THE BAD BOY OF MANHATTAN
Chapters 2. The Rebel

HUNTER SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL MANHATTAN UNIVERSITY.

January 13th 2038.

"Hey, Rockstar Boy, didn't you get your bodyguard?"

The cry made Elric who had just emerged from the school gate enter the courtyard, turning to the horde of boys who were laughing mock him.

The long curly-haired teenager with the stern jaw raised his hand and brandished the middle finger. Then regardless of the taunts that continued to slide from their mouths, Elric waltzed into the school building.

He traced the corridor without looking around him towards his locker. There, two of his friends were waiting.

"Good morning, Elric," chuckles Michael.

"Shut up (silence)!" hardik Elric while opening the locker door and inserting his backpack.

"You why?" ryan asked while looking at Elric's face that looked sour.

"Why is that?" Elric closed his locker and stepped towards his class which was at the end of the corridor followed by Michael and Ryan.

"Hi, Elric."

Two beautiful girls who passed by the three youths greeted while throwing their sweetest smiles. But Elric only glanced at a glance without even telling. He breezed nonchalantly into his class without caring for the two girls.

"You're ignoring Clara and Ashley?" Michael widened his eyes in disbelief. The black-haired teenager looked out the door and noticed the two girls, Clara and Ashley.

"The most beautiful girls in school (the prettiest girls in school)," Ryan cheered.

Elric pressed his shoulders. He was upset with all the female students at this school. They are always friendly to him and tend to tease him. To him, they were nothing more than sycophants. They tried to get close to him because he was the son of Nathaniel Bradley. While his male students, they all hated him for feeling rivaled both in popularity, good looks and also wealth.

Elric thought, envy him is just a waste of time. He even felt like he was a loser. Were it not for his father's big name, he was just an ordinary teenager who did not know the direction.

He loves music and he can play several instruments. Guitar, piano, violin, everything he's mastered. Both of his parents strangled him with all the things about music from his childhood. And his father really hopes he plunged into the same world. But, his little heart said, he did not want to always be in the shadow of his father's big name. He wants to find himself. I don't know what it is.

And that afternoon once school was over, as usual, Elric didn't go home right away. He and Michael go to East Harlem, where Ryan lives in a densely populated and rundown area of Manhattan. Somehow he felt more comfortable hanging out with lower class people who did not know his identity at all as the son of a famous rocker in this country. Elric had warned Ryan not to tell the people there, even to Ryan's parents.

He would have just come home if his mother had called him many times. He refused when his mother told the driver to pick him up. Elric chose to take the subway and get off at the underground station close to his home in Greenwich Village. He also prefers to walk from the station to his home.

"Elric, where have you been (you're from anywhere)." That is what his mother always asked whenever he set foot in the luxurious house owned by his father.

"From a friend's house." He also answered only briefly. His mother, Alya, would usually not ask anything more.

However, when his father, Nathan is home, he will be interrogated. His father always checked with anyone he was friends with, or went anywhere. Both of his parents knew he was friends with Michael, but they did not know about Ryan and his place of residence which he came to almost every day.

Perhaps, if both his parents knew, he would never again be allowed to meet with Ryan let alone come to his home in East Harlem. The most rundown and dangerous place in Manhattan, according to most people.

He is also friends with Ryan's older brother Noah. Twenty-two-year-old youth who introduced cigarettes, cannabis, and also alcoholic beverages to him, Michael and Ryan.

Nathan also keeps bottles of alcohol. But, Elric was only allowed to drink wine because he was too young. There is a rule that Nathan applies to Elric, that he should not drink or smoke until he is old enough. But in the mind of Elric stored a slogan that the rules are there to be violated.

"I rarely see you in the studio" Nathan told Elric one morning while having breakfast.

"I'm busy." Elric rubbed his crap while chewing the croissant he had chipped into the potato porridge.

"What are you busy with, Elric?" nathan urged while staring at the prince only wayangnya was full of probing. But the touch of Alya's hand on his arm made him understand that his wife did not want to enjoy breakfast with the debate between father and son.

"I gotta go now (i gotta go now)." Elric got up from his seat and stepped closer to Alya and kissed her cheek at a glance.

"Let Pablo take you, honey," said Alya.

"No need," refused Elric as he rushed out of the dining room without saying goodbye to Nathan.

"Why does he seem to hate me so much?" nathan complained as he looked at Alya in astonishment.

Alya clucked. "Don't think like that, okay?!" emphatically.

Nathan raised both his hands. He doesn't understand the mind of a teenager of Elric's age. They hate anything. Not listening to others, and just obeying their own ego.

***