Broken - Chapter 14

When spring semester started after Christmas Break, Scotty and Brian joined Coach T's class. I felt a lot better having Scotty close by where I could keep an eye on him. Foster and Steven welcomed the newcomers with open arms.

Having us in the class actually helped Coach T. We had all come from Group 1 classes and could easily handle our work. We ended up helping our other classmates study. By the end of the first six weeks, everybody in Coach T's class had improved by a full grade point.

Although I thought that having the guys together would help, Scotty and I being seen together restarted the rumor mill that had largely died down since the past fall. We were aware that people were talking, some of our friends gave us a heads up. No one openly confronted us, for which we were grateful.

We had to learn to develop a thick skin. There was really no point in getting upset at every little slight. Best to save your energy for the fights that really matter. It was a lot easier to do with a few friends around.

There is a problem with letting too many things pass without challenging them. Sometimes it emboldens an aggressor and incites others on the sidelines to join the fray. It was a very fine balancing act. Billy Wheeler and his worthless mutt friends Brandon Farmer and Todd Taylor were getting a little bolder all the time about seeing how far they could push me. It was a stalemate for the time being but there was eventually going to be a showdown.

The upperclassmen that had it in for Brian were the ones that made me nervous. They were juniors and seniors and I couldn't handle them. Brian and I got into a shouting-and-shoving match with a couple of them that tried to “trash” Brian. That is what they called it when they put a kid in one of the big 55 gallon oil drums that were around the campus as trash cans. Coach T warned them off from the parts of the school that the junior high students were in. I think that Mr. Walthers did too. They didn't push things and we didn't miss them being around either.

I don't know why but the Jesus freaks targeted us for serious soul saving. It's not like all of our parents didn't make us go to church every Sunday but you would think the campus hyper-Christians considered us nude pagans that had never heard of Jesus before. It was really annoying. I ended up telling one them that Odin would be really mad at me if I kept talking to him. The idiot didn't even know who Odin was.

My morning bike rides up the 3 miles of “Nut Buster Ridge” were having the desired effect. My legs were getting a lot stronger, especially in the quads. The daily repetition over the path made it a little easier every time. I began to know every root, rut and lump on the trail.

It was a really cool ride. Going through that part of the deep woods was much wilder than the part very close to the neighborhoods. Riding through the woods at that hour of the morning I got to see all kinds of wildlife that shunned areas people frequented. I would see deer, wild turkeys, raccoons and owls in addition to the usual birds and squirrels that didn't really mind being close to people. One morning I almost ran over a bobcat who was just as surprised to see me, as I was to see him.

The only animals that were really a problem were dogs. Dogs chasing instincts are a menace to riders. Thankfully I didn't run into too many of them on “Nut Buster” Ridge but I did have a couple of scary encounters.

We played things very cool at school. Everybody in our little crew were strictly weekend tokers. We didn't mess with anything stronger than weed and a little booze. If we did any smoking out at all during the week, we would meet up at the fort after school. It was just too stupid to have anything on you at Oak Hills.

We didn't party with anybody outside our circle. We saw the other kids at school as posers and wanna be's because they couldn't wait to tell everybody what they were smoking and with who. That shit was just plain stupid. Brian and Clay had their hookups but the rest of us stayed out of it for the most part.

As usual, it was the dumb asses made things difficult for everybody. One day in January one of the juniors decide it would be really cool to drop four hits of purple microdot (acid) and go to class. It turned out to be a disaster. We didn't see what happened but word got out that he had a really bad trip. An ambulance took him away and he got expelled. There was a big school assembly and a “drug awareness seminar” where some dorky kids that had smoked a joint once and gotten in trouble told us how good it was to be clean. That was a big fucking joke. The only people at school that were unaware of all the drugs that were around was the administration.

Ludes were real big thing too. Taking one would fuck you up about the same as drinking a fifth. If you drank on top of it, you would really get twisted. Around the first of February a couple of rich prom-queen type girls from Vicksburg wrapped their Camero around a tree stoned out of their minds on ludes. One of them died and the other got messed up so bad her mother could barely recognize her.

The papers love a good tragedy especially when it involves pretty young teenage girls. Their pictures were all over the place. There was a huge funeral that was covered by TV and newspapers that showed a bunch of people crying that didn't even know them.

There were random locker searches. Cops started showing at school for no particular reason. People that teachers thought were getting high were questioned and, if they had one, their cars were searched. It was clear that kids were narcing and snitching on each other to settle scores and mess with people. Kids that were unpopular got their names called more than their share. Of course my locker got searched.

I got called to the office where my old buddy from the witch-hunt Deputy West tried to shake me down for information. I didn't say jack shit. I just glared at him. When he lectured me about my attitude, I asked him if he and his butt buddy Rainer had broken up any homes lately. He hemmed and hawed about how they had no choice but to investigate the allegations of sex abuse that they had received last summer. They were protecting us for our own good. I thanked him so much. I told him it was such a joy to lose most of my friends and get called a faggot every day. It was such a thrill to have my Dad treat me like a stranger and I just loved to hear my Mom cry all the time. I told him that the next time he felt compelled to protect me to just shoot me in the head. I walked out of the office without being dismissed. When he said he wasn't finished with me I didn't even turn around. I just gave him the finger and I walked off. I warned the other guys that they might try to shake us down but thankfully, they left us alone.

Nick was browsing the X-men rack. I walked up beside him as he was looking at one with Nightcrawler on the cover. It had been since July since I had seen him. Nick hadn't changed much. Maybe he was a little taller. He had shoulder length sable black hair now and was wearing a pull over sweater from the Catholic school he was going to.

Nick looked at me and then he avoided my eyes. After a pause of a few moments he said very sadly, “My Mom has me going to this counselor every week. She says that I can't get any better until I admit that you and Doug molested me. Every week it is the same. I go in and tell the same story but she just won't believe me.”

I didn't know what to say. Suddenly it occurred to me that the reason that Doug was free and I wasn't in even deeper shit was because of little Nick's stubborn insistence on the truth. It would have been easier for him to just go along with it just to get them off of his back. We owed more than we could ever know to the courage of one little boy. Suddenly, in my eyes Nick grew taller than any of us.

Nick asked about Scotty, Brian, Mark and Clay. I told him everything that I could think of as we stood there chatting quietly in the comic store for a little while. He still hated Catholic school. The Priests always told him that he needed to confess his “sin” and the Nuns sounded like unholy bitches.

She was in a rage. She grabbed Nick painfully by his arm and pulled him close beside her. Then she turned to me and growled, “If I ever see you close to my son again I'll have you arrested you little pervert. You're a demon! You're an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. You're going to roast in hell...”

The guy who runs the comic shop was so horrified by Mrs. Turner's outburst that he just sat there for a moment. The few kids that were scattered around the shop were staring at us. The shop manager interrupted her in mid rant saying, “Excuse me, is there a problem here?”

Mrs. Turner gave the shop manager a withering look and started to say something to me but stopped. She pulled Nick behind her as she stormed out the door. As she moved out of sight I could see Nick looking back sadly.

The shop manager asked, “Kid. Are you all right?” I didn't answer as I was still in shock from sheer venom of Mrs. Turner's assault. The next thing I knew the shop manager's hand was gently on my arm and he repeated, “Are you OK?”

I was aware of tears running down my face. I was a long way from being OK. I walked out of the shop in a daze. I didn't even think about my Mom who would be finished in the grocery store shortly. I just wandered away from the shopping center aimlessly. I wasn't even sure where I was going. Tears were running down my face. I just kept walking. Before I knew it, I was running.