1995

The start of a new era.

Under the advice of Mrs Taylor, Dave had applied for a scholarship at the prestigious Liverpool College, had passed the test and been accepted.

Dave had been fearful of actually accepting the offer, however. He would know no one and be generally surrounded by people with a very different up bringing and far more money. Although the kids arround him thus far had not been great, it was a case of "better the devil you know." Dave's parents were proud of him just passing and more or less left the final decision up to him.

Then Alan stepped in.

He took Dave to one side, and said, without a trace of humour, "Don't be stupid. Don't waste this chance. Don't end up like me."

And so Dave's life at LC began. He knew no one and had zero social skills at making friends. For the first few weeks/months he just sat quietly in a corner by himself.

The first thing he learnt at LC was the importance of his SAT results. The school used them as the sole decider as to which "set" a child was placed into, and generally only those in the top sets would recieve a decent education. Having 5's gave Dave a ticket to the top set in all subjects.

Having a 6 was apparently unheard of. The teachers were impressed. Several of the kids seemed jealous, almost to the point of anger in one or two cases.

"You must have sat an extra test! You can't get a 6 on the normal test," he was informed in an accusing tone. In all honesty, Dave had no idea if that was true or not, and really hadn't cared. This seemed to be a rather annoying response though.

Eventually, Dave did start making friends. The main one being a little boy named Macca and his sidekick Skish. The trio spent most of their school time together, communicating mostly in an endless stream of popular quotes flawlessly joined together to discuss comics, games, TV and films almost exclusively.

"I miss you so much it hurts sometimes."