The Bully

The Bully 1.

 Chapter 1.

“Felix, your friends from school are here.”

 Seven little words.

 They don’t seem scary do they? In fact, one would even think such an announcement would bring cheer. Friends are a good thing, you might say. Not if you are me. See, I don’t have friends. I have lackeys, minions or even henchmen, but I don’t have friends. The reason for that is quite simple.

 I am the Bully.

   Of course now you are asking the ’why’. Why be a bully? Don’t you know that your actions could be what drives some poor kid to hurt themselves, or lowers their self image so much that they never have the courage to do anything? Blah, blah, blah, blah.

  Yeah, I have seen the stop bullying videos, the thing is, as long as there are people with different options there will be bigoted people who as going to try to spread their opposing ideas through violence and there is going to be casualties. I decided when I finished middle school right before our family moved that in high school I wasn’t going to be one of the victims.

 And I wasn’t. The best offence is a defense they say. So that’s what I did. And as sports were never going to be something I could dominate at or even keep up with the pack in, I choose the one place I knew I would be able to hide. Grant it, if either of my valedictorian, glasses wearing, brothers or genius parents had found out what I planned I would have been disowned. That’s why I came up with the two versions of myself. Felix at home and Flex at school.

 Not super original, I am aware of that. A guy who is one way in front of people but has a completely different side that no one ever sees, tale as old as time, plot as original as a reboot movie. Still for a guy whose whole life was taught that he should never be afraid to be himself and to always tell the truth, it was kind of big for me. Like Neil Armstrong big. I was walking on totally unexplored territory and the most amazing thing? It worked.

  Leave behind the Star Wars t-shirts, skip the white tennis shoes and never ever tuck in your shirt and you are as good as gold.

  So maybe you understand my panic when my mother shouted those words up the stairs. Especially on a Saturday at 10 AM. No normal kid would be up at this time, much less working on complex mathematics on a 4 foot by 6 foot blackboard on his bed room. I might as well hang a banner above my head with the words, “Nerd Alert” on it.

  I briefly considered wiping the problems from the surface but decided that it would be fruitless with the mural of the solar system on my walls. Not to mention the Einstein poster and Latin quotes on the other.  Sometimes I look back on that moment and wonder why I didn’t do something different.  Like get the heck out of the room chalked full evidence that I wasn’t who I pretended or even hide.  I have a huge closet. I didn’t do any of those things though.  

  Instead I froze. My cover was about to be blow to kingdom come and I did nothing.  

 “His bedroom is the first door on the left. I am sure he is up, you can go right in.” My mother’s voice came from the bottom of the stair.

 “Okay, thanks Ms Collins.” A female voice I didn’t recognize answered.

 I had the sudden urge to mess up my neatly made bed.

 The door swung open revealing someone I had never seen before. Purple converse were the first thing I notice. They were being worn by a girl who looked close to my own 15 years of age. Her blonde hair was pulled away from her face in two low pigtails, making the puzzled look on her face that much easier to see.