Kinetics
Authors: Andrew Peed
Kinetics
By
Andrew Peed
Copyright © 2012 by Andrew Peed
All rights reserved.
Cover art by:
Ricardo Sandoval, Jr.
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http://tvlookplay.deviantart.com/
Cover model:
Natalie Paquette
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http://fetishfaerie-stock.deviantart.com/
True
thanks to my beautiful wife, Crystal, that has pushed me.
To
Daniel who always listened.
And
to my brother who wouldn’t stop asking for the next one.
So Kinetics marks a
large chunk of my free time. I began writing several years ago and worked with
a small group of people to get just the right idea. I’ve thrown the manuscript
more times than I care to admit and feel that the characters are part of me. I
had my hang ups sure but it was a great journey along the way. Thanks to
everyone who had ripped open their flesh and poured their blood in along with
mine.
Table of
Contents
The food was always cold, but I filled
my tray anyway. When I got to the front of the line I took my government
issued free lunch card from my back pocket, and handed it over to the lunch
lady. She swiped the card in her computer and marked today's date, "You
have six meals left in your program." She handed the card back to me, and
I tried to put it away without anyone seeing.
“Why is it that you can’t pay for you
food like everyone else?” a boy behind me pushed. This kind of thing happened
a few times a week. I didn't care about being poor, but everyone in this
school seemed fixated on this fact. Ignore what he says and walk away I told
myself, but that didn’t stop him from going on, “Yeah, that's right don’t
listen to me you stuck up…” before he could finish, his buddy walked up and
they began chest bumping and high fives followed by an explanation on the
sick
burn
that I was just given.
Normally I could blend in to the crowd
quite nicely at five foot five and only a hundred and twenty pounds. My guardian
expected me to do at least thirty minutes of exercise per day to stay healthy,
which put me somewhere between athletic and skinny. I was the definition of
the word
average
. My fiery red hair was the only part of me that I was
particularly proud of and it was constantly getting me accused of using
unnatural hair color by teachers.
I sat down at an empty table and began
gnawing on the so called chicken sandwich that I was served. The room was
bustling with at least a hundred or so students coming and going. We were
allowed to do whatever we wanted to do during lunch as long as we were back to
class when the hour was up.
The boy from the lunch line, Josh, along
with his normal gang of buddies sat down at the table next to mine, “So, how
about we finish our conversation?” the boy smiled a toothy grin. All of his
friends were quiet waiting for my response. I always wondered what kind of
damage that he suffered to spend so much time picking on a girl.
“What conversation? Oh…wait, you mean
you once again being the biggest asshole to walk the face of this planet?” I
knew as the words left my lips that I would one way or another live to regret
them.
“How dare you!” he wasn’t used to
anyone, especially me, actually talking back to him. As he stood to do god
knows what to me, most likely sock me I wouldn’t put it past him, his
girlfriend walked up and took his attention away from me.
“We’ll finish this later.” He mouthed
over his girlfriend’s shoulder.
As much as it made me sick to my stomach
I made a kissing noise and said, “See you later Josh.”
His girlfriend reached out and smacked
him across the face. He was furious, but had to chase after her to try and
explain that I was screwing with him. He returned a few minutes later, alone
and furious, and started to eat.
I went back to my food, even colder now,
and almost completely inedible. My mood for the day was completely shot.
I was a constant target for ridicule. I
lived in an orphanage with a few other kids that went to this school. Hillside
was a place where they sent kids like me who have difficulties assimilating, or
as I called settling for, a family. I have lived there for five years, I’m
seventeen, and right around the corner is my eighteenth birthday. All of us at
the orphanage are about the same age, within a few months anyway. Like there
is some kind of cut off age for someone to be able to find a family.
Ronnie, one of the other orphans, came
to the table from the serving line. He could have blend in as easy as me, but
chose a different approach. His short black hair was spiked in all different
directions. He always seemed to be in a good mood, and talked to tons of
people as he passed by their tables. I never understood why he always sat down
at my table when he so many other friends that he could sit with.
He dug into his food. He was able to
eat anything, as longs as it was dead before he started, and sometimes I even
wondered about that. “What’s up?” he asked between bites.
“Nothing.” I tried to mask my
irritation, but it wasn’t long before he picked up on my tone, and he knew my
tones.
“Grace, what’s wrong?” he put his
sandwich down.
“Don’t worry about it.” before I could
stop myself I had glanced over to the table of jerks, who were all laughing it
up having a great lunch.
“What happened, I swear if they laid a
hand on you, I’ll kill ‘em.” He stood fork in hand. We weren't usually given
knives for lunch.
“No, just verbal abuse, sit down.” I
pulled on his arm, “What, are you going to fork them to death with a plastic
utensil? Enjoy your lunch.” I grinned at the thought of him doing just that.
He sat uneasy and picked up his
sandwich; he took a bite and then a big, forceful, gulp of his drink. He
didn’t say anything until he couldn’t keep quiet anymore, “Why can’t they just
leave you alone? They never mess with me and I don’t think that Kenny, or
Sandy ever get this kind of treatment.”
Kenny and Sandy were two other orphans
in Hillside; somehow they actually fit in with the “so called” social groups. I
didn’t know how Kenny did it; he joked around a lot. Sandy was gorgeous, at
least compared to most of the girls in the school. They usually had friends
around if any of the bullies started in on them.
“I don’t know Ronnie and to be honest I
really don’t care. I don’t think that they are ever going to stop. So I’m not
going to worry about it.” I threw my fork down and officially gave up on the
crappy food, chugged what I could of my drink, and stood up taking my tray in
my hands.
“Well, those clowns need to be taught a
lesson.” He took a rather forceful bite out of a helpless apple.
“You think?" I lathered on the
sarcasm, "But not by you.” I put my foot down.
“And why not?”
“Maybe because they're bigger than you,
or maybe because they have you out numbered six to one, and I highly doubt that
they are going to fight far.” I rolled my eyes.
He got up from the table picking up his
tray, “Yeah well, we’ll see.” He stormed off towards the trash cans.
I left the lunch room before the class
bell rang so that I could be one of the first people back into the classroom.
The teacher was boring, no ifs, ands, or buts’ about it. On top of that it was
history class so sleep was on the top of most people’s to-do lists.
I didn’t sleep; I didn’t pay much
attention to the lecture either. I preferred to use my time more for me. We
were given e-book readers at the beginning of the year for our text books. I
hacked mine so that I could load my own novels, which I read instead of the
textbook. A book about humans colonizing the deepest reaches of the galaxy, it
was interesting enough, it kept me from being bored to tears anyway.
The teacher droned on about the finer
details about World War II, the same things that we have been taught several
times over the past few years. Most of the students in the class could have taken
the tests without even studying.
Before I could finish the chapter that I
was reading, the bell signaling the end of classes rang. I finished the line
that I was on and stuffed all of my things into my bag. I slowly shuffled from
the classroom, and into the river of students leaving the school, then made my
way down to the student parking lot.
Out of all of us from the orphanage,
Ronnie had gotten a job so that he could get a car. He was gracious enough to
give me and the other orphans, Kenny and Sandy, a ride to and from school every
day.
I made my way across the parking lot to
where his car was parked. A large group of students were circled around an
empty spot next to Ronnie’s car and I knew instantly what was going down.
They were all chanting in unison,
"fight", and I knew that this was not going to end well. Once I was
close enough to the crowd, I saw Josh land a punch across Ronnie’s face sending
his head smashing into the driver’s side window of his car. The window cracked
and blood remained as he fell to the ground.
Kenny pushed his way through the students
and threw a punch at Josh. His fist made contact with Josh’s jaw, sending him
to the ground, and blood spraying all over the onlookers. A group of girls
called out that it was gross. Ronnie pulled himself from the ground shaking
his head and trying to clear the ringing in his ear.
Josh had back up, the same guys from
lunch joined in on the fight making the odds three to one. Ronnie balled his
fists so tight that from where I was standing at the back of the crowd I could
see his knuckles turning white.
I tried to yell over the crowd, but my
words where lost, and it felt like the people were holding me back as I tried
to push my way into the circle to stop the madness. I could see Sandy trying
as hard as I was to get to the boys, to help, to stop the bloodshed.
Josh was picking himself up off the
ground, Ronnie waited until he was in a kneeling position before running at him
and kicking him in the gut. Josh fell back to the ground coughing.
One of Josh’s buddies grabbed Ronnie
from behind, as another began to pound him in the stomach with his fists over,
and over again, blood spraying from his mouth with every hit. The same was
being done with Kenny, but after a few hits they dropped him to the ground
where he balled up in pain.
Josh stood, and pushed his hair back out
of his eyes, spitting blood onto Ronnie’s shoes. They held Ronnie up by his
underarms, “Do you think that, that girl deserves this kind of a beating? She
is nothing man. She will always be nothing.” He spoke as if he were talking to
a friend, and then punched him in the face as hard as he could.