Straighten Your Ties / Book 1

I don't wanna see the day, my words cannot make it safe.
(Come running home! Come running home!)
Her heart in my hands, it's too bad, no regrets
I don't wanna see the day, her tears are falling on my grave.
(Come running home! Come running home!)
This is my one chance, to take back, no regrets
-The Fall Of Troy – F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X.

I have emphasized how much I hate Mondays. While I have always felt this way, I think this Monday has been the worst and shittiest one of my life. I didn’t want to get out of bed that morning, and I didn’t want to move a single muscle for at least another few weeks when my name wouldn’t be whispered all around school. My dad wouldn’t allow that.

He threw the door open. “Trouble,” as he usually called me, as I seemed to be the real troubled child of us three. “You gonna get up?”

“You wish,” I mumbled. I had somehow been awake since six. It was seven now.
“Nothing’s going to happen.”
“That’s what they all say.” I turned on my side, staring at my laptop that had been left open on my desk the previous night.

“Well, this time,” He sauntered over to bed in his boxers, “It’s true.” He hit my head with a pillow. He wasn’t mad. He just wanted me up.
“Yeah yeah. I hear you.” I stretched and pulled myself up. Outside my window, the sun was just hitting our backyard. It was just like any other day. Nothing to worry about. Silly Derrick, Trix are for kids. Your worries are for adults.

I had met Greg over the weekend to tell him about what had happened when I got back from the concert. We sat in the dry fountain of Westmount park trying to talk about it while skateboarders all around us tried kickflipping off the ledge or grinding their trucks to them. I don’t think Greg knew the severity of the situation.

“Wha?” He stared at me as if he had just woken up.
“Wake up, fucker,” I said, “It’s nearly three anyways!”
“No, but what? Really.” He smirked and turned his attention to the skateboarders.
“I could be arrested.”
He shook his head. “Stop over thinking this, dude.”

But I couldn’t. I slept in till four on Sunday because I thought I’d maybe sleep through Sunday and past Monday. I felt queasy and had that sleeping in kind of taste in my mouth that I was very much used to. Its dryness irked me now more than ever. I only got out of bed for supper. By one in the morning, I was still up, worrying. I had to use my weird trick that usually got me to sleep. I thought of a light bulb. I kept thinking of it until the idea got boring. And I got bored. And my mind said fuck that. And my eyes shut. And then I shut down.

I walked through the pass-coded doors of the Terrance building. It felt like weeks since I had been here. It didn’t seem like welcoming territory anymore. Every second tile on the floor looked like a landmine. I was in a giant game of minesweeper. And I was damned if I made one wrong move. Only it wasn’t minesweeper. I didn’t have numbers telling me how many mines surrounded me. I didn’t have the chance to back out and hit the x button to get back to the desktop. Instead, I had to make it to my locker.

I looked up for the first time since entering the door. No eyes were on me as I saw a couple of guys from our grade at their lockers, emptying books from their bags for the day. I felt like a bunch of eyes were on me though. I felt like I was being indirectly glanced at by invisible eyes. It couldn’t be though… It couldn’t be. Maybe no one was looking at because no one wanted to see me. I was nothing. But I mattered. I didn’t want to matter. I wanted to disappear into my locker and never come back

***

It dawned on me that no one was looking at me because no one even knew the slightest bit of what was going on. Everyone had been in line for lunch the day that Greiche pushed me up against the locker. Even the blog. No one in our grade read it. It was all the guys in Senior School who noticed it. I realized this as I walked to math class in period three. I took the street crossing rather than the tunnel, too tired to walk down that many stairs. A few grade elevens huddled over by the patch of grass in front of the MacDonald building. I walked across as normal. I could feel their eyes on me. I was gripped by the collar and turned around suddenly, amazingly able to hold on to my books.
“You got my friend suspended,” said the guy looming in front of me.
“I didn’t do anything.” I said back.

“Oh yeah?” He sneered. His teeth were yellow and gapped. Someone obviously hadn’t been to the ortho in a while. He grabbed me by the tie in a non-sexual way and dragged me toward the other grade elevens. I dropped my books on the grass, also leaving my laptop behind. I didn’t know their names, and I didn’t know why we started heading down the street behind the building. But I did soon enough.

The guy who had grabbed me, Julien, tossed me in front of him towards the brick wall of the alley. I faltered a bit and almost hit myself against the wall, but I instead caught myself right before I could injure myself.
“You fucker!”
“You sick fuck!”
“Think you were going to shoot us?”
“You fucking pussy!”

They all yelled at me. I just looked at them with disdain. Julien came forward as his gang kept leering. I looked at him, deadpanned from fear. Shit. He punched me right in the gut. I knelt over to the ground and tried to breathe. It felt like I was just trying to vomit my breakfast. I was on the ground. They were kicking everything but my face. They didn’t want to leave any visible marks. I thought I was dying. I kept hearing tons of yells.
“G did nothing. Fuck you!”
“You fucking wannabe. You’re as worthless as shit.”
“Look at the shit. He’s gonna puke.”

I did. I was aching all over. Mind you, I don’t even think they were kicking their hardest, because I knew I’d be in much more pain. These guys were probably on several varsity teams. Maybe I fell asleep. Maybe they ran because they thought they saw someone. Maybe I blacked. I just remember waking up to the smell of my own puke right next to me. My legs could barely move to get myself up on my hand and knees. I somehow managed to limp back to my books, finding my binder’s pages spilled out onto the grass. That’s Mondays for you.

I contemplated skipping third period, but as I looked at myself in the mirror of the bathroom, I saw no cuts on my face or anything visible. Nothing felt broken except maybe my ego, which wasn’t all intact if anything. I figured I had to make it through this period. I’d be meeting with the police and the other administrative people at lunch. Only an hour to go.
I searched my bag for the bottle of Tylenol that my mother had put in my bag at the beginning of the year. Sadly, I couldn’t find it. Just when I needed it most…

***

I limped into math class fifteen minutes late. Von Escher looked to me from the whiteboard she was scribbling problems on. “You’re extremely late, Derrick.”
I racked my mind for an excuse, “I just had to see Miss Mullins. I’m sorry, I – ”
“Do you have a note?” Oh how there were so much more important things than a note right now.

“I lost it.” Stupid answer.
“Detention at lunch then.” She didn’t believe me. She shouldn’t have, of course, but I thought that maybe she’d be forgiving.
“Already in it.” Technically, I was.
“Tomorrow then.”
“Sure.” I started to look for a seat. Classmates looked up at me from the notes they were writing on factoring. I slid into a seat in the front row. I just wanted my back to be stared at, so they didn’t have to see my incredibly dead-looking face. I didn’t matter in this classroom. I only mattered outside it. Oliver sat behind me. He tapped my shoulder.

“Where were you man?”
“Getting beat up by grade elevens,” I whispered back as Miss Von Escher kept writing and explaining on the board.
“What?”
I decided to lie. “I just fell asleep while I sat down beside my locker.” I’m not even sure if that was plausible.
“You look dead.” I wish I was. “You sure you weren’t beat up by grade elevens? I’ll give them a talking to man. They respect me, yo.”
I shook my head, which I realized hurt to do. “Yeah, I’m good.” I said through the pain. All lies.

I sat outside the headmaster’s office behind the thankfully closed doors of its entranceway. I didn’t want to be seen here. I looked sulky and depressed, as I could see from the gold-mirrored ceiling.

I was waiting to be asked to come in to the room, and in turn, also waiting for my dad, who always managed to be late. I felt like I could never count on him to be there. To just show up. Unless it was an athletics event, he just didn’t want to be there early. He clamored up the Headmaster’s stairs that only the graduating class of the year could use, as well as staff and the Headmaster. He was in his dress pants and striped dress shirt. No tie. As always.
“Hey.” He said unenthusiastically.

“Why hello there, Captain Late.” He really was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago. At least he wouldn’t get detention. “They said to knock on the door when you got here.”
“Ready to settle this?”
“Yeah… Guess so.”
“Remember, be polite. Don’t bullshit them either. This is the police, and your school. You really can’t risk it, Derrick.” He warned me with cautious eyes. I knew what he meant. I just nodded.
“Let’s just do this.” My dad knocked on the door.

A few seconds later, the blurred glass of the windows of the door saw a shape of black appear behind it. A few seconds later, the door opened to the Headmaster of Seguin for the past two decades, Paul Gilbert. He was an old man who always looked like he had a sour taste in his mouth. He hung his balding head, sprinkled with a crown of white hair, all the time, with his hands at his hips like he was the big cheese. I didn’t like him. He ruled Seguin like a dictator and was the one who coined the term of “civil community” to Seguin. We had heard it said a lot. He also couldn’t give a speech for his life. He was deplorable when it came to standing in front of a gym of students and talking about nearly anything. His voice would always crack, or stutter, or he’d just lose track of his speech. He would say “uh” a lot. We once ended up counting his uhs just for fun. I think we were at over seventy in a fifteen minute assembly. For reader’s sake, I won’t include all his uhs.

“Good morning gentlemen.” He said, looking at us both over his glasses. “It’s nice to see you Mr. Madison. It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, definitely.” He said. “Nice to see you again as well.”
Pauly, as I liked to call him, turned to me. “How are you Derrick?”
“Not so good to be honest.” I didn’t even see why this was necessary.
He stared at me blankly. I didn’t have much respect for the man. I didn’t see why I had to fake a smile for him.

“Let’s get down to business then,” he welcomed us into his office, which was carpeted beige, painted beige and was just beige all over. In the corner was Pauly’s desk, with his laptop open and desk lamp on. The room also had a large boardroom table right near the entrance. Sitting at the table were Minerva, Carla Mullins, and a police officer of some sort. Pauly gestured towards my seat, and my dad sat across from Miss Mullins and the police officer was to his left. Pauly went to take his seat at the end of the table, resting his enclosed hands upon the glass countertop that topped the wood of the table.

“Alright gentlemen, this is Detective Michel from the Westmount Police Department. He’ll be wanting to hear about the situation before us.” I nodded towards him, and he nodded back. My dad shook his hand.
“So…” Mullins looked at me. “We were wondering what this blog you were running was…”
I explained in detail about how a blog was a sort of online journal that I took the time to write in and that I liked writing a lot. They asked about one poem I had written on it. It was the one about how the person was shot with more than a bullet of lead. I tried to explain that I didn’t mean anything with it and that it was just a poem. Nothing more to it. Minerva looked beyond that.

“But you wrote it like you meant it. Like something was troubling you. Someone managed to email it to me when parents called in to complain about your blog.”
“Yeah, uh, but I didn’t. I don’t really write things so literally all the time. No one does.”
Miss Mullins cut in, “But you did write it.”
“What of it, though?” I nearly raised an eyebrow.
“You meant some part of it.”
“I didn’t! Honestly, miss.”
“Derrick, we can offer you therapy sess-”
“Can we just move on, please?”

Minerva and Mullins looked at each other. “Go on.”
I continued to say that I had had a bad week last week with my grandparents and that my mother and father had been out of town. It had annoyed me severely and I just wanted an out. I didn’t tell them my belief structure about Mondays. As far as I knew, the structure fell apart when I got beaten up in the alley. I didn’t mention that either. I even omitted the Greiche situation for the policeman’s sake. Soon enough, I was done.
“And that’s really it. I didn’t have any intention of doing harm. Really, I came in today expecting things to be fixed.” I stopped talking and waited. Everyone except my dad and Michel were looking downwards. For a moment I thought they were sleeping. Pauly spoke.

“You understand why we are supposed to investigate this situation, right Derrick? Due to the events, uh, of the Dawson shooting this year, parents are up in arms about any threats, uh, or attacks against the school. We are, uh, even in the process of putting a school lockdown system in place for the next few years. It is necessary for us to, uh, assure the students safety. Due to the fact that we did receive so many calls about your… uh… blog, we had to see about all this for ourselves.” He paused. “There is, however, one more issue.”
Miss Mullins broke in, “A student was suspended this week for pushing Derrick against a locker last week.” She spoke directly to Michel.
“Sorry,” My dad broke in, “What does he have to do with this?”
“This student admitted to calling Info Crime on your son this morning to the Senior School Director.” I knew it all along. It had to be him.
“He lied about it all then. Shouldn’t he punished further?” I said.
“No.”

I sat there silent for a moment. “But-”
“We do not know who started the situation between the two of you. You very well could both be in the wrong.” I knew I wasn’t either. “We have heard his story. But we must hear yours. He could be very well not telling the truth. He is on probation after all.” I saw Michel taking notes on all this in his seat.
“I just…” I went on to say tell them my side of the story. How I imitated Greiche, how I was pushed up against the locker by my neck, helpless. I admitted that we were being loud in the hallway, but I didn’t think it was that big a deal. The hallway was usually crowded and loud anyways.

“I’ll admit part of that scuffle or whatever you want to call it made me write the blog, but I didn’t think much of it, really. I don’t really get why I wasn’t talked to on Friday about it.”
“The situation was brought to my attention late on Friday evening just as I was receiving calls about your blog.” Minerva remarked.
The room stayed silent for a few more moments. I didn’t see anything else to resolve. “So, are we just about done?” I looked from Michel to my dad, to the faculty members before me.
“Not quite,” Michel spoke out. “I would just like both names for the case file here.”
Miss Mullins went on. “Derrick. D-E-”

“R-R-I-C-K. Madison. M-A-D-I-S-O-N.” I completed.
“Ok…” Michel scribbled it at the top of his page. “And the student who pushed this young man against the lockers?”
Miss Mullins came in again. “I don’t think we’d like to give that name out.”
My dad shot his gaze at her and as did I. “Why?” We both demanded.
She looked back at us. “I don’t think the family would like their son in the police file.” WHAT WAS THIS? Why wouldn’t she just give up the name? It wasn’t that hard to do at all!
I spoke up then. “Miss, in all fairness, I gave up my name to the case.”
“That was your choice.”
“Actually miss, you began spelling it for me in case you didn’t realize.” She looked at me blankly. “Are you really not going to give it?”
“No. I’m not. I firmly believe that we shouldn’t.”
I shrugged. “Then I will.”
“Mr. Madison…”
“George G- ”
“Mr. MADISON!” She yelled.
My dad wasn’t saying anything, but I could feel his careful eyes on me for the umpteenth time.

“NO! I AM GIVING IT TO HIM, MISS MULLINS!” I stood up from my seat and looked down at her. “Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re going against all your morals with this. You’re worried about his rich parents who will call up the school and say that it was inappropriate to give them – ”

“Mr. Madison.” Pauly said sternly.
“Let me continue, sir. His name. It’s unfair. I did nothing here. I wrote words that meant nothing. You all read wrong. In case you haven’t realized, I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m fully willing to give up my name here. I don’t mind. Sure. It’ll be on my record. Tarnish my record but leave his a little less dirty. You already said that he was on probation anyhow… Christ.” I turned to Pauly.

“You say this is a civil community, sir? Well, this office certainly is not. You have lost all sight of that civilness in greed and overbearing fathers who own most of Montreal. I believe that is despicable of you. You don’t care about my record. You don’t care if I have my name hurt here. You care about your precious donors to the school. No – not even school – your business. You run this school like a business. Pathetic. All you think is that I have some kind of problem. That I’m suicidal and that I wrote poems that have so much meaning and that I will act on such things. Don’t you see that you don’t know me? You didn’t even know I had a blog till this weekend. You didn’t know that I was pushed against those damn lockers until Friday. You don’t even care. You don’t take action. This isn’t even considered action. It’s a stalemate. We are getting nowhere.

“I came to this school expecting mature men who took education seriously and don’t slack off and don’t do things like push people against lockers. Whatever happened to the application process? You let me slip through the cracks. I’m apparently a psychopathic student who just might come into school and shoot people. Do you think I would? DO YOU honestly…. HONESTLY think I would? This shouldn’t have even been a problem. Instead, your stupid paranoid Westmount mothers call in and worry all about their fragile little kids who are just sweet darlings. You don’t know the kids here. You’re all cooped up in offices all day just doing paperwork. When was the last time you sat down with a student when he wasn’t under suspicion of something and just got to know him? Never. I can tell. You don’t know the first thing about how screwed up this school is. You wouldn’t even suppose that I was beaten up by several grade elevens today, would you? My body aches just to stand up like this. Further more, half of your teachers are playing favorites towards the brilliant minds, and leave us people in the middle behind while all the retards of this so-called fine establishment are helped to no avail. My father pays a lot of money for me to come here. So does every other student. We’re not equals though, according to this system of yours. Regardless of the money. Apparently, I’m a horrible student whose name is liable to be given up to the police, while the owner’s son of some optometrist company scrapes by because daddy’s been slipping you a lot of cash. Whatever happened to education and students first? Veritas. Our mantra. Tarnished. Verity doesn’t exist here. It’s cowardice that does.”

I turned towards Michel. “His name is George Greiche. Like Greiche and Scaff.” And I stormed out of the office. Down the headmaster’s stairs and went to get lunch. Like any other day. I wasn’t done with this school yet. They weren’t going to send me out. I was staying in. I sat with my friends at lunch, eating undercooked chicken burgers, laughing about the daily stupidities that rotted our daily lives.