Authors: John Goode
Like the Morlocks from
The Time Machine,
I was barely considered a person and treated as such. Random shoves in the hallway were expected, followed by long, donkey-like laughs from the douche bag who had done it. People slamming my locker shut as I tried to change books out between classes was also a popular pastime, once again followed by the resounding glee from onlookers. Sometimes it got worse. Sometimes they would slap the books out of my hands as I walked down the hall, a few times I had random pieces of food tossed at me during lunch, and once someone put a fresh pile of dog shit in my backpack.
I’m sure they thought that last one was especially clever.
Since I was considered the enemy, I began to act as one. Since I didn’t have the brawn to make someone cry, I used my words instead with devastating results. A war of wits with a jock is a lot like a modern day Marine unit attacking a Civil-War-era squadron; it is over pretty fast, and it could be days before anyone knows what actually happened. I tried to focus my attention on academic studies, since I knew it was the only arena I could actually compete in. And until junior high, I thought I was easily the smartest person in Foster.
That was when I met Kyle.
I say “met” when I mean I became aware of him. We had a social science class in seventh grade, and I had assumed it was going to be one of those topics I dominated in, showing up the rest of the small brains who actually had brains. It was a softball question about the Emancipation Proclamation asking how many slaves did it free? The Civil War was one of those things I had obsessed about over the summer, so I was more than ready for this kind of question.
“Over four million slaves were freed,” I answered, not even waiting to be called on.
The teacher paused, giving me a small smile and then asking the class, “Anyone disagree with him?”
I didn’t even bother to turn around. I mean, who would even dare? It wasn’t like anyone here actually knew….
“Kyle,” the teacher exclaimed brightly. “Okay then, what is your answer?”
I spun around to stare at the idiot who was about to publicly announce how little he knew in front of the entire class. Of course, it was one of the random, good-looking assholes, this one with shaggy hair, no doubt trying to pretend he was a skater or something. I smiled darkly at him, trying not to appear happy when he crashed and burned.
“None,” he said, sounding smug to my ears.
“None?” the teacher asked him back, sounding a bit surprised. “You sure you want to go with that?”
She was giving him an out! How predictable. The cute ones always got special treatment. I scoffed under my breath, knowing he had just had a public, epic fail.
“Well, technically you can say around twenty to fifty thousand were freed on the day it went into effect, but there is a pretty strong case that Lincoln didn’t have any authority over them at the time, so the official answer is none.”
Now I laughed out loud, waiting for the teacher to tell him how wrong he was.
“Who thinks Mr. Stilleno’s answer is right?” she asked the class.
Almost half the class raised their hand, which made me smile even more. Of course they were going to vote for one of their own; lemmings follow in a pack.
“Well, those with their hands up are right.”
I was about to give this idiot a well-deserved
ha
when her words penetrated. Instead I turned to her and demanded, “What? That’s wrong.”
The teacher gave me a patronizing look and said, “No, Jeremy, it isn’t. The proclamation was more a political move than an actual social one and in fact only freed slaves in the rebel states, where Lincoln had no power. Though I’d like to know where you got your other number from, Kyle.”
I sputtered out noises that weren’t quite words in protest as Kyle explained a nonsensical answer that made even less sense than before. “Over four million slaves were freed by Lincoln!” I exclaimed. “You can’t deny that.”
Before the teacher could answer, this Kyle person said, “Actually, the slaves weren’t freed legally until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed, and he did that by making the lame duck Congress do it. That wasn’t until after he was reelected.”
I just stared at him in shock.
“Very good, Kyle,” the teacher beamed at him. “You have a run for your money, Jeremy.”
The class laughed at her words, which made me sink lower into my chair. The idiot behind me kicked my seat, whispering, “Dude, you can’t even be a good nerd!”
That was when I became obsessed with Kyle Stilleno.
I could say that was when Kyle Stilleno moved onto my radar and I began paying attention to him, but I don’t see much reason to lie now. At first he seemed to be everything I wanted to be, and it infuriated me. He was cute, seemed to be in shape, he moved through the world without anyone bothering him at all. I never once saw someone pick on him, berate him, or even laugh in his general direction. School seemed to come easy to him. He always had an answer on the tip of his tongue, and if he had ever gotten a question wrong, I wasn’t there to see it. As junior high progressed, I realized he wasn’t everything I wanted to be; he was something far worse.
He was everything I wasn’t.
Instead of being this superman that I was trying to become, he was a totem of everything in the world I wasn’t. I would never be liked, I would never be considered cute, I would never be accepted, I would never be him, and it began to make me a little crazy. I was running an academic race against a guy who didn’t even know he was in a competition. His graduating GPA from junior high was perfect—not near perfect but absolutely perfect—where mine wasn’t. I had lost points in gym class because of not participating, which is an overall useless class anyways, and I lost half a grade in science for bad attitude, which again, had nothing to do with my brain. Mr. Diego had said I was combative and antisocial when working in groups, and even though I had aced every test given to me, he was not going to reward my behavior.
Mr. Diego was the first person I put on my list to make pay later.
That summer I begged my parents to let me go to Granada. I knew that Kyle was headed to Foster, and the last thing I wanted was another four years watching him mentally lap me in each class. I needed a place to thrive, a place where I could invent myself again, become someone else. I laid out my reasons carefully and clinically to both of them, showing the logic in my decision in each and every point by point.
That was when they told me my mom was dying.
Of course, they didn’t put it to me that way. They explained she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and that they were going to treat it as aggressively as possible. They told me not to worry and that things would be okay. My mom would give me a sickly smile and say that everything works out the way it is supposed to and that I had to have faith in that. That was June. By August she was dead. My father reeked of booze as they handed him her ashes, he shook his head, and they gave them to me instead. As we drove home, he told me he never wanted to see the urn again. It was the last time we talked about my mother.
Because I was cursed, of course, I ended up having to go to Foster High instead of Granada, and my Sisyphean torture of following Kyle Stilleno began all over again.
It was freshman year when I began stealing my dad’s smokes. Though I wasn’t fond of the habit, taking the time between classes to light up in the alley was the closest thing I could find to a hiding place from the galloping herd of zombies who made up my peers. It was there, between third and fourth period, struggling to not cough as I inhaled, that I met Sammy.
She was the only other freshman in the alley, and it was obvious no one was talking to her either since every other smoker was older than us. She gave me a small smile, and I nodded back, and that was how it started. Every day I would go out to smoke, she would be there, and we’d nod and smile at each other. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but when all you’ve known is open disdain, a smile and a nod is like winning the social lottery.
It took us a week before we talked to each other, and even then it was just her asking me if I had an extra smoke she could bum. From there we worked up to names, how we both hated the school, and by extension the town. She told me that she had decided to join the drama club to escape the endless press of small-minded people and that I should look into it.
It was the closest thing I ever had to a friend asking me to join something.
It turned out that the drama club was Foster High’s secret island of misfit toys. It was a hodgepodge collection of losers and nerds who were seeking asylum from the jock culture that ruled our school. We were all high school pariahs who possessed little to no social skills, which made fitting in even harder than it normally was. I fit in almost instantly, and within a month or so was practically running the place, which was also something new for me. The drama geeks became the center of my universe for two reasons. One, because having people listen to me was intoxicating, and two, Kyle had nothing to do with drama club.
I began to worry less and less about my academic standing and more and more about being in control of drama club. I passed freshman year easily but not with the GPA I had become accustomed to in junior high. I didn’t care because that summer I had a group of friends to hang out with, and that made all the difference in the world. None of us was old enough to drive, so we spent the majority of our time at each other’s houses watching bootleg anime and hating on everyone who wasn’t us. I learned all the lines to
Rocky Horror
, discussed Buffy in great detail, and tried my best not to dwell on the fact my mother was dead.
My dad finally relented and let me turn our basement into a bedroom, which pretty much meant that the only time I had to see him was when I ate or went to the bathroom. That summer everything changed for me. I embraced the fact I was a freak and would never fit in to normal society. I had a pack now, a group of like-minded individuals who felt the same way I did, and that made me strong.
Which made going back to school that much easier.
I stopped caring about who was popular or what people were saying to each other. My days were measured in how much time I could hide in the drama department and away from everyone I hated. Though I never once stood up on stage and said a line of dialogue, every production Foster High put on was mine. The thought of standing in front of a crowd and acting made me want to throw up. I was much more relaxed behind the scenes calling the shots. I watched jock after jock stand up on stage and make a fool out of himself with each play, each time making sure that if something went wrong with the production, it looked like it was their fault.
Sammy became my best friend, and we ended up doing everything together. She was with me the night the Vine played
Donnie Darko,
and we both sneaked in bottles of schnapps to drink during the movie. Afterward, when we stumbled out onto First Street, we wandered into a group of equally drunk jocks who saw us and thought it was open season on drama fags. They threw empty beer bottles at us while they mocked the way we dressed. It was that night that I met Brad Greymark.
Of course he was cute, and of course he was in perfect shape. I mean, what jock isn’t? He had done something impressive on the baseball team that other people seemed to like and had instantly been propelled from normal hot brah to superstar overnight. He began dating the sheriff’s daughter, and people around here thought he could walk on water. They had even made a sign for his lawn that proclaimed him MVP and everything.
I could have produced a play that cured cancer and there wouldn’t have been so much as a flier made for my front lawn.
Facial features that made him look like a character from a CW show were distorted into ugly hatred as he hurled his half-empty beer bottle at me. Though the pack of them seemed like rabid dogs, Brad’s hatred was a bit louder than everyone else’s, his loathing closer to the surface than his friends’. It was something I should have noticed at the time. It’s important to point out that Kelly Aimes was there that night too. Though Brad was taking center stage, as he normally did, Kelly was there throwing bottles and cursing me out with as much gusto as the rest of them. I didn’t notice because I was too busy dodging flying glass, but I just want to point out, he was there in the parking lot that night.
As Sammy and I walked home, I honestly thought to myself that this was the worst Foster had to show to me, that those boys in their homosexual rage was the ugliest this town could get, and I’d survived. Neither one of us was hurt; we were both laughing at the intensity the morons felt for people they didn’t know. I really did think for a moment if this was as bad as it got, I could survive this.
Of course, no matter how far down you think you’ve fallen, there is always a place beneath that you can sink to with enough effort.
Turns out my father was out drinking at the Rodeo Club that night, and he had watched his son get verbally abused with the rest of the drunken patrons, all of them laughing at the punishment the freaks were getting for being out on the street. I suppose it was lucky for me that no one could connect me to my father, because the beating he gave me that night for almost embarrassing him was so painful that I spent the next week walking very slowly to avoid further injury. I can only imagine how much more he would have done if the people at the bar had laughed at him as they’d laughed at me. It was the first time he had actually waled on me for being something other than what he had wanted me to be, and it wouldn’t be the last.
That summer became the summer my dad tried to force me to be normal through corporal punishment.
He threw away all my movies and comic books. Posters of bands I liked were torn down and thrown away along with any clothes he deemed “not normal,” which meant almost anything. Jeans and plain T-shirts were enforced on me as I went to work with him every morning and labored in the fields with a handful of undocumented workers who did the job for pennies on the hour. I found it ironic the illegal aliens were getting paid more than me.