Lives Of The Unknown Book 1: The Legend of Andrew Lockeford Read Online Free PDF Page B

trees and putting them into his pocket. He
would usually take the acorns out and throw them back onto the
grass because he didn’t need them—the simple act of collecting them
satisfied that boy more often than kickball ever did. He had one
friend that he really connected with, whose name was Shaun, and
even then they didn’t do much together. Shaun was most likely doing
something by himself as well, not caring about anyone else.
Andrew’s friend was two months older and always an inch taller;
they bickered over random topics and laughed over others. When
Andrew and Shaun met again after six years without contact, they
were still similar, still best friends.
    However, there were times when
important issues had separated the two. Being repeatedly bullied by
a particular kid in the fifth grade, Shaun was led to act upon a
dangerous stunt. He pulled Andrew aside to show him a firecracker
he had obtained somehow, which he planned to attach to the kid’s
back in order to spook him. Andrew knew that this could go horribly
wrong, so he stood up saying, “I’m not letting you do this, dude,”
and tried grabbing the firecracker away from Shaun, but Shaun was
not so likely to give it up. After a few seconds, both of them
noticed a yard-duty lady looking at them—the two boys decided to
stop fighting immediately. Neither of them wanted to be found with
a firecracker in their hands, so Shaun hid it in his pocket and
later into his backpack. The lady did nothing, and Andrew told
Shaun that if he lit that firecracker, he would not be friends with
him anymore. Later that day, Shaun crushed up the firecracker into
bits of paper and gunpowder, throwing it away into a trashcan at
the park nearby his house; no one would be likely to see it, let
alone use it. Those two boys were already more ethical than some
people would ever be.
    He always had a tendency towards Legos
and anything else that he could take apart and put back together.
He didn’t care too much about reenacting someone else’s world, such
as the new Spiderman toy set or whatever was on the commercials. He
just wanted plenty of Legos so he could make his own world, create
anything he wanted with what he had. He also enjoyed playing
driving games—racing games were fun, but open-world games in which
he could drive through and explore piqued his interest the most. He
decided as a kid that he would do something related to making
automobiles when he grew up.
    Then came Andrew’s move to Searles,
where he would enter the hell known as middle school. Back in
elementary school, he was more or less the comic relief of the
classroom, but he was too socially awkward to know that the things
he did were generally idiotic. As he moved on into middle school,
his socially awkward tendencies resulted in consequences. Many of
the students guessed he was retarded in general, so they had thrown
him aside and taunted him repeatedly; somebody once threw a Master
lock at his head. It was in the seventh grade that he realized he
had autism; he didn’t know what the symptoms were, but he knew now
why his social life was so poor. He wanted to be like everyone else
now, even if it meant making some sacrifice to his dreams. The
worst part was that he already established the first impression for
everyone else, so he believed it was too late to fix anything. He
had been asked to hang out with some of the more popular kids
during lunch, and although it wasn’t a joke, he had nothing
interesting enough to talk about to these guys, so nothing improved
in his social life.
    Why did those people even take him
in?
    Puberty kicked into high gear during
the eighth-grade and his freshman year of high school, thus he
became depressed over one thing: lack of a girlfriend. Andrew felt
as though everyone else was in a relationship, when it was just his
mind overreacting to thoughts and exaggerating the reality. He was
asking out girls out of his league, and if by some chance he did
receive a “Yes,” he