Damaged (6 page)

"What the fuck!"

He'd collided with a senior.

Adam looked so silly as he stopped. Face puckered like he'd eaten bad cheese, he waited for the severe blow to crush his nose.

“
Yeah, you bump me 'gain, the back'a ya' head goin' run into the pipeline." The kid was white, even though he talked black.

Relief. He'd practically escaped death. Any other time, he would be hamburger by now. But they both passed each other like nothing had happened.

Adam entered his sixth period class with two minutes to spare. Last class of the day, no more surprises—

Bullshit.

There were always overlooked surprises in any public place. On the bus, walking to the school exit… the only thing close to a guarantee was being home behind locked doors.

The teacher, Mr. Saunters, an overly energetic, shiny-headed bald man with a severe limp, entered the room right before the ring of the bell ended.

“
Hey, class, I graded your percentage papers, so you will be getting them back today." He reached into a folder on his desk and took out a stack of stapled papers.

"How'd we do?" John Spokes, the ultimate class clown, asked.

"Not too bad. All pretty good grades, really."

Adam was dumbfounded.
Good grade? Me? How? In what universe? A fluke.

"Except one," the teacher said.

Adam knew it.
Just please don't mention the name, please don't say the name!

"The F paper goes to—" he said, handing them back. "Mr. Adam McNicols."

His face went flush.

Heads turned, eyes focused. John clapped. "Good," he said, looking at the failure, "we got an underachiever on our hands!"

Kids laughed, shook their heads, or did nothing. In Mr. Saunter's eyes, Adam was nothing but a mistake.

The class went on... and on... and on. The color never evened out in Adam's face. His eyes, however, never separated from his Timex. The minutes crawled ahead, and Adam was far more focused on the upcoming rattle of the bell than the teacher explaining something about ridiculous fractions. Numbers met nothing to Adam; being released from prison within minutes meant as much to him as Christians’ salvation through Jesus Christ. This was his favorite part of school, the reward for being insulted and assaulted.

Bell=freedom.

It was coming, despite that nagging mathematician writing on the board, who occasionally looked at him like he did not belong here.

Seven minutes to go!

"Now, this number, you divide by X, times Y—"

Use real numbers! This isn't fucking English class!

"It's really very simple," the teacher said. "All you got to do is understand what the prime number is. Then you solve the problem."

"Ain't nothing to it," Spokes said, "a monkey could do it." Then he looked at Adam. "Well, monkeys with half a brain."

Adam did not even hear him.

Six minutes more until the cage opened.

"You see, class, math isn't just numbers, it's about understanding and analyzing what life throws at you. It's the universal language. Some people believe that we could communicate solely by numerical values, alone. Let me show you something. If you add—"

Hurry!

Five minutes.

Adam bounced his feet off the floor, excited. He hoped the bell would ring earlier than expected, as it sometimes did. It could be his worst enemy or his best friend.

His eyes watched the escalating digits. Soon, he would get to go back to his safe haven.

Four minutes.

Adam lifted his head and looked at the other kids, all of whom actually seemed interested in this math shit. John puckered his lips at the weirdo in the black clothes.

Three minutes and the chains are off.

"And what is the answer?" the teacher asked Peg, the sometimes pretty, sometimes ugly—depending on if she was wearing make-up or not—girl in the front row.

"Thirty-eight point nine-ninety-two?"

"Yes!"

The bell screamed.

Adam threw his books in his left hand and was the first one to leave the room.

The halls flooded with kids coming, going, stopping, talking. Adam just went, headed straight toward the front of the building, needing to get to fresh air. He imagined how good it would be to get home, sit down, and take a load off. Watch some television, write a little, listen to some Rammstein.

He finagled his way through the jungle as quickly as he could and, rather speedily, reached the entrance. Here, the kids looked like ants tunneling their way through the ant farm to escape the bully with the magnifying glass. People shoved Adam every which way; he was barely tall enough to see over most of the juniors and seniors. They would have probably trampled him to death had the fire alarm rang, leaving behind a bloody pulp.

"Got a smoke?" a young man questioned him.

Adam was so lost in the ocean of sharks to hear the kid with the full beard.

"Hey you! Got a smoke?"

Adam looked aside. He heard it this time, and wanted to tell him yes just to avoid any kind of unnecessary confrontation.

"No," Adam said, "I don't smoke. Sorry." It just shot out like a bullet. He was just finally glad to get out the door.

***

The buses were lined up, rumbling, waiting, their doors spread open like accordions, their exhausts filling the air with toxic fumes. Kids stuffed into different ones. In the near distance was Number 11, Adam's ride back home.

I'm not coming back here tomorrow. I'll rage before I give in. Fuck school.

Adam hurried to it the whole time, staring at his savior, trying to see how full it was already. A few kids in front, but the back was vacant.

For the second time of the day,
he fell
as he ran to catch the Number 11. Harder this time, and not by accident. Someone from behind had shoved him. His knees hit the concrete with a pretty loud pop. Pain shot up his thighs. Embarrassment swam through his whole body.

The laughter was so loud, it could have drowned out a fireworks display. He sat there for a full moment and did not desire to see who'd pushed him or why; why not was probably the better question.

Adam stood a second later and jogged slowly into the bus. This time, the bus driver refused to make eye contact with him.

"He's a—"

"What a real—"

"What do you think he—"

"I don't give a shit—"

He went to the very back, sat, and bowed his head.

The bus was on its way not more than five minutes later. They were the second ones to leave the lot and the first ones to travel west. Adam hid back in his own little world.

He began to rouse by the time they were one block away from Barb's Tanning Salon. By now, some more harsh reality set in:

Everyone hates me. No one likes me or cares. So many people think I'm a nobody, and if that many people do, how could all of them be wrong? They have to be right. I'm the ultimate victim.

What a freak—

Maybe I'm worse than Osama...

It's winter, not fall!

Or Hitler...

Don't look at me, moron—

Maybe I should just...

The squeak of a bus door opening...

He spotted the roof of his house over some pine trees through the window. He stood and left the bus, free at last. The overbearing shadow of stress was gone as quickly as it had appeared over seven hours ago, like a one hundred pound boulder neutralizing into dust. For him, it was a better climax than masturbation.

Adam finally headed home. Nobody bothered him now, nobody gave him a dirty look.

When he made it to the big tree at the beginning of the alley, he met with his security blanket. Where school was his prison, his home was his sanctuary.

Without a negative thought in the world, he ran across the street, two-stepped up onto the porch, and entered.

Ah... the smell... that familiar welcoming smell.

"Hi, Adam," his mother said from the living room.

Home, but not alone, dammit.
"Hi," Adam said thoughtlessly.

"You want pizza for supper?"

"I suppose," he grunted, breezing up the stairs.

Angela sighed, heart aching. Her only son often ignored her and never wanted to spend time with her anymore. She knew he was growing up, becoming more independent, but she felt like she was losing him somehow.

***

Adam entered his room, locked the door, and went straight for the remote. As his ass kissed the bed, his thumb pressed power, and a breaking news story from Channel 11 appeared.

"We're just bringing you a story from Blake County. Two
cars
have been
stolen
earlier today from downtown, in the parking lot of Telecommunications Company. Now, whether they were—"

Adam sighed. "Oh, who cares."

He turned it to ABC Family Channel. Full House, his favorite television show, had just started. The current episode was almost over, but another was lined up for three-thirty. He was a little disinterested in most of the humor-based episodes, but he could watch the serious, dramatic, heart-to-heart ones over and over again. His friends made fun of him for even liking the sitcom. He did because a satisfying home life was something he'd always wanted but never felt he had.

"Adam! Adam!" his mom cried out.

Adam rolled his eyes and watched Danny Tanner.

"What?!"
he screamed.

The door opened. His mother entered. "You don't have to bite my head off, y'know. God, all I wanted to know was what kind of pizza you wanted. Now, do you want pizza, or not? Tell me now."

Adam thought about it. As he did, his mother took a glance around his room. It looked like a disaster—a home makeover show gone terribly wrong. Mounds of clothes littered the floor, and soda cans overflowed the trash bin and had piled onto the floor in heaps. The smell was not pleasant or awful but completely stale, like air sucked dry of its freshness.

"Adam, would you clean your room?"

Adam sighed. "I guess."
I'll do it when I'm good and ready.

"Dominos," he said.

"Okay," she said, taking a last look at the pigsty. "Today? You'll clean it after you eat?"

"Yes, mom, I'll clean it. God."

She left and closed the door behind her. Adam turned off the television and flipped his middle finger at the wall, toward his mother in the hall.

"Nag, nag, nag. Jesus Christ!"

He laid back on his bed and gazed ceiling-ward. Responsibility and discipline were not Adam's specialties. He hated picking up, cleaning, vacuuming, mopping,
school
. If it meant doing something other than relaxing, he didn't do it. Just taking one small, light garbage bag to the curb was a back-breaker for him. His heart was simply not in it. Sometimes—many times—he thought even writing was too much work. It was
this
that he kicked himself in the ass for. He beat himself up when he skipped too many days of typing. Also, creative juices could be unreliable at times. Depression took a lot of that away.

Pain
came with a vengeance. It usually came back fairly sudden when he had the time to do nothing but think. Right now, he spiraled downward into a stupor of self-pity, a better friend to him than lifelong Chris. He spent more time here than anywhere else. He knew no one else would feel sorry for him, so he felt like he had to do it himself. Constantly, he attended to his feelings of worthlessness, trying desperately to find the reason for his deformed place in the world. So many questions to answer and no way to answer single a one.

He felt like a steamer about to screech, a nuclear missile about to explode. The temper had come, was growing. His sanity was fading away. He wanted to attack the nearest person: his mother. In his bouts of rage, he almost always went for the closest target. Not to assault physically but psychologically.

"Adam!" his mom yelled.

He breathed heavily. His opponent was now standing either right outside his door or on the staircase.

"Adam, can you look here a minute?"

Adam jumped to his feet, causing a small quake in the floorboards. His hand clutched the door knob so firmly that the wood around it cracked.

The door flew open and the match was on.

"Whhhhhat!" he screamed at her. She was standing six steps down from the top, shocked by his sudden transformation. "What the hell do you want? You always fucking want something!" His face was ready to burst.

She was quiet, confused. "What are you yelling at me—all I wanted to know—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, want, want, want, want. Why don't you do whatever you want on your own free time and
leave me the hell alone!"

She hated this Mr. Hyde. Where had she gone wrong in the experiment?