10 Jan 2008, 3:16 am
Rudy could not concentrate on the lesson. He was too busy worrying about how he looked. Was he sitting up straight enough? Was he staring at one spot for too long? Did he look dorky with his hands folded in his lap? Was he slower than everyone else to turn the page in the book they were reading?
There was whispering behind him. Donnie whispering to Juliette. Something about him.
"Is he smart?" Donnie whispered.
"No; he's stupid," Juliette whispered back. "And wierd too. Ask Alan. Don't ask him."
Rudy had had it. He swivelled around, his pencil clutched tightly in his fist, and rammed it into Juliette's eye, as deep as it would go. So what?; she was a girl. She was also an as*hole.
The classroom filled with screams. The hallway filled with muttering boys and squawking girls.
Then another girl in the class screamed, then another, and the teacher was asking what was going on. He was a big, hulking, intimidating, honest, straight-speaking, opinionated, hard-done-by-in-his-youth, I-take-no-shit-from-nobody kind of guy. A teacher who wasn't afraid to take sides during the football games, a teacher who never sent kids to the office because he believed in solving his own problems.
Even in his horror that he had done what he'd done, Rudy knew he had to act fast, and he did. He was down the hall and out the front door within fifteen seconds. But Mr. Do-Gooder Douglas was still following him.
Rudy ran across a street, almost getting run over by a yellow car that looked vaguely familiar. Suddenly he realized it was his parents, coming to school for the IEP meeting. He'd almost forgotten. He banged on the door; they rolled down the window.
"Rudy! What's going on?"
"Please... he's chasing me."
Without a word they opened the door and he was in, just as the teacher reached out and grabbed him. By the hair, and now he was pulling at him, pulling hium up and almost out of the car through the window.
His parents were yelling and shouting and screamiong, and finally his father floored it and off they zoomed, leaving behind a bloody clump of hair in Mr. Douglas's hand.
They drove for three blocks and then his father turned around, looked Rudy in the eye and said, "Son, what is going on at that school? Who was that man? He looks familiar. Is he one of the bullies at the school? One of the kids who's been bothering you?"
"He's Mr. Douglas," Rudy managed to say. He was going into some kind of shock. He shook his head. He couldn't pass out. He couldn't fall into the black hole of depression, because he might literally never wake up, never see the sun again, never see his parents or his brother or his sister or his dog or his online friends again. He would never taste Hawaiian pizza again, or drink milk again, or hug his stuffed bear Lars again. He would never even get to tell them goodbye.
"Oh, God, oh God, oh God, oh God, please help me," he moaned.
"Rudy, is everything alright? Well ,it isn't, obviously, but are you-- okay?"
"No," he confessed. "I'm dying."
The car skidded to a halt. Both parents whipped around from the front seats to look at him.
"Not like that. Inside. It's worse. Please help me. You don't unders--"
"You look alright to me. Calm down; it's all in your head."
"He's just traumatized, Hal. He was probably beaten up. Honey, did you have a run-in with someone? What did they say to you? What did they do? Please! Oh, don't be silly! you're NOT dying!"
Part of Rudy knew he should tell his parents to step on it, to take him to a relative's house to hide, and he could go from there to someone else's house, perhaps one of their friends. But the other part of him was too depressed, too desperate for stimulation now, to to something so understimulating and dangerously minimal as thinking. He needed to do something huge, ne needed a lot of love or something right now, to save himself. And worst of all, he didn't know how to explain it.
He had been moaning and begging them to give him attention. Literally "give me love", "Give me attention".
"He's totally changed. They... did something to him," his father was saying.
Normally Rudy would have exclaimed, "No; nothing like that! But they did piss me off; they did royally piss me off and they're paying for it now." But he couldn't. He was too busy trying to get the stimulation he needed to save more than just his life... he needed it to save his REAL life; his soul, himself, whatever.
They were driving very slow; his father seemed to be deciding whether to pull over or not. An ambulance raced by them towards the school, sirens wailing. No police yet.
To be continued
