Issue #1: The Beginning
I felt a small smile break out onto my face as I neared the store, but I kept my eyes glued to the ground, eyes locked onto the lines that were etched into the concrete, my Converse tapping lightly as I jumped over a line.
Step on a line, you break your spine; step on a crack, you break your back.
I grinned to myself as I cleared the line, hefting my back up onto my skinny shoulders. People of all ages gave me odd glances as I walked passed, probably wondering what an eighteen-year-old boy was doing skipping down the foot path playing such a childish game. And I wasn't playing with anyone either. It was just me, by myself. But that was normal. I was always alone, I mean, I was that weird dork in the corner.
I wasn't normal, not one bit. People call me a pussy, but is it sad to agree with them? I knew I was somewhat of a pansy, I mean from the back I looked like a girl. I was barely scraping past 152cm, and I had no muscle on me whatsoever. I was skinny and short, but my limbs were super long, which just made me look retarded and out of proportion. Some people called me anorexic, since I looked like a stick, but I eat a lot- trust me, I eat a lot. My body just can't gain weight, and I hate it. I hated looking like a five-year-old. I guess the whole childish appearance just had to match my immature personality, I suppose. I still went to bed with my stuffed teddy-bears, I still brushed my teeth with an electric Batman toothbrush that played the Batman theme song when brushing, I still had to use a Green Lantern shaped night light to go to bed because I still believed there was a monster or a creepy murderer with an axe chilling out in my wardrobe.
So essentially, I was just a big ass baby.
I gleefully skipped along the footpath, leaping over the cracks until I got to the front door of the store. It was a small shop, on the corner of a pretty vacant street, but it was in a nice neighbourhood, not some place where rapists and muggers hung out. There was a bakery next door to the store, and the woman that works there makes he best finger buns, the ones with the coloured icing and the rainbow sprinkles. I liked them because she put a lot of sprinkles on them.
I rummaged through my back, sorting through the various school books and comics that filled the space, yelling out triumphantly when my fingers closed around a metal ring. It had only two keys- one for the store, one for home. I didn't have a car- I had failed every single test since I would freak out before even starting. I just took public transport, walked, or sometimes I took my bike. But I didn't use my bike a lot- the last time I did I got teased. I thought it was a really nice bike, with the batman logo scattered across the dark blue bars, and the honker even had Batman's face on it. I think people made fun of it because it still had training wheels on it- but it wasn't my fault! I had really bad balance, and I didn't want to hurt myself. I bruised really easily.
I unlocked the door, stepping in to the familiar shop, flicking on the light. The fluorescent bulbs flickered on, the little electrical whirr buzzing as I turned the switch for the fan, the crappy thing rotating around slowly, before picking up momentum. The thing with the fan was that we couldn't put it up all the way, since the comics that hadn't been bagged-and-tagged would be damaged if the pages went flying. Damaging comic books was the worst of the worst. Some people treated them like trash, but those were the people who didn't respect the art and the pure genius of the comics. Call me a geek, dork or nerd, but I preferred the term 'intelligent one'. There was nothing wrong with having a little bit of substance up there, but people thought that it was weird. It's not my fault I like studying.
I dumped my back pack behind the counter and picked up the phone as I settled myself down on the torn faux-leather bar stool. The phone was a plug-in corded burger phone, almost identical to the one in Juno. I called up the first person on speed dial, grinning as Jekyll replied. His name wasn't actually Jekyll but Jeremy- I just called him that because he had a really good impersonation of Dr Henry Jekyll from the movie. The nickname kind of stuck in the end, and he said he didn't mind so why not call him that?
