I’d never been this boy.
Hopeless.
Unhappy.
Gloom.
Fifteen years old /10th Grade/October
“Hey, yo,” a kid a short distance away called out to me. I looked up at him without saying anything. “What class are you ditching?”
“Math,” I replied. Which was almost laughable now. Math had been the only thing I was decent at, but that had slipped out of my grasp this semester. My life sucked, and I pretty much hated everyone and everything.
He held a cigarette toward me, and I took it as an invite to join him. I stood and took my backpack over to where he was and sat next to him.
“What grade are you in?” he asked.
“Tenth.” I reached out and took the cigarette from him and brought it to my lips. “You?”
“I’m a senior.”
“Man, you’re lucky. You’re almost out of this place.” I handed him back his cigarette.
“Yep. I’ve done my time.” He pointed to where I’d been sitting under the bleachers closest to the side with the school. “Bit of advice, my sophomore friend, you’re sitting too close to the school over there. When the monitors walk around the school, they’re too lazy to walk their asses over to the football field, but they glance under the bleachers. Sitting too close to the end will get your ass caught. You’ve got to sit back here, man,” he explained.
I nodded. We sat in silence for the duration of second period, and I took a few hits off his cigarette. The sound of water hitting the shelter of our metal bleachers forced me to pull my hood over my head. Light rain had been forecasted off and on for the entire day. I hated the rain. And since I didn’t have a car, rain made the walk home unpleasant.
“You going to the football game tonight?” he asked.
“No, fuck that shit.”
I hated popular sports but shamefully still watched wrestling on TV. I watched so I could hopefully pick up some wrestling moves to surprise Dad or Sebastian with. Things were even worse at home, and Dad was getting really weird. Sebastian had graduated high school and had enrolled in a community college taking psychology courses. I thought he had done it just to impress Dad. But Dad started to become good friends with Sebastian’s best friend. They’d talk on the phone a lot, and when Sebastian’s friend came home from college, he’d stay with us. Which was what was going on now that Thanksgiving was close. The three of them were making things nearly unbearable at home.
“Hey! You boys get over here!”
My head whipped in the direction of the campus monitor who had called out to us.
“Shit!” the kid next to me said as he put the cigarette out on the ground.
“I thought you said this was the safer area,” I commented as I stood.
“Less likely to be discovered… I didn’t say it was a shield.”
I walked out from under the bleachers and into the rain. Before I slung my backpack over my shoulders, I pulled my hood farther over my head to shield my face from the rain.
High school detention, at least at this school, was way different than in junior high. Here, they didn’t just stick us in a room to sit quietly and do homework. Instead, they put us to work in some way. They called it a type of community service for those in trouble to serve the campus. I’d done nearly everything thrown at me here, from cleaning up after assemblies, to setting up for school dances and other functions. To be honest, I didn’t mind it at all. Being needed and wanted wasn’t bad, but sometimes the kids who signed up to help looked at me like I was diseased or something. Some of the teachers did too, but not all of them.
“Alright, Patrick, the big home football game is tonight, and there will be some recruiters on hand. You’ll report to Coach Sanders right after school. You check in with him and check out with him. Understand?”
“Yes. I understand,” I replied to the dean.
I was given a check in and out card that I needed to get stamped by each of the teachers for the rest of the day. I had to turn the card in to the attendance office after school. This wasn’t anything new for me. I ended up a little late for biology, but that was fine by me because that teacher bored the fuck out of me. Either way, I showed up and got my card stamped.
Thankfully the sun peeked out for lunch, and I was able to eat outside. I saw that the cement planter in the courtyard had some space on it, so I sat on a small section on the corner. The huge planter was the prime place to sit during lunch or hang out with friends. Since it was cool outside and kind of dreary, I figured that most kids were inside and it would be safe for me to sit there today.
I always kept to myself and had no friends, and for a dumb moment I thought maybe I could be friends with the guy from under the bleachers. But during lunch I saw him with a pack of guys wearing school basketball sweatshirts. He walked right by me and paid me no attention.So much for that.
People sucked.
