Sort of Dead

10 - This Sucks

'Hey, buttwipe.’

‘Lost your way, Freckles?!’

‘Oye, look who's here –'

‘It’s that loser from –'

‘Ew, is that who I think it is – ?’

And so on.

These are some of the first few remarks I heard when I set foot back in the jam-packed campus of {Undisclosed} School of {Undisclosed}.

In class, people acted just like they did when I sat in Dad's medieval car. Only this was so much more worse, because I could hear what they were saying. Like, they weren’t even whispering or trying to be even mildly polite. Exactly how shameless are kids these days?

And one would think at least the teachers would be nice, sensible human beings. I'm not saying they didn’t try, but their efforts to tranquilize me only made things worse. There was this one teacher, who introduced me to the class and all (when she said “some of you might know Mr. Marra here from earlier forms,” half the class snickered; I recognized many faces from before, almost all the jocks, even more gigantic and terrifying now; and that copper-haired girl who'd rushed to help Jason but tripped over herself, and a few other vaguely familiar faces), and at the end of it, she turned to me solemnly and said:

'I'm sorry about your mother, Mr. Marra. I’m sure she’ll make it through. Just stay strong.’

And she said it out loud. Loud enough for the entire class to hear.

Great. {Undisclosed} is a small town, and now by tomorrow, someone will have found out about my Mum's tumor. And then the whole class will know. And then the whole school.

And that’s exactly what came to past.

Most of the kids were somewhat decent in this matter and didn’t use it as an insult. Some even tried to sympathize with me, which I hated.
But the jocks. Nuh-uh. They made a point of making my Mum's disease a joke. Calling her “baldy-waldy oompus” and telling me I had “a dead brain”, just like my mother’s.

I swear, I wanted to punch them all in their unsightly, odious faces, but I held back. I may be Unkillable, but I do feel pain.

I did, however, hope in my heart of hearts that all of them beget brain tumor and diseases even worse than brain tumor. I think they could use the lesson.

The teachers noticed the jocks weren’t exactly being subtle on the new, special kid and asked me if I needed any help. I said no, of course; I didn’t need any more attention than I had already garnered. Without even doing anything, can you imagine!

I don’t even know why the jocks trouble me in the first place. I've never done them any harm. They probably get spanked by their father's belts and direct their rage on us Innocents. Because yes, not just me, everyone is the jocks' victim. They steal kids' lunchboxes and water-bottles and bags and sports clothes and shoes. (There was this one kid, who I heard had to go home naked-feet. And he walks home.)

The Jocks don’t know the meaning of the word mercurial. But I don’t think they'd be as bad – as bad, mind you – if not for their leader. Let's call him . . . I wanna call him something that oozes his personality.

How about “The Great And Big Abomination”? GABA, for short. (I'll pronounce it Gaah-Baah, though it hardly matters.)

If not for Gaba, I think the rest of the Jocks could have been better humans. Or be just humans. Or at least just be humans.

(See how I played with words there? Patting my back.)

Give me a second. Aar has dozed off on my shoulder, let me get him off. Boy oh boy, he's heavy . . .