Chapter 5
School Worse
"Adam! Get up. Better hurry. Time for school!"
God, if you're up there, take me now. Instead, shoot her down with a bolt of lightning.
“Adaaaam!"
A huge, deadly bolt of lightning. While you're at it, blow up the school, too, if you would, please.
"Adam, come on now!" his mother barked.
God, thanks for nothing. Nothing at all. And I really, really appreciate all the problems You put in front of me. Real loving Master. Thanks.
"Adam, you getting up? Come on, don't make me come up there!"
Ewww, how intimidating, Adam thought, chuckling. His face shoved against his pillow, he closed his weighted eyelids. There was no other place he would rather be... here behind closed doors, resting, comfortable, miles away from—
"School!" his mother said, standing over him now. "You going, or what? You going to pull this today? I don't have the time for it. I have a meeting with my boss." She stopped there and sighed heavily. "You skip school today and you're grounded. Got it?"
Adam finally opened his eyes. That was one thing he had never heard his mother say. He had never been grounded by either his mom or his dad. Granted, he had been in mild and moderate trouble recently, but for all he knew, his parents didn't know what grounded meant.
"What?" he said, lifting his head. The whole right side of his face looked disfigured from the lumpy pillow.
She swiped her hands across each other, as if karate chopping two imaginary muggers. "End of this!"
Nasty, Adam thought.
"I'm calling your father, your principal, and the truant officer, and telling them, myself, that I'm not responsible for you not going to school. You're—"
Adam jumped to his feet, mouth contorted into an insane little pucker. He was taller than her by a foot. His fists were clenched. He wanted to do something rash, something with minimal thought and maximum power.
"Fuuuuuck yoooou!" he screamed in her face.
She did not falter. "I'm calling the juvenile officer!"
The fire in his eyes brightened and dimmed all at once. She knew she'd injured his ego. "Why, mom?"
It worked, she thought. "Because you won't go any other way. Final."
Crying now, Adam mumbled, "You're not my mother."
"I am, Adam, but the way you treat me is unacceptable. The way you act—I can't deal with you anymore."
"I'll go. Just please don't call the juvenile officer."
"It's too late, Adam," she said as she walked out of the room.
Adam shut his bedroom door like he’d just notified that his family had been hacked to death by an ax murderer.
***
The bus ride was worse today, primarily because Adam's anxiety was at an all-time high. The thing that bothered him most was knowing the final destination, that end point where the bus brakes screeched and he had to deal with the real world.
Adam often wondered if the kids in the bus, in school, and in town, weren't actually human. Just what if the reason they were so cruel and crude wasn't as obvious as mere teenage aggression? What if they were soulless? Wolves in sheep’s clothing? What if, in truth, they were genuinely evil? If so, where were the good ones? The real ones? Did any still exist? Or was he the last one?
The closer the yellow beast got to Blake High, the faster Adam's heart pounded. He had to sit on his hands to keep them from shaking. He licked his lips so many times the skin on them began to flake. He tried what so many people had promised to ease tension: deep breathing and visualization ... but after three full minutes of doing both, the anxiety did not go away.
The bus turned into the parking lot, making its way to the front of the building. I'm here... Hades, Academia. other kids on the bus stood in unison and walked off the bus with stupid smiles on their faces. Adam could not stand; his legs were too feeble. He did not want to risk falling a third time.
But somehow he mustered the courage to stand and did so without fail. The bus driver watched him in the rear-view mirror the whole time, shaking his head. Adam was aware of this without even looking.
Adam entered through the fiery gates and looked around at the hundreds of backpacked demons. One tall, husky boy with a mohawk—John Casivlin—a hard-core Goth who never showed himself in public without wearing black clothes, walked past Adam and commented, "What's up, gay boy? Screwing your boyfriend lately?"
He snickered, looked around for teachers, saw none, and did to Adam what he'd always wanted to do—
John spit a big, slimy hocker in his face.
No contest, no battle, nothing Adam could do but tread away toward the bathroom. They don't like me. Not a one.
Adam hurried into the bathroom.
He had tried more than once to befriend John and his friends, since they were Goths—different and non-conformists. People picked on them, too, but to Adam, they seemed to stand for everything they rebelled against. They did mostly the same things all other cliques did. For one, they were in their own group, which seemed to contradict their code. Secondly, they smoked the same pot the jocks did, slept around like the preps did, and caused more trouble than the bad boys did. They were no better, no worse; they were the same as everybody else. Blind followers of a goofy Marilyn Manson character. Freakish-looking but completely normal within. Adam deemed himself the purest freak, the purest outsider in Blake High. Loner is I; to join is to be a part of the cyborg.
After spending ten minutes staring at his tortured face in the mirror and cleaning the spit off his check, Adam left the Boy’s Room and walked to his homeroom. When he entered and took his seat, that short, inevitable time caught up to him for the second time in under fifteen minutes. One of his classmates had stuck a wad of gum on his seat. He, of course, sat right on it, and knew something was very wrong since they were all laughing.
He covered his head in his hands and tried to disappear. That did not happen.
"I can't believe the dolt sat in it!"
"What a fucking tard."
"Just call him bubble-gum ass. Be blowing bubbles out his poopchute.”
Demons need to be published. I'm the angel.
Adam often wished he had a brother, an identical twin with the same everything as him. Only then would he have somebody to relate to.
"Hey, sticky butt, whatuuuuup?" the geek across from him said.
You see, even the geeks are normal in retrospect.
A thought—faint, distant, but real—slammed into Adam. He imagined grabbing that kid's face, grabbing his pencil, and jamming it through his immense glasses and into his useless brain.
Blood flies.
A demon dies.
No more intentional schoolyard cries.
What a story I could make of that!
The boy stared at him as if he could read Adam's thoughts. The nerd suddenly looked frightened. Never again would he speak another word to the McNicols boy.
"That's enough, Tom," the teacher said to the four-eyed amphibian as she entered the room. The bell rang. The teacher, holding something tiny in the palm of her hand, sat on the front of her desk.
"What is that?" a metal-mouthed girl in the front row asked her.
She held up a small, dark-colored ring. "It's a mood ring. Ermel the science teacher gave it to me. See, slip it on your finger and it's supposed to tell you your mood. How you're feeling. Want to try it?"
The metal-mouth girl nodded.
The teacher smiled, looked over at Adam, and winked. He did not smile. His eyes did not blink. His face remained without emotion.
Mrs. Gavin stepped forward and handed the ring to the girl. The perfect little cheerleader slipped it on her pinky.
"Give it a minute, it'll change," the teacher said.
A minute passed. It became light purple. The girl didn't know if this was good or bad.
"What does it mean?" the girl queried.
"To be quite honest, it could mean many things. Dark purple can mean a calm, soothing feeli
ng. Light purple can mean a more energetic, openness emotion.
"Does red mean passion? Love?"
"Yes, well, it can."
Adam stared at the girl as she said the word love.
He despised the word.
The girl took the ring off, handed it back to Mrs. Gavin, looked over at Adam, and mouthed the word Loser.
The teacher gave the ring to a second person: Davey Longstorm. He slipped it on, and the color of the ring turned light yellow. The teacher seemed impressed.
"Yellow doesn't mean I'm a wuss, does it?" he wondered. Some kids laughed.
The teacher replied, "No, Davey, it means energy. You're energetic. Light-souled."
Davey did a little dance with his arms.
Before Mrs. Gavin even said a word, Adam knew he was going to be the next to try on that dreaded ring. He thought he'd melt the damned thing once he put it on his finger.
I would not fucking doubt it.
Davey handed her back the ring. Adam already held out his hand.
"Adam, here, try this on," the teacher offered.
He looked at nobody when he grabbed that little yellow, out-of-a cereal-box ring and slid it over his ring finger, expecting a disaster.
It did not turn.
Still, it did not turn.
Slowly, the yellow drifted away.
Soon it turned mars black. The entire class held their breath. The teacher appeared concerned, as if Adam had fallen, cracked his head against a desk leg, and was bleeding profusely. His hand trembled. He knew it meant something abnormal.
"Adam," the teacher said, "what are you—is everything okay? Is anything wrong?"
"What does black mean?" someone asked.
The bell rang. Kids were up and gone almost before the question had been finished. Adam yanked off the ring and dropped it into the teacher's palm.
"You sure you're all right, Adam? Do you need to talk to someone?"
Without answering, he stood and grabbed his books, trying to ignore her questions.
"Are you depressed or anything?"
He wanted to scream it in her face, pound it into her skull: I do not have a fuckin’ problem, all the purple, yellow, and red kids do! If not for them, that ring would be pure white. He left her and her ridiculous toy ring behind and marched away to his first class.
He wanted to be hopeful that his teacher, Mrs. Steiner, liked his story and would help him publish it. But the fact lingered—his soul was black, deprived, lifeless, worse than all the evil incarnates breaking past him.
"Hey, Adam McRetard!" a spike-haired boy said to him as he walked north. Funny stares and crude treatments came and went as usual from kids of all ages, sizes and classes, until he entered class.
***
The teacher seemed haunted by Adam's arrival. Her face, besides riddled with age spots, was also riddled with trepidation. Adam was used to this look, but not from Mrs. Steiner. She stared at him now, her eyes too big and too green. Adam could not comfort himself. He figured he'd done something wrong, but what? To whom? How? When? Where?
The class started to fill up quickly. Loads of demons and minions came plowing in like flies drawn to shit.
The sudden shrill of the bell was so loud, it gave Adam a headache. When he looked up at the teacher, she was still watching him.
Why?
She rolled her eyes, opened a desk drawer, took out some stapled papers, and said, "Good morning, class. Today we're going over a passage in our composition book. I also graded your short essays on The Batter. First, however, I want to read you something somebody in this class wrote. A short story—" She looked right at Adam.
Uh-oh, he thought.
"Might I add that this is a very strange story about the devil's son, who was freed from Hell."
Don't you dare.
"Who wrote it?" some girl in the back asked. "I want to know who wrote it.”
Adam scraped his feet against the carpet. Don't say it, don't say my name—
She began to read: "Syraqt was a demon from Hell—the devil's son. His only son. For fun, he liked to sneak through dark places and slaughter human people: age, race, gender—did not matter. It was a sport. A very, very competitive sport, since all of Satan's other demons liked to kill people as well—"
One boy, a few seats over from Adam, covered his mouth, laughing.
"Oh my God!" some girl gasped.
The teacher continued, "These entities’ only fear was crucifixes and churches. They were more afraid of these than anything else. These two things were the only things that could stop them, too.
“But Syraqt, the head of the evil army, would not succumb to defeat. He was sworn by his father, the devil, to end the world and teach God a lesson—" She stopped reading and flipped through the pages, shaking her head.
"Who wrote it?" the girl again asked, this time raising a hand.
The tension skyrocketed within Adam. He could not stop shifting in his seat or playing with his pencil or looking down.
Do not say it!
"The whole story was written by Adam McNicols." Not only did she say it; she pointed at him, leaving no doubt to anyone.
Adam would not look up from his desk. All I ever wanted was to be the next Stephen King.
"Oh my God, that's soooo sacrilegious!" another girl said.
"Crazy, not right in the head."
"That was complete crap," a boy snickered.
The teacher stared down this little devil in the scruffy black clothes. She feared him and disliked his wretched soul for writing such a horrible little story. Mrs. Steiner was just another Southern Baptist, the most close-minded kind of Christ-lover in existence. She would not tolerate anything pro-Satan or simply weird, and Halloween was her least favorite time of year. Back in ’73, she even wrote a nasty letter to Warner Brothers, protesting against the release of the film The Exorcist.
Fucking bitch, Adam thought.
Before anymore ridicule could be placed on Adam's trembling frame, he stood and darted out of the room, humiliated for the hundredth time. He went straight to the bathroom to recover yet again, and refused to leave until the bell rang again. Mrs. Steiner was not concerned. She did not really want him in her classroom anymore today, anyway.
***
Second and third period class came and went soon enough. Adam walked to lunch, his face throbbing red. Once there, he sat at same table by the window with his friend Josh.
One of the kids across the aisle from them, a boy from Adam's English class, stopped eating a slice of pizza long enough to show Adam the sign of the cross with his fingers.
"What's his problem?" Josh asked Adam.
Adam dove into his bag like a pre-programmed robot and removed a Hershy bar. "He's a—“ For fear of the boy overhearing him, Adam did not finish saying: Motherfucking son of a bitch.
"—never mind. It's not important. Nothing's important anymore."
"What do you mean?" Josh asked, sipping on a can of 7up.
“What do you mean what do I mean? Everybody in this place just—pisses me off," he whispered.
Josh did not hear him. "What's that?”
Adam shook his head and ate his candy bar.
So many things to say, too many feelings I can't control, and no courage to tell anyone.
In time, that would change.
***
Lunch passed. Homeroom class returned. Adam sat in his seat, resting restlessly on his unbalanced school books before the bell rang. The room was filled with monsters on all sides: geeky creatures from the far side of technology, jock-type mongrels who looked like the poster children for army commercials, dirt-ball trailer trash inbreds with no sense of bathing, and beady, cat-like preps who could win over the most stubborn of teachers.
Erica—Adam did not want to classify her as anything other than gorgeous, but he knew that her beauty was only skin deep.
Today she was crying, hurt once again by that loser boyfriend of hers. Her group of friends comforted her.
Adam sat up, grabbed his ink pen, and began drawing on his book cover.
"He—he loves me. Deep down inside I know he does," Erica said.
"Guys can just be asses that way," one of her friends told her. Not me. I'd treat you like gold.
The drawing of a demented-looking creature on brown paper began to take shape.
"And he flirts with other girls. He says he doesn't, but I know he does. I see the way he looks at Marsha.”
"It's okay,” her friend said, "all guys are sex crazed—"
—horns, claws, muscles...
If you were my girl, I would not need to look at any other girl. You are perfect in my eyes.
Erica walked up to the vacant teacher's desk, grabbed a few tissues from the box, and blew.
—A severed human head, which was being held by this life-like demonic depiction.
“I just hate guys."
"They don't treat you right," another of her friends said.
"All after nookie."
Lie.
—Blood dripping to the soil below. Monster grinning.
Adam wasn't aware of this, but the dirty mullet-haired boy sitting across from him sneaked a peek of his grotesque drawing and said, "What are you, a fucking devil worshiper?"
By this time, Erica was walking down the aisle, had overheard him, and also glanced at the picture. Disgusted and arrogant, she looked at Adam and said, "He is a devil worshiper. I guarantee it. Weirdo—ewww, don't look at me!"
Hurtful, untrue.
Why, was his only question. Devil worshiper, weirdo, freak, loser, nobody, gay, faggot, sissy, pussy, wuss, idiot, moron, dumbass, assfuck, retard, piece of shit—
Is it the truth?
All I ever wanted was one simple thing... acceptance.
Obviously inherited.
Or maybe it's just me—I'm the mistake.
Either way, something's got to give.
***
Art whizzed past and math class dwindled away. Adam pretended to do algebra when he really wrote down an extra scene for a story.
Five minutes prior to the final ring of the bell, someone knocked on Mr. Saunter's door.
"Enter," the teacher said. The door opened and a kid stepped in, handing him a note.
"Okay," he said, "thanks, Cindy."
Cindy, a little revolting bitch Adam remembered from eighth grade, left.
Damaged Page 6