Damaged (4 page)

Pain. Everlasting. Slowly.

***

Adam's second period class, Science and Nature, and his third period class, History, went by fairly easily. He did not learn much, for he did not pay attention.

I'm the next great American horror writer!

Adam was probably the most anti-educational teenager in school. What real point was there to learn about Photosynthesis? How was that useful in life?

I'm not going to nurse a greenhouse, for Christ's sakes.

And for what reason was there to learn about ancient Babylonians who fought a bunch of wars hundreds or thousands of years ago?

Why learn about history? That's all it is—ancient history.

No. The only thing he wanted to know was where to send his stories after they were finished. That's it.
Hopefully make a million bucks and prove everybody wrong.

The bell rang at 11:55, signaling the end of third period and the beginning of lunch. After throwing his books back into the locker and snatching his bagged lunch, Adam headed toward the cafeteria.

The halls always cleared out quickly, but once you saw the jumble of teenagers chatting, chewing and making farting sounds in the lunch room, you'd understand why. The cafeteria was a barnyard of pizza-faced, facial-haired, squeaky-voiced, pubescent boys and girls. Too many to count. Adam was one of the shortest and thinnest of them all.

He took his normal table at the end, apart from the flock, by the window partitions that gave view to the Blake High football stadium. This had been his little area since day one.

He shoved his hand into his lunch bag and removed the item he always ate first: a nutritious king-sized Hershy bar. His mother always packed the same things together: the candy bar, Ho-hos, and a bag of Lays Potato Chips. Proper nutrition wasn't a main concern in the McNicols' household. Adam's mother was in good health and ate pretty poorly. His father, before the divorce, had had high cholesterol, and though pudgy, seemed to be in good health. Adam had never given fruits, vegetables or meats—besides burgers—much consideration. His main meals were Sloppy Joes and fries, pizza with extra cheese, sometimes even ice cream and nutty bars in place of a dinner.

Adam devoured his Hershy bar and went straight for the chips—the great exchange. Chips always tasted better right after chocolate. As he crunched his way to the bottom of the bag, he peered out the window at the gloomy skies, the rolling green hills in the near distance, and even some teenagers sneakingly smoking cigarettes. Nothing about any of it was too stimulating. All a waste of time from a fucked up God.

He looked back in the cafeteria at all the kids. They laughed, shoved each other in good fun, made funny faces at one another. None of them looked at him.

That's better
, Adam told himself.
I'd rather be invisible than a bloody pulp.

Then again, if they dislike me, then that means they know I'm alive, but at what cost?

A hand fell on his shoulder. Adam flinched.

"Just me, just me," Josh told him.

"Oh, hey, man," Adam said, "what's happening?”

"Not much. Got to stay for detention after school. Mrs. Berkin's a fucking bitch. She thought I was cheating."

"Were you?" Adam smiled.

Josh sat across the table from him and chuckled. "Yeah, so I did. You expect me to learn that algebra crap?"

Adam smiled, no longer alone.

Josh had been Adam's friend for three years, since seventh grade, where they'd met in reading class. Josh was not his best friend but his best and second
only
friend. If not for Josh and Chris, Adam would have had nobody. He simply did not have the social skills to change his stature. Josh was nowhere near as quiet as Adam was but still hung out with very few people and was known best for his raunchy humor and brilliant artistic abilities. He could draw a perfect representation of anything in under thirty minutes with a simple number two pencil. He could also make the coldest cynic die laughing by acting like a complete idiot whenever he ingested too much sugar. He and Adam got along well; they often watched older, lower-budget horror movies together whenever either spent a night at the other’s house.

"Can I steal a few chips? I lost my dollar somewhere and I'm starving," Josh asked Adam.

Adam handed him the bag. "Here, you can have the rest."

"Cool," he said, taking the bag. "Write any new stories lately? I liked that last one about the demon that possessed George W. and had him become the next Antichrist."

"That was a while ago. I've written five new ones since then: The Swamp, A Bloody Present, The Thing from Mars, uh, one about aliens I haven't named yet, and The Doorway into Oblivion."

"Cool," Josh said, tilting his head back and dumping the remaining potato chip crumbs down his throat. "You should have somebody proofread them when you're done, though."

Adam felt a shift in the air. To him, any form of criticism was the kiss of death.

"'Cause in that one, I found a few small errors."

Adam winced.
I did my best. C'mon.

"Yeah," Adam said.

Josh, noticing his friend’s disappointment, said, "Just a suggestion. You draw any new pictures lately?"

"Not many. I drew one of this zombie hand coming out of the ground. Don't have it on me, though. What about you?"

Josh looked out at the crowd for a moment. "Just stuff in art class. Stupid things. Getting better at shading."

"I have so much trouble shading," Adam said.

"Yeah, well, the trick is to make it look like you don't shade at all. Helps if you got a good light. Practice first on drawing from a normal black and white picture of anything."

Adam nodded. He looked aside at the growing mass of teenagers, looked back at Josh, and then back at the crowd. His eyes locked on her—the one, the only, Erica Janson. She was somewhat short, but to Adam, she could have been three feet tall with a limp and still would have been beautiful. Her eyes were big and brown like a puppy's and sparkled brilliantly no matter how little light was in the room. Her hair was short, dark brown, the bangs somewhat long, draping down her forehead and face in thin, spaced strands. She always wore make-up, never too much, with the perfect touch of eyeliner that always brought out her eyes. She was a high-class babe who had it all: friends, money, popularity. She could have had anybody.

Adam, no matter how small on the rector scale, wanted her badly. Boys wanted to get into her pants, and girls wanted to steal her unrivaled beauty.

"You horndog," Josh said before he even saw what Adam was looking at. Adam's drool might as well have been puddling on the floor.

"Erica, Erica," Josh said, "you really like her, don't you?"

"I'm in love with her. She's the most beautiful... I get attracted to other girls and all, but when I look at her, it's different."

He stared. Josh sighed.

"Not in a million years."

Knock it off, already! Maybe.

"I don't know. Someday I'm going to ask her out."

"Yeah, and she'll laugh in your face. You've liked her since seventh grade, and you've never come close to approaching her. There are other fish in the sea..."

Adam's heart ached with rejection just from Josh's saying this, so he looked away from the princess, who sat beside Bain Wells, the best high school football player in the area.

Adam's heart ached more.

"It's a no-go," Josh told him. "Nobody can have her unless they're Bain Wells, the asshole. She's a stuck up bitch, anyways."

"Don't call her that, man. You don't know her, do you?"

Josh shrugged his shoulders. Adam looked back at her, then turned away for good just as the jock kissed her.

Oh, the jealousy.

"I'd kick his ass," Adam said.

"Whhhhat? He's the best wrestler around here. I heard he broke Dravid Smith's nose with no effort. Dravid, of all people!"

Dravin was one tough son of a bitch. He was up there with the Gasher brothers, the dirty rednecks who sometimes picked on Adam. Dravin was an oversized ogre with enough power in his fists to knock out a horse. His lack for speed was the only contribute preventing him from beating Wells in that fight.

"I don't care," Adam said. "He might be quick, but that doesn't matter. He's a fuckin—"

"An idiot and an asshole. But he'd hurt you, Adam."

Adam was getting aggravated.

"Yes. I bet you I can. Honestly. I mean, he's not
that
big."

"But Dravid
is
."

Adam watched his enemy kiss his beloved. "Maybe it was a fluke. I could take that motherfucker anyday—" Adam quickly lowered his voice. Three tables away, Larry Cox, one of Dravid's acquaintances, the fattest kid in Blake High, was listening. Adam did not want trouble with Bain. Or Dravid. He was afraid Larry would overhear him, go tell them what he said, and have hell to pay.

Adam matched eyes with Larry. To Josh, Adam said: "Maybe not. He is
really
tough."

Larry snickered, shook his head, and shoveled his food. Adam looked down and seemed to fall out of reality for a moment. Had a trained assassin been aiming a gun in the cafeteria, searching for the weakest target, it would not have been difficult to find.
He
was sitting with Josh.

"Did you hear me?" Josh wondered.

"Hmm?" Adam said.

"I said we should do something this weekend."

Adam did not buy what he said. Josh said that often, but when the time came around, he was already busy doing something else with someone else. Although on some occasions, like once a month, two at most, they did hang out.

Adam said, "I think Chris is staying over at my house. I asked my mom if both of you guys could stay, but she said no. She only lets more than one person stay about three times a year."

"Yeah. My parents are weird, too. One time, John Carod stole a beer from our fridge and they never let him come back again. They lie and say I'm not there half the time when he calls."

"John—I fucking hate him," Adam said. "He talks about people behind their backs, makes fun of people with problems they can't help, and when somebody complains about one of his problems, his face gets red and he wants to fight."

Josh sighed. John was one of
his
closest friends. They had known each other longer than he had known Adam. Also, they were on the same page about many more topics, unlike him and Adam.

"I kind of know what you mean, but he's a good guy," Josh told him.

No! He is not!

Adam rolled his eyes. He finished his lunch and checked his watch. "Grrrrr. Almost time for the bell to ring. Three more classes to go. God, I can't wait till summer."

Josh smiled. "Why? School stress you out?"

"If I could, I'd torch this place and spit in the ashes."

Josh giggled. "It ain't that bad."

Adam laughed. He could not hold back on that extremely twisted piece of truth. "The hell it ain't. I hate it."

"Only five more months left," Josh said.

"Don't remind me." Adam buried his head and said, "I want to go hoooome."

The bell screamed. Kids shuffled and scampered away like fidgety bugs. The lunch room was now a tomb.

Adam was the last to leave.

***

The Section E halls cleared out pretty quickly as the awkward Adam made his way through the receding adolescents, making sure not to accidentally bump into anyone and inadvertently cause big trouble. God only knew it was his only kind of luck.

"What's uuuup, man? You been sick?" one boy asked a geeky-looking girl.

"Well, that's what I thought. Yes, I'm going to the party. Kegs and boos! And pussy. Can't beat that!"—a bowl-haired young man asked a tall, skinny boy with enormous lips.

"Oh yeah, he's soooo hot," a tall, chubby girl told her friend.

Adam looked up, shocked. He thought they were talking about him... but when the girl saw him, she sneered.

Adam went on down the hall toward his classroom, carrying with him a mound of disappointment.
'Oh yeah, he's soooo hot!'

But he was used to it. He was used to being Mr. Bulls-Eye, Mr. Reject. Both sides of a lose-lose coin. He didn't like these people, if they really were people. All Adam knew was that with every putdown, with every dirty look, he was plummeting deeper into a dark pit of no redemption. The emulsion of his soul was running thin. Was there a way out? A helping hand? Either way, he felt stranded further from the world with each new dawn.

The boys in the hall glanced at Adam and grimaced and snickered; the girls went by him like he was transparent.

The bell exploded at the very moment Adam's ass hit the seat. Here he was back in homeroom for the next half hour. On the chalkboard there was something written about the French Revolution. Adam didn't understand a word of it. It might as well have all been in Spanish.

The classroom was occupied by only nine kids, including Adam. Except for him, they all stood by the teacher's desk—seven boys and one girl—delving into a deep conversation about who could beat whose ass.