WHAM! The green metal resounded as the back of my head struck it, and again as I was throttled back and forth against it by two massive meaty hands on my shoulders. On hand lifted from pinching my shoulder into shards and clamped over my mouth, and a stony knee found my abdomen. Sharp slits in the locker jabbed at the back of my neck as the hands continued their brutal game of forcing the wall of locked metal to ingest me, bones, kidneys, and all.

A voice grunted at me like a rabid boar. "And if you ever�" KICK! "�so much as look at my girlfriend again, I'll�" KICK! "beat the shit out of you!" KICK! "You one-eyed fairy!"

A second voice cut in. "Hey, hey, Pace is coming�!"

The first voice swore, and the sweaty hands fell away from my body-and I promptly collapsed to the floor, head spinning. Sputtering incoherently, I struggled to get my bearings as my two assailants fled. I wiped my face with my sleeve, disgusted by the jock-sweat from the Neanderthal's hand, and blinked repeatedly to restore my vision. After a few moments, my world stopped spinning and returned to the fuzzy but stable grayscale scenery I was used to.

And then there were loafers. Two big, ugly, oily loafers with fringe and tassels and a color like that of canine excrement.

"Any reason why you are lolly-gagging on the floor instead of being in class, Mr. Harrison-Addison?" warbled Vice-Principal Pace, proud owner of the ugliest shoes in the Western hemisphere.

"I'm looking for my pet tarantula," I replied dully, giving him the crazy eye and flashing my chicken-wire jaws. "She seems to have escaped. I hope I find her before she lays eggs in the girls' locker room."

"Don't get fresh with me, young man," Mr. Pace barked, pointing a thick, yellow-nailed finger at my forehead. "I'm not amused." He then withdrew his finger, flashed me a disgusted look, and continued in his daily expedition to make teenagers kill themselves.

I stuck my tongue out at him because I feared his secret set of eyes too much to flick him off. That taken care of, I hauled myself to my feet and dusted off my black jeans. I gritted my teeth against the dull throbbing that was rolling that Justin Davison's kneecap had sent rolling through my stomach.

Hello. My name is Harrison-Addison Madison Redde, and this is my pathetic life.

Behold the reason for today's punching-bag session: In math I had been paired with the brainless Irish beauty Cassandra Donahue, and she had enjoyed my presence a little too much. I gained us an extra five points on our tests thanks to my geometric superpowers, and thus she passed with a 65. She was so excited that she wouldn't be grounded for the weekend she threw her arms around me and told me I was awesome and smart and oh my God like really cool. She spent the rest of the class leaning forwards towards me, telling me all about her problems with her boyfriend, Justin (because oh my God I am like such a good listener), and occasionally scratching the valley between her voluptuous mounds of woman meat that were spilling out onto my desk. Now, I'm no pervert, but I am male, and that Cassandra has a rack like you-would-not-BELIEVE. They were hard to ignore. Naturally, I looked. Unfortunately, Justin caught me in the act and thus decided my face needed to be rearranged. Me telling him that maybe he should make his slutty girlfriend wear a bra when she dresses like Christina Aguilera did not help matters.

Well, no big deal. What was one more beat-down in the course of a very bruised lifetime? It wasn't like Justin, and Spinner, his partner in social-outcast-hunting, needed a reason to knock me around. The fact that I was breathing was enough, although it helped that I was short, underdeveloped, and physically disfigured.

Justin Davison is a mammoth basketball player who, thanks to his six pack and his obsession with genitalia of all sorts, has been crowned Most Popular Boy in the freshman class (ah, the logic of teenagers!) His cohort, Mike Spinner, is a black basketball starter who is much taller than any fifteen year-old has a right to be. His main talents in life consist of grinding with three girls at one time, making white girls swoon over his styled cornrows, and actually believing that New York City is the capital of the United States. Both boys run with the in-crowd, where sex and sneakers reign over morality and brainpower. They date the girls who are so thick the only way they communicate with the outside world is by flashing their cleavage. As of yet, neither has fathered a child, despite the horrendous tales shared at the back of the school bus, but then again, it's only April.

And then there's me. Smart, ethical, kind-hearted, and oh-so-modest Harris Redde, the leader of the future musicians, artists, punks, Goths, and software executives of America. I only have one eye, as a bad infection early in life forced me to forever wear an eyepatch over my bad eye, and I'm completely colorblind. I also weigh about 102 pounds and stand 5'1", maybe 5'2" on a really good day. I have never had a girlfriend. In conclusion: I exist, I'm funny-looking, and I have a big mouth, so therefore the in-crowd finds great joy in harassing me.

I suppose they wouldn't be so nasty if I didn't shoot my mouth off, but what would the fun be in that? I am no stereotypical geek to be strung by the flagpole from my suspenders; give me the chance and I'll stab you with my safety pin!

Fear the punk with repressed aggression.

It was lunch period, so I hobbled to the caf and plopped down beside my friends for the remaining five minutes of the period. My mauled stomach was not in the mood to ingest a full meal, so instead I sipped Lin's Sprite and ate most of Georgie's blue jello cup. I grunted death threats against the JV basketball team, but Georgie was talking to a chickfriend, and Lin was busy scribbling song lyrics.

I daydreamed my way through the next two periods, for they were stupid and of no significance to my educational career�much like all my other classes. I daydream constantly. You'd think that, due to my 'visual handicap' that placed me front-row center by the board, I would have to pay attention at all times, but I don't. I guess by now I've learned to daydream while staring mindlessly in the general direction of the teacher and nodding occasionally, thus luring them into a false sense that whatever they're saying is registering between the ears and the eyepatch. Sometimes, because my eyes are so bad, I can't pay attention even if I want to. My sight is forever blurring and blacking out so that I can't even read my special edition large print textbooks. When that happens, there's nothing I can do but wait for my eyes to fix themselves and hope no one notices.

Last period was English, that stuffy, humorless class instructed by the stuffy, humorless Dr. Dingle. I kid you not; his name is indeed Dr. Dingle. Now, if my surname was Dingle, I think I'd restrain myself from earning that doctorate so that I wouldn't sound like any more of a psychotic ice-cream man than I already did. But people will do what they want.

The man has resented my presence since the beginning of the year. It all occurred when, in a moment of unanimous apathy when no one could identify the indirect object in the sentence, Dingle banged the chalkboard and demanded to know if we were all half-blind. I raised my hand and informed him that I felt discriminated against by that remark. The class roared, and for that period I was a god. Dingle, however, has held a grudge against me ever since.

I'm no fan of the English language anyway. Even French beats the fickle spelling rules of English, in which it's I before E except after C but only if it's a leap year, and not always on Thursdays. Still, it's the literature that kills me, as I'm hardly an avid reader, and I honestly don't believe that writers set out to explain the meaning of life in their short story about their cat. It's not that I don't like a good book; it's just that unless the font is big and clear and double-spaced, I simply can't read it. Even with my large-text editions of my books, the black letters on white swirl together, I can't tell where one word ends and the next begins, and distinguishing between m's and n's is nigh impossible.

Dear Dr. Dingle is extremely unsympathetic about my plight. It took me three weeks to explain to him that no, I'm not severely dyslexic or mentally incapacitated, but I have extremely poor eyesight�hence the pirate�like adornment on my face. Now that he's realized I have one less eye than most human beings, he's forever advocating my removal from this "normal" high school, because he's convinced I belong with "other handicapped children." This insults me beyond belief, but when I'm unable to finish a test simply because I can't read the writing selection, I almost wonder if he has a point.

Regardless, I do well for myself, mostly high B's in my classes, but always an A in math. English is my worst subject, and I still average a B. I work my scrawny little butt off for it, studying and reading and studying some more.

And so there we were, cursing the sluggish movement of the hands on the clock and aching for the bell to ring, when Dingle began to hand back last week's Lit tests. We'd gotten report cards this morning, and I'd barely held onto Honors with an 80 in English. I'd expected an 85, so I figured the last-minute test had dragged me down. Goddammit, Dingle's tests counted for so much of your average, one unlucky test could destroy you.

My feet tapped compulsively as Dingle stalked around the classroom, snapping down several stapled sheets of doom onto my classmates' desks. My palms sweated-part of me wanted this hideous test back to get it over with, and the rest dreaded the ruination of my day.

Snap! Dingle slapped the packet onto my desk with a grunt of, "Disappointing, Harrison." I took a deep breath and flipped it to see the circled red grade.

69.

Shit.

I covered my face with my hands. A D. I'd gotten a D. Oh, Christ, D's had to be signed. My stomach flopped. Oh, Christ Almighty, I had to get a D signed.

Lin poked me from behind. "Hey, Harris, how'd you do?"

"Don't ask."

"What, you fail?"

"69."

"Sucks to be you," he said. "Georgie got a 50, though. Which is probably 50 points higher than he expected. Bergeron got a 5 for getting the title of the story right, shit, that's sad�"

"What'd you get?"

"97," he replied, trying not to smirk. Lin is practically Mensa, and the smartass knows it.

"Eh, fuck you," I grunted, irritated. "Man, I'm so screwed."

"Could be worse," he said.

"That's easy for you to say�you don't have my parents. Or my brother."

Lin rolled his eyes. "At least your parents speak English. If I try to tell my dad my grades, he just gets confused."

"Your dad's not that stupid, Lin, don't exaggerate."

"Hey, you started the whine war," Lin replied with a grin, and he stuck his tongue out at me.

I turned away from him. Lin may have been my best friend, but whining to him was about as effective as whining to a three year-old. And in all actuality, a three year-old would probably be more sympathetic.

At 1:50 the afternoon announcements came on to remind the jocks about their practices and the overachievers about their community service opportunities. The bell rang, and hundreds of bodies flooded into the hallways, pushing and gasping against each other and barking inanely to their buddies. A lowly freshman dressed in black, with a sore body and a nauseated stomach, I squeezed to my bottom locker and got my books quickly. I took a deep breath and dove back into the melee of bodies to escape to the bus before Justin and Spinner found me again. As usual, my poor black backpack was stretched at the seams with my stupid oversized textbooks, and the pinned-on band patches were near to popping off. The weight on my skinny shoulders was a painful reminder of the fact that, due to my optical deficiencies, my textbooks were twice as thick as everyone else's. Ow.

It was a cold day in April, rainy and sleety and bitterly cold. I shivered, white flakes dusting my mop of flyaway brown hair and melting down my neck in icy rivulets. I pulled my jacket closer around my neck as I headed out toward the parking lot.

"Harris!" called a stocky Italian boy with a mop of brown curls�my other best friend, Georgie�as he strolled off to catch his bus. He pointed across the parking lot and said, "I think your brother is here!"

I looked where he was pointing, my stomach hurting again. Sure enough, several cars down was a good-looking man in his late twenties standing by a white car. He was looking around, and when he spotted me, he waved. I immediately looked away as if I hadn't seen him.

I got on the bus instead.

next chapter...