Paraworld Zero (4 page)

    Simon stopped to get a drink and noticed Butch standing next to an open
locker nearby. The teenager was trying to be inconspicuous but failed miserably. He wore a long,
black overcoat, steel-tipped boots, and a pair of dark sunglasses—attire that was very out of
character for the sophomore, especially since few people had ever seen him in the halls without
his letterman jacket.

    A moment later, Buz and Spike—along with three other seniors—congregated at
the locker. Buz and Spike looked like a couple of henchmen as they crowded around Butch in a
tight circle. Simon couldn’t see what they were doing because of their bulky overcoats.

    He took a big gulp of the cold, stale water and wondered if the liquid ever
circulated in the drinking fountain or if it just lay there stagnating day after day. While
musing on this singular thought, Simon turned his head just in time to catch a glimpse of
something he wished he hadn’t seen.

    Spike was handing Butch a gun.

    At that moment, Butch glanced over at Simon, and their eyes made contact.
Simon quickly turned his full attention to the drinking fountain, hoping Butch wouldn’t realize
he had seen the exchange.

    Panicked thoughts raced through his head.
Oh, wonderful water! Just drink’n water here. Nothing but cool crisp water. Didn’t see
anything at all. No need to come over here and kill me
…

    One more gulp and Simon knew he’d be sick. He turned his head ever so slowly
towards the lockers, but Butch and his minions had left.

    A loud ringing sound boomed throughout the hallways, causing the boy to jump
in fright. This time it wasn’t the sweet sound of angels he heard but the bitter sound of doom;
he was late for Mrs. Cunningham’s math class.

    Simon sprinted down the hallway as the last remnants of life disappeared into
the safety of the classrooms. The halls now appeared empty.

    Not bothering to stop at his locker, he dashed around a corner. Just one more
hallway to go and then——Simon didn’t see it coming. One moment he was running, and the next, his frail body
was thrown against a locker like a rag doll. He couldn’t feel the ground under his feet anymore,
and the back of his head pulsated with pain.

    A faint whisper sounded in his ear. “If I so much as hear you peep a word
about this, I’m going to make you wish you were never born.”

    Simon’s vision became blurry, but he still recognized the outline of Butch
pinning him against the steel wall. He grunted as the sophomore ground his shoulder blades into
the locker. Then he gasped when the bully pressed a cold knife against his throat.

    “Do you understand me?” the menacing figure threatened. Simon nodded.

    “
What’s going on here?
” roared Principal Harmon from behind.

    “Not one word,” the young man whispered as the knife vanished into the dark
recesses of his black overcoat. Butch gritted his teeth and gently placed Simon back on the
ground. “Nothing, sir,” he said coolly. “We were just playing.”

    “That’s not what it looked like to me,” the principal snorted. “You!” He
pointed a stubby finger at Simon. “Go to class.” He looked at Butch and growled, “And you. Come
with me.”

    “Why? I didn’t do anything.” The teenager folded his arms in defiance.

    Principal Harmon waved at Butch’s long overcoat and said, “Don’t be coy with
me. You know that’s against dress code.”

    Simon felt his heart start to beat again as he walked to his classroom. He
tried to forget what had just happened, but he couldn’t purge the memory of the knife from his
mind—how the sharp blade touched his skin and how deftly Butch handled the weapon. Butch had used
that knife before; Simon knew it. He searched his neck for blood but found none. Relief came for
a moment but fear returned when he reached Mrs. Cunningham’s classroom.

    He climbed up on his tippy-toes to look through the window in the door, but
his short height prevented him from seeing anything. The boy jumped up and down, but the dumb
window remained out of reach. He huffed. Why did God have to give him a body from the reject
pile?

    Feeling extremely nervous, he opened the large door and slipped into the
classroom. Luck was on his side! Mrs. Cunningham was facing the chalkboard. Simon glided down the
row towards his desk just as the old woman started to speak.

    “Mr. Kent,” she said, her smoke-stained lungs crackling, “since you’re
already up, please come to the chalkboard and solve this problem for us.” At that, she added a
couple more digits to the end of the equation.

    Simon moved towards the chalkboard slowly, as if he’d been asked to place his
head in a guillotine. He wondered which was worse.

    “Well? Come on, Simon. We don’t have all day,” coughed the teacher. Mrs.
Cunningham was the ideal model for an antismoking commercial. One view of her on TV would be
enough to scare anyone out of taking a puff.

    
It’s just a simple long-division problem,
Simon thought.
I can do this.

    All the arithmetic he had learned from seven long years of school lay before
him, taunting him. He picked up the yellow chalk and tackled the problem head-on, beginning with
simple division.

    
Screeeeech!
The chalk shrieked against the board, and everyone in the classroom cringed in
their seats. A few girls brushed the goose bumps from their arms, and Mrs. Cunningham closed her
eyes.

    “Sorry.”

    He finished the division part of the problem. Now for multiplication. It
seemed awfully hot in the room, all of a sudden, and Simon felt extremely uncomfortable. Next
came addition. The students started to chuckle.
Wait!
Next comes subtraction, not addition!
Simon undid the top button of his shirt and
continued.

    A woman’s voice came from the intercom in the ceiling. “Sorry for the
interruption, but is Simon Kent in the room?”

    “Yes, he’s here,” the teacher hacked.

    “Please have him go to Principal Harmon’s office immediately.”

    “
Oooooh,
” the kids in the room teased.

    “He’s on his way,” Mrs. Cunningham replied. “Well, Mr. Kent, you got a good
start on this problem. We’ll save it for you, so you can finish it when you come back.”

    Simon hunched his shoulders and sighed. Mrs. Cunningham stretched out her
hand to take the chalk and eraser, but before Simon could give them to her, he sneezed and sent a
mushroom cloud of dust into her face. He handed the chalk and eraser to Mrs. Cunningham—who
looked at them distastefully—and started his long trek to Principal Harmon’s office. The boy was
in no hurry to get back to the math problem, especially after the chalk incident, so he took his
sweet time.

    Along the way, he noticed a police officer carefully withdrawing a handgun
from a locker. The officer moved the gun with a pencil, so as to not put his fingerprints on the
weapon.

    “Oh, yeah. Come to Daddy,” the officer said, dropping the gun into a plastic
bag. He looked up at Simon. “You Simon?”

    “What?”

    “Are you Simon Kent?”

    “Oh. Yes,” Simon said sheepishly. He looked at the officer’s uniform and read
the name tag: McKenzie.

    “We got some questions for ya, kid. Follow me.”

    As Simon neared the principal’s office, he could hear an argument taking
place on the other side of the door. “You can’t hold me here,” Butch yelled. “That knife was just
a birthday present.”

    “Was this gun a birthday present, too?” Officer McKenzie asked as he walked
into the room bearing the weapon. The office overflowed with people—including Buz, Spike, Butch,
Principal Harmon, another officer named Petri, and a few more students whom Simon didn’t
recognize. Butch sat with handcuffs on his wrists, and a knife with a curved ivory handle in the
shape of a cobra lay on the hardwood table.

    Scowling at Simon, Butch sprang forward, attempting to head-butt the boy, but
Principal Harmon held him back. Simon hugged the doorframe.

    “You told him where it was, you little twerp!” Butch said.

    During the excitement, Spike jumped in front of the policemen to distract
them while two of the other seniors snuck behind the men and knelt on all fours. Most officers,
even ones stationed at high schools, wouldn’t have been so naive, but these two might as well
have gotten their badges from crackerjack boxes.

    “You know what, guys?” Spike said as he tapped the officers’ badges with his
fingertips. The men were slow to react. “You two are so oblivious, I bet you’d
fall
for anything.”

    “Huh?” both officers said in unison.

    “Exactly.”

    With his hands already on their chests, Spike applied a little pressure, and
the two men both toppled over the kneeling students.

    Butch exploded with energy, releasing himself from Principal Harmon’s grasp.
Still in handcuffs, he grabbed the knife off the table and lunged at Simon. Simon’s eyes widened
as adrenaline shot through his veins. He slammed the door and ran for his life.

    “We’re gonna get you, punk!” Butch yelled, kicking the door.

    Butch, Spike, and Buz exited Principal Harmon’s office unhindered and pursued
Simon down the empty hallway.

    Two seconds later, Principal Harmon rushed out the door, threatening, “You’ll
all be expelled for this!”

    

    

    “Here ya go, Butch,” Buz said, tossing the handcuff keys to his friend; he
had stolen them from Officer Petri during the commotion. While in full stride, Butch spun around
and caught the keys from behind. However, not wanting to slow himself down, he didn’t bother to
use them.

    Simon burst through the front doors of the school and headed towards the
crowded parking lot. Panting heavily, he made his way through the first few rows of cars before
he heard the three bullies yelling his name.

    From a bird’s-eye view, the parking lot looked like a garden with many
colorful vegetables, big and small: red ones, blue ones, yellow ones, even neon-green ones; cars
with low-riding bodies, others with jacked-up axles, and still others with mammoth tires. The lot
contained minivans, trucks, convertibles, old station wagons, and many other varieties. With such
a large selection of vehicles, Simon thought he could easily find a suitable hiding place, but to
his dismay, he found none.

    “There he is!” Buz shouted.

    Butch slid over the hood of a new Corvette. As he did so, the knife and keys
in his hands scraped the shiny red paint. Simon rolled under a large black truck just before Buz
could grab him.

    As if he’d done it a hundred times, Butch slid his hands down his body and
pulled the handcuffs to the front. He jumped onto the bed of the truck so he could pounce on the
seventh-grader when he came out the other side. Simon scurried like a centipede to the head of
the truck and inched his way to the next vehicle.

    “Come on out, Simon,” Spike called, looking under the black truck to get a
better view. “We just wanna talk.”

    “Yeah,
right!
” Simon blurted. “You want to cut me open and talk to my insides.”

    “He went under another car!” Buz exclaimed.

    Simon crawled out from under a jeep and raced towards the fence. Fortunately,
the large teenagers had trouble maneuvering through the tight maze of cars, thus giving the
slender boy a chance to flee.

    Simon made it to the outer fence and slipped through the bars just as Buz
grabbed his shirt. The fabric tore, and Simon catapulted down the busy street.

    “You guys go on without me,” Butch ordered. He fumbled with Officer Petri’s
keys while his friends struggled to climb over the tall fence.

    Simon stopped at the intersection and waited a few seconds for the light to
turn red so he could cross. Buz and Spike bolted towards him like crazed football players in a
sudden blitz.

    “Come on! Come on!” Simon shouted at the light. The cars zoomed by so fast
that he didn’t dare to cross early; besides, it was against his nature to break the law. Soon,
the light turned red, and Simon sprinted through the intersection.

    The streetlight turned green when Buz and Spike started to cross. A small car
swerved to miss the teenagers and ran into a fire hydrant. Water flew up into the sky and
splattered against the windshield of a bus, forcing the driver to veer into oncoming traffic and
smash into another car. None of the vehicles were going fast enough for anyone to get seriously
hurt, but the whole intersection became a big watery mess. The two seniors didn’t even look back
to admire the wreck they had caused. Simon was escaping, and they needed to catch up with
him.

    The young boy felt as though his lungs were about to burst. While still
running, he unzipped his fanny pack, pulled out his inhaler, and took a deep puff. He then
collided with an old lady who had just exited a corner store with her bags.

    Simon frantically gathered up her groceries, apologized, and ran off—but then
he stopped, suddenly realizing that he had dropped his inhaler. Looking back, he saw the plastic
dispenser resting in the gutter. His assailants were getting closer, so with bitter anguish, he
turned around and continued running.

    The old lady had taken only one step before she was knocked down again—this
time by Buz and Spike as they rushed by. She watched sadly as several cans of cat food rolled
down the sidewalk.

    While maneuvering though the sea of pedestrians, Buz and Spike came upon a
tall, slender woman wearing a red tank top and white Daisy Duke shorts. A little poodle stood by
her side on a leash.