One of The Crowd- Version 1

One of The Crowd

The students had gone berserk. Whites and Blacks were fighting amongst themselves, others were fighting the teachers and authorities that had come to restore order. But we were having none of it. The once peaceful school social was thrown into chaos, plastic chairs were being thrown and wielded as weapons, tables with bowls of punch were being flipped in rage and students falling to the floor in pain. The barrier that segregated the Blacks from the Whites had been completely destroyed, and both parties were taking full advantage. The Band had long since fled from the scene and called the authorities, but for the moment, we were free.

I could still see Cody up on stage, the microphone still clutched in his right hand as he surveyed the results of his words. The ghost of a smile marked his lips, and then we heard them, the sirens that marked his demise.

The year was 1953, and the school social was just around the corner. Everybody who was anybody were making plans for what to wear and who to take. Except for two. My good friends, Cody and Leanne were all but dreading the social. Cody was your typical teenage guy, he was on the football team, he was a hit with the ladies and was an all in all cool dude. However, the one exception to his stereotypical personality was that he had a very strong belief in equality between Blacks and Whites, which (as you'd expect) was not a very popular opinion among his peers. This attribute was also shared by Leanne, one of my only female friends, and the two of them were almost always together.

Cody and Leanne were bound by their parents, Leanne's mother had worked for Cody's farther and the two of them were practically siblings. As you may have already figured out, Leanne was Black (or African American if you were so inclined) and as such, she was treated as a lesser human being. I couldn't say that I shared the same enthusiasms of my two friends, but they were the only ones who actually saw me at school. And I do mean that in the literal sense. For the past two years I had just drifted through school like a leaf in the wind. Moving from class to class, lunch to lunch, day to day and month to month. I was invisible. No friends to speak of, and certainly not a girlfriend in sight; just me, myself and I, sitting at the back of the class.

I can remember the moment when Cody first came to rescue me; I was alone under the bleachers, getting my head stomped in by some faceless hockey junky who needed to express some rage. I was lying in the fetal position, the taste of blood fresh in my mouth mixed with the dirt I lay in. The leather shoe of the hockey boy would rise up, then come back down, making impact on my skull. Up and down, up and down, up and down. I could smell the shoe polish and hear the creak in the leather as it rose above my head. But then I heard a new sound, the sound of pounding feet on exposed gravel. "Hey, scumbag!" I heard someone shout, followed by the crunching of flesh and bone meeting more flesh and bone. This was followed by a thump as something rather big hit the ground with a groan.

My eyes were swollen, but I felt multiple pairs of hands lifting me to my feet, blood trickling down the side of my head and onto the ground below. Once on my feet, my arms were supported by two muscular pairs of shoulders as they began to drag me away from under the bleachers. Once out in the light, it was as if my eyes were set on fire and I winced away from the sun. The presence of light was also accompanied by various gasps of horror as different students saw my mangled face. However, the gasps were oddly followed by a cheer from the Cheerleaders (obviously) and I was a little offended at the time. I was later told that it was because more of the footballers had just dragged the hockey boy from beneath the bleachers, and that he looked even worse then me when they were done.

For a brief moment in history, I was famous.