Kapitel 30: Troubled

New Year's celebration had long passed and the happy times brought by the long break were effectively snuffed out by the reality of the world.

School and work still commenced and one of the most troubled ones is Alexander Creed.

He was really hoping that his return to school life would just be normal. Unfortunately, that was just wishful thinking.

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His daily and early morning jogs were now compromised.

The neighbors became overly enthusiastic and would try to have a conversation with him.

The child they thought was aiming to be America's next star athlete was now America's brightly shining child star.

Before he knew it, the community now had a jogging fever that could not be contained.

There were now a lot of children being dragged to train by their parents to run behind Alexander.

The adults were too literal with following a successful person's footsteps.

Having an energized community wasn't that bad but when paparazzi and reporters became involved, the trouble just escalated even higher.

Fortunately, Alexander came prepared, and just as the snoopy cameramen would flash his running figure, he had already switched to running in place in his room. A treadmill should help.

It was depressing but it was better than having candid picture takers earn a hundred bucks without giving him a commission.

At least, the pictureless column detailing Alexander's daily running schedule helped the Home Alone box office somewhat.

The community also responded quickly to the influx of nosy strangers, so it became a restricted zone that annoyed the paps and the press.

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The neighbors and the media could be easily disregarded when one insists on privacy and hiding.

What is truly troublesome is the schoolmates that you can't push away due to technicalities.

When Alexander was hoping to ride the school bus like always, his fellow passengers had already changed.

Scorn, jealousy, envy, curioisity, wanting to be friends, wanting to be cast in the next Home Alone movie.

The attention and questions came unceasing, even the old bus driver had much more questions than the kids.

Answering a simple question is easy in itself but when the same question gets asked by 20 or so students for 20 or so times, it becomes incredibly annoying!

When those 20 or so students move on from the easy questions and asked complicated ones, it becomes tricky. When they asked even more complicated questions, it becomes taxing!

Alexander kept every answer to the questions generic and easily passed to their fellows and seatmates. That would have solved everything but when every fellow and seatmate wants to hear the answer personally come from his mouth and with their witnessing, it becomes torturous!

And... this wasn't even the end of it because the school bus has to arrive at school.

At school, the 20 annoying, 20 taxing, and 20 torturous would be bumped up to a thousand.

Classmates, year mates, upperclassmen, teachers, and even the principal had joined in on the fun.

The official paparazzi and reporters were thrown off but the unofficial and civilian ones could not be impeded.

The craze of Home Alone and Kevin McAllister finally caught up to Alexander who was always hiding behind the shadows throughout.

The kid that was the inspiration for the making of a movie that is recently raking up about 450+ million dollars worldwide from a 300,000 dollar budget is currently attending their school!

It would be even weird if they behaved and acted like it was normal.

Eventually, the paps and reporters that were banned from nearing Creed's neighborhood joined in on the campus craze.

They were obviously stopped from entering the campus but their egging of students to get all information about the mysterious Alexander Creed by paying real money just fuelled everything into mania.

A hundred kids claiming to be Alexander's best friends lined up when a television reporter asked for an interview.

Twenty bad boy groups stepped up when a paparazzi asked if Alexander Creed was part of a bad influence.

A ton of reluctant and shy girls stepped up when the reporters asked if Alexander had a young girlfriend.

Their fraudulently crafted and plothole-filled stories were too all over the place to be believed.

However, it didn't stop the gossip papers from writing fun articles.

Alexander Creed: Everyone's Best Friend!

Alexander Creed: The Godfather of the Child Delinquent Community!

Alexander Creed: The Young Playboy who Multi-Time Multiple Girls.

Every sensible person knew that those headlines were for fun but they still gave great sales to the publishers.

Another important note when the media were hovering around Alexander was when some of them scavenged in trash cans.

They didn't look for condoms like how they would for adults, they searched for Alexander's test papers and his competency in education.

All in all, it became a frightful experience that Alexander felt he was lucky he survived.

He, who was an aloof and mysterious loner, suddenly had a hundred best friends who had apparently shared diapers with him.

Some of them even sent letters to his house, writing that they should do this and they should do that, just like in old times.

He, who is a hiddenly scheming character but completely neutral, suddenly became a frontal figure in the school's group of bad influences.

This led to the occasional challenge letters that dumb high school gang leaders propped on his desks.

He, who was just a good boy and had not yet become his player self, suddenly had an abnormal amount of girlfriends popping up.

Love letters were piling from the girls and challenge letters from heartbroken boys piled up as well.

Alexander didn't know if this was what child stars like Culkin had gone through or if this was a ploy by the film competitors.

All that he knew was that with fame comes troubles and all these troubles only led to old Sullivan laughing hysterically with smug pride at his bloodline.

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It would take about a month or so until clarifications would finally be set and for the fame craze to settle around Alexander. Even that countdown would just start after Home Alone would go offline.

Fortunately, he had already formulated excuses to get away from the hubbub and be busy with the more important and fun stuff.

It was already 1989 and the development of the Creed legacy is just beginning. The ones who concluded that Home Alone was just a fluke would know the truth.