Read Online XGeneration 1: You Don't Know Me by Brad Magnarella - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Brad Magnarella
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cost you? Better yet, why did you buy them?”
Heads turned at Star’s raised voice, and Janis fought to not bring her hair around to her nose, wishing she hadn’t said anything. She wished, too, she hadn’t let Margaret dress her that morning.
“My older sister,” she answered honestly.
Star’s black-rimmed stare remained large and frightening. Janis tried to think of something better to say but couldn’t. After several seconds, the black flames relented. Star’s makeup grew dark around her eyes again. She gave a tired smile and looked down.
Just as their typing teacher arrived, a short woman with a round, pleasant face, Star mumbled, “Yeah, I had one of those once.”
* * *
Scott balanced the paper plates of pizza on hand and wrist, and found a seat inside the sprawling root system of an oak tree. The day had warmed to ninety degrees, easy, the air above the food trucks shimmering with heat. He scooted back until he was against the tree and beneath its shade. With the breeze, it was almost pleasant. He cracked his grape soda, slurped the foam, and set the can atop a flat knot on the root to his right. Long banners of Spanish moss swayed overhead.
This isn’t so bad.
At Creekside Middle School, lunch had to be taken inside their sour-smelling cafeteria every day, no exceptions. That’s where Scott fell victim to the most humiliating “pranks.”
Ha ha! Look, everyone! The dork’s dropped his tray again!
Scott took a large, cheesy bite of pizza and glanced down at his lap. This shirt was clean, but the stains that had never come off his others told the story: faded squiggles of spaghetti sauce, spots of broccoli juice—the sloppy joe stains were especially gory, making it look like he had given gastric birth to an alien fetus. The steak and gravy only left mud-like impressions. And that’s what he had told his mother on that occasion, that he’d fallen in mud, because he didn’t dare tell her he was being bullied. He’d already learned that lesson.
“Oh, stop crying!” she told him when he’d gone sobbing to her one night, unable to sleep for the dread of another school day. “If you can’t stand up to children , how are you ever going to call yourself a man ?”
But Scott never stood up to them, not when it happened. He knew that’s what the cretins were hoping for, could see it in their glinting eyes. No, he waited until he got home and was seated in front of his computer.
Who was that who upended my tray today? Cam Moser? Well whadd’ya know? Cam’s in the student directory. How about we change the class code on that phone number from personal to pay. Got twenty-five cents, Cam? Because that’s what that annoying recording is going to ask you to deposit every time you try to place a call from your Touch-Tone. Let’s see how hard you laugh over that one. Hope it drives you and your family straight to the flipping nut house.
Clickety-clack and voilá !
The pleasure Scott would feel was grandiose and guilty, not unlike when he assumed his Stiletto identity in D&D campaigns. There, like in real life, his powers were predicated on going unseen, on being a slink. He would never tell anyone that he was behind the phone tampering, not even when he would hear the cretins grumbling at lunch and he’d want to stand and declare, “Yes, it was me! Behold the power I wield over your puny lives!”
But now Scott recalled his summer spent at his computer, in the darkness, alone. He gazed on the other students spread over the lawn, their chatter as bright as the day. With high school, Scott had expected the worst: middle school on anabolic steroids. It had never dawned on him that the students here had other concerns besides making his life miserable. He remembered the solid guy in the Polo shirt. (“I totally didn’t see you. You all right?”)
Then he thought of Mr. Shine and the quarter he’d vanished, then reappeared—now tails, now heads.
A thought came to Scott in a rush: maybe he
Heads turned at Star’s raised voice, and Janis fought to not bring her hair around to her nose, wishing she hadn’t said anything. She wished, too, she hadn’t let Margaret dress her that morning.
“My older sister,” she answered honestly.
Star’s black-rimmed stare remained large and frightening. Janis tried to think of something better to say but couldn’t. After several seconds, the black flames relented. Star’s makeup grew dark around her eyes again. She gave a tired smile and looked down.
Just as their typing teacher arrived, a short woman with a round, pleasant face, Star mumbled, “Yeah, I had one of those once.”
* * *
Scott balanced the paper plates of pizza on hand and wrist, and found a seat inside the sprawling root system of an oak tree. The day had warmed to ninety degrees, easy, the air above the food trucks shimmering with heat. He scooted back until he was against the tree and beneath its shade. With the breeze, it was almost pleasant. He cracked his grape soda, slurped the foam, and set the can atop a flat knot on the root to his right. Long banners of Spanish moss swayed overhead.
This isn’t so bad.
At Creekside Middle School, lunch had to be taken inside their sour-smelling cafeteria every day, no exceptions. That’s where Scott fell victim to the most humiliating “pranks.”
Ha ha! Look, everyone! The dork’s dropped his tray again!
Scott took a large, cheesy bite of pizza and glanced down at his lap. This shirt was clean, but the stains that had never come off his others told the story: faded squiggles of spaghetti sauce, spots of broccoli juice—the sloppy joe stains were especially gory, making it look like he had given gastric birth to an alien fetus. The steak and gravy only left mud-like impressions. And that’s what he had told his mother on that occasion, that he’d fallen in mud, because he didn’t dare tell her he was being bullied. He’d already learned that lesson.
“Oh, stop crying!” she told him when he’d gone sobbing to her one night, unable to sleep for the dread of another school day. “If you can’t stand up to children , how are you ever going to call yourself a man ?”
But Scott never stood up to them, not when it happened. He knew that’s what the cretins were hoping for, could see it in their glinting eyes. No, he waited until he got home and was seated in front of his computer.
Who was that who upended my tray today? Cam Moser? Well whadd’ya know? Cam’s in the student directory. How about we change the class code on that phone number from personal to pay. Got twenty-five cents, Cam? Because that’s what that annoying recording is going to ask you to deposit every time you try to place a call from your Touch-Tone. Let’s see how hard you laugh over that one. Hope it drives you and your family straight to the flipping nut house.
Clickety-clack and voilá !
The pleasure Scott would feel was grandiose and guilty, not unlike when he assumed his Stiletto identity in D&D campaigns. There, like in real life, his powers were predicated on going unseen, on being a slink. He would never tell anyone that he was behind the phone tampering, not even when he would hear the cretins grumbling at lunch and he’d want to stand and declare, “Yes, it was me! Behold the power I wield over your puny lives!”
But now Scott recalled his summer spent at his computer, in the darkness, alone. He gazed on the other students spread over the lawn, their chatter as bright as the day. With high school, Scott had expected the worst: middle school on anabolic steroids. It had never dawned on him that the students here had other concerns besides making his life miserable. He remembered the solid guy in the Polo shirt. (“I totally didn’t see you. You all right?”)
Then he thought of Mr. Shine and the quarter he’d vanished, then reappeared—now tails, now heads.
A thought came to Scott in a rush: maybe he
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