The Student and Other Stories

Chapter One

Perhaps the price of education is blissful ignorance. Whether you’re a doctor, lawman, or whatever the case, having felt education curses you, even for a brief, nonchalant duration, with the clarity of painful truth. This is why it’s upsetting to me that today I have to go into school. It shouldn’t bother me as much as it should, regardless of it being the first day, but the idea is baffling that my mother demands I go, and we had to go the night before into our local supermarket across the street just to buy a late-night backpack and supplies. My mother is not keen on doing things ahead of time, or else we would’ve gotten my supplies earlier; nevertheless, she still demands me to go to school—my ideas of its point are, in fact, besides it.

I get up at the crack of 5:00 A.M., even though my bus doesn’t come until about 7:00 A.M., and then after that school starts at 8:00 A.M. The bus takes about fifteen minutes to get there. I get up to my mother telling me, Wake up, sweetie, time for school, when all I want to do is sleep and never wake up again until next Summer starts. I put on my clothes despite this ideal and go into the bathroom, where my dirty, scummy toothbrush lies in the holder, which I assume was less relevant to buy anew compared to my mother’s purchase of a new backpack the night prior to today. I use it anyways, rinse, spit, wipe my face on the towel behind me, and walk into the kitchen.

Mother is cooking what looks like to be eggs, but I can’t be too sure because the eggs look something out of a mad-science project: they are burnt and runny off to one side, as if she set the temperature too high in expectation of it cooking faster. Just eggs, too. No toast, no bacon. Just eggs on a plate. She tells me, There you go, Kyle. I tell her thanks despite my thoughts and sit down at the dining room table. I chow down. Not bad. They could be better. But as I think this, my mother comes and sits beside me to ask, Do you like them? to which I reply, Yup, they are just dandy! My mother should probably be lied to because I often think she lies to me. It’s senior year, and my mother still has the gall to tell me I have to go into school early and eat her little eggs. She says to me, Are you excited for school? Not really, I say. Then she’s like, Well, Kyle, you must be excited. You spent all Summer writing and such. Yeah, I’m excited, I lie.

For the next hour or so (really it’s almost two hours) my mother has been boo-hooing that I should shower, that I’m a handsome kid, and that if I ever want a girlfriend eventually, I should wear nicer clothes and shower. I say it’s pointless because every single one of those beauty-queens at my school can lick my hairy butt. I hate those prissy-types. So I tell my mother, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and let that sort of fall over my head. My eyes were literally feeling as though they were caving into my brain, as if I am sick or something. But it’s from the headache of waking up at the crack of five. So I suck it up and play video games in my room—or so my mother thinks. Usually I sneak a little nap here and a little nap there, just to get ready for the day I have ahead at school. This time it’s games, though.

It’s 6:54 A.M. and my mother comes storming into the room, saying, Kyle! Get up! The bus is coming. I almost say a curse along with my lazily, reluctantly getting up, but I decide against it as my mother being around. So I grab my backpack that I placed near the door and bolt toward the public transportation, a poor family’s means to get to their destination, I reckon. From there, I’m huffing and puffing and saying to myself, What have I gotten myself into? Nothing, it seems. I look around, nobody’s there, I notice. Crap. This is just dandy that I have to wait here this long! And then, from very far away to the point where I have to almost squint to see, the bus is coming my way. I suck it up and wait. The bus parks in front of me. I get on.

There is a soft, tart, body-order smell on the bus—as I assume most buses are. But this smell in particular could cut the nostril hairs in half if its green-green smog came to. Nothing seems to bother me but this smell seemingly fumigating the visuals in front of me: I eye the obnoxious gazers with drawn eyes, no smiles, and looking out their little windows or down at their smart phones, reading articles of God-knows-what on social media. I shake off the notion and hear the bus driver say, You gonna just look at people, or are you gonna pay the toll? I give him about seventy-five cents, roll my eyes, and stand just at the front of the bus, where I can see the view of my intersection fly behind me.

For awhile I think of ways this day could get any worse. Like if my teacher calls my name, knows me as a pea-brained punk, and tells me to answer a stupid question I don’t know; or if I see a fling at some past random party, and she tells me, Why didn’t you call?; or if I step on some gum on the way in through the front gates, paying no mind to it, and feel my shoes stick down on the cement with each step I take—but I get used to it and think there is a physical weight through my body, and furthermore the stress consumes me and I worry so much so that I don’t think to look down at my sneakers . . . This seems silly, but I try not to laugh for fear of the onlookers behind me—if they, God forbid, briefly glance up from their little phones—laughing or looking at me wildly with judgmental eyes as I, too, laugh alone at the front of the bus from these foolish scenarios buzzing through my mind.

Finally the bus gets to my stop, I step down—because of being up front—to see the front gates of the high school I attend. They inch forward, and I can see little collared, chimney ants standing outside it, puffing away at their cancer-sticks—"Well, gee, look, another nail in the coffin," as my mother would say. I want so badly to join them, but I know that I’m trying to quit that horrible habit. One of my best friends, Zoey, keeps telling me to quit; even though (news flash!) she’s a smoker, too, and drinks quite more heavily than I. But I don’t tit-for-tat her, she’s a good sport. Speaking of her, I hope I run into her. I wonder where she could be. Maybe with her slutty cheerleader friends, Nicki and Amy.

Wouldn’t you know it: Zoey and her two clam-buddies are doing cheers nearest to the entrance doorway of the front office, though Zoey isn’t a cheerleader so her moves are amateur, exaggerated, and without rhythm. Despite this, her blonde, frilly hair looks especially nice and simple as she bounces pirouettes and spins to hiphop music playing by I’m assuming one of the other chicks’ smart phones. Zoey is about the same modest six foot height as me, which is to say that that is relatively large for a woman. She’s big in all the right places: wide hips, big breasts, fat booty . . . I just wish she hadn’t friend-zoned me hardcore since we first met in Kindergarten, years back. Oh well. What can a guy do? We were just kids.

I walk up to her. Hey, I say, how’s dee firzzz day! I’m sounding odd—I do that for Zoey.

No new-new, kiddy, she plays along and laughs. "Ha! How are ya?"

Doin’ gravy. I don’t wanna be here.

None of us do, Kyle.

Yeah. I nod and smile.

Amy says, Nice yellow teeth, and she giggles.

Whatever, I say, nice moves, for a slut-bag.

Nicki, standing next to Amy, gasps. How dare you!

Just bein’ honest . . . Can’t make fun of someone if you ain’t prepared to get it right back, I laugh.

Zoey says, Be nice, Kyle. Just let us dance—I’ll see you at lunch. ’Kay?

Okay, love. See ya.

See ya.

And when I’m walking away, I vaguely hear under Amy’s breath, Our moves are slutty . . . ? and Zoey says to her, No, he’s just being Kyle. I cannot believe Zoey, with her not sticking to her guns and saying that Amy was in fact being extra lame for telling me my teeth were yellow. I’m vaguely thinking that that possible new toothbrush could have came in handy. I hate when I’m right all the time.

The bell rings and I turn my head to my right, gazing at everyone going loony, running back and forth in alert, panicked gestures. I can tell they all were at their little Open House, which I failed to attend due to the fact that I have no cares of such mindless, pointless tasks. I go on through the front office doors and the first thing I see is a long, strenuous line of all the dirtbags that are unprepared on this first day. That just irks me so: the fact that I have to wait for all of them just to get my schedule for first period. I want no part of this ordeal.

Seeing this rather large black kid in class named Kaylin Rich, who I despise beyond belief for bottle-checking me in the past (the act of tapping the top of said bottle with the bottom of your bottle, whereby foaming said bottle and the bottle-holder looks like an apparent goof-ball), I finally get to the front of the line to see this new female teach—one I hadn’t seen before—who pen-holds with an obvious look of utter distain for the student body of urchins . . . Henceforth I disclose the same facial expression right back at her. Uh, I say, "I need my schedule for first period . . . uh, ma’am." To avoid possible confrontation, I have to add meaningless pleasantries for her brain to register a derivative of peace.

Yeah, here, she says. Right place. What’s your name?

Kyle.

Kyle what?

Turner.

Kyle Turner . . . Kyle Turner . . . She looks through a booklet of what I assume holds a filing system of the students’ names. Here. She finds mine in a haste, being as I assume, from looking at Kaylin moments ago, the K’s were conveniently placed with accordance to the previous member. Next, the teach says, handing me my schedule. I say a brief thank you before walking off to hear behind me the person say their name as Zach, and I think to myself, Your little moment of leisure is gone, dear ma’am, because you have quite a few more