Straighten Your Ties / Book 1

And all the roads we have to walk along are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would
Like to say to you
But I don't know how
-Oasis - Wonderwall

I had no intention of going to class right now. I had just fallen down a whole flight of fucking stairs, for crying out loud. And for the third time in two days at that. I was pissed with myself for being so idiotic, pissed with Ms. Evans for being so unendingly beautiful, pissed with Greg for not talking when there was obviously something on his mind, and just overall, pissed with the world.

I sat at the bottom of the set of stairs for a minute, laying my head against the radiator and musing about everything. This wasn’t that bad, I thought at first. People have been through worse. I’m overreacting. So what? You’re in love with a teacher. Or you think you are. What is love? So what? Your best friend isn’t talking to you or anyone else right now. So what? Your parents work from nine to nine and you eat take out every night. So what? You depend on your sister to talk you out of things and depend on her to calm you down when you’re depressed, because your parents obviously can’t talk to you, they’re too busy with paperwork that they have to do and refuse to employ people to do. So what? You’re looked upon as a rich upper-class moron by the rest of society. So what? Your marks have been plummeting, but so what? Your troubles are mere bullshit compared to others. You shouldn’t be complaining you fucking douchebag of a prep.

I only went with that for about a minute. I knew then that I had to get up and get going somewhere, and if it wasn’t to class, I had to go somewhere I wouldn’t be caught skipping. Actually, I needed to get out of school. But now I was faced with the problem that our secretary, who is barely a nurse by the way, has seen me, and I looked fine. I needed to skip a period. And the easiest way out of it was to play sick and that I had the runs, and was in the bathroom. That was the plan, and until then, I needed some air.

I looked at my discarded, and now crumpled Wonderword on the floor. I had no intention of finishing it now. I had to be in the mood to do anything with a pencil or pen. I wasn’t in any kind of mood to scribble ink on newspaper. I got up, ditching the floppy piece of paper behind me and headed down the stairs, realizing that my head really hurt. No blood was coming oozing from anywhere, but there was a rather large bump on the side of my head. I couldn’t remember whether that was from yesterday or now. So, I had a real excuse to be dismissed from school. My whole fucking body ached. It just came on right when I started walking down the stairs. And this only reminded me of yesterday with April and her gleam in her eyes that just resounded in my mind. It sickened me in a way, and totally turned me on. I’m crazy about eyes by the way. It’s always the eyes. I love people’s eyes because I can barely see out of my own, I guess. Instead, I can see into their world and get out of mine.

I kept on walking, and turned and turned again. I knew the exact place to go if I wanted to skip a class. It was quite simple actually. Down this flight of stairs, at the bottom, and through a separate set of double doors was another set of doors that lead to the east yard of the school that was usually occupied by the elementary kids. But luckily, they probably didn’t have their recess for a good amount of time, meaning I would be safe there for a good hour until I went to complain to the office saying I wasn’t feeling well. It was simple enough. Hide out in the east yard, not be seen, and I’m home free. Get caught, get a Saturday detention. Either way was appealing since I didn’t have much to do on Saturdays anyhow. And wouldn’t for a while, as Becca wasn’t taking me back, and April was much too old for a student. And you know why I never wanted anything to happen between April and I for certain, but so wanted it at the same time? Seguin House was sued with a huge class action lawsuit back in 2006 over teachers in the 70s who had sexually abused or had been involved with students in some way. Mind you, they were al men, and those teachers were dead now. One of them had killed themselves in his own garage by leaving the car running. The gas gagged him to death, of course. The allegations brought a bunch of bad press to the school. And I even though I hated the school (marginally), I most certainly didn’t want it to be shut down. And hoped it wouldn’t. Anymore bad press could spell catastrophe for Seguin. But I know I couldn’t help it if I all of a sudden fell in love. Love… pffft. Soon, I’d be admitting it to her in the most blatant ways. I knew I would.

I reached the set of double doors at the bottom the stairs, opposite the ones that hit me in the noggin the day previous, went through them, and reached another, and burst out them. I sighed, and then breathed in the fresh Westmount early morning air. It smelled like late fall. Which smelled nice, even if it was misty and a little cold. I enjoyed the fall. Quite a lot actually. It was your last moment to savor the sun and all it offered before it was usually tucked behind grey clouds of freezing rain or snow. Plus, you’d end up being snow-blind if the sun were to come out during the winter, leading to us rich ass bastards slamming into a pine tree halfway down the slopes of our favorite ski resorts.

I sat down on the small rectangular cement block that could barely be called a step, but lead up to the door. I slumped forward, not wanting to hinder the door or its delicate woodenness with my thin body. It was calm for a Tuesday, in a city nearly downtown for that matter. Cars passed by on Sherbrooke street, and buses hummed and stopped at their respective stops every once in a while. Just looking at it all made me depressed. Nothing was happening. It was just so boring and uneventful, much like I wanted my life to be. I wanted to crawl up in this hole, here, where I sat and stay away from it all. I didn’t want change. I wanted a constant. I would eventually come out, maybe when this had all passed, when I could love a Lancaster girl, or maybe even some schoolgirl at ACS. If I needed someone to constantly obsess over, why did it have to be a teacher who was twice my age? It’s sickening. I wasn’t head over heels for Becca, but I somehow now needed to be. Or else life would just become hollow and lifeless. Because when you knew you never had a chance with someone, you have this huge flock of butterflies in your stomach that are wreathing with pain. If you’ve ever had that bottomless pit in your stomach, it could be a number of things to do with love. You’re in love, you’re thinking about the person you’re with and missing them, or you know you’ll get rejected if you make a move on some person. But maybe I could get rid of those kinds of thoughts…

I shrugged that thought of thoughts out of my head, knowing that it would spell certain doom anyways and that I needed a better motive than a silly feeling called “liking someone.” I could never tell what love was because I never did experience it with anyone. Not even Becca. Becca was… well, I’ll get around to telling you about her.

I sat there for what seemed like a long amount of time, looking at the normalcy of it all, the world. I wasn’t watching the minutes much. Only periodically did I pull out my cell to check, which was amazingly not damaged from the stairs’ cement/marble steps. First period ended at 9:40, started at 8:25. I was supposed to be in math right then, and luckily we didn’t have a test that period. I wasn’t doing so well in math this year. In my case, my math mark was always decided on whether the teacher was good or not. Some teachers didn’t have a spark or knack for teaching. The last good math teacher I had had was, well… Ms. Evans. She could always just explain it all so well. Even her assignments were well explained, and the word problems on her test were never mind-boggling that I couldn’t figure out what x was or what y was.

I couldn’t figure out my x’s. My y’s were the same. She could explain everything, but I couldn’t explain myself.

I sat there motionless and still for what seemed like a good number of hours. It wasn’t until the door behind me was slammed into my head, sending me toppling forward to the rock hard cement recess playground. I glanced at my hands quickly, realizing they were cut and scraped. Second, I looked in back of me to see April herself, apple in hand, half-eaten like some teacher right out of those student teacher porn movies. My body went stiff. Shit.

“Did I just do that again?” She looked shocked, and nearly dropped the glistening somehow sexy red apple. I knew I was in shit if I couldn’t get out of this quick. So there had to be a way. I ransacked my mind for ideas while responding.

“Seems like it,” My hands stung. I winced.
“Ugh... I’m really sorry Der,” Oh god, don’t say my fucking name... please.
“It’s fine... I’m just out here because I really didn’t feel well... I better... um...” I had now forgotten the stupid secretary’s name because the only name in my mind was April at the moment, be that the month I wished it was or the gorgeous teacher in front of me.
“Miss Courtney?” she took a bite out of her apple. I secretly wished I was the apple right now... wow... my fucking libido was messed up back then. All Eric’s fault. Hand on her hip. Sexy as hell. Mind reeling. Bad things. Bad thoughts. Apple. Forbidden fruit. Fuck. My. Life.
I winced, “Yeah.”
“Go on then...” With pleasure. Must get away.

“Yeah, that’d be good,” I could actually feel a weird deep sinking feeling in the pit of my gut. I felt like vomit was firing up my esophagus right now, and was going to just come flowing out. I knew this whole thing with April was the cause.
“Hope you feel better soon...” I ran past her, and dashed up the stairs again, feeling the need of some kind of sleeping pill that would knock me out cold for hours and hours.

My parents couldn’t come pick me up as expected, which was good. They would’ve seen that I wasn’t actually sick, just a little woozy. That wasn’t acceptable when you were paying such a heavy sum per day at school. Would you like me to do the math for you? In grade eight, the total tuition for the year was $16,530. The government requires about 180 days a year of school. So 16,530 divided by 180 equals $91.53 per day. Trust me, some people don’t even spend that in one day in any way. I could be buying an Xbox game per day if I went to public school. Yet I sit here glad that I didn’t. Perhaps I wouldn’t have learned much at public or maybe I would’ve learned the same amount, but there are other factors to why I enjoyed my years at Seguin.

For one thing, I got off the South Shore. The South Shore is the entire part of Quebec that is to the east of the Island of Montreal but not to the extent past the desolate wastelands that are beyond St-Bruno or such. While certain areas of the Island are full of French speaking Quebecors, the majority isn’t. The South Shore is the polar opposite. It’s where all the Quebec separatists are it seems. I usually couldn’t get much service on the South Shore in English. It was a godsend when I found anyone who could even speak a word of it.

Another, my house and neighborhood. I was getting tired of my house. Living there for most of my childhood (about since I was three) until I was twelve was a bore. I was in the neighborhood that I despised. I played hockey with my town. I was the only English kid on the team. So if I were trying to say something to any of my teammates I would have to make a big effort with my French, and even then they couldn’t always understand me. It got frustrating trying to tell them which side of defense I felt like playing. Eventually there was this one troupe of kids who patronized me every game in the locker room. For no real reason. And I supposed it was because I was English. I checked them into the boards at practice when the coach wasn’t looking. That wasn’t enough to stop them of course. There was one kid who stuck by me though. I can still even remember his name, Olivier and that he was our goalie. French kid, but always stood up for me. Eventually a fight broke out in the locker room when one kid spat on me after I had checked him during practice. I went ape-shit on him. Mind you, I’m not a strong guy at all. The coach came in and stopped it. He was still all smiles though. My coach always smiled. It was creepy. My dad and I disregarded that his name was Eric and called him Smiley after games.

I never got in trouble for any of this. My dad tried talking to Smiley, but he just brushed it off, not wanting to cause trouble but still not wanting to solve anything either. I decided that enough was enough that year. I wanted out of hockey in my town. I didn’t want to be badgered by the mindless dicks anymore. So I decided that was my last season. After the last game, I got undressed and all before anyone. Ignoring the coach’s end of year speech. I really didn’t care for Smiley at this point. As soon as I was back in my sweater and jeans, I got up and went over to my goalie, and said in French, very politely: “Thanks Olivier, it was a pleasure to play with you this year.” I shook his hand.

“Pleasure’s all mine.” He replied. Smiling. I smiled back.
I went over to the supposed kid who had been the leader of the whole Derrick hate group and said to him in English, shaking his hand, “Hey, asshole, you’re never going to get anywhere in life with your attitude. I wanna say thanks for being a shit eating bastard, you fuck.” He merely cocked his head back, not knowing what I said. “Learn English you shit.” I lugged my hockey bag out of the room. I never saw any of them again. I’m glad I didn’t.

***

I arrived outside my house a bit later. It was about eleven now. My house was like many other Westmount houses, and there were three types essentially that mimicked each other, basically. Grey stone and three storey’s high, it was relatively small compared to something you’d find on the South Shore. A yellow Hummer H3 usually rested in the uni-stone driveway, but was at the office at the moment, along with my Great Dane, Borris, who probably wasn’t even supposed to be living in Westmount, but that was kept on the downlow.

I walked up the stone steps to the big wooden front door and stepped inside. The atrium of the house was lined with mahogany colored wood floors, yellow-beige walls that seemed like just beige in the light above. The stairs were in the same color wood, and went up another two stories. They were crammed in the corner to the right of the atrium I wasn’t moving up there until over Christmas Break. My parents were very slow with the renovations they wanted done to the house, and my room was ready over the summer, but I was too lazy to move anything into it.

I walked through the house to the kitchen, where the stairs lead downwards into the dark cavern of my room. It was a pleasant plain walled room that I didn’t mind temporarily living in for the moment, and hadn’t minded over the summer, because it was insanely cool down there, but it just felt lonely.

Like right now. Like how I was the odd one out on my hockey team. Like I was the only one who could possibly like some teacher like April. I collapsed on my bed in a heap of hopelessness. That being me, because I really was. I felt lifeless, unloved and stupid. My eyes watered helplessly. I rubbed them constantly. They started getting irritated and began hurting soon enough. I shut my eyelids, seeing blackness, seeing nothing, until the figure of a woman I knew well and had seen so many times came out from the darkness. I really was hopeless. She wasn’t going to be off my mind no matter what I did. I knew she’d be in my dreams if I slept. I slept. She was.

***

I was in my uniform in the empty main hallway where my locker was. I saw no one in the corridor. I was the only human organism there. A rarity unless it was after hours. I hoped I wasn’t stuck in here or something. The hallway lights were somewhat dimmed and disoriented me slightly, being so used to their yellowness. I looked in back of me towards the door that I always entered in the morning. Through the blue double doors to the wooden double doors. I didn’t even get to the next set of doors. I gazed out the window, but saw nothing. I wiped my eyes and blinked a few times. I was probably not looking at it all properly. That didn’t help. I opened my eyes to the same thing outside the window. Nothing. It was black. Pitch black. I couldn’t even see the other entrance to the adjacent building or any light coming from the door that should’ve been beyond this one I couldn’t see anything but blackness. I guessed that I just wasn’t looking right. It was obviously just a bunch of black tape covering up the shattered windows or something. Must’ve been. There was always some kind of light outside.

So I ignored the stupid mind tricks the window was trying to play, and looked to my open locker, and jumped back. Out of the locker came oozing red blood. It was etched into the sides of the locker, it was spilling and pouring like a waterfall from the shelves (where it was getting this supply, I didn’t know), and it rose from the corners at the foot of the tragically blue locker. I then finally decided to suspend reality and suspend my own thought process. I knew this wasn’t real subconsciously of course, but that hadn’t reached the front of my brain just yet. I don’t think it planned on moving either. I inspected the blood, being stupid, but getting my index fingers coated in its stickiness. I mean really, it turned to sticky goo as soon as it touched my finger.

By the way, that whole last part about the blood was most likely insignificant and irrelevant due to the fact that I had and still have a fucked up mind. My dreams never make total sense, but this blood thing really didn’t have any kind of significance. Though if you can figure it out, you get a medal.

I backed away from my locker, which was now spilling gallons of blood to the linoleum floor. I decided it best to let it be and spill all over. The maintenance guys would get around to cleaning it soon. I decided to toss off my blazer. It had gotten stained with the anonymous blood when I had inspected it. I didn’t think there was much else to see other than this blood here. I moved down the hallway, past the Biology lab a few lockers down from me, the Physics lab, and the science office. All their doors, and the panes of glass on the doors gave off no light, just like the entrance doors. Someone must’ve really fucked up the glass or something. Lots of tape… right. Tape. Maybe someone hit a really high F. Could be. I kept walking down the hallway to the lab that I had been in just a day ago. The Middle School lab. I was instinctively drawn to it. But I didn’t want to be. My mind was telling me to stop walking. My body wasn’t listening. Not surprisingly, the glass on the doors to the lab and the double doors at the end of this hallway were covered in… tape… I still say it was tape. Why it would be black glass, I don’t know. I tried the door to the lab. The handle didn’t budge. Locked of course. I was glad. Now I wouldn’t have to relive the patheticness that was Monday. And that’s when I heard the crash.

It sounded familiar, like I’d heard it before. I know you’ve probably heard a lot of things crashing or clattering before, but there are some you can just make out really well. You’ll see. I knew what it was. It sounded like me crashing down the steps like yesterday. I frowned. Was I going to emerge from the blackened portal of those doors now? Because that’d be nice. It would’ve been better than what happened next.

The doors slammed open, only blackness behind the figure that came out from it. April. Of course. She looked fine. My mind played her out quite well. Except for the machete in her hand.

I started running. Just running down the hall. I didn’t look back either, because I knew it was just her with a machete sharp as a… well, machete, in her hand. Her just chasing after me.

“Derrick,” I cringed at her saying my name. “Are you alright?” I sprinted now. I was near the end of the hallway, the blood now surrounding most of this area. I slid across the pool of blood into the first set of doors, which opened to the familiar antechamber of the entrance. I instinctively dove for the exit doors that were obviously also blacked out at the windows. And I fell. “DERRICK!"
Onto the floor.
“Derrick!” Greg was at my side. I jumped up, fearing I was still falling, and I reeled back. Merely a dream. Greg was still in uniform. School must’ve just ended. I looked over at my alarm clock on my desk: 4:40 PM. Greg had come straight from school? Was he concerned or something? I was fine, just freaked out by a hot teacher with a machete. Completely normal. “You OK man?”

“Falling dream…”
“I hate those. The ones where you think you’re falling and like for a split second when you wake up –”
I stopped him short. “Yeah yeah. Same old, same old.” I climbed back onto my bed. I now felt somewhat dizzy… Wait a second…

“What are you doing here?” I propped my head on my hand, and raised an eyebrow, suspicious of why he wouldn’t even go home. He should’ve. And then called me. Mind you, he didn’t live far. He could’ve walked here. He was always welcome. So I pried. “Fuck… and how did you get in?”

“Door was unlocked. You told me I could come by anytime I wanted.”
“’Course you can man. You just haven’t taken up the offer till now.” With good reason. I didn’t do much when he came over. I was a bad host.
“Well, now I have…”
“And the reason is…?” I pried further.
“You know I wasn’t feeling well today, right?” He crossed his leg across his knee and looked away from me.
“Neither was I.” I put my head back down, realizing that I was just dizzying myself further. I clenched my eyelids shut, knowing that the lights in my room, that Greg must have flicked on, were killing my mind’s inner-workings. I winced. “Go on…”
“Well, there’s obviously a reason behind that,” Go figure… “You see, there’s this girl…”
“You were rejected?”
“Not exactly… I mean… Guh…”
“Where does she go?” Meaning what school.
“Scholar.”
“Hold up, didn’t we just have a talk yesterday about how you though the hill was full of Japs?” I still held my eyes closed, but I arched my eyebrows.
“She’s not a Jap.”
“Live in Westmount?”
“Yeah.”
“Could mean she is.”
“Would you shut the fuck up with your emo attitude, you pussy?”
“You’re a pussy too. Girl troubles and all…”
“Fuck you.”
I ignored him. “Anyways, what happened with her?”

“I just… I can’t sum up the guts to ask her anything. Yesterday, I was like hanging out with her and Kenneth,” Kenneth was a guy in our grade who was quite the douchebag to me, but was still friends with Greg due to their interest in hardcore music, “And I was just making a fool of myself. I think I even said I liked her boobs or something…”

“Did you get drunk?” Not that I thought he would, it was just always a possibility with Kenneth though.
“NO.” Unthinkable as imagined by Greg.
“Plain stupidity. You just can’t say much ‘cause you’re shy and all.”
“So now, I’m just feeling like I’m never going to get with her… She’s far above me.” So was April.
“Dude, you’re a nice guy. Don’t worry about some bitch at The Scholar.” I frowned. And I shouldn’t be worrying about some teacher at Seguin. “Maybe it’s just cause you’re brown.” Ouch… You aren’t so hot yourself, Derrick.

“I’m gonna come to your house at night, rip open the door, come down here to your room, have Borris ass rape you…” He continued to play out a homicide scenario. He was a creeper sometimes.
I paused after he finished saying that I would eat Borris’ penis and said, “You were saying…?”
“Dude, I think –” Here goes the whole love scenario thing again….
“Pit in your stomach and can’t stop thinking about her?” I asked.
“Well…”
“Does everything remind you of her?”
“Yeah…ish.”
“My friend, I believe we are in the same boat,” I sighed, turning over on my side, “And it’s sinking fast.”