The next day, a Friday, everyone burst out of school at the end of the day, even the teachers. Someone actually peeled out.
It seemed that I was alone on the street. Then suddenly, I was not.
The way home included a stretch with a warehouse on one side and railroad cars on the other. Often a man could be seen working among the railroad cars but this day no one was there. Ricky was waiting for me behind one of the cars. After I passed, walking as fast as my skinny legs would carry me, he snuck up behind and gave me a strangle hold. He gripped me so tightly I started to lose consciousness. I believed that he was seriously trying to kill me. My terror helped me do what I had been wanting and trying to do for five long years.
Ricky never knew what happened. One second he was strangling a geeky boy and the next his arms surrounded a monster. Having read many comic books, horror and sci-fi stories, my imagination cooked up the scariest creature it could invent, a combination alligator, gargoyle and slime dripping alien with pointy tipped batwings! One second Ricky was enjoying cutting off my air and the next he was having his arm bitten by fangs from the depths of hell.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” he screamed when I finally let him go. He ran so fast he stumbled and fell flat on his face. The back of his pants were soiled and one of his shoes came off but he kept on going, slap- slapping along the rough concrete and I hoped he got a nail or piece of glass right through his foot.
He avoided looking at me after that. Whenever I walked by, I smiled right at him, but he turned away. I felt my power; it rushed through me, electrifying my being. I strutted through the school halls as if I were a creature from another world who could, any time he chose, eat the little earthlings for a snack.
This lasted only a short while. I craved companionship, needed a friend so badly that I cried myself to sleep. It had been a long time since Sean had written. The years crawled by, I joined the science club but they were all deeply involved in various projects and didn’t seem to have room for me. None of the other after school clubs interested me. The teachers did not seem to notice my despair. I considered running away, but was smart enough to know what happened to kids like that.
In spite of my misery, my grades remained decent and I did nothing self damaging other than sneak the occasional cigarette. I read science fiction, designed computer games in my head, and studied college brochures to see where I could escape after one more year of high school.
“What are you, from outer space?” whispered this druggy looking girl in my junior year Lit class. We were reading The Metamorphosis with which I could obviously identify on a personal level, but naturally kept my comments to myself.
“Why do you say that?” I shot back. It hurt because I often wondered if indeed somehow I was.
She shrugged. “I don’t know, you’re just different.” She didn’t say that in a mean way, just matter-of-factly.