by J L Aarne
“Nobody’s gonna drink your Kool-Aid, girl,” Robby Whitaker said. “Millions of kids out there just like you go through a lot worse in school and they turn out just fine. They don’t do sick shit like this. They don’t kill nobody. They survive it and get past it and it gets better. You go to college and stuff, you get jobs; that’s real life.”
Mercy rested her eyes on him, watched him squirm nervously, and said, “If this doesn’t feel real to you right now, I think you’re the one who’s confused, Robby.”
“But you talk like you’re the only kids ever had it rough in high school, and that’s reason to go around killing people?” Robby said. “Lots of kids have it rough in school.”
“So?”
“So… what do you think of that?”
Isaac coughed out a laugh. Mercy glanced down at him, smiled and took a step toward Robby. She leaned down a little to look him square in the eyes. “I think you’re wishing we were like those other kids right now, aren’t you?” she asked. He didn’t answer her. “Yeah,” she said.
She turned and walked away from him, back to the chair where Isaac was still sitting, and faced them all again. “Enough of this. I’m tired of arguing the morality of it with you, so we’re done,” she said. “I want another person sitting in this chair, so someone better speak up. If not, I’m sure Isaac can think of someone, right Isaac?”
Isaac smirked. His gaze shifted to the left to a group of boys sitting together before passing over them. “Yeah,” he said. “I got a couple.”
“I know you do,” Mercy said. “But first, let’s give someone else a turn. Come on. Don’t be scared. No one’s going to hurt you for speaking up. Think of all those horrible things they’ve done to you, and they always got away with it, didn’t they? Think of all those awful days, and no one stopped them and you couldn’t stop them, but now you can do something about it and no one is going to stop you. We won’t let them.”
A hand shot up, quickly followed by the fat boy it was attached to.
Mercy knew Paul Flockoi, he was a senior in her class, but they weren’t friends. He had friends—other boys like him who preferred books, video games and academic clubs like Mathletes to sports and making out with girls—but high school had not been kind to him. He had been chubby in middle school and had only grown wider as he grew taller. That alone would have been enough to draw negative attention his way, but added to his unpopular interests, his shyness, his quiet manner and his awkwardness, it had all combined to make him an ideal target for torment.
“Hello, Paul,” Mercy said.
Several heads turned in his direction and many faces blanched.
“You want to say something?” Mercy asked.
“I think so,” Paul said. He had a prim way about him and fidgeted with the front of his button-down shirt, smoothing it out. “I think so,” he repeated. “I can only pick one?”
Mercy considered it and looked around at the others to see what they thought. Isaac shrugged, Corey didn’t seem to be listening or he had no opinion, but Ezra held up two fingers. Two. Two was a good number. Otherwise they might as well just line up half the senior class and shoot them all one at a time.
“You can name two,” Mercy said. They were going to need another chair.
“Okay,” Paul said. “Cameron Williston and John Rehbein.”
“No,” Molina said.
Mercy turned to her with a frown. “Why not?”
“Not John,” she said, speaking low just for Mercy. “Not now. Not yet.”
Not yet. Mercy studied her for a minute, her long sleeves, her baggy jeans, her unstyled hair and her makeup-free face. Something had been wrong with Molina the last couple of months. Maybe John Rehbein had something to do with it and maybe he didn’t, but Molina was her friend and Mercy had dragged her into this. They could wait and see.
“Okay. Not yet,” she said. “Paul, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to choose someone else. John’s got himself a governor’s pardon.”
More like a temporary stay of execution, but there was no need to say that aloud.
John Rehbein looked intensely relieved by this news and Angela Kent, who had moved to sit with him, threw her arms around him, saying, “Thank God, thank God,” over and over.
Paul looked disgusted by this spectacle, but not very surprised that he had been told no about the mayor’s son either. He sighed.
“Wayne Olmstead,” he said, with very little hesitation.
“No fucking way!” Jesse Gleason screamed. Wayne was Jesse’s new best friend. Jesse stepped in front of him like that would shield him from what was happening. “You can’t do this. He didn’t do anything to that fat fucking loser. This is murder! You leave him alone!”
Corey was watching now. He had evidently been listening the whole time, only now something had piqued his interest.
“Cameron, Wayne, will you please come down,” Mercy said.
Cameron didn’t move. He looked a little green and like he might vomit or keel over if he tried to stand, and he kept shaking his head no like if he did it enough times this whole thing would cease to be happening.
Wayne stood up, but Jesse pushed him back down. “Fuck you, you can’t do this!” he shouted. He sounded like he expected a mob to rally behind him, but none did. “I’m not gonna let you freaks do this!”
“Isaac, will you go get Wayne, please?” Mercy said.
Ezra was already climbing up the steps to retrieve Cameron.
Isaac went, choosing to leave his bat behind this time, and when Jesse looked like he might fight him about it, Isaac hit him in the face with the butt of his gun. Jesse cried out and sat down with his hands over his injured eye. Isaac grabbed Wayne by the arm and propelled the smaller, skinnier boy down the steps.
Cameron didn’t fight Ezra when he pulled him up from his seat and got him moving. He went docilely, in a daze, not quite able to believe that this horrible thing was happening to him.
Isaac shoved Wayne down into the chair and went to get another one for Cameron. While they were waiting for him to return, Mercy waved Paul down to stand with them and gave him the mic.
“Oh,” Paul said. He looked between Wayne, who glared back at him and Cameron, who stared straight ahead at nothing, then he smiled faintly. “I have to tell my story, huh? It’s… I mean, it’s pretty awful. I don’t know if I can… I mean…”
“If Lundy can tell her story, you can tell us yours,” Mercy said.
“I guess so,” Paul said. He looked down at the floor and stared at it for such a long time that it seemed like he wouldn’t be able to do it after all. Finally, he took a breath and said, “Okay,” and started to speak.
Paul
Pauly Want a Cracker?
It was a pretty familiar story. Everyone knew someone like Paul Flockoi. He was the kid who always raised his hand in class no matter how many times he got his head slammed into his locker. He was the kid who hated lunchtime more than anything, even though he was always hungry. He was the kid for whom P.E. was his worst nightmare; there had never been a scary creature in a scary movie or a monster in a closet that scared him more than he was scared of the shower in the locker room.
It was their freshman year and Cameron Williston and John Rehbein were friends then. Mr. Williston was a prominent member of the town council and John Rehbein Sr. was the new mayor and their wives volunteered for some of the same charities. Cameron and John both played sports and had a lot of friends. They were from good families, they weren’t exceptionally bright, but they always made the minimum grades required to stay on the basketball or football team and they were attractive in a clean-cut, small town America way. Girls liked them, other boys liked them and their teachers liked them. They couldn’t really help being popular.
Paul Flockoi was the opposite of everything they were. Paul and his friends liked books about elves and wizards, they took drama and read Shakespeare instead of trying out for football, they enjoyed doing homework, some of them had acne, som
e of them were flabby. Vincent Bartell had asthma, Paul was fat; most of them were poor and none of them had ever had a girlfriend.
After P.E. one day, Paul was the last one out of the shower. He was usually the last one out of the shower because he was also usually the last one in the shower. He knew he was fat, but with his clothes on, he could cover it up and hide it with big T-shirts and baggy pants. Naked was, well, naked. He could always feel the eyes of his classmates on him and they stared sometimes, sometimes they laughed, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it except wait until everyone was done and most of them had left. Then he would sneak into the shower and clean himself off as quickly as he could before the bell rang.
Mrs. Woodell wouldn’t let him get dressed and go on to his next class without showering. He had tried before and she always sent him back into the locker room and then he’d be getting dressed when the next class showed up.
Sometimes Paul wished he had asthma like Vince, then he could get his mother or the doctor to write him a note so he could spend P.E. in the library. Then he would feel bad about wishing for something like that when Vince had such bad asthma attacks sometimes he wheezed and his lips turned a little blue. Vince had even been taken to the emergency room a couple of times because of it and he had to keep an inhaler with him all the time. He was skinny and sickly and small for his age. He didn’t have to run laps in P.E. or take showers, but it was stupid for Paul to wish to trade places with him. At least he could breathe.
Paul had soap in his eyes when he heard the laughter. It was mean, boy laughter. It was a sound he was very familiar with.
“Hey, fat ass, look what I’ve got,” Cameron said.
Paul wiped soap out of his eyes to look toward the sound of his voice and saw him standing in the open doorway of the shower room with Paul’s clothes on the end of a hockey stick. He stood there under the shower spray staring, still not really understanding, and Cameron waved his clothes on the end of the stick like a flag. There was laughter from the locker room behind him.
“What?” Paul said. He swiped water out of his face and frowned, recognizing his shirt. “Hey, those are mine!”
“Mine now, jiggles,” Cameron said, and ducked out of sight.
Bursts of jeering laughter exploded in the locker room outside the shower then the door slammed open and closed, the voices faded and Paul was alone. His heart was pounding like a drum because he knew, he knew they had done something awful. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew it was something horrible and he would discover it as soon as he left the shower and went to get dressed. There was a scared little boy part of him that wanted to stay right there in the shower until his fingers and toes pruned and Mrs. Woodell was called to shoo him out and he had to leave because as long as he didn’t leave, the bad thing they had done couldn’t touch him.
He couldn’t do that, of course. There would be another class coming into the locker room to change out for P.E. in a few minutes and they would find him hiding in the shower. Paul couldn’t bear the thought of his humiliation then.
He turned off the water, put a towel around his waist and went to see what they had done.
They had taken his clothes. Not only his street clothes, but his sweats and the T-shirt he wore for class, even his shoes; everything. All Paul had was the towel. He tried to think of something he could do, but there was nothing. He couldn’t even call one of his friends for emergency help because his cheap cell phone was in the pocket of his trousers and they had taken it when they took his clothes.
The bell rang and Paul started to panic. The next class was coming. Any minute, they would bang through those doors and go straight to their lockers to change into their gym clothes and there Paul would be. Fat Paul Flockoi in a towel that was too small to even close around his nonexistent waist, nothing to wear and a pathetic look of fear on his round, red face.
He heard voices coming toward the locker room and, not knowing what else to do, he hurried into one of the toilet stalls and locked the door. He hid there while the boys changed their clothes, talking and laughing about girls and what they were doing this weekend and what they had done last weekend and how Mrs. Woodell was definitely a dyke. When they were gone, Paul continued to sit there on the toilet clutching his towel because he still didn’t have anything to wear or a way out.
The bell rang to signal the beginning of the next class.
He was late to English. For some stupid reason, he could feel himself wanting to cry about it. His eyes stung and he blinked them rapidly to make it stop, but they welled up and spilled over anyway. He felt awful and the tears only made him feel worse. He was scared and naked, hiding in the toilet stall and crying like a baby because he didn’t know what to do.
The door banged open and Paul jumped.
“Paul?” It was Mrs. Woodell. Oh God. “Paul Flockoi, are you in here?”
He didn’t say anything and held his breath.
Mrs. Woodell walked over to the toilet stalls, walked along them and stopped in front of the one where Paul was hiding. She knocked on the door brusquely.
“Come out of there,” she said. “I know you’re in there, I can see your feet. You can’t stay in there, Mr. Flockoi. Please come out. I have your clothes.”
“What?” Paul said.
“I said, I have your clothes for you,” Mrs. Woodell repeated. “Come on now, get out of there. You’re late for class.”
“Why do you have my clothes?” he asked.
“Mr. Flockoi, I don’t have time for this. I have a class of my own waiting for me,” Mrs. Woodell said.
Reluctantly, Paul opened the door and emerged from the toilet stall. Mrs. Woodell gave him his clothes and she wasn’t unkind about it, but the way she looked at him was both pitying and disgusted. He got dressed and she wrote him a hall pass.
When he walked into English, everyone laughed. They all knew what had happened and he soon learned. John had helped Cameron run Paul’s XXX-large pants up the flagpole in front of the school to flap beneath the American flag then dumped the rest of his things in a trash bin. The janitor got the pants down and Mr. McGuinn had called the boys to his office, but their scolding hadn’t even lasted very long because they had made it to class before Paul did. Cameron was right there at the back of the class in his customary seat to laugh at him with everyone else.
Paul wanted to go home, but he knew that he couldn’t. If he left school early and went home, everyone would know why and it would make things worse. He still might have done it anyway if he was sure his dad would never find out, but he wasn’t. The principal or the secretary or someone would call his house if he went home early and his dad would give him the belt.
In the lunchroom that year they started calling him Pauly. Kids who didn’t even know who he was quickly learned and taunted him in line.
Pauly want a cracker?
It wasn’t even very clever, but they laughed like it was the best joke ever told.
Ha ha, isn’t he funny? Look how fat he is. My god. Pauly… Pauly… Pauly, you want a cracker? Maybe a whole fucking box of crackers, Pauly? Wouldn’t that just hit the spot? Ha ha.
The more miserable he was, the harder they laughed. Paul stopped eating lunch, but it didn’t help a whole lot. He went to the library during lunch and read, pretended that he wasn’t hungry. He didn’t lose any weight from not eating lunch. When he got home, he made up for it and binged.
He was a junior the year Wayne Olmstead moved to town. Wayne was a year younger than Paul, a skinny, ugly boy with acne on his forehead, but people liked him. He was charming when he wanted to be, he made people laugh and he drove a really cool car.
He was mean and Paul hated him.
Paul was going to the library one day at lunch when Wayne caught him in the hallway. He had a bag of gummi bears he had bought from the vending machine. Paul didn’t want them, but Wayne wouldn’t leave him alone. When Paul tried to walk away, Wayne hit him in the gut.
“Leave me alone!” Paul coul
d feel tears in his eyes.
People were watching and he wanted to run away, but he couldn’t run. Wayne would catch him anyway.
Wayne opened the candy and scattered the gummi bears on the floor in front of Paul. “Eat them,” he said.
Paul looked at him to see if he was serious.
Wayne grabbed the front of his shirt in his fist and twisted. “I said eat them!” he snarled in Paul’s face. “Go on, Fat Ass Pauly, get down on the floor and lick them up. Do it.”
“Do it,” someone else urged.
Others picked it up and soon everyone was chanting, “Do it, do it, do it, do it.” Wayne’s smile was sharp and hideous and so pleased. Paul wanted more than anything to run away, but he couldn’t and if he tried, Wayne would hurt him. That mean, twisted smile promised him that.
Desperately, Paul looked around for a teacher or a friend or the janitor, anybody he might turn to for help. Mrs. Millay was walking toward them and she glanced at Paul and Wayne, at the others gathered around them, and she kept on walking without even a pause in her step. Paul stared at her retreating back, a sick, heavy sense of betrayal in his belly, willing her to turn back around. She was a nice woman. She liked him, or at least he had believed that she liked him. She talked to him sometimes when he was in the library and she smiled a lot and she was a teacher. She couldn’t just walk away.
But she did and none of Paul’s friends were there. They couldn’t have done anything to stop it if they had been, but he wouldn’t have been so alone. Maybe he could have fought back a little harder if he hadn’t been alone.
Before Wayne could hit him again, Paul got down on his knees on the floor. There was laughter ringing in his ears and the flash of camera phones taking pictures all around him and all he could think was, Get it over with, get it over with, just do it and get it over with.
The gummi bears were sticky. The grit and sand of a thousand different shoes walking over the carpet stuck to them. Fuzz and fibers and fruit punch flavored jelly. He was sobbing as he ate the candy off the floor, his chest hitching because he was trying so hard not to cry. He had a vague, distant idea that he could deny them some measure of satisfaction that way, but it was bullshit. They laughed and took his picture and made jokes like he was the geek in a freak show. No one noticed that he was trying not to cry.
