Get Me To A Church

CHAPTER 1: OPEN

 SAL

          "You kiss your daddy with that tongue? I'm sure he—"

           That was a stupid idea. What else is a guy gonna do, though? Let himself get bullied by a dumbass like Travis?

           In elementary, they taught me to tell a teacher if I was being bullied. But what the hell am I gonna do? Sit around, let a kid cuss me out , and not defend myself? I suppose that would've been a better idea, because he punched me in the jaw when I got him back. It probably wouldn't have been as bad as it was if I wasn't wearing my prosthetic.

           For some context, I had an accident and my face ended up mangled. I think it would've been cooler if I had at least part of my face left. Then I could have a Phantom of the Opera mask. It would look awesome, and I also wouldn't have bled as much as I did that day. 

           So, Travis punched my prosthetic into my face. As he sped away, I spat out blood and it ran down my chin. My friend, Ashley, who was standing next to me when it happened, flipped out. I wiped the blood off with my hand.

           "What the hell, asshole?!" she shouted after him. That was also a pretty bad idea, because any teacher could have heard us. We live in a small town. There aren't a lot of students in our high school to block out the sound. "Are you alright, Sal?"

           "I'm fine," I said automatically. Not really. It stung. I'm glad my sweater's black, or the blood would've been more obvious... though, that could look cool, too. Like a tough guy.

           "C'mon, let's report that jerk," she said, scowling. She swiveled around, about to march off to the principal's office — I didn't want that. Travis was just some lame, homophobic shithead. We didn't need to worry about him.

           I put my hand out like I was a traffic cop. "No, don't worry about it." She turned around and gave me a dubious look. I adjusted my mask. "That'll just make things worse, trust me. I've dealt with worse bullies than Travis before." I really have. I was kind of surprised there weren't worse bullies here; it's not a super clean and wealthy neighborhood.

           Ashley didn't care about what I said. She looked at my mask, which apparently got blood on it from when I messed with it. "Sal, you're bleeding!"

           "I'm okay, really," I replied, putting my hands in my pockets.

           The thing with Ash is that she's really stubborn. Sometimes I get a free pass, like when she didn't go to the principal's office to report Travis — although she might just do that behind my back — but after that, I can't stop her. So of course she pretended not to hear me when I said I was fine. She's a great friend.

           "Here, let's use my bandana," she muttered, grabbing a red piece of fabric out of her pocket. I panicked.

           "Wait, hold on—" I protested uselessly. She'd get her way. "I— you can't— I'm—" What I was trying to say is that I'm ugly. I've gotten used to my face, but being a hormonal teenager, as well as a relatively sane person, I don't like it. I have an ugly crevice that splits my lip down the middle and goes up to where my nose should be. It looks more like a lizard nose than a human one. My jaw has a chunk missing on the left side. One of my eyelids flops over my eye. I look like Two-Face if he was One-Face. It's depressing. I really like Ashley — I didn't want her to think I'm a monster.

          Ashley was merciful and did not react to my face. Instead, she undid the bottom buckle, flipped up my mask like the hood of a car, and bit her lip as she focused on tying the bandana over my wound. It was weird. Now both Larry (my other friend) and Ashley had seen my face, and they were totally cool with it. I tried not to cry.