Marine stopping a car. Me being laid in the back, screaming. I know I was screaming. I could feel my hand dissolving, but the burning never stopped. She left the car in a parking lot. I don’t know where. I didn’t recognize any of the buildings as she put my arm over her shoulder and dragged my mostly uncooperative body down the sidewalks. It was a residential district. A nice one. Trees and bushes and shit I hadn’t seen in years. We stopped in front of a building and as my eyes blurred, exhausted from screaming and spent adrenaline, I read a sign that couldn’t possibly have been right.
Chimney Oaks Middle School.
Chapter
NINE
I opened my eyes to a scene I wasn’t entirely convinced was real. On the ceiling was a poster with seventy-seven different ways to say no to drugs. It was yellowed and faded and looked like it was maybe older than the school somehow. Most of them seemed like they were exactly the sort of thing a kid who needed a poster to tell them how to refuse drugs would say. My favorite was “No, I don’t talk to strangers, stranger.” There were so many things just basically wrong with that. First of all, who the fuck talks like that? I mean, just what a weird fucking thing to say to another person who is, presumably, your age. You’re not in an Old West saloon, you dimpy virgin. I mean what do you do after that? Tip your cowboy hat and suggest they mosey on home? Who would tell a kid to say that? It’s like a road map to getting shitkicked and put in a trashcan.
Second, and don’t think this list is short, is the baseline fallacy that you don’t talk to strangers. You’re doing it. You’re saying a sentence to a stranger. Moreover, you’ve responded to their offer vis-a-vis drugs by saying no. So not only are you talking to them, you’re actively participating in the conversation. Don’t talk to strangers. Fuck you, little kid. Not talking to strangers means ignoring them. This whole thing breaks the first rule they teach you about not talking to strangers, which is to just make an excuse to make them leave you alone. This is basically the exact opposite of that. You’re giving them a smarmy “bet you can’t rape me in your van” sort of answer. Cocky little prick. I hate this kid. I really hate him. I can picture him, too. He’s wearing a tucked-in, plaid, short-sleeve button up shirt with a front pocket that he uses and tan shorts. And he walks around with his chest out like he just got named a blue ribbon mathlete.
Third. That’s right. That’s right, there’s more. Who is this stranger that just offered you free drugs that you don’t know? If it’s an adult rapist, as I suggested before, then what the fuck are you even doing in that part of town? Probably a fucking boy child named Chelsea because his dad just does whatever his mom wants and she liked the way it sounded. Just like she likes votive candles and the idea of someone breaking into the house while he’s away on business and ravishing her on that four-poster bed hubby couldn’t afford because things at work weren’t going his way. But enough about Chelsea, the boy who dared to be pathetic, and more about Stranger. This is, presumably, another kid. One who doesn’t think Chelsea is so insanely pathetic that he was going to offer up the line he offered up. This little morally superior bag of shit just strangered a fucking class mate because he was raised by the sort of parents who complain about how the competitive children aren’t including him. It’s like the sort of kid who gets confident about all the bullshit teachers feed kids to keep them from hanging themselves with an extension cord from their bedroom door. His friends call him a lame ass for telling on them any time they do something wrong and he goes “Well, you’re not true friends of mine then.” A fair world would see that sort of kid drowned in the bathtub when his mom got a message from the angels.
Fourth…
The anger was getting to me and I tried to grab my thigh so that the rage could form a nice loop around my body instead of building up in my extremities. Instead of a firm grip, I just felt a searing pain. I sat up and looked at my hand. Ah, son of a fucking bitch. I’ve got a stump. A fucking stump!
I started screaming. Mostly things like “my fucking hand” and “what the fuck happened to my hand” and generally things along that theme. The curtains ripped open and a woman with an electronic cigarette came in, eyes narrow with purpose. She slapped me hard across the face. Her boobs shook when she did but I only saw the first half of it as I had shut my eyes from the slap.
“Shut the fuck up you little asshole. It’s school hours.”
I looked back at the woman. She had red hair and ruddy skin and dark lipstick. And giant tits. She wasn’t really that fat though. Sort of a surprise. But she was wearing scrubs so I wasn’t really sure of that. I have a theory that some sort of sex-hating genius designed scrubs, honestly. They manage to make everyone look like this amorphous blob of sexlessness.
Sorry. School hours? She turned and pulled a chair over to the side of the bed, which I now noticed wasn’t a hospital bed but something much more plain and far less comfortable.
“Didn’t expect you to be up for another hour,
