You Know How I Haven't Posted In A While? Here's Why. :: Mildly Mental... A Creative Writing Blog

You Know How I Haven't Posted In A While? Here's Why. November 30, 2005 - 22:40:38

Shooter
Matthew White

Click.
Click.
Click.
My father doesn't know about this. I managed to sneak the pistol out of his closet yesterday. Surprisingly, it's loaded. I always sort of thought that my dad left it empty, you know, to scare a burglar or whatever. Not like we'd ever get a burglar in my neighborhood. Nothing exciting or even a little dangerous, God forbid, ever happens in Hamlet Lake. We've practically defined Minnesota nice here. I'm pretty sure that the ants in this town have, at some point, actually asked permission to take breadcrumbs.
I actually think that my dad still believes that I don't know about this gun. You'd think that he'd have noticed I'm in high school and can figure stuff out on my own. But my dad doesn't know shit. He never pays attention because he's never home. He stays at work for hours now that Mom's gone. I guess he figures, why come home? I'm the only other one in the house, and God knows we don't get along. The stuffed-shirt successful businessman and the hardcore punk who's failing half his classes and dyes his hair purple? Oh, yeah, that's a great family dynamic. We get on each other's nerves, and by that I mean that we pretty much shout at each other all the time. So he doesn't notice or care that I found his gun.
He's also failed to pick up on the fact that I get the shit kicked out of me about once a week at school. You know, just a little detail that he's overlooked. When I come home with a black eye he just shakes his head and says he wishes that I wasn't so anti-social. I'm pretty sure he thinks I start these fights. It's hilarious, because I've never started a fight with a kid before. Now I'm just going to finish them. I point the gun at the mirror again and pop the trigger with the safety on a couple more times. I don't know where he stashes his spare bullets, so I only have one full chamber, one time, and I want to make sure it counts. I want to make sure that when I shoot this thing, it only takes one shot each time. When those bastards fall down, I want to make sure they don’t get up again. While I get comfortable with the gun, I decide to put on NOFX’s album, The War on Errorism. The idiots really are taking over, I think.
Yesterday, it happened again. I was walking home from school, which I’ve started doing since riding the bus became a nightmare. It’s a long walk, but I couldn’t ride the bus without my things turning up missing before the end of the ride. It started simple, with my backpack or whatever. I’d always get them back. A couple weeks ago, they stole my coat. I couldn’t get it back from them and had to walk from the bus stop home in the cold. The next day I found pieces of it all over the floor by my locker. My dad had to buy me a new one. Of course, since he’s a sports nut, it had to be a Vikings jacket, with Hulk Hogan’s face bravely emblazoned across the back, wearing a stupid horned helmet. It’s great, you know, because I like professional sports so much and everything. So there I was, walking home in my nice new Vikings jacket and looking for rocks big enough to “lose” it under, when Aaron Banaczek snuck up behind me and grabbed me by the back of my backpack. I turned, but by that time Aaron’s buddies, who we’ll call Short, Dumb, and Ugly for the sake of conversation, had already grabbed me by the arms so that Aaron can have his fun.
“You little faggot,” muttered Short, “We’ll get you this time.”
“Still not gay, you guys,” I answered. “This whole labeling thing is getting old.” I was trying again, vainly, to be a smartass.
“How ‘bout we label you dead?” growled Dumb.
Vainly. I winced as Aaron’s fist careened toward my face. Crack! And the lawn gnomes in the yard next to me started spinning around in some kind of strange dance. One of them turned to the other one, and I swore I heard it say that this time I wouldn’t get up. I realized that was actually Aaron as he kicked me in the stomach. There was something warm and wet on the front of my ugly new jacket and everything kept spinning around. The lawn gnomes watched, quite intrigued by the entire thing, and tittered back and forth to each other as Dumb and Ugly played catch with the contents of my backpack. I reached out a hand, but Short pushed me to the ground, and Aaron stepped on my nose. That’s an incredibly unpleasant feeling, if it ever happens to you. As the front of my face exploded, Aaron turned his attention to kicking me, over and over. The lawn gnomes pointed and laughed, and then I heard the lady who owns the lawn gnomes screaming something, and the world went fuzzy before it went black.
That was a trip to the emergency room. Again. And, again, who took me? Some total stranger. Where was my dad? At work. When the doctor tried to call him at work, he was informed that Mr. Goffen was in a meeting and had asked not to be disturbed, yak yak yak, call back later and maybe he won’t put you on hold. When my dad saw me later that night, with my nose bandaged up to the size of a cucumber and stitches in my cheek from where Aaron kicked it so hard it split open, he told me that if I didn’t listen to that damn punk music I’d probably do better in school and get into fewer fights.
“Fuck you, Dad. How was your meeting today? Get a lot accomplished while I was in the E.R.?” I stormed off to my room, slammed the door, and cranked Green Day so loud that a picture fell off the wall in the dining room. I heard the glass shatter. My dad stared screaming something, so I headed downstairs and slipped out the back door. After he went out to the bar, I found the gun. Homework took a pass that night. I vegged out in front of the television watching some brainless crap until about two in the morning, when there was finally enough Vicodin in my system that I could sleep without feeling the pain in my face. My vomit-stained Vikings jacket started to smell.
Click.
Click.
Click.
When I showed up at school this morning without a coat, my homeroom teacher asked me if this was part of the punk movement, to freeze in the winter. He’s the men’s basketball coach, and, as far as he’s concerned, Aaron Banaczek can do no wrong. The couple times I’ve said anything to him about him, he’s looked at me like I was crazy. The other teachers who know, and there are only two, claim that their hands are tied because Aaron always attacks me off school grounds. My science teacher has told me that I should call the police, which sounds great until you think about it. Who are they going to believe? Me, the juvenile delinquent look-alike, or Aaron, the clean-cut basketball player who’s probably going to get a full-ride athletic scholarship? And what’s worse, my dad would probably blame me in front of the cops, which further discredits my story. Plus, I don’t exactly trust the police. I mean, they’ve never done anything to me; I keep my head down most of the time. But there’s just something about them that I don’t like. I’d be more specific, but it’s not specific. I’m not some kind of paranoid delusional who thinks the cops are coming for him . . . I just have what you might call a healthy distrust of authority. So, since my dad won’t help, my teachers can’t help, and the cops probably trust the kid who kicks the shit out of me more than they do me, I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands.
After the snide comment about my coat in homeroom, I had to endure the constant humiliation of just a plain old regular school day, just like most of the other days since I started middle school three and a half years ago. Now that I’m a freshman at the high school, things are even less fun. My day starts in homeroom; my teacher (the smartass who ribbed me about freezing) usually teaches chemistry, I think, but he also coaches the men’s basketball team, which, like I said, makes him a devoted fan of the tre-popping Aaron Banaczek. To my joy, Short, Dumb, and Ugly, who seem to go everywhere in a pack, like vultures or wild dogs, are all in my homeroom. This means that homeroom is nothing but delight as I fight for my right to do my homework in peace. After I got an important assignment torn into bits and had to go to my English teacher empty handed, I have started carrying floppy disks containing my essential homework on my person at all times. So far, I’ve only had one get stolen, which is a major improvement over the hard copies. My homeroom teacher intervenes whenever he isn’t preparing to show his junior class how to blow stuff up with chemicals, which means that he doesn’t intervene all that often.
First period is science, with the teacher who thinks I should call the cops. Luckily for me, this means that I am basically watched like a hawk every minute of my science class. Unluckily for me, this means that I am basically watched like a hawk every minute of my science class. The dilemma of course being that I suck at science, and my teacher catches my every mistake, which is then corrected, usually in a more public way than my teacher believes. She tries to be discreet, but God help her, she’s about as discreet as a rhino. So that means that my entire science class thinks I’m an idiot, which, at least in science, isn’t too far off base. I never get beaten up or stolen from in science, but I am regularly exposed to the glaring light of my own failure.
Second period is gym. With Aaron Banaczek.
Third period is English. While I really enjoy writing, I absolutely hate the novels we’re reading. To Kill A Mockingbird may be a “classic” and an award-winning book, but it makes me barf. So I don’t do well in the class because I rarely get to write and am judged largely on my ability to give a shit about the books we read. And I don’t at all. The other joy of third period is that lunch comes right in the middle, which means that everyone in my English class has watched me get force-fed mashed potatoes through my nose on at least one occasion, as well as the now-infamous slushie incident, which involved my undergarments and semi-frozen liquid. The moment is rapidly becoming a part of school history. I keep imagining my horrified face blown up and plastered across the middle of a yearbook page, with “Good joke, wasn’t it?” as the caption. Everyone, especially Aaron Banaczek, will want to sign my face in their friends’ yearbooks.
Fourth period, and thank God we’re on a four period day, is health this quarter. Last quarter it was some cooking class that I mostly didn’t pay attention to. Health is my strongest subject because it’s horrendously easy. They want to make sure that I know how not to get a girl pregnant and when to stop drinking at the parties that they’re sure I must be attending every night. Since I have no girlfriend, and no one invites me to parties, the class is about the simplest thing in the world. Rote memorization, ahoy! I’m good at that, and I ace every test cold.
Then I walk home. Two days ago, I actually got home with nothing more than a snowball in the back of the head. It didn’t even have a rock in it; they must’ve been lazy that day. Two days ago I thought that my dodging the school bus had actually worked. Yesterday I got proved wrong. Today I have a gun. Tomorrow I'll use it.
You know, I’m not even sure what happened that caused Banaczek to single me out as his pet project from hell. It’s been this way for a long time, and if I ever did know the reason, I stopped caring about it after the third or fourth bloody nose. But Banaczek has managed to convince a significant group of people that I am 1) a faggot, 2) a loser, and 3) an easy target. Especially 3.
When my mom was alive, things were different. My dad was a dad, then. He came home from work early some nights just to see Mom and me. He’d lie and tell the boss that he had some important conference call or something, and then we’d go out to dinner and a movie. When I got beat up at school, which really didn’t happen very often back then, Mom would clean me up, kiss the owie (that is a rare and special mommy power which no one else gets away with using and which I cannot now believe I ever let anyone, even her, use), and give me chicken soup or hot chocolate or something. Feed a cold, starve a fever, and pamper a punch in the face. She also helped me with my homework, especially my science, which she knew all about. Well, she probably didn’t, but I was in like fifth grade and my parents were, in actual fact, the smartest people in the whole world. Then, when I was in seventh grade, my mom died, my dad became the workaholic asshole that he is now, and my life went down the shitter. Emotional trauma doesn't sit well with seventh graders, and I got taken for a wuss and a crybaby. Since then, I've had nothing but trouble at school.
Well, not all trouble. There is this girl . . . but even that hasn't worked out right. Her name is Jamie MacLain. She is gorgeous. She's tall, she's smart, she's in my English class . . . and a week ago she started dating Aaron Banaczek. I just don't get it! Why does he get all the breaks, and I just get cracked ribs? I have never done anything to deserve this! I keep my head down, I stay out of everybody's way, and I just want to be left alone. Why can't they just leave me the hell alone? I'm too tired to think about this right now. Off to bed.
Click.
Click.
Click.
I sleep with the gun under my pillow and dream of Jamie MacLain. We're at some party, one of the ones that I never get invited to, and we have this brilliant intelligent conversation about the symbolism in To Kill A Mockingbird and drink beer and then she actually takes me out on the dance floor. I am in love, all is right with the world, and Aaron Banaczek is sitting in a corner crying because no one loves him and he's all alone. And I think, in the dream, now that's poetic justice. And the dream just keeps getting better, and the dance lasts forever, and Jamie leans over and kisses me on the mouth, and it's awkward and crazy and I think I'm in love . . .
And I wake up and feel the gun under the pillow and remember that today's the day that I'm going to do it. I get dressed carefully, picking the clothes that I'm going to die in. I watch the news. When kids like me do things like this, they either shoot themselves or get shot by the cops. I'm not going to jail. I'm not going to live in humiliation. I'd rather die than keep going, anyhow. My life is totally meaningless. It's a shipwreck, and I know enough to jump off and take my chances rather than hang on until it sinks. And, hell, at least I'll take Aaron Banaczek down with me. I take my puke-stained, smelly Vikings jacket out of the hall closet and hide the gun in an inside pocket. Dad's already gone to work, go figure. I wonder if he'll miss me. I wonder if, when I'm gone, he'll think about the shitty way he treated me and wish he hadn't. I imagine the look on Aaron Banaczek's face when he realizes that I killed him. I don't bother eating breakfast: I don't want to puke later. I just walk through the slush on the sidewalks until I get to the bus stop, along the way taking inventory and making sure that I have everything. I'm wearing my backpack. That's good. People should think I'm going to class, like a good boy. I've got all my books, I'm wearing my favorite clothes, and the gun is in the pocket of my jacket.
The bus ride to school is typically humiliating. I just keep hoping that someone will look at me, talk to me, smile, give me a reason not to do this. I'd love a reason, somewhere deep inside, to just not have to do this. Someone grabs the strap of my backpack as I get on the bus and knocks me face first on the floor, and then another person snags my backpack and, as I stand back up, throws it toward the back of the bus. I watch as a pair of willing hands stretch out and catch it. I don't bother chasing it.
No one gives me a place to sit until the bus driver starts hollering about how he's not driving anywhere until I sit my butt in a seat, so somebody better move over, at which point one of the big burly football jocks reluctantly shoves over closer to the window. I sit down, without my backpack, and wait for the bus ride to be over. The jock stares pointedly out the window and pretends I don't exist. To him, I'm a maggot. Just a little worm that he has to put up with until he gets to school and can hang out with his jock buddies for the rest of the day.
In my mind, I can already hear the news reports: “Today, a shooting happened at the local high school. The shooter was a ninth-grade male with purple hair wearing a stinky Vikings jacket. No one knew much about him, and all of his classmates say that he was quiet. When we contacted the boy's father, he gave no comment. The boy shot four other students and a teacher, killing them all, and used the last bullet to take his own life. Another tragic case of a loner student seeking revenge for reasons that none of us may ever understand.” Right there, there may be the obligatory interview with some crazy crying girl who they assume must know me, but actually has never met me in her life. The reporter will strike a pose, a saddened look on his face, and then, facing the camera, say, “Back to you, Charlie.”
And then they'll go on to the weather. Isn't that always the way it goes? “Oh, what a terrible tragedy. Are we expecting more snow this weekend, Bob the Weatherman?” I'm so tired of this life, of this world, of these stupid people. It's time for it to be over. I'm just so sick of it all. The bus driver's playing Christmas music, and for just a second I think about my grandparents and how I won't get to see them anymore, and my throat closes off and a tear runs down my face. No one notices, no one cares. Another tear slips down my cheek, and I slide my hand inside my jacket to touch the gun. Its hard anger reassures me.
The bus screeches to a stop. I wait until the rest of the kids get off, and three or four of them shove me down into my seat as they pass. The jock I was sitting next to barely notices me as he brushes past and disappears off the bus into the school. I walk quickly to the back of the bus and collect my backpack and my books, which are scattered everywhere. Reasonably certain that I have everything, and more certain that none of it matters anyhow, that it's all for show and I'll never read these books again, I walk back to the front of the bus, thank the driver (why did I do that? I wonder), and step down onto the sidewalk. I walk down the sidewalk, and for just a minute I think that someone must have noticed, that any second I'll get tackled by a cop and taken to some psychiatric ward. I keep hoping for that until my hand touches the crash bar on the door to enter the school. My right hand slips quietly into my jacket again. The door swings inward as I push on it, and I walk into the school.
- LeBlanc

TRHBlogs a strange sort of community