When I got home, my mom saw my bruises and was shocked. She thought it was about attention, but I told her that it’s not like it at all, that I’m just trying to reaffirm my masculinity. She’s been psychoanalyzing me since then. Nonetheless, I ate my dinner, went upstairs and lay on my arms facing the ceiling and listening to Teenage Wasteland by the Who. Then something strange happened. I slept.
I rarely did this. Usually, I spent all night tossing and turning until my body found a spot it could reconcile with . but tonight, I lay thinking of how eventful my day was and how I would be fine with tomorrow being just another day. Finally, I thought of Autumn and fell asleep smiling.
Then I felt swift knives puncturing my ears over and over again until I jumped up like the victim of a violent exorcism. My alarm clock had gone off. I tore it out of the wall and threw it. I truly did hate how it disrupted all of my dreams. Nevertheless I rubbed my eyes and remembered that today is going to be just another day. I took a shower (because I only bathe when I need extra sleep), got out, combed my hair the way I liked it, put on my glasses, and got dressed. I texted my mom before I got to school and when I got there I was ten minutes early. So I started drawing a picture of TVs, stereos, all kind of electronic appliances attacking humans. It had the vibrant colors of a futuristic comic and the cheesiness of a 50’s sci-fi thriller. Then I kicked myself because I forgot the ink at home. The ink from that little brat Miles.
Soon enough, people started filing into class and looked at my drawing. From being me, I’d here a ‘wow’ or a ‘that’s really good’ but I said thanks and kept looking at my art. I never , made eye contact with anyone who gave me a compliment. Then again, this is why I don’t want or need friends, because the only reason they spoke to me was because of the fought. Now they thought I was cool, but it was a one dat thing. Now I was back to being that weird Divide kid.
By the end of class, I had finished my picture with my two favorite parts being a blender with a roguish smile riding atop of a man’s head and a toaster lying on its side, launching toast into people’s mouths. I titled it ‘Two-Pronged Riot’ 9and though I know there are three pronged appliances; I’m still shooting for simplicity.
After art came physical education. Bony and embarrassed, I hated this class the most because I felt so self conscious about my legs in my gym shorts and my arms dangling to my sides like a skeleton for the world to see. We played basketball and I couldn’t seem to get the ball in the hoop, but the guys in the class orchestrated an operation in which every time our very large gym teacher turned to watch the opposing team, we turned our home of basketball into dodge ball. This would last a second but surely we never truly played a game of basketball the whole way through.
Then after that was Reading/English. I never really could seem to get a firm grasp on this class because I was more of a visual learner. And then of course, there was Mz. Alexander. She would scream if you called her miss or misses because she personally thought a woman’s status should stay her business, like men’s. She was a big boisterous woman with so many melodramatics, I pictured her on a red carpet with a big fur coat accompanied by a fuzzy boa, referring to everybody as ‘darling’, or ‘doll face’ or other things like that. I could see her, a celebrity librarian of Hollywood, holding mikes to people saying “No sweetie, it was Samuel Clemens who wrote ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’, Mark Twain was a penname.” Or “Honey, CS Lewis who wrote ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ not War of the Worlds. That’s HG Wells.” This thought made me smile.
The next class was math where my energetic math teacher showed us ways to use pi to do things like find the radius of a circle. I tended to drone out in his class, but I passed. He always lent a hand and was easygoing when he wasn’t hyper. But when he was, math just seemed to jolt. Everything he did a rapid movement if that makes sense. But today fortunately was just a lazy day. I stared into space and heard the bell ring.
Then came lunch-the most interesting hour of school.
I always sat at a table, facing away from whoever inhabited it. They’d make comment to or about me and whether nice or malicious, I ignored them and continued eating. The principal would always come up to me and tell me to turn my seat around and I always told her I couldn’t because nobody there like me. This usually led to the guidance counseler.
No im sure not everybody I sat with didn’t like me. I’m sure half of them didn’t mind me, but to me this was fun. I ate in the guidance counselers office and she asked my what was wrong. Her checkups usually corresponded to my personality change, so the week I gorged myself I told her I had suddenly developed a intimate relationship with food. After that the week I had my southern drawl, I told her a story of how I was a poor boy from Kentucky trying to make the best our of his fathers crops after that. The business suit week, I told her I was a ghost from the Great Depression who had jumped off of a builing in response to the despair of the stock market crashing. I told her I possessed this sixteen year old child so hopefully I could reaqure my millions. So I tried to keep it interesting every week but I had to open up eventually.
So this week I did.
I held my head in my hands to try to ‘hold back the tears’ and said “Ms. Moore… I have a problem” her voice light and concerned, she asked “What’s wrong Brandon?” .
I looked at her deep in the eyes and said “I think I’m god.”
“God?” She repeated.
“Well, gods.” I replied. “I don’t know if I’m Kronos or Hades or Posiden sometimes. And then…”
“Brandon sit right there.” She cut me off. “Is there actually a problem?”
I sat back “No, but everybody thinks I do.”
“Well Brandon it just seems like you don’t have many friends at this school.”
“I don’t like anybody here.”
She thought about it for a second.
“Well I guess I can understand. You don’t have to like every kid here but…”
“You don’t love every kid here” I retorted.
Her eyes gave me that suggestive look that said I was right. I was a smartass but I was right. This is why I liked Mrs. Moore. She was what I called ‘Discreetly Honest’.
“Well if have any problems, can you find me?” I nodded my head yes and she said I could go. Before I left I told her thanks for putting up with me.
The way that my school worked is that classes alternate during the week. Last period on Monday was Spanish and yesterday was gym. So today would be Spanish and tomorrow would be gym again. On Friday we had music.
So the classes left today were history, library (which was basically study hall) and then Spanish. Spanish was a challenge- not necessarily the test, but the staying awake part. Each day I struggled trying to keep my eyes open but today was even harder, as my teacher quizzed us completely in Spanish, Autumn Ashley Roswell began to hum. As I closed my eyes, I imagined those angels plucking at the harp flawlessly as cherubs danced around them. And as I opened my eyes again, a saw kids filing out of class which meant the forty five minutes were over. I also felt something wet and then raising the arms I was laying on, I realized on them and on the desk was now inhabit by a big puddle of drool. “Buenos tardes, Mr. Divide.” My teacher said as I grabbed some tissues to wipe off the table. “Uh, y tu, hasa luego, Mrs Martinez.” I said sponging the rest of the slobber up before leaving. She just shook her head and smiled as I hurried out of class but I need to do something.
I could spend my whole life obsessing over her; I needed to do something to show her I cared. Mrs. Moore was right, I needed friends and if she wouldn’t be my girlfriend, then we could still be friends at least. I couldn’t write her a people because I’m not that kind of guy. So I had to do what I did best.
I grabbed the ink that Miles dropped and opened up to a picture of Autumn. I filled an empty pen with the ink and began drawing.
When drawing with a pen, there wasn’t any room for error. She was my Sistine chapel, I was her Michelangelo, twisting my body in all different ways to make her perfect. My hand stayed steady to make sure to mimic every complimenting curve line and shade she had. And after about an hour and twenty minutes, I was almost finished. I stretched in my chair and as I went to swing my hand back to the hand, a knocked a glass of water onto my picture. I screamed, numerous obscenities spewing from y mouth, I threw the glass. It smashed against the door and I had to pick up the pieces, but when I went to throw it in the garbage can behind me, I dropped the glass again.
Before my eyes, the ink on my paper began to rise, showing the deformed face from the paper. Black lines from the paper all seemed to be floating in the air, the water marks making her look grotesque. Her smooth lips before were now stretched out, Out her button nose like a pigs, and her eyes smeared around her face. As I realized I couldn’t leave my room because I would steep on the glass, the monster which used to be Autumn opened its disk-sized bottom lip and its fissured pallet and called my name.
The way she said Brandon made me wish I didn’t have a name at all. It was obscure like the sound of pigs squealing inside of a slaughter house- a language of that female screeching from horror moves. Her eyes grew bigger and hit the top of her hairline) they were at her forehead before) and I reacted, grabbing a trashcan and throwing it at the monster. My small metal bin hit the thing, making a noise and contact, but all that would happen is that its lines would scatter and drift off and then within seconds, it would reform its shaper.
Now I knew the pattern, I had to make my move.
“Brandon! Brandon!” the monster began forming my name and closing in. quickly I bounced on my bed, rebounding to the other side of where I picked up my hard copy version of Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game.” I hurled this also at the monster, causing it to break into pieces. That’s when I quickly dashed ot the desk and tore the picture up. Instantly I witnessed the ink being pulled right back to the page like a mage calling back a summoned animal. She was gone, in half, in fourths, in eights on my desk.
I sunk out of the chair, constricted to the floor, I was paralyzed by post fear and I never wanted to see such a terrifying figure ever again. But soon enough my mom rushes up knocking. She asks to come in and I tell her I can’t. When she asks what’s wrong I tell her I’m just reaffirming my masculinity some more.
