Читать книгу Inanimate Heroes - Zack W. Van - Страница 6

As more students began to enter, I looked through my bag for the notebook that I had for class. I couldn’t wait for the books and stories we were going to read. In this room, I felt as if all my worries from today were gone. Part of it was because the day was almost over, but the other part was that I knew that this would be a class I could unwind in.

Even at home where I had access to TV, I read a lot of books. I had just finished reading “The Lost Boy” by David Pelzer, and I was looking for something else to keep my mind occupied. Mrs. Carlisle got out of her chair as the bell rang and she introduced herself. There was an air about her that I couldn’t quite place my finger on. She was most definitely a teacher, but she must have forgotten we were the students; as if we were friends of hers out to lunch. She told us things about herself and made jokes that were actually funny; she rendered the sympathetic giggle unnecessary.

She was a true human being with flaws and didn’t project herself as otherwise. From the moment I listened, I had learned something. Then again, I remembered one of my favorite quotes that I heard on Larry King. “I never learned anything while I was talking.” It was so simple and yet so beautifully true.

Mrs. Carlisle went through the curriculum of the things we would be reading and learning. To my excitement, there was nothing that was going to be uninteresting. She told us that our first assignment would be to read “The Cast of Amontillado” and do the questions on it that followed. We had to bring our textbooks, but for some reason I didn’t mind nearly as much as I did with biology. The thought of coming back to 9^th period made the overall thought of tomorrow less threatening.

All too soon the bell rang. Mrs. Carlisle said have a nice day and we all left the classroom. The hallway that linked the main hallway to 9^th hour was long and flooded with other rooms. When we were dismissed, so were all of the other kids in the hall. While I walked leisurely to the main hall, I heard something that made my blood reverse through my veins.

“Get a haircut you faggot!” I sharply turned around to see who it might have been. I saw a couple of boys snicker and point in my direction. They definitely meant me. I turned back around as the worst of my fears had come to fruition. They had known I was gay by my hair’s length? I tried to walk quicker but my heart felt as if it would beat out of my chest. At the first ten seconds it happened I felt anger, but then I saw Faye as she met me in the main hallway. At the very instant she saw that I was so flustered, I wanted to sink into the color coordinated floor tiles and melt through the Earth’s soil.

“What’s the matter?” The question, while all in good meaning, had only twisted my stomach further into submission. My knees felt weak and my strength was zapped by the tidal wave of emotion that I tried to keep from drowning in.

“I just don’t feel so great. Let’s just get on the bus so I can sit down.” Faye was a brilliantly smart girl. From a couple of quick-spoken sentences, she knew right at that moment that something was wrong, I didn’t want to talk about it, and I would tell her later. She went along with the lie as if she was an actress and the script was just now handed to her.

“Yeah you do look pretty pale. We’ll go sit down. I was gonna get my hoodie but I’ll probably need it for tomorrow anyway. My classes are fricken cold!” I laughed at that a little too enthusiastically and blew my cover even further out of reach. An unknown girl walking next to me glanced at me as if I had just put a gun to her face. I wanted to leave. Maybe if I jumped hard enough I could break through the roof and the stratosphere and orbit the earth for a couple of years until high school was over.

We walked onto the bus where a droll woman told us to take a seat anywhere. I choose to sit three spots from the driver on the window side; Faye sat right next to me and started to tell me about her day. I was just happy she didn’t expect interaction. I was too busy thinking of what had happened. Pressing my forehead against the glass window, the event happened over and over in my head.

Rationalization was my first line of defense. They must have meant some other kid; a friend of theirs probably. Isn’t that what kids did now? They would call their friends derogatory names as some form of a game. It was all a funny joke that they were continuing from class. But the image of them laughing and pointing directly at me flashed into my mind. I damned myself for turning around to find a culprit. Ignorance would have been a bliss one couldn’t have paid for. My second line of defense was to evaluate the merit of the statement itself. Why did those 5 simple words destroy me so effortlessly? My hair really wasn’t all that long; maybe an inch or so past my ears when it was straight. Was it my hair that really gave me away, or was that just the sniper calling its target?

After my primary and secondary defenses were shot, my third and final defense kicked in. In order to rebuild myself, I had to evaluate why that word had such meaning. I couldn’t care less about my hair being too long. I grew it that way because it was my decision and mine alone. Then I evaluated the bullet of the sentence. The word “faggot” was, from my recollection, a word for a bundle of sticks used to burn people for wrong doings in the Middle-Ages. I could only imagine how the definition had ignorantly shifted its course to speak of a specific type of person.

Still, it wasn’t the definition of the word that had struck me like a speeding semi-truck. It was the very connotation of the word that added such inertia to the sentence. He was speaking directly to me as I had logically drawn from the 5 second incident. The definition intended for the word was in fact, a homosexual man. The connotation intended for the word was a hissing snake staring into the eyes of a mongoose. The boy that said the word had instantaneously hated me as if we had known each other for years. I know for certain that I had never laid eyes on that kid and I certainly never spoke with him. He hated me for the very simple fact that I was gay. No logic was necessary for the reason.

My calculation hadn’t made me feel better by any means at all. When I snapped out of my trance, I had realized that the bus hadn’t even begun to move. It was as if I had broken the sound barrier and when I stopped moving, sound and vision finally caught up and surrounded me. Faye was still talking about her teachers when an older boy got onto the bus. He stuck out his hands and slapped every seat he passed like he was a celebrity high-fiveing his fans. He finally sat down in the back as the collision of his body hitting the seat made an audible smack. Apparently he was the last to get on the bus as it finally began to rev to a start and carry us home. The superstar boy in the back cupped his hands together and shouted “freshman suck” which began a chant that lasted for at least 2 minutes. My blood began to boil as the chanting continued. It was the sort of hypocrisy you saw when older people hated young kids, only with a shorter interval of time to separate the new from the old.

With some form of miracle, I learned that our bus stop was third and only about 5 minutes from school. Once we were released, the bus driver nodded as if she was a taxi driver who decided to give me a free ride. I looked at her like a wolf in a sheep’s façade. She was just like the rest of them. She had probably seen and will see much worse than she had today, and she still wouldn’t do anything about it then either. That much I knew for certain.

I walked in back of Faye and exited the bus with haste. A few other friends of ours also got off of the bus, such as Sandy from my Spanish class and our childhood friend Megan. Her nickname was Doug because on a 6^th grade class trip, we all gave ourselves transgendered nicknames as an inside-joke directed toward the teachers. Faye went by Carl, Megan went by Doug, and I went by Angelica. For some unknown reason, only Doug’s nickname lasted up until now. Doug lived right on the corner of our bus-stop and I envied her for that; I had to walk about 3 blocks to get there and Faye walked about 2. Doug and Sandy stayed behind me and Faye. I knew she was just burning like a freshly lit match to ask me what was bothering me. My very core shook as I decided to blurt it out.

“I was walking in the hall today and this kid just shouted “get a haircut you faggot.”” Faye’s gasp seemed loud enough to shatter a crystal wineglass.

“Who the hell is he to tell you to get a haircut? He’s probably just a closet cased skinhead with like, a shrine to Hitler or something. Don’t worry about it. ”I mulled the words that Faye said over in my head and then had a conversation with myself again. He wasn’t a skin head. In fact he had brown hair and light skin. His clothes were not of the militant persuasion at all. If his demeanor had been kind, I wouldn’t find it strange at all if he was walking with us to his own safe haven.

Faye’s description of his inner being was spot on and I had no doubt about that. But her outer description was short sighted and unfortunately incorrect. He looked like he could have been me. There was no distinctive look to him at all; just a face among so many people walking in a crowd. His face was only identified by the snickering disposition it held; like a cop who finally caught his craftiest adversary. He hadn’t shot me in the heart, but more like a main artery that had been bleeding since it all happened. Sandy must have heard the elicited gasp and semi-jogged over to find the cause.

“What happened?” She asked the question innocently enough but I couldn’t help the feeling that there was a hint of malice there. It was the kind of unknown malevolence that humans inflicted upon each other with reckless curiosity.

“I stepped in gum,” Faye answered quickly. Sandy had either bought the lie or understood the need to let it go and moved on with other interests.

“So how are your guy’s teachers? I have a couple of duds already.” Faye listed off her teachers and their good and bad qualities. Human evaluation was a luxury she was built with. Suddenly it was my turn to speak as Sandy directed the question toward me.

“I have several cool teachers. My math teacher is kind of a fail, but all of my other teachers are pretty good.” My mind flashed with the sudden thought of Mrs. Carlisle. “I do have a pretty good English teacher though. She treats us like we are adults and doesn’t talk down to us.”

For a split second I forgot the pain I had endured from the moment in the hallway and remembered the good things that happened today. Mrs. Stout was a nice and interesting woman, and so was Lauren, the girl I met in Civics class. Soon after my reminiscing, the parted waters crashed back down on me and I was reminded of the hallway. Would it ever stop playing back in my head? I wanted to clean my memory the way you would clean a CD to stop it from repeating.

As Sandy went into her house and closed the door behind her, Faye and I walked in a comfortable silence. She didn’t expect me to speak and I didn’t really want her to. When we finally reached the bottom of the hill where we parted ways, she told me she would see me tomorrow and not to let what had happened get to me. I lied and told her I wouldn’t. It had already got to me and it was slowly eating away at my psyche like termites; boring holes and tunnels into my woodwork which would eventually lead to my erosion to dust.