Near the end of class, I heard “Psst… Hey kid.” I turned my head to see a big guy leaning towards me.
“You're not from around here are ya? My name is Brutus. By the way everybody is giving you the death stare I’d say you aren’t fitting in too well.”
No, I wasn’t fitting in. I was doing the exact opposite. But it did lift my spirit to have someone actually talk to me instead of staring at me in awkward silence.
“No, I am having a bit of trouble fitting in. By the way my name is Anthony.” I whispered back, surprised that he actually reached out and shook my extended hand.
The bell rang and I had to get to my next class that Brutus was not in. I said goodbye and thanked him for being nice to an outsider like me. I had to run to my next class, American History, which was next to the doctor’s office. On the other side of the school. The numbers did not make sense at the school, and I was lucky to make it to class on time.
I walked into the room on time, just to have this ancient teacher yell at me “Take an open seat, young man!!!!!” She was a very feeble old woman who should have retired a long time ago. I thought to myself that she might even be old enough to have experienced all of the content she was going to teach us. Her name was Mrs. Thyme.
Her class took longer to explain then it took me to sleep at night. Her class took FOREVER!!!! It was exactly the same kind of lecture Mr. Helmsley gave only with “dissection” and “biology” replaced with “adventure” and “history.”
The worst part of class was when she singled me out to help her hand out our history textbooks.
Of course, there I was again, the target of frighteningly resentful stares from the entire class. I didn’t make any new friends during that period, not even talk to anybody. Next period was worse though.
~~~
For gym class, I was out on the football field, looking at a large man and a chalkboard. The chalkboard simply said “Mr. Tyndall” printed (in capital letters) and under that is said “Muscle training.” When I saw this, my heart went south. If there was something I could do worse than fitting in this school, it would be exercise.
“ALRIGHT KIDS!!!!!! WE ARE GOING TO LEARN ABOUT THE MUSCLES IN OUR BODY AND HOW TO WORK THEM OUT!!!! THEN WE ARE GOING TO WORK ON THEM!!!! FIRST IS YOUR CARDIO!!!!!! THAT IS YOUR HEART AND LUNGS!!! YOU CAN WORK THIS OUT BY RUNNING!!! SO 10 LAPS AROUND THE FIELD!!! NOW!!
Everybody looked frightened, even the guys who I would later learn were on the football team. He blew his whistle “GET GOING!!” He yelled and everybody started to stumble over each other in fear of him yelling more.
By the third lap I was already tired and there were two choices I could have made. I chose the wrong one. The right choice was to not stop running and just slow down and hide myself in a crowd of people so he couldn’t yell at me. I made the wrong choice, which was to politely ask him for a water break. He always said to me that water breaks would stop the burning of fat and muscle growth, so there would be no water breaks till after class.
The next place I had to go after I almost died from running was lunch. Oh how I dreaded going to eat food that no one can scarf down with happiness in a room full of loud and obnoxious people. I was in for quite a show in this room. It was also the last interesting thing that happened that first day of school at school. Until the bus ride home at least.
The first part of lunch was normal like in New York, I walked into a crowd of loud voices that drowned out my thoughts. It was brightly lit with tables in neat rows that someone with OCD couldn’t get twitchy about. In the giant rectangular room there were two doors about 15 feet apart that had the signs “IN” and “OUT” which I correctly assumed was were you got the food.
I went into these doors where you get food and it blocked most of the chatter from the lunchroom. In here it was very calm, only about 12 other students and one teacher getting lunch. In here I got the same treatment as always, stares from people out of the corner of my eye. I got the lunch, to be honest i don’t even remember what I had for lunch that day but it’d say I had it about 200 times over the course of that year.
“Hey there sweetheart.” Said the Grotesque lunch lady putting the glop on my styrofoam lunch tray.
“Thank… you?” I said questioning whether I should be grateful for this cheaply made meal that is suppose to have nutrition, but is less nutritious than cardboard.
Just before I got to the out door there was a scanner where I put my student ID bar code under. I walked out of the “OUT” door and walked back into the lunchroom craziness. I was looking for a table to sit when Brutus walked up behind be, engulfing me.
“How your day been so far, Anthony boy?”
“It has been very slow and tedious.”
“I heard you got in trouble at P.E today. Here, tell me all about it, I saved you a seat at my table.” He said with a devilish smile, similar to the one Mr. Helmsley had during Biology class.
I followed him to a slightly quieter and secluded part of the lunchroom where there were only five other people.
“Everybody, this here is Tony boy, he is going to be joining us at lunch everyday from now on. Tony Boy, this here is my “crew”. He motioned his hand to the five people waving hello as they ate their glob.
“That is Julian.”
“Nice to meet ya, Anthony.”
Those were the first words you said to me and it was the nicest greeting I got.
“That’s Gusty.”
Julian: For the record, he is my cousin, and is younger than all of us by a year.
“This here is my girl, Claudia.” She always hated me.
“This here is Cali.”
“HELLO THERE NICE TO MEET YOU IT IS SUCH A PLEASURE AND I KNOW WE WILL BE GREAT FRIENDS!” Something like that. She was a very hyper person.
Then, out the corner of my eye, Brutus pointed to a small girl in the corner reading a book the size of my head.
“This here is Cleo.” She was shy to me at first and was very secluded. She didn’t like me at first, but then we started to connect and……… (He started to give a long speech so I cut it out.) She didn’t say anything to me the first month we knew each other. She didn’t say one thing until October first. When the first of three life and society changing event occurred in school.
For the December performance, there were auditions for a play. William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Chapter 4
For the entire month of September, it was hard and annoying. Every football player and person who thought they were superior to me were racist. It was very racist.
The month went fast but I bet so does prison for most. I always was being looked at wrong and Brutus had gotten less friendly with me as the month went on. When I asked you, Julian what was wrong, this speech still lingers in the back of my head...
“Well he is probably getting a little resentful, he does have a title to maintain and you might be ruining it for him. I have nothing against you but allowing you into the group is one of the rash decisions he always likes to make. Look Tony. You are ruining all of our images, but I think that you being our friend and happy is more important than what anyone thinks of us. Brutus just doesn’t fully accept this ‘not having a godly reputation’, just like Claudia when you two first met. I am kind of astounded that no one has beat you up yet though. Better be careful, little man.”
Julian: That was one thing that I really meant. You should've been dead by week two.
Even at the time where I was being harshly bullied, which was hell for me, I could obviously tell it was worse for my dad. Everyday he came home very sad and after a while stopped talking to me and just sat on the couch to watch TV. He only ever got up to get us food. He was obviously doing bad in his job and by the way he talked on phone calls people were complaining. He was more stressed than me. Home life was now depressing and school was mostly hell. There was one
bright thing in my life, and it was my drama class.
Julian: I know why, cause that was the class you could spend time with Cl-
SHUT UP LET ME TELL IT!!!!
Now, as I said before at the beginning of this, I was a great “actor in the making”. I knew all of the viewpoints of acting and how to make a scene as dramatic and true to the view of the playwright as possible. The theater is my life. But I wasn’t the only one who was devoted to the art of acting. Cleo also had a great passion for acting, like me. Although she was too shy to talk to me for the first month.
(I know I said I wouldn’t interrupt, but technically this is after the recording session so it is fair game. He went on about an hour rant on how he was destined to act alongside her and all that, so I’m going to skip that part and go to the next interesting event of the year. Winter play try outs!)
Chapter 5
Julian: So after September, there were the winter play auditions, right?
Anthony: That is correct. This was actually the thing that made my life easier. It was a turning point of that year. If I recall you were also getting friendlier with me at that point, Julian. You started to hang out with me more than you did Brutus.
Julian: No spoilers yet, go in order of events.
Anthony: Right. Back to auditions…
~~~
So auditions for the play were starting on the first of October. The drama class had to prioritize the auditions and the teacher said he would fail us if we didn’t get a part. Of course for Cleo and me it wasn’t a problem. I actually didn’t get the main role of Julius Caesar but I did get the part of Cicero, the most important person that wasn’t already taken. Brutus took the role of Brutus. A boy in my drama class named John took Julius Caesar. And Marc Antony was taken by Gusty.
Julian: I played Octavius.
Anthony: Yes, and Julian took the role as Caesar's adopted son, Octavius. Cleo got the part of Octavia, the power hungry women leader and Claudia got the part of Claudia, Brutus’ wife. The people who didn’t want to fail the first marking period of drama class took up the other roles. Since Julian’s part relied so much on my character and John’s character, we had to rehearse together for the play.
Julian: That’s how you and me became so close over those months.
Anthony: Yeah, this play was very time consuming, but there was a pay off. Everybody in the school thought that the people in the play were the most popular kids. That’s why even though Brutus and Claudia aren’t in drama class, they wanted to do this for their reputation.
So yes. I was getting more well known around the school, and most people stopped being racist and started to accept me. But even though Brutus had a more important role, he still thought that I was outshining him. So he took the people who were still racist to me and tried to stop me from being in this play. He hatched a three part scheme. Starting with Biology class.
I remember that Mr. Helmsley was as annoying as ever on this particular day.. It was a rainy Tuesday in late October. We were dissecting a frog in biology that day and Mr. Helmsley decided to put me in a group that gave me the worst time. It was Brutus, the class bully, Adam and me. At this time I didn’t know that he was already conspiring with Adam and some others on the Football team.
“Hey, Tony.” I heard Adam whisper.
“What now?” I recall saying to him with my focus on the dissection.
“You wanna be French, and taste some frog legs!” I remember this clearly as he shoved one of the legs into my mouth. Before I could pull the leg out Adam already called over Mr. Helmsley.
“Sir, Tony here was eating the frogs. He told me the French do it or something and that it is actually very common to eat frog legs.” Adam told Mr. Helmsley innocently.
“Is this true, Anthony?” He asked me in all seriousness. Which still baffles me to this day.
By that time I had got the frog leg out and was complaining that I would never eat frog ever and Adam was the one who did it.
“Is that true Adam?” Mr. Helmsley pulled the dreaded detention slip out from his pocket.
“No sir, Anthony was lying and was trying to get poor Adam here in trouble. If anything it should be Anthony here that should be getting detention, Mr. Helmsley. For EATING THE FROGS and trying to get another classmate in trouble.” At the time I could not believe my eyes, but Brutus was standing over me with a serious look on his face. Mr. Helmsley had given me the permission slip and I was to report to the principal’s office if anything else happened like this in the future.
It was not that I was so mad at Adam for being himself, but it was the betrayal of Brutus and the fact that he yelled part of it so that the class could hear and eventually spread rumors about it. After that it got worse. During the same period Adam gutted the frog most gruesomely and blamed it on me. He said that I was trying to make grape soda.
This time everybody was listening closely and Mr. Helmsley didn’t ask any questions. He just said go to the principal’s office to receive proper punishment. So I was out of the class and off to the principal’s office to set things straight. That was the first grape soda joke I heard him make. Or anybody make. It wasn’t rare to hear racist cracks, but this was new. He usually called me watermelon lover or said I should play basketball because I love it so much. MAN I DON’T EVEN LIKE TO WATCH BASKETBALL LET ALONE PLAY IT. THE FOOL WAS DISCRIMINATING ON MY CULTURE WHEN IT WAS OBVIOUS I WAS REALLY NERDY AND DIDN’T LIKE SPORTS OR ANY OF THAT STUFF!!!!!!!
Julian: Calm down there Anthony. So you went to the principal's office and then what happened?
Thankfully, I got everything straightened out. It was a little hard to convince him that Brutus would lie to a teacher. I hadn’t put one and two together before to realize that Brutus was the principal's son and was known to get away with things with teachers.
“So you think that one of my teachers was afraid of arguing with my son’s reasoning and got another child a detention because of me? If it were any other student coming to me, Mr. Cedar, I wouldn’t believe you. But I trust you a lot. So your detention you don’t have to go to and I’ll write you a pass to your second period. I will look into this, Tony. Don’t let me catch you lying to me though.” He said with a quick signature of his name on a scrap piece of paper and shooed me away.
Chapter 6
Julian: So, now you got in trouble and barely made it without getting ISS. I know you got in trouble many more times after that from Brutus’ scheme, right?
Anthony: Well actually, if my memory serves me correctly he got me in trouble four more times before his big one. One during Global which wasn’t so bad, he just knocked some books out of my hands, and the teacher thought I dropped them on purpose. He got me in trouble in PE, and literary which were really bad.
Julian: Well tell us about those two and how it affected us. I say us because it affected the group’s relationship after a while. He was really starting to go mad at this point.
Anthony: He got the whole football team in on his little plans, and life was very hard. Again.
~~~
I remember on the first week of November, after the whole biology incident got cleared up, Brutus was at work again. This time he was going to screw with my gym period. My PE class had about half the football players. As I said, Brutus got the whole team to get me in trouble. That day we were playing a scrimmage game of ultimate Frisbee. There were two captains, John from my drama class and Adam. Adam was able to pick the whole football team and every not so fit or non “athlete” was on my team. Needless to say--we were crushed. Some literally.
The middle linebacker of the football team’s defensive line squashed me. Now he was a 6’6”, 260 giant of an athlete who crushed me on the spot of a point. Instead of walking in to the point area he jumped over it and got me to fall with him. He sacked me like a bunch of potatoes.
“Sorry about that.” I remember him
saying with a sarcastic smile.
It took me about two minutes to get up and about 90 seconds of the coach yelling at me for getting in the way. It was quite painful and I asked to go see Mr.O.
~~~
When I got to the nurse’s office, it was like Mr.O was expecting me.
“It has been a while, Anthony.” He said as I sat on the doctor’s medical table.