Joey Small

Inevitable (4)

"Fucking hell!" Is the first thing I say (more of an exclamation really) the next morning. It wasn't for one sole reason but an array of them.

It was a rough night in the new home, with a new bed and an unexpected visitor in the night. Due to this, he had a sudden surge of pain thriving through his right arm. Impossible, not only were there no scars but the insidious murderer was on the left side of me, as my right side was facing the wall. Rebecca comes knocking immediately, a concerned look in her eyes. Though, she does tell me off for my potty mouth, foul tongue, use of inappropriate language. I apologise, but we both know this isn't going to be the last time.

"Have you located the injury?" She asks. I shrug my shoulders, feeling the pain again. I put my left arm on my right shoulder, it crosses my chest. She tells me to stand up and she'll inspect me. This should be interesting.

After a not as thorough as I hoped for inspection, I turn our clean, somehow. "I'm not quite sure what is wrong here, maybe it's unrelated to the incident of last night."  I trust what she says, wearily. And like I said, that day everyone in the orphanage take care of me.
The food was great: pizza, pasta; burgers galore. Food glorious food. I destroyed everyone in a Tekken 6 tournament, as everyone else plays as either Jin or King (with the occasional Devil Jin players as well). He mained Lee, mainly for his aesthetic badassness. In all honestly, it's more suave than badass, but the effect is still the same. His white hair makes him look more innocent, with white holding connotations of divinity and angelic ideas. Or an innocent old person. But from all the anime he had watched, he knew that the White-haired ones were the badasses. As for how he won, he uses a technique he calls strategic button mashing, he's not exactly clueless but doesn't know the combos. It doesn't take an MLG like Holeman to beat these noobs.

Of course, even in paradise does the sun set. Another day had gone by, another night to bear through. Rebecca offered to sleep on the floor in case he decided to return, but I objected. I wanted to be alone, quite frankly. She did however, insist on putting him to bed. As she did, she reminded him of the dreaded 6 letter word (coincidence, I think not): school. School is literally like a prison. Set times for lunch and even walking (which must be in silent lines), an emphasis on silence and order, a strict dress code, a loss of individual autonomy (we don't have any input in our own decisions), a lack of freedom plus negative reinforcements. It's horrific. He never liked school before, so now it'll be like a living hell. One thing he had in common with Jake was the fact that he was antisocial, or socially awkward (with antisocial behaviour being a result of this). He envied the likes of Timothy, who no longer need to go to school.

You'll need this knowledge for your revenge, I remember. And that sets me in a content enough mood to go to sleep knowing what I would awake to the following day. 

Dull dreams last night, no signs of any monsters or witchcraft. Alas, the inevitable is upon us. Seven crappy hours of our lives- school. Rebecca walks in to awaken me, but sees that I've managed to do so myself. "Here's your uniform, Joseph." She's still cheery, even when talking about school. How? I reply with a dull, verbal sign of gratitude (thanks...) and she walks out the room. In the uniform it reads Fairway Primary School. The uniform is black as well as yellow/green (a bit of both, I think). Seeing it makes me feel colour blind, which could be apparent. My father got confused between red and orange, so maybe I'm the same with yellow and green. Not that I think grass and bananas are the same colour, but when they're more blended to a similar shade then I will get confused.

Eventually, I put on my uniform. It feels heavy. Why did I have to be a good boy and say I'm ready to go back to school? I think I just wanted it over and done with. But I could've taken a good amount of time off. I would've been bored at home though, I get the feeling Timothy isn't too fond of me.

I snappily eat the egg and toast that Rebecca made us, probably giving the impression that I refuse to be tardy on my first day at my new school. I just wanted to leave. I don't have anything against the orphanage, but after the first night I just don't feel as safe.

She walks us little ones to our school as Timothy takes the older ones to their bus. It wasn't until then that I realised that I'm actually one of he youngest in the orphanage, the ones younger than me were still in nursery or reception, so I was the youngest in the family going to my school. I shake the thought off, I mean year 2 can't be that nerve racking.

It was just a blur of embarrassment. I was forced to sit next to the brainiac Asian kid (the only in the class amongst a white majority with a couple young niggas spread around too), and he answered every question I tried to answer. My enthusiasm died by lunchtime. When I finally got to answer a question, I got it wrong: "what's 9 + 10?"
"21? " Ridicule, ridicule is the only way I can describe that moment, with no words made to describe the level of embarrassment.
You can tell what character everyone in the class fits into, and even the white moron could answer that question. Lunch was worse. Disgusting chicken, so dry and flavourless. No salt or pepper allowed either. We didn't even get to have any dessert.

In the playground I sat by myself, and without a book to curl into I had to sit there, bored out of my brain I stared into the abyss (which is probably what the mind of most of the kids in my class would look like), and think. I don't start to plan my revenge just yet, in fact I decide to leave that topic entirely when it comes to school. I instead think of how I'm going to make some friends. For an antisocial genius like me, this is quite a difficult task. From what I know about my peers so far, there isn't anything I can use to get close to them. In the end I suck it up and wait until I find something I can use to empathise with my peers.

Luckily, next lesson was philosophy, or as they called it: P4C (the teacher called it that too). This was when we'd sit in a circle and have a stimulus, something to get our minds going. We the. Think of key concepts or big ideas and themes relating to it. Most of the time it was an image, and we'd always have a theme relating to death. This one was no different, to my dismay. Death is right down memory lane, not too many stops away from the current times. But if I were to mention all of this, I would have even less of a chance of making friends. Unless I twist the truth. Slightly.

The question was: "Why are we afraid of the dark?" This was suggested by Jimmy, just your average white kid. I was very surprised to see nobody call Thomas in the class; it's always been quite a popular name, there's even a Tommy in the orphanage.
       When it gets to my turn to speak, Asian weirdo hands my the item which gave us permission to speak, it smelled a bit like curry. I tell them that somebody came into my house, but I tell them that I scared the guy off (which did happen, at least in my eyes). I don't mention the death of my parents and nobody brings them up, so I'm in the clear. The hero box is checked. Next is that I need to sound smart, but not like a nerd *cough* Yusuf *cough*. I say that we are scared of the dark because we don't know what's out there. It could be anything really. A monster or a puppy. That was enough for me to get an applause, I always had a notch for thinking.