Thankfully the bell rang, and I made my way to math. I felt a lot of pain and pressure in my lower back as I sat down. After fidgeting in my seat while the teacher gathered their materials to begin, I finally found a semi-comfortable seating position. By the end of math, I felt nauseated and warm. Between classes I went to the bathroom and leaned against the stall door in case I felt the urge to vomit.
Third period was gym class, and I elected to take an F for the day due to “non-participation.” I didn’t give a fuck. Walking and breathing caused me discomfort. There was no way in fucking hell I was participating and making myself feel worse.
During lunch I sat on the planter in the courtyard and worked on my math assignment. After I’d finish a problem, I’d looking up and my eyes naturally gravitated to Hollis Hawkins. I didn’t even know the guy but found myself wanting to pay attention to him. The way his girlfriend hung on his arm annoyed me. Was she afraid someone would snatch him up if she didn’t have her arm attached to him?
Got news for you, honey… he’d probably be able to take care of himself.
I nibbled on my lunch and tossed the rest when the bell rang. Four classes down, just two more to go. I carefully sat in my American Lit class and pulled my book out. By the grace of God, the teacher was giving us the entire class period to read.Easy enough.And, of course, since it was so easy, it was no surprise at all that I fucked it up like everything else.
I jerked awake and pulled my head off my desk. I glanced around, and all I saw were several sets of eyes staring at me. The teacher had dropped a dictionary on the floor next to my desk to wake me up.
“Glad to see you could join the rest of the class, Patrick.” Her snide tone dripped with sarcasm. She picked the dictionary up and stormed toward her desk while I looked around at my classmates. I could feel the heat from embarrassment covering my face.
“What are you looking at?” I said to one of the boys who stared at me with a smug smile on his face. He sat diagonally from me in the row to my right and finally shook his head at me before turning back around, as if I wasn’t worth his time. I heard him mumble that I was a waste.I wasn’t.That little mumble was all it took to set me off. “Why don’t you say that to my face, preppy prick?”
Kids around us stifled their laughs while others gasped or said shit to encourage him to not let me get away with calling him a preppy prick. The guy turned around and glowered at me. His smug grin was still in place as he said, “You missed it, man. While you slept, your mother licked the sweat off my balls.” Despite the discomfort I felt, I quickly pushed myself out of my seat. More noise erupted from the kids around us as the prick stood.
“Enough, boys! Both of you pack up your belongings and get up here.”
I was slightly grateful the teacher stepped in because if I hadn’t had the tips of my fingers touching the desktop to help steady my balance, I would have stumbled over. Then kids would have had something to really make fun of me over.
I leaned over to pick up my backpack, and I felt a rush of pressure in my head. I unzipped my backpack and tossed my stuff inside before I approached the teacher’s desk. Due to my sudden dizziness, my foot got caught on the carpet, causing me to lurch forward. All eyes were on me now, and I felt all the heat in my face.
“Drop the dramatics, Patrick,” the teacher said. The students laughed and began mumbling about me as I stood by her desk waiting for the write-up slip she was working on. I stared at the paper she quickly wrote on while I listened to the kids say shit about me.
“He’s such a loser.”
“He’s a druggie. Did you see his eyes?”
“No one likes him.”
“Surprised he hasn’t killed himself.”
“Someone should put the rest of us out of our misery.”
If it wouldn’t be so painful, I would.
The preppy prick and I were sent to the dean’s office. Out in the hallway he swore at me for getting him in trouble.Ha!As if it wasn’t his own fucking mouth that did it. I shoved him forward so he’d get the fuck away from me. He flipped me off and then hurried ahead of me. I didn’t care. I’d be there whenever my feet got me there.
I contemplated ways of killing myself that would be painless. The only thing I could think of was a drug overdose. Once I’d doze off to sleep, I’d never wake up. Painless. That would be ideal. But there was room for even that to plan to backfire. My stomach was already an absolute mess, and I’d probably end up throwing up everything I ingested before I fell asleep for the last time. What was worse would be the repercussions of not being successful.
I pulled open the door to the dean’s office and tossed the write-up slip in the basket next to the sign-in sheet. I grabbed the pencil that was tied to the clipboard and scribbled my name on it and then took a seat away from the preppy prick. Looking around the waiting area in the office, I guessed I had six kids ahead of me. This just might take me through most of sixth period too. I unzipped my backpack and grabbed a pen and my composition book and opened it to a blank page. I sketched a block letter H near the margin of the page and colored it in with my pen.
You laugh.
You call me names.
You say you wish I were dead so I didn’t disrupt your day.
You think you understand.
You have no clue.
You laughed because I fell asleep in class.
You don’t know what it’s like to be afraid to close your eyes at night.
You called me a druggie because my eyes looked different.
