“More like what didn’t happen to you. Didn’t you do anything this summer besides babysit your sister?”
Sully cocked his head. The voice sounded a lot like Morty’s.
“What are you looking at?” The Emo kid tossed back his head. His lips moved perfectly in sync with the sound of his friend’s voice.
As Sully looked around to see where Morty was hiding, a purple house sailed in and out of view from the bus window.
“Earth to Sully.” The Emo kid snapped his fingers in front of Sully’s face.
“Do I know you?”
“Man, you really are out of it this morning. It’s Morsixx, Dude.”
“Morsixx? Really?” A girl in the seat across the aisle shrilled her surprise. “Is that some kind of warrior name?” Laughing, she tapped her hand to her lips and made a “woo-woo-woo” sound.
“Shhhh,” the girl beside her giggled. “I heard his mama’s one crazy—” She spoke the taboo insult in a whisper, but loud enough for Morsixx to hear.
Sully looked at the girls in disgust and then back at the boy. He jutted his chin forward and pushed the hair away from his low-lying eyes to get a better look.
“Morty?” It was beginning to dawn on Sully that Morty’s voice really was coming out of the Emo kid’s mouth.
“Morsixx,” the Emo kid said. “I told you that last night. Weren’t you listening?”
“Morsixx? . . . Wait a minute. Is that really you, Morty? What, did you grow a foot at your dad’s over the summer? Why are you dressed like that?”
Sully and Morty’s surnames, Brewster and Bearheart, were usually one after the other in alphabetical class lists, so they often sat next to each other in elementary and middle school. Friends more by default than design, they’d decided at the end of last year to share a locker in Grade 9.
“This is just me, Dude.”
“No, it’s not you, Morty!” Sully’s assertion skipped ungracefully from A-minor through F-sharp. He nodded to the back of the bus and then to the girls across the aisle. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“Their bad, Dude. Racial slurs can’t touch me. And the name’s Morsixx, now.” Morty handed Sully a black handkerchief decorated with skulls. “You got ketchup on your face, Dude. Clean yourself up.”
CHAPTER 4
Sully bolted from the bus as soon as it stopped. With a plan to avoid any further collision with Morsixx, Tank, or any other human being, he circumvented the locker and headed straight to class. Grade 9 hadn’t even officially started, and this day was already a million times worse than the worst of his imaginings.
Passing the cafeteria, he caught his reflection in the darkened glass and shuddered.
He started down the hall and looked back and forth between his timetable and the numbers over the doorways. He turned right and then left before passing a side hallway that ended in a broom closet. A round boy about his age was slumped in a corner by the open closet doorway. With his head in his hands, his shoulders shook with some tragic sniffling.
Sully took a step toward him and then back. He’d had a bad morning himself. No one could blame him if he decided to simply walk away and not get involved, especially since the boy didn’t even know he was there.
He tiptoed backward and darted glances between the emptying hallway and the boy in the broom closet, before he sighed and walked toward him.
“Are you okay?”
The kid’s face was gooey with snot when he looked up at Sully’s voice. His tongue protruded slightly from his mouth as he sniffed and wiped his nose with short, pudgy fingers.
“Miss Winters said to turn right.” The boy raised his right hand. His puffy, soulful eyes studied Sully out of wide, flat features. “But this isn’t a classroom.”
“I’ll take you to the office, okay?”
“Are you a girl?” The boy’s face cracked a smile as he reached for Sully’s hair. His own dark brown hair was trimmed in a tidy bowl cut.
“What? No!” said Sully. “I’m kind of in a hurry. Do you want me to take you to the office?”
“You have girl’s hair,” said the boy.
“Yah, yah, I know. Look, follow me, okay? I’ll help you find Miss—”
The rest of Sully’s sentence was swallowed by the bell.
“That scared me!” The boy jumped. He grabbed Sully’s arm and giggled.
“Bell.” Sully pointed at the ceiling and then at himself. “I gotta go.”
“You’re Belle?” said the boy.
“Yes,” said Sully. “My bell. I’m late for class. C’mon. I’ll take you to the office.”
“Like in Twilight?” said the boy. “Belle? Like Bella?”
“What?”
“You have curly hair, Bella,” said the boy.
“No,” said Sully. “My name isn’t—”
“There you are, Winston.” An older woman came up behind them, her gray bun pulled sharply at her temples to expose hawk-like features.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in class, young lady?” She ran her finger across the top and then down the squares of Sully’s timetable. “Get a late slip from the office and hurry along.”
“Man,” said Sully.
“Excuse me?” said the woman.
“Young man,” said Sully, “and I was just—”
“She has curly hair.” Winston pointed at Sully as the woman ushered him along. “Bye, Bella!”
Flustered, Sully made a full circle to reorient himself. Off to his right, Tank leaned against a bank of nearby lockers.
“Better hurry along, Sally.” Tank pointed at Sully and twitched his thumb to his index finger as if cocking a gun. “Or is it Bella?”
CHAPTER 5
“Girls’ Health class is down the hall in room 251, young lady.” The muscular middle-aged man with the receding hairline—Mr. Green, according to Sully’s agenda—directed a beefy finger out the door over Sully’s left shoulder. “Guys only in this class.”
“No, I—”
“You heard the man, Sally.”
Tank shoved Sully into the room with a broad shoulder as he sauntered in behind him.
“We’re going to try this one more time, are we?” Mr. Green looked past Sully and straight at Tank, as if Sully had already trotted down the hall.
“Third time’s the charm,” said Tank.
After laughing at Sully, the class now turned their attention to the Tank–Green show.
“I thought the boys might want some pointers from someone who’s used their equipment recently.” Tank’s comment drew whistles and laughs from the class.
“Cocky words from someone who’s flunked this class twice. Take your seat.” Green directed Tank to a desk in the barren first row and then turned back to Sully. “I said room 251, Miss. Move along.”
“Sir, I—”
“Now, then.” Green ignored Sully again. “We’re just missing Brewster. Any of you know a Sullivan Brewster?”
Tank ambled to the back row and stood in front of a thin kid whose face reddened under his pointed stare. Grabbing his backpack, he’d barely vacated his seat before Tank replaced him.
Shooting a warning glance at Sully, Red Face darted to the last empty seat in the middle row.
“I’m Sullivan Brewster, sir.” Sully held up his small yellow late slip as if it was the missing piece to this puzzle.
Green looked surprised to see Sully still in his classroom. “Speak up, young lady.” Uproarious laughter issued from everyone but Tank, who was now leaning back with his hands folded behind his head and his eyes half-closed.
“I’m Sullivan Brewster, sir.” Sully’s statement surfed the scales again.
“I see.” Green looked at Sully as if inclined to argue the point. “Well,’ he said, “okay, then. Take your seat, Brewster.”
Shaking his head, Green walked to the b
lackboard and wrote Sex Ed in foot-high letters.
“All right then, Gentlemen. Listen up.” He stood with his legs apart and one hand on his hip. With the other, he grabbed the whistle that hung from his neck and gave it two sharp tweets.
“This can go one of two ways.” With both hands on his hips now, all he was missing was a cape and a letter on his chest. “I can bore you with lectures you’re all going to sleep through, or you can teach the class yourself.”
He flung his arm out and pointed directly at Sully, whose heart vaulted into his mouth. Which fell open on his forehead.
“Who, me?” Sully’s alarm squeaked into the silence that followed Green’s words.
“Yes, you, Brewster.” Green paused for effect. “And you, and you, and the whole sorry lot of you.”
A hum of murmurs and whispers rose behind Sully.
“Well, that’s settled, then,” Green pronounced. “Thirty students. Thirty topics. PowerPoint presentation. Minimum twenty minutes. First presentation next Monday.”
“That can’t be legal!” someone protested.
“Here are your topics, Gentlemen.” Green ignored the comment and slid the blackboard over to reveal thirty ghastly words he’d chalked in three rows of ten. Words like Gonorrhea. Chlamydia. Condom. Herpes.
“You’ll find a basic presentation outline for each of these topics in the handout.” Green deposited a stack of paper on Sully’s desk. “Take one and pass the rest on, Brewster. Each of you will be responsible for fleshing out one of these topics to present to the class. No pun intended.”
No one laughed.
“After each of your presentations, I’ll take over to fill in any gaps or correct any misinformation. If you do a good job, my part will be short, and I’ll end class early. Capiche?”
Grumbles and murmurs rumbled around the room.
“All right, then. Topics and presentation dates will be drawn by lottery.” Green pulled a box out from under his desk. “Grab a slip on the way out.”
These were the last words Sully heard clearly for the remainder of the period. His left ear, the one on his head, had picked up a high-pitched ringing from overhead. His right, pointed as it was directly at the blackboard, deflected the sounds that spilled out of Green’s mouth.
“You have a problem with time, Brewster?”
A dribble of drool slid from the corner of Sully’s mouth before it curved around his ear and into his left eye.
Green’s bark in Sully’s middle ear jolted him back to attention. Realizing his classmates were filing out, he stood abruptly, which caused his desk to pitch forward and hammer hard into Green’s own middle body part.
As Green choked out some indecipherable words, Sully swung his backpack over his shoulder, smacking Green in the side of the head.
“Sir, I . . . I mean, I didn’t mean—”
“Slip, Brewster,” Green managed, grimacing. “Grab a topic on the way out and just go!”
As he raced for the door, Sully collided with the desk. The topic box fell to the floor where it opened and spilled the last presentation slip on the floor.
“Menstruation,” it said. “Monday, October 5.”
CHAPTER 6
“Hey.”
Sully was pretty sure he’d dialed the right number, but it was hard to tell from that single syllable.
“Morty?”
Two phone conversations with Morty in a week is more than he’d had the entire time they’d been in middle school together, but he needed to talk to someone.
“Hey, Dude.”
“Morty, it’s Sully.”
“Morsixx.”
“Just quit this whole Morsixx thing, Morty. You’re making a fool of yourself.”
“Your opinion, Dude.”
“What does that even mean, Morty? Morsixx? Really?”
“It’s Latin for Death with a nod to the Gods of Punk and Heavy Metal. And it doesn’t matter if you approve or not, Dude. I’m happy with who I am.”
“Happy with who you are? Right, Morty. Happy people always go around dressing like corpses and calling themselves dead.”
“Death, not dead,” said Morsixx. “I’m a process, not an event, Dude. All of us are dying.”
“Huh?” said Sully.
“The music speaks to me, that’s all,” said Morsixx. “Billy Talent and bvb, but that’s not even the point.”
“Well, what is the point, Morty? You heard the girls on the bus this morning. You really want high school to be a repeat of middle school?”
“Look, Dude. Morty would have worried about those things. He did worry about them. Morty hadn’t grown worthy of the name Bearheart. Morsixx is working hard to earn it.”
“So, you think hiding behind a new name is going to solve all your problems? Like it or not, Morty, you’re still you.”
“That’s what you’re not getting, Dude. I’m not hiding. And I do like myself. My dad broke himself on other people’s arrows. He forgot himself. Taking a new name at different stages of our journey is part of my heritage. My mother taught me that. Morsixx is who I am now.”
“I’m telling you, they’re going to bully you worse than ever if you keep this up.”
“This is just who I am, Dude. I feel good about myself. Get over it.”
“Look, never mind about all that. Tank’s posted the Naked Niner Prelude video.”
“You know you’re just playing into his plan by getting all freaked out about it.”
“How can you not get freaked out about it? Have you seen it?”
“I gotta admit, the guy’s not stupid. Branding it and everything. He’s bound to end up some advertising genius or something.”
“What are you even talking about? These are real people he’s filmed, not some paid actors.”
“I’m just saying. He’s a thug, but he’s not a dumb thug. Think about it. He was a niner himself when he started this whole thing. Bold, right? I mean, way to pre-empt—”
“Geez, Morty, do you even hear yourself? I repeat. His victims are real people. They—”
“All right, all right. So how bad is it?”
“How bad do you think it is? It’s a friggin’ nightmare. Shouldn’t somebody do something about this? It must be against the law or something.”
“Did he sign the post?”
“Sign the post? Of course he didn’t sign the post. What kind of moron would put his signature on this kind of thing?”
“Exactly,” said Morsixx. “Nobody can do anything about it because they can’t trace it back to him.”
“Well, they may not be able to trace it, but everyone knows that Tank’s behind this.”
“Proof, Dude. They have no proof.”
“Have you got the page up?” Sully clicked the replay button on his own screen. His fingers hovered along his jawline, ready to block out the horrifying image of Gerald Budinski hanging by his feet from the tree limb. Completely naked. Squirming and squealing, with his arms tied to his sides. Gerald’s vain attempts to cover himself up were painful to witness.
An alumnus of the same middle school Sully attended, Gerald was the first Naked Niner. The so-called Aftermath video of his attack (full, unedited footage) had quickly achieved viral distribution in Sully’s Grade 7 year.
After Gerald was Billy Smithers, the Naked Niner from last year. Different location but same humiliating pose. In both cases, the footage was shot at night, with the poor Naked Niner illuminated by harsh, unflattering flood lights.
A word crawl across the bottom said: wimps, losers, posers deserve no respect. beware the black spot. u cant hide. u will be exposed.
The words twisted in Sully’s gut. Tank had used at least three of these words to Sully during the ugly bus encounter.
“You better be careful, Morty,” he said.
“Morsixx.”
/> “All right. You’d better be careful . . . Morsixx. Do you want to see yourself strung up like that? Exposed like that? You’re probably on their list already!”
“I’m not a poser, Dude,” said Morsixx. “And I’m not a loser or a wimp, either. They don’t scare me.”
“Well, you should be scared! Geez, Morty . . . Morsixx . . . you fit the profile perfectly, the way you’re hiding in that stupid disguise. You should quit it immediately. As in yesterday. Maybe they’ll forget all about it and pick someone else.”
“Like I said, I’m not hiding anything, Dude,” said Morsixx. “This is just me. Maybe it’s you who should be careful. You’re awful jumpy.”
“Me? Jumpy?”
“You sound like a girl, Dude. Get your voice under control.”
“Okay, just forget it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Sully stared at the screen long after hanging up with Morsixx. Gerald, and even Billy, had been caught unawares, he reasoned. No one sees the first one coming, and if there’s only been one, there might not be two.
But this year was three, and three seemed inevitable because, as the saying goes, things come in threes. Three was inevitable. That’s what Sully figured.
Sully hugged his arms close and started when his computer screen went black. His eyes stared back at him from along his jawline. He took in the out-of-place profile of his nose, which protruded from his left cheek, and the twisted grimace of his mouth, frozen like an open wound across his forehead.
“Morsixx better watch himself,” he said to the ear in the middle of his face. And then, more softly, as if afraid to speak the words aloud, “And me, too.”
CHAPTER 7
It was the middle of the third week before the notes started showing up on the locker Sully shared with Morsixx. While the bizarre, and apparently invisible, rearrangement of Sully’s face hadn’t changed, Sully found himself cautiously hopeful that the worst was behind him.
Until now.
Emo Fag, said one of the handwritten signs. Cut yourself, said another. Makeup is for queers. Worst of all was a crudely drawn heart surrounding the words, Sally loves Emo.
Sully Messed Up Page 2
