Tom

Alex's home was tiny 2 bedroom apartment on the second floor of a four floor apartment complex. Living in this apartment were a total of 5 people, Alex, his parents and his 2 younger twin siblings.

There wasn't enough room for much furniture in the house, not that they could afford much anyways. The living room had a single 2 seater couch that Alex slept on and nothing else in the room. Even with only the 1 couch, the room still felt cramped.

The kitchen was bland and colorless ,with only the basic necessities being present within, like an oven, fridge and microwave. The microwave a second hand piece of junk that Alex's dad had managed to grab from a coworker when it broke. He spent almost a week fixing it before it was usable, allowing Alex and his siblings to step up their lunch from bread to the occasional bowl of noodles.

One of the bedrooms belonged to the twins and had bunk beds that took up half the room shoved into the corner. Although they were twins, they were not the same gender, which made their shared space seem like a war zone at times.

The other room was naturally for Alex's parents. It had a Double bed against the far wall and a small set of cupboards in the wall by the foot of the bed. These were the only cupboards in the house and everybody had to share the space as fairly as possible. Some people may think it was too small a space for everyone's stuff but the sad truth is that the cupboard wasn't even full.

There was a single bathroom in the house with a toilet, sink and shower inside of it. The toilet was to your immediate left upon entering the bathroom, not allowing even a single step to be taken in that direction without kick it.

If one was to sit upon the porcelain throne they would have their left should touching the sink while their right shoulder rubbed the wall. From the toilet, if you took a single step forward, you would be in the shower. The shower was too small for more than one person to stand in and was too small for a single person to use comfortably, which led to Alex's dad removing the shower door to make the shower slightly less cramped.

Alex's parents worked really hard every single day so they could provide this small home to their children and all 3 of them were grateful for their parents sacrifices. It was because of this that Alex felt so guilty about lying to them, specifically about where he was going to be last night.

Alex looked through the peephole of the front door and immediately recognized the person who was knocking. "Ah shit..." Alex said in a whisper.

"I can hear you standing behind the door, Alex, open up and let me in!" The person shouted while loudly banging on the door three times.

"Ju..Just give me a minute!" Alex shouted back as he quickly ran to his parents bedroom and opened the cupboard. Due to there being only one place to look, and the fact that the cupboard didn't have much in it to begin with, Alex found what he was looking for in a flash.

He grabbed a pair of sunglasses his sister had found on her way home from school one day and put them on while heading back to the front door and opening it.

A young man was standing outside the door with an annoyed look on his face. He was slightly shorter than Alex's 1.83 meters (6ft) and had short brown hair in contrast to Alex's blonde hair. His eyes were a yellow colour, which was slightly less uncommon than Alex's red.

This young man's name was Tom and he was Alex's best friend. His only friend.

"Dude, where the hell were you last night!? You were supposed to get to my place by midnight!" Tom shouted as he brushed past Alex and entered the house. Alex winced slightly as Toms shoulder grazed the cut on his chest but Tom didn't realize and continued speaking.

"I stayed awake until 2 waiting for you before I passed out from exhaustion. Just because it was a Friday night doesn't mean I want to stay up late you know!" Tom reached the living room and turned to face Alex. "Why are you wearing sunglasses?"

With Tom finally keeping quiet long enough for Alex to speak, he replied.

"I'm sorry about last night, something came up and I couldn't make it to your place."

"It that all you're gonna say? Come on man, just tell me the truth, you had a hot date didn't you?" Tom said with a sarcastic tone while smiling and making his eyebrows jump up and down. "Hey, I get it, I would ditch you for a hot girl any day of the week too."

"Me? Go on a date with a hot girl? Do you really think I would suddenly become popular with girls all of a sudden?" Alex replied while rolling his eyes.

"Just because it's extremely unlikely doesn't mean it's impossible, although in your case..." Tom placed a hand on his chin and pretended like he was thinking deeply about something while looking Alex up and down. " Never mind, it's impossible."

Alex scoffed as a smile appeared on his face. "Asshole, is that how you treat your best friend?"

"When they're as ugly as you? Yes." Tom replied with a chuckle.

The two young men laughed and continued their back and forth banter for a few more minutes before Alex started to get a bit more serious in tone.

"Honestly, something happened to me last night. I was mugged and got knocked out in an alleyway, I only woke up this morning."

'I feel bad about lying but I can't just tell him I murdered someone because the gang I joined told me too.' Alex thought as he saw Toms expression turn serious.

"Shit dude, I can obviously see you're alive but are you hurt anywhere? Besides your head I mean, since you got knocked out I'm sure that hurts quite a bit." Tom said with a concerned tone.

"I got a pretty serious cut on my leg and chest but they're both healing already so it won't do much more than leave a scar." Alex replied.

"I'm glad you're alright then, and besides, chicks love scars." Tom said with a double thumbs up.

"Hmm...I guess they do?" Alex said with a thoughtful tone as he nodded. "Anyway, there's something way more important that I want to tell you."

"Oh?" Tom said with a curious tone.

'There's no point in keeping it a secret from him anyways, I only put the sunglasses on because i panicked and wasn't sure what to do.' Alex thought.

"Well it's more like I'm going to show you rather than tell you but here goes." Alex said as he took the sunglasses off.