Straighten Your Ties / Book 1

This chapter's going to be a close one
Smoke rings I know you're going to blow one
All on a spaceship persevering
Use my hands for everything but steering
-Red Hot Chili Peppers – Can’t Stop

The last exam was way too easy that year. Geography had always been a really good subject of mine, even if it was taught in French. I had to recreate a PowerPoint advertising a made up town with certain specifications. I finished it in an hour and exited the class, leaving Greg behind. He had pointed to me during the exam (bad boy) and I looked over at his presentation. He was explaining a natural disaster that struck his made up city. Apparently, an earthquake occurred in so and so year and there had been a “panic at the disco.” I smiled. That was Greg, alright. Always putting in some joke for his final. It brightened up my day significantly.

I opened my locker once I headed down the stairs. It seemed like my day’s high point would be Greg’s tomfoolery. I remembered I had been too tired to pick up my key as I left the house that morning. I groaned under my breath. Just my fucking luck. It was only ten o’clock. My family wouldn’t be coming home for at least another five hours, maybe more. I kicked my locker door shut. Of all the times I had forgotten my key, it had to be the last day of school. I sat in the hallway, not even bothering to open up my laptop. I didn’t even feel like doing anything with that shitty piece of garbage. I wanted to curl up in a ball and die. Instead of the inevitable suicide that lay before me, I sat there and started thinking.

***

I’ve never known where I really wanted to go in life. I just wanted to coast and go along with whatever my parents had planned for my future. This school was my future. These brick walls and linoleum floors were the future that I was currently barely halfway through. I was a good student, but why was I here in the first place? Did I belong? All I had was the fact that I was being called emo day in and day out, having some sort of retarded teacher infatuation case on my hands, and just recently nearly becoming a school shooter. It was all so fucking stupid. I wasn’t meant for these walls or this school or that hallway or even the dress shoes that I laced up every day to look like some businessman I wasn’t. I was meant for the public school system with all the other losers of this world. I wasn’t a leader. I was a follower and a troublemaker and just an all around cautiously raised suburban kid who was trying to be something he wasn’t. I couldn’t leave though. I couldn’t escape. I found myself starting to love it though. I thought of all the bullshit that I had been put through. Next year couldn’t be worse than this. It was only getting better. I had Greg, and Anthony, and Seth, and Paul, and Ramsey. I had these guys. If I wasn’t meant to be here, I would’ve never met them and been friends with them. Maybe they weren’t even meant for Seguin, and we were all outcasts. That’s what made it so ideal and novel and amazing. We were friends through all the crap that these walls threw against us. We had risen above it all. I was right. There was no place to go, but up.

***

I opened my laptop, realizing I needed a fix of Facebook at the moment. I looked at my wall, with seniors posting threats and hatred. I laughed. They didn’t know shit about me. I updated my status with “Derrick Madison is saying, ‘Fuck the world.’” I knew I would get comments on it. I didn’t care. I laughed at anyone who dared defy me and tried to make fun of me and attempted to put me down. I knew I was better than them for overcoming their words. It was me would be the last one laughing eventually. If I didn’t belong here, then at least I had gotten here and was past their level.

They could poke fun as much as they wanted. I honestly stopped caring. So what? Greiche nearly suffocated me and nearly injured me enough to call 911. So? I was here. I was alive. Fuck it all.
Reality struck me then. I still hadn’t made my key appear magically. I decided to go for a walk. I shut the laptop and literally tossed it into my locker. I probably shouldn’t have been going around the school like this while exams were in session, but I could easily say I was just heading to my locker. They’d believe me.

I walked past the labs of the ground floor, science exams in session in all of them, with guys running from table to table with some kind of chemical, mixing them, and calculating things. A grade eleven eyed me from his beaker. Just for kicks, I gave him the finger and walked on air down the hallway. He only glared, and I kept going, past the dining hall entrance where I saw our illegal immigrant kitchen staff talking in Spanish about whatever they talked about. I ignored them and kept walking. I saw the doorway that hit me across the head months ago due to a teacher’s clumsiness. I laughed. How childish all this was; I had always been overreacting. I paused and remembered how I had tripped down those stairs not so long ago. How my head hurt like a bitch for days to come but I barely even noticed because I was too worried about some lust I had for an older woman who just happened to be my teacher. Accidental and caused by a misfiring of hormones that I had always loathed in the first place. I hated them even more so at the time. Since, I had forgiven myself and my mind for acting up as most brains do. It was all… normal.

While thinking all this staring at the stairs through the reinforced glass window of the door, I barely noticed April Evans walk out of the Middle School science lab right next to me.
“Finished your exam early?” I turned to her, my daydream being interrupted as they always were. I blinked a few times and then finally realized I was on Earth, in North America, in Canada, on the east coast, in the province of Quebec, on the Island of Montreal, in the City of Westmount, at Seguin House School, in the eastern corridor of the ground floor, next to April Evans, being asked a question. I felt small.

“Oh… yeah…” Just coming out the daze. I shook it off. I had written a letter to April via email not too many nights before, essentially saying I was sorry about everything I had put her though this year. There wouldn’t be any point in really writing it here, as it’s everything you’ve heard before. “I’m done for the year now.”

“Not heading home yet, though?” She shut the door behind her and fiddled with her keys.
“Turns out I forget my keys to my house a lot lately.” I rolled my eyes as she slipped the key into the slot of the door, locking up the miserable lab for the day, nearly for the year.
“Bummer,” she smirked.
“Yeah, pretty much.” I sighed. “Denmark?”

She turned around to face me. “Fresh start. Everyone could use one, you know?” She already knew my answer to that. I always thought people needed a new and fresh start, which is why I tried to make every Monday one of them.
“I definitely know what you mean.” I nodded in turn. “It just seems so random and far away, really.”
She placed her keys back in her pocket, putting them away. “You’ve got to start somewhere.” She only gave me a light smile, and then turned more serious. “I think…” Pause. “That I might just let the wind take me wherever it needs me. See where that gets me. It’s an experience to say the least.”

“You just gotta hope it works out,” I said in return.
“It’s all about chance.” She looked to where I was daydreaming moments before. “Derrick?”
“Mmmm?” I turned to look in the direction of where her eyes were locked.

Sunlight shined against her cheeks from down the hallway. She kept on beamed. “You’re not a spoiled brat. Far from it. I’ll see you around, Derrick.” Then she walked towards that very door, opened it, went up the stairs and disappeared from my point of view. I never saw her again.

An email in my inbox read as such:

Derrick,
I just wanted to let you know that everything is cool. I have absolutely no hard feelings and wish you all the best in the future.
Have a nice summer.

Ms. Evans

“You!” Greg walked outside to meet me fifteen minutes after I had gotten out. I was standing by the tree that Eric had once dubbed the “Happy Tree,” due to the fact it looked like the Happy Tree Friends logo tree. Rather true. “That was too easy for its own good.”

I left my leaning stance on the tree and walked towards him. “God, I know…” You could easily tell by the number of people who were already out of the exam in our grade, as the front courtyard was filled with a good amount of students. Someone had really not known the definition of exam when they made that one. It was just pitiful.

“But!” He held his fist high in the air, and yelled under his breath, “We’re done, fucker!”
I smiled, finally realizing that we really were. The days of Middle School were actually totally done. I would never be opening my locker ever again. Nothing was left in it now. It was empty, cleaned out and hollow. Fresh.

“Yeah… you’re right.” I acknowledged.
“Someone seems grumpy…” He eyed my blank gaze.
I stayed silent for a moment, and then found a few words to launch at him. “This year fucking sucked.” You’re so fucking typical, Madison, it’s disgusting. My mind wandered.
“You don’t need to tell anyone that,” Greg replied, “because it obviously did. I mean, fuck… Today was probably the highlight of the year.”

“Wanna go through the list of what made it oh so terrible, buddy boy?” I swung my glance towards him.
Greg kicked the dust at his feet for a moment, and then looked at the clear blue sky of Montreal. “Teachers, homework, Mullins, emo guys like you, your mom… and women.” He knew everything about what happened a few weeks ago. The police and the whole shebang.
I pondered that for a good moment. “Just about right!” I clapped my hands together. “Magnificent work, chap.”

Greg took a bow, “Thank you, thank you. Encore?”
I laughed, “Fuck off.”
He smiled back. “Next year will be better man. I can tell.”
I shrugged, not knowing if I could even trust in my theory that things could only get better. I couldn’t trust myself or anyone else anymore. Greg was probably the only exception. “You really think so?”

“Your guess is as good as mine to be honest.” Well, that was saying something.
“The future is bright, then. Got it?”
Greg gave me uneasy stare back. “Sure…”
“No seriously,” I exclaimed, “we’ve got to believe.” I knew as those words vibrated through my vocal chords that it was hopeless. I couldn’t just believe it and make it happen. This was bigger than us. The future was controlled by us, sure. But we were just teenagers. We couldn’t tell wrong from right, and we couldn’t even remember to do our homework half the time. It was pointless to even believe in the distant future now. It was really fucking hopeless. I didn’t take my words back right then, but I think Greg could tell I had in my mind.

“Fuck it.”
“Fuck it.” I raised my imaginary glass to that.
Greg and I stood there for a moment, silent. I wish I actually had that glass to down. It would’ve made this scene look so much cooler. Jason came stumbling out of the exit/entrance of the building, all smiles. “Dude, that was so fuckin’ easy.”
“We know!” We both said. I rolled my eyes. I didn’t need to hear it more than once.
“Yeah yeah, poor you.” He was being rather random as ever. “Downtown?”
“Chill?” Greg asked.

“I can’t get into my house,” I showed my empty hands, trying to just say I had no key, “so I’m all for that.”
“Get Ramsey and Seth though.” Greg added.
“You go get them, fatasses!”

Pffft. “Look who’s talking…” I shoved him back towards the doorways, which people were still flowing out of, some of them done for the year, others still in need of studying time since they were seniors. We would soon be as busy as them.
“Fine…” Jason said, “But you owe me something.”
“Bullshit,” I yelled after him.

***

The bus took us downtown. We had lunch and walked around in our uniforms for the afternoon. I soon had to head home, though. My mother called me, and said she had just gotten in. It was about time…
I ducked into the Peel metro station, leaving the others behind, saying that we’d chill this weekend or something. I paid my fare to an angry Montreal Transport worker at the booth and passed through the turnstiles, down the stairs. I heard the metro pull in and tried to make it, but my legs and my body were carrying too much weight to get me far. Plus, I didn’t want to try my luck with the stairs again. I had just gotten over that bad luck streak.

I walked onto the platform as soon as the car was pulling away. I sighed. It was just my luck. I walked to lean against the wall, my tie loosened, my top button undone, and my shirt half-tucked in. I was quite the rebel. A man with a messenger bag walked down the stairs and onto the platform. He was in his early twenties and looked like any other regular Montrealer. I didn’t pay him much attention. He looked to me, and walked over to me very slowly. He stood a few feet away and said “Spencer…” I wondered if he thought I was someone he knew. Then I realized that I was wearing my Spencer house tie rather loosely around my collar.

“Oh,” I fingered the tie. “Yeah.”
“I used to go to Seguin.” He said. “What grade?”
“Just finished eighth grade today.” I said, almost proud of my not so cool accomplishment. Keep telling yourself you’re hot stuff, Der. Soon enough, it’ll be true. “My second year is done.”
“You’re not a lifer then?” I certainly wish.
“Nah. Not me. Don’t think I could afford that lifestyle.

“Sweet.” He nodded. I wondered if he meant that in a good way, like he was happy I wasn’t put through any more hell than he had been. “ I was a lifer. And now, I just came from an exam at McGill. Big change from what I’ve been used to.”
It had been only a short while since he had graduated then. “What year did you graduate in?”

“Oh, back in 2002.” He looked upwards, thinking. “What teachers do you have?”
“Oh… I dunno if you had any of them when you were there.” Teachers often came and went like the latest trend. “But umm… Caldwell, I’ve had Russell, Evans… The like, you know? Seems like a hit or miss though with most of them.”

He nodded, still looking up towards the ceiling of the station. “Some kids can be assholes there.”
I nearly laughed, “I know what you mean. Don’t think it’s changed much since you were there.”
“Same old Seguin,” he said. I heard the gentle roar of a metro car coming through the tunnel then. We still had time. I kicked the air in front of me.
A few moments passed before he said, “But do you like the school?”

I froze and thought for a moment. The metro car was just rumbling through the platform and I turned my gaze to it. It rushed by with the usual velocity that would kill anyone jumping in front of it. I didn’t want to. That wasn’t any way to go out. And it wasn’t time yet. Wasn’t too stylish either, mind you.

I smiled and turned myself towards the man, as the metro almost came to a stop. I only said to him, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I turned back to the metro car in front of me and walked into the open doors. The doors shut closed after me. I sank into a seat and lurched forward into the dark unknown abyss of the oncoming tunnel.