Radiation Face

by Phil Skaggs Jr.

  Kevin, Dweebil, and Joosh jump in behind us. I thought they had already headed back downstairs, but I’m wrong.

  ‘Oh, look. The freak made it up.’ Kevin bounces on his heels and smiles. ‘Finally find your balls?’

  I ignore him. Sam turns around and gives him a look.

  Dweebil throws his hands up. ‘Oh look out. Looks like Abe here got himself a little bodyguard. Someone who’s as scary as he looks.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Joosh agrees.

  Kevin laughs.

  ‘Get moving guys.’ Sam says. The three stand there giggling, eyeing each other. Sam seems set.

  ‘You guys go ahead. We’re just waiting to get through.’ Kevin shrugs. ‘No big deal.’ I continue to ignore them and turn my back and get behind the others headed off the roof. Sam eyes Kevin and slowly turns and gets beside me. The three follow up close behind us.

  ‘Dweebil, I wonder what it’s like to get up with a face like that every morning?’ Joosh asks.

  ‘I don’t know, man. It must be pretty hard.’

  ‘Yeah. Real hard. I’d probably put a gun in my mouth. You know, if I could find it.’ Joosh adds. I keep walking.

  ‘Oh man, that’s just mean.’ Kevin says. ‘Think of all that blood everywhere. You’ll get someone sick for sure. Don’t you know these guys are filled with diseases.’

  ‘Oh yeah, you’re right. Don’t use the gun. How about a good old fashioned rope?’

  ‘Do you think he could get it over his head?’

  ‘Nah. No way.’ Dweebil smiles. ‘That fucking mutant couldn’t even kill himself right.’

  ‘Well, he fucking should.’

  ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ Sam has her finger out and against Joosh’s chest. ‘You need to keep your mouth shut, you piece of shit.’ Sam pushes her face up closer to Kevin. His face is twisted up and his teeth are showing in a grim scowl.

  ‘Get out of my face, you bitch!’ Kevin spits.

  ‘No, you back off. You need to back off. I’ve seen the shit you give him. You need to back off.’

  ‘Hey, we’re just having a little fun. He’s not hurting. Are you?’ He looks at me. I just look back. I don’t feel like saying anything. I just feel like hitting. And hitting him. I just want to keep throwing my fist against all of them. That’s all I want to do. My hands are shaking and I am holding them tight by my side. I just want to keep walking down stairs.

  ‘See he’s fine.’ Dweebil throws in. He shoves Sam forward. ‘Now, get going. We’ve got class to get to.’

  The line behind us has died down. There are a few stragglers waiting to see a fight go down, but everyone else has headed down the stairs. Back into school. Sam looks at me and I motion to the door. It’s not a time to fight. It’s never a time to fight in school. She has to know that. She has to know when to walk away. She heads to the stairs and I follow.

  ‘That’s it. Keep walking, mutant. Keep walking.’

  Sam and I start down the stairs and the three assholes behind us keep talking shit. And then one of them gets antsy. I don’t know which one. ‘Hurry up, freak whore.’ is all I hear and I see Sam jolt forward. She stumbles on the stairs and keeps going forward, rolling over herself she tumbles down the stairs until she finally stops when the brick wall catches her. Hard.

  My blood boils up into my head and I can hear the pounding in my ears as I turn around and grab someone’s collar.

  ‘Shit.’ It’s Joosh’s words. It’s Kevin’s collar. I pull Kevin close and throw my fist into his ribs and try to push my hand through his spine. I throw my head against his and that’s all I get before his two friends jump in on me. The crowd below hears the fight and some people are checking on Sam. A few others are rushing up to watch the fight. The rest of the people behind Joosh and Dweebil surge forward and I can’t keep my feet under me. I fall back against the rail and I start to feel a few punches against my head. I keep throwing mine into the closest body. I can’t make heads or tails of anything. It’s just fists and pressure. Nothing more.

  I finally get some leverage and pull everything forward. I’m lucky. There are enough people underneath me to keep me from breaking my head against the wall.

  I feel a few hands on me and I’m pulled out of the pressure. The crowd starts to break up and I hear ‘Break it up! Break it up! What’s going here?’

  It’s a few teachers. They’re out of breath and red faced. And not happy.

  ‘What the hell is happening?’ One of them looks me straight in the eye. He has me by my forearm. I look around as I’m dragged down the rest of the stairs. I see a few people around Sam. She looks like she’s sitting up. I don’t struggle the rest of the way.

  I get out of the stairwell. Into the hall where the cool air hits me and I take in a deep breath. Joosh, Kevin, and Dweebil follow close behind. There’s one teacher to the three of them. She has Kevin by the shirt and the other two walk on their own. We end up in the main office, sitting on chairs.

  #

  I don’t know how long I sit there. It has to be at least an hour. I don’t know what they’re waiting for, but I watch Kevin go in then Dweebil then Joosh. Then I watch them all leave. Smiling. I wait a little longer after they left. A few teachers walk into the office and back out. Each giving me the evil eye. I just sit there and wait as my nose dries, full of blood and my lip swells. My old bruises come back and some new ones appear. I sit there and wait.

  I slink down in my seat as I watch my parents’ faces in the office window grow closer. They come in the door and mom smiles at me meekly. Dad just looks at me.

  ‘Son, what happened?’ He asks.

  I open my mouth to start speaking, but I’m interrupted as the principal comes out. My mom and dad stand up and shake his hand. He’s a short man. Shorter than me. He has his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up. His face is red and his dark hair is matted against his scalp as if he’s been sweating.

  ‘Mr. Jennings. Mrs. Jennings.’ He shakes their hands. He invites them into his office and they follow along. And I follow behind them. We all sit down.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to have you in here under such, well frankly, disappointing circumstances.’ The principals starts.

  ‘What exactly has happened? Your secretary wouldn’t tell us anything.’ My dad asks.

  ‘Well, Abe, here got into quite an altercation with a few of his classmates.’ My parents turn to me then back to the principal.

  ‘What exactly happened?’

  ‘Well, from all our eyewitness accounts, your son here, started an argument with three boys up on the roof. He blocked their exit. He threw a punch as the boys tried to head down for class. The boys defended themselves. This would all be bad on its own. But during the scuffle, a young woman was knocked down the stairs and hit her head against a wall.’

  ‘That’s not how it happened.’ I mutter. My arms crossed.

  The principal pauses for a second and glances in my direction. ‘Luckily, she’s doing alright. But we can’t have that kind of behavior in this school. You understand?’

  ‘That’s not how it happened.’ I say again.

  My mom grabs my hand and holds onto it. She gives it a squeeze and Dad barely makes eye contact with me. The principal smiles and leans back in his large leather chair. He folds his hands over his stomach and continues, ‘Now, you know that I fought long and hard to get Abe here into the school system. We had a lot of trouble getting parents and teachers to take a risk with a--uh, someone like him.’

  My dad nods his head.

  ‘And I don’t really want to throw all that effort down the drain. Now, I’m sure Abe does know how hard you two worked to give him an opportunity here.’

  ‘I’m sure does know.’ My dad says.

  ‘Well, that being said, the boys’ parents are trying to pressure me to expel Abe here. The administration is breathing down my neck on top of that. But don’t worry, I’ve been able to get the punishment reduced down to a month’s suspension.’

  ‘A month?’
Mom finally says.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s the best I can do. The administration really wanted to expel Abe from the school system entirely. But I can’t imagine it would be easy to find somewhere else to go after having something like that on his record. That wouldn’t be right for the rest of his family.’

  ‘I see.’ Mom places her hands on her stomach. ‘Well, we have settled into the neighborhood. I wouldn’t want to move.’

  ‘That’s exactly my thought. So we’ll put him on probation after he returns and as long as he keeps his nose clean, we won’t have any problems.’

  ‘Well, that seems fair.’ My dad says.

  ‘Dad?’ I try to speak up.

  He turns to me and says, ‘We’ll talk about this when we get home Abe.’

  I give up. I don’t fight back. I always knew it would go down like this. Since the first day of school when some kids spit on me and dumped my bag out in the hall, I got called into the office that day too. My parents don’t know that, but I was. I was warned. I was lectured. They wanted me to know that I was on thin ice from the start. That my parents could see all their hopes washed out. The principal knew that my parents were here to have a normal looking kid. Everyone in town knew that. Word travels fast when people make it out of the zone. Especially when those people have a mutant kid in tow. These people know how much I’ve got to lose.

  So keep my mouth shut and I try to keep my head together. I think about the fight. Not the fight I just had, but the fight I’ll have. The one that will get me in the Bishop. The fight that will get me back in the cage. That’s what I concentrate on. I have to keep that in my head or I think about Sam with blood on her head and three assholes throwing fists against me. And this short, red faced prick smiling at me while he fucks over my life. Then I think of the worst things possible. Just making things easier for everyone else around. But I don’t want to go there. Not now. So I think of the fight.

  My parents say a few other things. The principal shakes his head then they all stand up and shake hands. And we head home.

  #

  Back home, I go straight up to the bathroom and get cleaned up. Mom helps me out. I sit on the toilet with my shirt off and Mom goes over the scrapes and bruises. Cleaning what she can. She wants to take me to the hospital, but Dad and I talk her out of it. No one out of the zone will take a mutant. Maybe if it’s some kind of emergency. But I doubt it.

  Even after all these years, there’s the fear of radiation and diseases. That my blood just carries the worst of the worst.

  I wince a little as she cleans out a large cut across my nose. I didn’t even notice it until now. Dad’s outside, pacing the backyard with a cigarette in his mouth. He hardly touches the stuff now, but I guess this sent him over the edge.

  I’m just glad I haven’t had to hear too much shit from him. The car ride was pretty silent. I decided to wait him out. I’ll let him make the first move. That’s for the best. I don’t want to instigate anything with him. Mom’s different. I can at least say something without worrying that it will automatically be thrown back into my face.

  ‘Sorry, Mom.’ I say as she takes a damp cloth to my back.

  ‘For what?’ She asks.

  ‘For getting kicked out of school.’

  ‘You weren’t kicked out, you were suspended, Abe.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘You get to go back.’

  ‘Great.’ I sigh.

  Mom keeps cleaning me up. I’m pretty sure she should be done by now, but she’s always paranoid about me getting sick or something getting infected. It’s always been like that. Probably comes from raising a kid out in the zone.

  ‘I know it’s not your fault, Abe. You dad does too.’ She keeps washing.

  ‘Well, he sure doesn’t act like it.’

  ‘He’s just stressed. It’s a lot harder living out here than we thought it was going to be.’

  ‘Money?’ I look up at her.

  ‘No, your dad makes enough.’ She stops finally and looks back at me. ‘It’s the other things. Like his job. And the people here. It’s just so different from Middling. It really is.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of moving back are you?’ I meant to sound excited. Interested. Instead, I say it with a little fear.

  ‘No. We’re not. We moved out here for a reason and we’re going to see it through.’ She doesn’t like saying the reason is a normal looking kid. At least not to me. She tries to be nice about it. Something I appreciate, but I understand. It’s something any parent wants. Hell, if I was having a kid I’d live in a place like this. And maybe I will, I mean, check out Willy and Sam Barnes. If a mutant could have a normal looking kid outside of the zone then it’s worth it. Of course, Willy wasn’t born a mutant which fucks with the mind on a whole other level.

  ‘Then what, Mom?’ I ask.

  ‘We just know it’s not easy for you. If it’s not easy for us then it has to be just as hard for you. I remember how school was. It’s always a rough time. And you’re different from everyone else here which must be pretty hard.’

  ‘I’m fine, Mom. It’s not a big deal.’

  ‘You’re a good kid. I’m just saying that we know none of this is your fault. That’s all.’

  ‘Alright.’

  Mom stands up and rinses off the washcloth and takes it with a few odds and ends out of the bathroom. I’m still sitting on the toilet as she heads downstairs. She shouts back at me to clean myself up so I close the door and peel off the rest of my clothes as best I can. My body aches, but nothing is in a sharp pain which is good. Everything is just the dull, hard pain you get from bruises. Nothing I can’t handle.

  I get into the shower and turn the handle until the right temperature is coming out of the pipes. I hit the switch and the water moves from filling the bathtub to hitting my face. I just stand there and let the water run over me. I have to move myself around in order to get the water where I need it. I look down and I see some red thinning near my toes, and I feel around my face and that gash across my nose stings at the touch. It stings when the water hits it too. I’m going to have to check it out in the mirror when I get out. I make a mental note to do so.

  I’m standing there with my chin on my chest, looking down at the red turn to pink and swirl away into the drain. And a wave hits me. I wasn’t expecting it. I start to shudder and shake and that choking feeling is crawling up my throat as I try to keep it together, but I hear myself whimpering and I can’t hold onto it. At some point, I don’t want to and I just let it go. I let it start coming out. I’m crying. Balling my eyes out. It’s just a knotl of hurt in the pit of my stomach. A ball that I didn’t know was there to be honest. I thought it was all rolling off of me, but I was wrong. Some of it has been sitting there. Just collecting. And apparently it’s had enough.

  I cover up my eyes like it matters. And I start sobbing into my hand. I’m leaning against the wall with my free hand and trying to stay standing. It doesn’t want to stop.

  I’m shocked by all the thoughts that flow out of my head. I think about the move. I think about the first day of school. I think about the loneliness. I think about Melanie. I think about the fight. The one in school. The one out of school. I think about Sam. I think about Willy. I think about my dad and my mom and how shitty of a son I am. I think about how happy I am not to be going to school for a month. And I think about how sad that makes me. I think about everything. I think about dying. I think about living. I think about showing them all up. I think about how different the world will be in ten years. I think about how afraid I am it will be the same. I think about Middling. And monsters. And fighting. And twisted looking children laughing in the playground with normal looking kids. I think about how unfair it is. I think about all of that. And I keep thinking until I’m not thinking at all and I am sitting on the floor of the bathtub just crying my eyes out and hoping that my parents don’t hear.

  #

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’ Dad says.<
br />
  ‘I don’t know. What does someone do when they’re suspended?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t get smart with me. Just tell me your plans to fill you time. You’re not going to be sitting around all day. That’s not good for anyone. That just leads to trouble.’

  It’s the first words he’s spoken to me since the meeting with the principal. We’re sitting down at the table for a nice meal of frozen dinners. I actually like frozen dinners, they remind me of living in Middling, but since moving here Mom has been on a healthy, fresh food kick.

  ‘Sorry, dad. I don’t know. Probably train. A lot. Not much else for me to do.’

  ‘You can get a job.’ He says.

  ‘Doing what?’ I cut into my salsbury steak.

  ‘You come down and work for me. It’s about time you saw all of that.’

  ‘I don’t want to work on the radiation crew, Dad.’ It just came out.

  ‘Oh really? You can’t help keep crap from leaking out of the zone?’ He holds his fork waiting for me.

  ‘No, I don’t want to do that. I don’t. Maybe if I was still living in Middling I would, but I’m not so I don’t want to.’

  ‘I see. Not something you want to do. Then let me ask you this, what are you planning to do instead of that. And don’t say fighting.’

  ‘Why not? It can’t be any worse than pulling twelve hour days cleaning radiation.’

  ‘Cause it’s not a real job. Look. I’m happy you’ve found a coach and everything, but you’re not going out and fighting when you’ve just been suspended from school for fighting.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to be training. I don’t fight cause I haven’t passed the tryouts yet. But if it’ll make you feel better, you can look for a job for me.’

  ‘Mom, you heard your son just agree to working. Right?’

  Mom doesn’t say anything, but she reaches over and pats his hand. Dad smiles and gets back to his tv dinner. I finish mine up and head upstairs to go to bed. It’s kinda early, but I’m sore and tired so the sleep hits me pretty quickly.

  #

  The next morning, the house is empty. Dad is at work and Mom left a note saying she’d be out running errands pretty much all day. I look at the clock. I slept in pretty late. It’s already 10 a.m. I was hoping to get an early start and hit the pavement. Get my running in before the sun gets to high today, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.