with his lack of living relatives and all he really didn't have any other choice, plus at the time of their death Jacob was 3 so he wasn't quite ready for independence. His parents did leave him some money and by some he was referring to 150,000 dollars but there was an issue, he couldn't access it till he was 18, which coincidentally would happen the day after his last day of highschool. Graduation from that very highschool was actually the event he was forced to attend in that foul smelling auditorium/gym he didn't really know what to call it.

Currently he was sitting as far back as one could get, well almost. He was on the row second from the top and this really was only of note because behind him he could hear the heavy breathing of some sort of monstrous human or at least that's what he assumed since it sounded like he had a bear on his shoulder. This was why he despised the people around him he always was put in with the outcasts. Ever since elementary he was part of the lower rung, the people picked last for teams, or the person the teacher could forget during the fire drill. Though outcast didn't really describe him he was just hard to notice.

Jacob was so average that he blended in to every crowd, he had no distinct features, standing at 5' 10" with barley a inch of muscle on his body, a face that would be forgotten in seconds unless the person with that face owed you money, and a voice monotone enough to be drowned out in any group, but high enough to make it near impossible to attract anyone of the opposite sex. He had jet black hair and jet black eyes which would have been nice if they weren't set into a face that was at most a 3, if the judge was held at gunpoint and told to answer high.

All of his average to below average traits were then combined with his ugly and worn out clothes which made him one plain and boring mother fucker. Though the word mother fucked wouldn't fit him very well since he was still a virgin, though that wasn't a surprise was it?

Jacob for all his life felt that at some point he had been slighted by the universe, though there really wasn't a way he could get back at it since, well….. it was the universe. At the end of the day he could only make the best of a bad situation so he had done the one thing he could do, Work his ass off in school. He wasn't smart, not by a long shot but being in an orphanage and having no friends left him a lot of study time. So he had managed to against all odds get accepted to a decent university, New York university. There was a issue though it was in New York, which for him, a kid living in Chicago was a fucking long way away.

As Jacob thought about his future, the principal, a fat middle aged man going by the name Henderson, walked onto the stage in the center of the gym and though the sound did drop down the talking and hum of voices didn't cease. Though that didn't seem to bother Mr Henderson who started his speech about the success and change that these seniors would have after this graduation ceremony, which to be honest was the last thing that was going to happen since this was a Chicago public school. Jacob didn't care for the banter of the ageing principle so he simply picked out a particularly interesting water stain on the roof and tuned the rest of the world out.

Jacob looked at that stain, which to the observant eye looked a bit like a bat, and contemplated his life. He had lived his life alone or almost completely alone, sometimes the occasional bully would pick on him for a while till they would get bored and leave him alone. In his solitude he had been pretty miserable, he didn't have any sort of games at the orphanage so the little free time he had he spent reading. The one thing that kept Jacob going was a promise he made to himself years ago, and that promise was that he would live his best life. Maybe he made it out of some sort of guilt for his parents death or maybe he just made it to try to motivate himself, but no matter the reason soon he would have a new opportunity for growth that was, college, a chance to start anew.

A huge motivation Jacob had for applying to New York university was a desperate drive for a fresh start. The further away he was from Chicago the better Jacob thought to himself.

Soon Jacob was brought out of his thoughts by the abrupt silence which showed that the principle had finally rapt up his speech.

You would think from here there would be some grandiose graduation ceremony with cheering and more speakers, but who are you kidding? This is a public school nobody cares about, and if they did care at some point, that stopped a long time ago.

The graduation ceremony, if you could call it that, was nothing more than a rapid fire list reading combined with a paper hand out.

"Jacob Romano, please come to the stage."

Hearing that phrase Jacob quickly stood from his seat and made his wobbly approach down through the stands, pushing and stepping over legs and arms. It took him much longer than the previous graduates to make it to the stage, mostly due to his decision of sitting as far away as possible from the stage. Due to his tardiness, and the obvious annoyance on Principle Henderson's face his graduation was even more rushed than Avengers End Game.

Having his highschool diploma pushed into his hand he was quickly ushered off the platform from which the principal spoke and just like all the graduates that had already gone, quickly exited the building for the last time.