Damaged (10 page)

He is a devil worshiper. I guarantee it. Weirdo.

"What the hell!” Adam burst out. "What the hell's wrong with her? Every day, she's crying over that bastard, complaining about guys and how shitty they treat women, and every single day she—any woman—treats me like crap for no reason at all when, in reality, I'm the nice guy, the guy they dream about? Maybe not physically, but it's fucked up. I'd give her the world, but she'd rather be abused. It's not just her, either. It's all women. They want a guy to sweep them off their feet, yet when he comes, they're like: ewww, gross. And when some loser comes around, they drool all over him? Jesus, I can spot those guys from a mile away. Why can't they?"

“
I understand that," Chris said, "but you got to realize that those guys are on a higher level than you socially. They're popular, wealthy—"

"—They're not on a higher level; they're on a much lower level than me."

"Who would you rather be with… Shakira? Or the bum lady under Guffurn’s Bridge?"

Adam hated him for saying this and implying that he was as low in the ranks of life as a drunken woman who lived under a bridge. But he could not think of any comeback at all. His mind went blank.

If I only had a backbone.

“
Girls are bad," Chris started, "usually when choosing men, but who would you think they'd rather date? A guy who spends time writing horror stories and is very shy, or guys with convertibles who are the life of every party?"

Go fuck yourself, Chris, always one-upping me.

"It's still not right. You're—you—don't—it doesn't make any sense!"

Chris actually felt superior. He loved being right.

So did Adam.

***

Adam stayed up for most of the night, too awake to go to sleep and too tired to stay awake. He dreaded going to school tomorrow—within hours now, actually. Visions of kids tearing him apart like a pack of hungry wolves flashed in his mind. Kids, from middle and from high school—thousands of them—were badmouthing him, beating him with spiked baseball bats, and growing stronger every time a drop of his blood hit the surface of the Blake High School hallway floors. There was nowhere to run or hide. No face among them carried any hint of empathy or compassion. They were robbing him of everything he was, everything he could have been.

Too scared to fight back and too hurt to cry out for help, he felt himself dying an ultimate death. Then, in the background, behind the hoard of wicked teenagers, stood many teachers, arms crossed, eyes red, grinning at the sacrificial spectacle—

"Adam, get up!" his mother shouted.

He opened his eyes, but the dream he was having still felt right beside him. "Mom, can I please stay home today? I don't feel good. Seriously."

"Sure you can. You can take my car for a spin and backpack across the desert, while you're at it. You're going to school."

Adam remembered those kids’ faces and his own feeling of utter vulnerability…

"I am
not
fucking going. Do you hear me?! You listen to me, goddamn it. I swear to God I'll kill myself before I go back there!"

"Fine," she said, rolling her eyes. She
really
wasn't in the mood to fight today. She was tired, had a headache, and had a very important meeting for the day ahead.

Oh, the days Adam could play out forever.

He was still waiting for the usual threat of hers. But it never came. Before he knew it, he was sleeping peacefully, and his mother had gone to work. Perfectly imperfect felt more correct.

Ah, one day left till a two day vacation!

He awoke at 1:37, pissed, ate breakfast—buttered waffles with loads of syrup—and got onto the internet. He had three fairly good friends on AOL, all guys, two his age and one in his early twenties. He had just as much trouble making friends in cyberspace as he did in person. Some of his on-line relationships had deteriorated into heated disputes, usually because Adam could not take criticism or because he would call people names because they did not share his opinions. Most of the time, he entered chat rooms just waiting for the wrong person to say the wrong thing so that he could unleash hell. He even had an army of enemies online; except here, he chose them instead of them choosing him. In here, he felt that picking fights was his way of getting even with his classmates, in some obscure fashion. And here he did not back down from confrontations and did not let someone insult him without him giving them a piece of his mind.

His AOL account had almost been deleted last weekend for his calling someone a “retarded, cocksucking motherfucking bastard” in an instant message because they said they hated his screen name. He received an email the following day that any more outbursts of slander would result in a total cancellation from America Online.

"Email, email, email," he said, clicking onto just that.

0 in his mailbox.

He clicked off that and went into the chat room: Teen Chat. It always surprised him just how many teens were in here during school hours.

"Anyone got Tequila?" Aarate626 typed.

Adam felt like typing an insult, such as:
why, alcoholic? Stupid drunk! I hope you drink yourself to death, moron!
But even to his own surprise, Adam did not say anything rash.

"My poison is Vodka, dude," Sk8r811 wrote.

"Miller's the shit, but it doesn't matter, does it? They all do the same thing, right?" Hawk74777 commented.

Adam was disgusted by the content of their conversation. He'd only taken one sip of alcohol before, and hadn't even swallow it, it tasted so bad. He openly thought drinking was wrong. His father used to be an abusive alcoholic back when he was a toddler, and he'd seen Josh shit-faced on a few occasions.

It makes people act like idiots, it's not good for your body, it creates more problems than not, and—

The golden truth:
That's what the demons in school that pick on me do—drink, party, get wasted, screw and start trouble.

Look at them! Never will I fall into that temptation. I'd die before I'd get drunk. I'm above all that.

Adam sat on pins and needles, dying to piss off these moronic alcoholics.
Maybe if I—

Don't do it, or else no more chatting ever again.

Sk8er811 typed: "Yo, I wish there was a way to get drunk instantly, like smoking pot."

Peebug39 wrote: "Two different animals, Sk8er, but when combined, makes one hell of a good time!"

Then, Roseybabe1234 typed in something that Adam totally admired: "You guys crazy? That stuff is no good for you. Why would you do that?"

Adam couldn't help himself: "It's a disgrace to the body," he typed.

The backlash began.

Sk8er811 wrote: "Yeah, and what are you? Mr. Perfect? Probably Bible Thumpers."

Hawk 74777 typed: "Or pussies who don't know how to have fun."

Roseybabe1234: "Can we talk about something else?"

Sk8er811: "Like what? Puppies and ice cream?"

Adam snickered and wrote, "At least we're not burnouts that sit around brain-numb every two days, going: 'dude, what's goin' on? I'm soooo messed up!' It's retarded."

Hawk74777 wrote: "That's not what we do, for your information. How can you even knock it? I bet you never tried it."

Sk8er811: "Only thing he's been drunk on is his mother's breast milk, probably. LOL."

It was on now.

"Come on guys, let's not fight," Roseybabe1234 wrote.

"Are you still attached to your momma by the cord, Antisocial11?" Sk8er811 said to Adam's screen name.

"At least I don't follow in everyone's footsteps; that's what drug addicts do," Adam wrote.

"What!" Hawk74777 wrote. "Drug addict? From sucking on weed once in a while?"

"Mark my words. It leads to worse drugs," Adam commented.

Sk8er811 wrote: "Are you religious or something?"

"No, but I have common sense, unlike you. Grow up."

"Hey, freak, we don't need a lecture!"

Freak... freak... reak... eak... k...

Adam's face turned red. He now wanted this kid to get high and overdose to death on heroin—

“
Hello," Roseybabe1234 wrote to Adam on instant message. But Adam was still in the mood to brawl.

"These guys are really dumb," she wrote. Adam cracked a smile.

Sk8er811 typed: "Probably got Jesus so far stuck up your ass that you don't know your shit from your brain. LOL!"

Hawk74777 typed: "LMFAO."

“
Fucking stupid sons of bitches! God!" Adam said aloud.

"Hey, you want to go to a private chat?" Roseybabe1234 typed to him.

Adam came very close to closing her message, but didn't. He wanted to continue arguing with the masked idiots but found some faint comfort in this girl. As far as he could remember, no other girl had ever instant messaged him before and invited him to a private chat. She sent him a link, inviting him to the room: Sunny1963058253.

Before he left Teen Chat, he typed, "Catch you guys later. Losers."

***

"So," Roseybabe1234 typed, "what's your name?"

"Adam. Yours?"

"Erin. Cool. I always liked that name—Adam. How old are you?"

"I'll be 16 in two months. You?"

"I'll be 13 in two. Where you from?"

"Weirton, Ohio. How about you?"

"I'm in Bransville, PA. It's pretty close, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I think so," Adam typed. "So, you're an anti-drugs and all that too?"

"Yep. Good way to be, y'know? Why would anybody put that junk in their body? I knew one guy friend of my dad's who almost died from doing drugs."

"Gee, sorry to hear that."

"Yeah, it's a sad story. He has flashbacks and forgets where he is sometimes. Never in a million years would I do that," she wrote.

"I've been asked to do that stuff by one of my friends—Josh—but it just never appealed to me. No real use in it."

"That's good." Roseybabe1234 posted a smiley face up on screen. "Not a lot of people like us left."

"I agree."
Very much so.

"Adam, can I put you on my buddy list?"

Adam smiled. Even in his genuine smiles, there was a dank splash of pain. "Sure," he typed.

"Oh, and add me too, if you wanna."

"Done," he said. He quickly did so.

They talked on and on about everything: from likes and dislikes, to the pets they had, to their favorite foods—and Adam, even for a short while, came close to feeling good about himself. He’d made a new AOL friend who shared with him many common interests and similar views. She also seemed, at the very beginning, to accept him without any indifference at all.

Conflict came soon enough the following morning:

His mom asked him to go to school.

Adam refused.

She pleaded with him to go.

He refused angrily.

She demanded.

He told her to go fuck herself.

Holding the cell phone to her ear, Angela threatened to call to truant officer.

Last day... two day vacation, and Chris spends the night.

Not happy about it, and bitching about it on his way to the car, Adam went.

***

His mother drove him there today since she was headed to the mall, which wasn't far from Blake High, anyway. Adam much rather liked her driving him there than going on the bus with a bunch of strange-looking unknowns.

On the way, Angela flicked on the radio station 10.06, a music meltdown. To Adam's poor ears, 10.06 was a love song station unfortunately low on commercial time. No audio vibes hurt his ears more than men and women singing about true love, sunshine, flowers, and beauty. It was like salt being poured on open wounds. He would have rather bashed his head against the window than to believe even half of what those people sang about. He didn't know the first thing about love or relationships, nor did he want to.

Truth be told, he was petrified of the pain that such a powerful emotion could bring if it went sour. Possibly more painful than the people who hurt him intentionally. He didn't love a soul, especially not himself.

"Well, here you are," his mom said. "Get some good grades." She did something that really sparked a flame in Adam—she leaned over to kiss him. One immense no-no. Shows of affection, public or private, were like blows to Adam's stomach. He could not even remember a time during his childhood when he’d allowed his mom to kiss or hug him. Today he almost fell out of the car when she went for the attack. He did not wave farewell, and he did not look back after he closed the door behind him.

Angela watched him as he entered the building, wondering if her son still loved her anymore.

The school day was average, as far as school days went for Adam. A few kids in homeroom made some remarks about his “weirdness”; in English class, the teacher demanded he go to detention after school today; one kid in the cafeteria called him an untalented, devil-worshiping writer; and one boy he'd never seen before shoved him to the ground.