Damaged Read Free

cabin, waiting to slice and saute him until he was no more. School buses were not a sign of education in his mind but a sign of extreme distress, like an ambulance and patrol car rolled into one. He did not even like walking down the street when one was rolling by with kids inside.
    Now one approached, its wheels slowing their spin, its door squealing open, welcoming him into the abyss.
    In order to catch it before it left him in the dust, he broke into a jog, head down, eyes forward, and shoes untied. The winter air brushed past him, all too cold.
    The freakish lazy-eyed girl and the mega-pig went on board, watching him, expecting him to foul-up. And as Adam looked up, the girls' forecast came true. Adam stepped on his untied shoelace, which was too long to begin with. The fall was so fast, he didn't know what hit him. His knees made a soft thud against the pavement, like a potato being crushed by a small brick. He held out his hands to protect himself and ended up scraping his palms off the rough concrete.
    The embarrassment was far worse than the injury. The two girls laughed loudly and for a long time. Adam could feel every single kid on that bus laughing as well, not giving two shit's less about his well being.
    He just sat there, asking God why it had to happen, why he had to take a spill in front of everybody.
    But God didn't answer. Adam took this as the answer—God did not love him. The Man Upstairs did not even like him.
    By the time he got himself together, he, more or less, woke up. Adam had had a mild panic attack. From the time it took the bus to get from Barb's Tanning Salon to its current location, Adam couldn't recall. It was the third attack he'd recently had, and as before, everyone and everything around him looked and sounded funny.
    The bus was parked aside him now, its door open, the driver, a decent-looking overweight gentleman with long blond hair who liked most kids, was laughing silently at him.
    Adam stood, dusted off his palms, and got onto the bus. The driver looked at him like he was a clown with a kick me sign taped to his back.
    "Hi," Adam said kindly.
    "Yeah," the driver said, shutting the door and shaking his head.
    Adam sauntered down the aisle, knowing what was coming. It did.
    "Have a nice trip?" one skinny redheaded boy in the second seat asked him.
    "It's winter," a very attractive brunette girl with braces in the third seat queried, "not fall!" She burst out laughing with her friend, a thick black girl who looked at Adam and said, "Don't look at me, retard."
    He went his way, very hurt, very angry.
    "Ever hear of Velcro?" one muscular kid wearing a Blake High School jacket said.
    Adam kept walking, passing more kids, who either laughed at him or mumbled something about him under their breath. He reached the back seat and sat alone, the only single seat on the bus. Nobody here cared about him, and he had done nothing wrong to anybody.
    ***
    Number 22 reached Blake High School at 7:45 A.M. Kids poured into the building. Adam did not want to leave the bus, but he knew he didn't have a choice.
    He was the last one to get out and the most reluctant one to enter through those glass doors.
    For him, entering the place was like being sucked dry of every decent emotion. True prison, physically, mentally, spiritually. Not the place to learn or make friends but a place to be beaten down by big kids with 4.0 grades and no real intelligence. In many ways, Adam thought it was worse than a high-security prison, save being stabbed and screwed up the ass by a three hundred pound queer. At least there you got sentenced for doing something wrong; here it was reversed. Being the frail one in this institution was its real crime.
    Many fish swam mindlessly around him. Some of the girls, attractive or not, flew in different directions, ignoring Adam as if he weren't even there. Oh, but they did know. They just didn't want him to be. They glanced at everyone else.
    Adam's face was always whiter when he