by Cole Parker
Circumstances 5
I was in Mr. Johnson’s office again. He was scowling at me worse than ever. I kept occasionally looking at him out of the corner of my eye, but mostly kept my head down. Looking into my lap. My still un-pant-covered lap. I didn’t know which was worse, looking at my lap and seeing my near nakedness, making my circumstances so obvious, or looking at his anger. I chose the former because at least it was familiar and less threatening.
While I sat there, a secretary came in and dropped a folder on his desk. She looked at me, then did a double take. I was basically naked, except for my shirt which I was pressing into my lap.
When she’d gone, Mr. Johnson opened the folder, then picked up his phone. He dialed, then said, “Mrs. Perryman, this is Charles Johnson, vice-principal at Hillgrove. I called to tell you to come pick up your son.”
There was a pause, and then he said, “No, he’s all right physically. Mentally, who knows? I don’t know what’s going on in his head, but we can’t have him here. He was standing up and masturbating on the school bus this morning, then I caught him doing it again in the boys’ room during first period, and then he was running naked in the halls. A teacher heard the commotion and walked out of his classroom just as Keith raced by. He grabbed him and pulled him into the classroom, then called me. I’ve got him in my office. I need you to come get him right away. Bring some clothes with you. We’ve had enough nakedness being paraded through our halls for one day.”
He stopped again. I was hearing mostly a roaring in my ears now from my blood rushing about 2,000 miles an hour. My mother! She was difficult at the best of times. When I was in trouble, she was impossible to deal with. And by ‘trouble’, I mean not getting to the dinner table fast enough for her, or not doing my chores on time. I didn’t have any idea what I was in for now, but knew it would be brutal, and the words ‘disownment’ and ‘adoption’ jumped to the forefront of my brain.
Mr. Johnson dropped the receiver into the phone’s cradle, then stood up. I shrank in my chair. He stepped out from in back of his desk and stood directly in front of me.
“Stand up,” he roared.
I didn’t. I just quivered in my chair.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me up. I held my shirt as strategically as I could, but I was about past the point of caring.
He marched me out into the main office. I was covering my front, but my backside was open to the public.
He pushed me into one of the chairs along the wall where kids waited till they were called into someone else office, or had to meet their fate with him. “Mrs. Montgomery, I’m leaving this kid here. Make sure he sits in that chair till his mother shows up. I want her to see how he’s dressed, and I don’t want to be alone with him in my office. You know what we can be accused of these days. So out here in public is better. Keep an eye on him, and if he starts doing anything inappropriate, let me know. I’ll come back and tie his hands behind his back if I have to.”
He glared at me again, then went back into his office.
I sat there, making sure my shirt was doing everything it could, which was only to cover the essentials. My thin and unmuscled chest and bare legs were open for review by anyone interested in gawking at me.
It was usual for kids came to the office throughout the day, sent by teachers to get something or pass a message along or for whatever. So as I sat, kids came in, saw me, and gasped, then started laughing. I was feeling worse and worse the longer I sat.
I closed my eyes, not wanting to deal with this any longer. I sort of felt something, a vibration or something, but didn’t bother to look to see what it was. I just sat and tried to keep my head as empty as possible.
Then I heard a soft voice, and someone saying, “I’m sorry.”
That made no sense, so I opened my eyes. Sitting next to me was a boy who was staring intently at me. He had kind eyes. He was also fully dressed, like everyone else except me.
“You’re sorry?” I asked, puzzled. My voice sounded funny even to me. Like I was about to lose control soon.
“Yeah. I can’t imagine what you must feel like. I’ve been watching you for a few minutes now. You look, well, you look kind of awful. I’m sorry.”
You know, it’s funny. I’d had the worst day of my life, and everything seemed to get worse and worse as the day had progressed. It was still early in the day, too, and when my mom came, well, the worst part was now approaching, I knew that for sure. But here was this kid, looking at me compassionately, and for the first time, I simply couldn’t hold it in. I started crying.
I hate crying. What 14-year-old doesn’t? We’re all trying so hard to pretend we’re grown up and past that. You prove you’re still a kid if you cry. And that’s what I did. I started crying. The whole day came back to me in a rush, and with all that had happened, compassion was what I couldn’t handle.
The boy put his arm around my shoulder, scrunching closer to me to do it. He held me as I cried and then whispered in my ear, “I know there has to be a reason you’re almost naked. I’m new here, and don’t know anyone, but you look like you need a friend worse than I do. Maybe we can be friends. I don’t mind if you want to run around naked.” He laughed, and sighed, and said in a wistful sort of voice, “I wish I had the nerve to do that.” I sat up a little straighter. The way he was holding me, and the intonation he used when he spoke, and what he’d just said, made me forget my problems for a quick moment and wonder if maybe, just maybe, he was gay, too.
Right then, my mom came in. She took one look at me and yelled, louder than even Mr. Johnson had, “Keith Rogers Perryman. What in the world happened to your clothes? How in the world can you be naked in school? And those other things Mr. Johnson said you’d done—!”
I started crying again. My mom wasn’t done yet, however, and had started to say more when the most miraculous thing happened. The boy next to me stood up and looked my mother in the eye and yelled, louder than she was yelling, louder than anything, “STOP IT!”
I think it was the shock of someone yelling at her that did the trick. She stopped. The boy didn’t. He lowered his voice some, but didn’t stop talking.
“Look at him! Does he look like he needs someone yelling at him? There’s an explanation for him being like this. You don’t even know what happened, what his side of the story is. Does he do this all the time? Huh? He doesn’t look to me like he’s used to being in trouble. Think about it. He wouldn’t be looking like this if he was. He needs a chance to explain. He needs help right now, not you getting on him when you don’t even know what’s happened!”
My mother isn’t one to back down. She meets aggression with aggression. By the time he’d finished, she’d recovered. And was ready for a fight. “Who’re you, and what gives you the right to talk to me that way? Go away!” She turned her gaze on me, dismissing him. “Keith—”
He interrupted her again. “I’m Gary. Gary Jenks. Keith needs to be taken home and not embarrassed any more than he already is. You yelling at him isn’t helping. Take him home and talk to him in private. Or is your embarrassment over having to come get him more important than the embarrassment he’s feeling because of all this? You’re quadrupling what he feels by yelling at him.” He paused long enough to glance at me, then was back at her with, “Who’s the adult here, anyway?”
That shut her up! I couldn’t believe it, but it did. She turned to look at me, and for the first time in about forever, I briefly saw something in her eyes that I used to see occasionally before Dad left us. I saw my mom the way she sometimes used to be. Just for a second.
She held me in her glance for a moment, then said softly, “Come on, Keith. Let’s get out of here.”
I stood up, more embarrassed than ever about not being fully covered. The kid saw my expression. He had a shirt on over a tee shirt underneath, and he slipped off the cover shirt and handed it to me. At least now I could cover both sides of me, one hand for each.
As I was walking down the hall with my mother, he trotted up next to me and, brushing his long blond hair away from his face, whispered in my ear, giving me his phone number before saying, “I really do hope we can be friends. Call me.”