The Cursed Blood
be able to see and react to when another of my fine classmates (likely looking to score some social popularity points by adding to my humiliation) inevitably stuck their foot out in the hopes of making me faceplant on my ear reddeningly jeered and cat called “walk of shame.”I shouldered my backpack, picked up my now milk-drenched tray, stepped over the feet that swept out on my way to the trash cans at the front of the lunchroom where I dumped the sopping ruined lunch and stacked my tray with the rest of them.
I pretended to ignore the whispering, pointing, and giggling as best I could, and a few painfully long moments later I was off down the hall, trying and failing to put the whole mess behind me as I trudged, teeth grinding, and still dripping head hanging low on a mission to get washed up before the bell rang to mark the end of lunch time.
Anthony, the mustached and overweight security guard, nodded as he passed me taking in the state of my clothes and hair and shook his head. A ghost of an amused smile played on his face as he walked past. I wonder if he ever caught on that smirking made kids like me feel worse?
As I was wiping at my face with those god-awful scratchy brown paper towels from the big white painted steel dispenser (with crude things etched and graffitied onto it, of course) in between the mirrors over the rows of sinks, I felt my stomach drop as from the mirror I watched as Mr. Varsity Letter walked in with a huge perfectly white smile on his face as he cracked his knuckles.
I was doomed. And I knew it.
“Hey dweeb,” he greeted as he put me in a headlock with one arm and grabbed my hair with his other hand, dragging me to the dinged up and black marker doodled green metal toilet stalls with a happy laugh. “Figured I’d help you get washed up. How’s that sound, four-eyes?”
My breathing came hard. I felt hot and angry and scared, and I remember shaking as I futilely struggled and begged while I was muscled to the stall. He kicked it open loudly with one of his fresh new basketball shoed feet.
He laughed, right up until something in me snapped. I don’t know what possessed me at the time, given that the dude was a head and shoulders taller and was a known weight room rat with more than a few local and state wrestling championships under his belt. But I guess none of that matters when you get punched in the balls a few times.
I don’t even remember thinking about it or telling my hands to move or anything—it all just seemed to happen in slow motion. I saw the toilet, yellow with piss and floating wads of brown streaked toilet paper bobbing at the surface that another guy hadn’t flushed down, and something just snapped.
The hot thundering rage was tempered with a surge of cold as I felt myself moving but couldn’t quite take credit for it. It was like watching yourself do something in slow motion while a thundering ear-splitting headache. Like one of those big marching band drums was getting hammered on in my skull, beating out a cadence.
I somehow ended up with the stall door in my hands, pulling back with all my weight and strength over and over and over. I remember hearing crying, but it wasn’t until later I realized it wasn’t me.
I don’t know how many times I slammed that door closed on Mr. Varsity Jacket. All I know is when I stopped, my arms hurt and my whole body was shaking and there he was. Slumped onto the floor with a bloody and oddly bent nose and bruised face, holding onto his crotch and rolling back and forth sobbing.
Stiffly, my head throbbing and my whole body shaking, I tottered over to my backpack by the sink. Mostly sliding myself across the tile wall to get there as I breathed heavier than I had the last time Coach Tassione had made me run the mile for gym class fitness testing.
I splashed water on my face and stared at my reflection in the mirror. I was as good as dead. Mr. Varsity Jacket was huge in football and the teachers all adored him, letting him literally get away with murder every day because he did so good on the field.
He would sit in the back of the class with his hot girlfriend and his pack of loud, jock buddies and just mess around every day. I don’t even remember the last time he had even turned in a homework paper or got good marks on a test. Yet ever year he passed, and every year he got bigger, meaner, and more popular.
A cold fear gripping at my stomach and squeezing, I picked up my jacket and walked out, fantasies of horror playing out in my mind at what would happen when he told on me, what the principal would say, what my parents would say, what his friends would do to me…
Would I even live long enough to make it to the bus to get home to be grounded for life?
Strangely enough I never heard anything the whole day. No security guard knocking at the class door to escort me to the principal’s office to discuss expulsion, no pack of angry football players waiting for me in the hall by my locker, nothing.
It was odd and kind of uncomfortable sitting in science staring at the clock with Mr. D droning on about tree frog life cycles while my heart thundered in my chest. I sat there staring at the clock on the wall above the chalkboard like a sheep staring down the business end of a dragon, waiting for the worst to happen and completely unable to do anything but wait for my doom to inevitably come swooping in.
It never did.
No phone call aftermath