Through the Break in Her Hair

Chapter 1

It was just the same as any other boring, old Tuesday. The class bell buzzed over head but no one really heard it, or no one paid any attention to it. They were all too busy getting involved in each other's lives and business, swapping the truth for dirty rumors. Ruining each other's reputations, tarnishing their self-image.

What did I care though? I wasn't on their hit list. Naw, Johnny Hawthorne was untouchable. There was no need to mock me, stab me in the back, or pile drive my rep. I didn't really have one. I was spotless, pure. Not in the nerdy way that the class President was or the teacher's suck up. But in a, I'm so busy making everyone around me laugh that no one stops to see if I actually have a life or feelings.

Better him than me, I thought as Ben Barnathy sent out a mass message on Myspace, telling the entire school that Freddie—the Freak—Souxsan's fly was down.

I guess that one wouldn't have been so bad for me, I could have just spun it to make me look good. Like, "Just letting the ladies know that I take the time to coordinate my boxers with my socks." Maybe then girls would think I was conscious of stuff like that, that I cared about fashion. Which I did not, but hey, I'd do what any other pre-teen boy would do to get as close to a girl as I possibly could.

"Johnny! Dude! Did you see?" Ben hiss-whispered to me, pointing not-so-slyly at the Freak's groinal area.

"Mh, hm," I nodded, lips closed.

Ben looked stunned for a second. "Dude?! Aren't you going to say something about it?" He waited expectantly for a handout, because you know, that was my thing. I was all give and they were all take. All of 'em would come crawling to me when their own self esteem took a plunge for the worst, hoping I'd be able to cheer up them on someone else's bad fortune.

"What? Like, at least my mom doesn't hand pick out my panties every day before school?" Freddie's tighty-whities were blindingly white. God, what did his mom do? Soak them in bleach and let them sun dry them on the roof?

Ben doubled over, clutching his stomach as he nearly choked on his spit laughing. Ben swayed, threatening to fall. Just as he was pitching over, I grabbed him by the arm, and he steadied himself by latching onto me. Once he was upright again, he said, "Where do you come up with this stuff? It's so good!"

I shrugged the shoulder he was gripping, "I dunno, it just comes to me."

That was partially truthful, enough for me to skirt by with anyway. Things did come to me, just not in the way you'd imagine. For as long as I could remember, my mind would show me little scenes of my life, snippets of a conversation here and there. But they were never in real time, always minutes and sometimes even days before. It's like getting to glance at the future and using it like a tool.

I'd pull from those snippets most of my answers, my comedy from people in my visions. I was basically ripping everyone else off of their humor or their knowledge. I was cheating them of their credit. But to be fair, they were cheating me of friendship and meaning. So, we were even.

"Hey, do you mind if I use that line?" Ben asked, eyes hungry for more.

"Knock yourself out." I didn't need it anymore. It served its purpose already, since Ben was my closest non-friend and probably the only human being I would share that with.

He squeezed my shoulder. "Thanks, man! Better get to class," and ran off down the long stretch of hallway.

"Yeah, me too," I said to his already disappearing form, bodies of other non-friends all crashing in around him, swallowing him whole.

I turned to close my locker before heading off down the opposite end of the hallway. I had Geometry, followed by Social Studies, Phys Ed, and the Trough, aka, lunch. The Trough was my least favorite time of the day, contrary to popular belief. Thousands of bodies shoved into one tiny, ever sticky cafeteria where the lunch ladies smiled at you as if they cared and served you, "the very best!" Ha! The best looking pile of garbage a plate could hold. But the nightmare that was, the Trough, came after the dream of Geometry.