Ada and Forrest Are Okay

ONE

[one - ada]


On the seventh day of my senior year, a sort of bleak, rainy Thursday afternoon, during the small three minute and fifteen second time frame between classes, I saw something that would soon cause a messy catastrophe of events to occur and disrupt my otherwise monotonous life.

It was so unbelievably cliché, and a complete slap in the face to oafs everywhere, that the people casually standing around the wide structured hallway had no choice but to laugh. I wasn't sure if they were laughing at the scene that was taking place, the star of said scene, or the victim―probably a mixture of all three―and I didn't actually stick around long enough to find out. But at any rate, what happened was this:

Boomer McFadden―more on him later―and his posse of Neanderthals gathered around to torment this kid―a pale guy, tall and skinny. Internet girls and boys would love him, but not here. Not in high school, where we're all ugly, except maybe two percent—and they're most likely ugly on the inside, so that counts too. And if we're all horrible creatures, then who do the bullies pick on? Oh yeah, the weirdos. And boy oh boy does this school pack some freaks.

What's more peculiar is that the quote, unquote popular kids are the most outrageous. They get by with some strange garbage, but because they know how to sway a crowd, know where the punchline goes to set off a raucous audience, it's totally fine that Captain Boomer made out with his sister (she's adopted, but still), or that someone caught and recorded Bailey Reynolds―part of the wicked two percent―beating her dog. With. A. Stick. An actual stick.

She's a monster, but whatever because she's also Bailey freaking Reynolds.

And this kid, this guy who's pretty cute I suppose, but has the audacity to be shy, is getting o-blit-er-a-ted all because he let it slip that he thought Boomer's girlfriend was hot. Wow.

And no, Boomer's girlfriend is not his sister. I was shocked too. Boomer's girlfriend, Macy Loomis, is to Forrest Whitley (the victim) as Peyton Sawyer is to Lucas Scott. However, I don't see Macy giving up her entitled self-admiration and/or self-pity (see the wiki character page for a general idea of the Peyton Sawyer/Macy Loomis paradigm) for the human heartbreak that is Lucas Scott...I mean Forrest Whitley. I roll my eyes at both, by the way. Or all four. Whatever.

Still, Forrest has a certain aura about him. A sadness, I suppose.

Boomer McFadden was good for contributing to the heaviness that slumped Forrest's posture. It was hard to look at him, all achy and perpetually tired. You had to wonder what went on at home too.

But we're teenagers. We don't ask a person than kind of stuff. We're rotten, I tell you.

Anyway.

Before I scurried away to my cowardly little hiding hole (the library. Another cliché upon endless clichés. My apologies before you get in too deep, if I can keep your attention long enough), I saw Boomer, big, boisterous Boomer, grab Forrest by the short brown scruff at the back of his neck. People laughed (not me, I point out with righteous indignation), they stood around to watch the humiliation take place (again, not me, at this point I tried scurrying away. Unfortunately, the crowd was too thick), and they did nothing about it (this is where all of my righteous indignation deflated with a blubbery whistling sound, shrinking into a pathetic little shriveled-up balloon on the hall floor). I couldn't get away, so instead I looked away.

Pathetic, I know.

"She is a pretty little thing, isn't she," Boomer grunted as Forrest—who, might I add, was taller by a good couple of inches than Boomer—hunched into his body, every bit of seeable flesh turning steamy red as a full-body flush washed over him.