The New Kid

Jimmy Maddox was the new kid that year, and he felt that title weigh heavily on his shoulders as he got up for school extra early that Monday morning; the first Monday morning of his life as a student in Middle Valley High. He felt anxious as he slipped on some light blue trousers and glanced at the wall mirror in his room. His pale, bony legs were covered by the rough fabric of his pants, but his chest lay in full view, and he suddenly became very aware of how he might look standing next to one of the more popular guys in school. Shudder. It would be like comparing a stick to a gorilla. The shock of bright auburn hair on his head didn’t contribute to his cause either, as it only succeeded in making him look even more freakish.

Jimmy might be what modern high school standards would classify as a run-of-the-mill geek. Nothing too special; just a scrawny, pubescent boy who got all A’s and who was taking calculus, and physics courses when most of his peers were still in algebra. Adults might call him smart, but Jimmy knew that there would only be one word that would fit him in the eyes of his classmates: Just plain weird. He planned to change that though. Upon transitioning from his old school to Middle Valley, Jimmy had hoped to change his reputation: He wanted to be cool, not geeky. He just wanted them to like him.

So he crossed his Space themed bedroom and found the most un-weird shirt he could scrounge up from deep in the depths of he second drawer in his dresser; a white aeropostal shirt with the logo smack in the middle, and preceded on to the bathroom across the hall. As he passed by he noticed numerous little scrapes on the walls. Undoubtedly from the apartment's previous inhabitants. When he and his mother, Margery, had moved there, the landlord had informed him that the guy who had lived there previously was a raging alcoholic, and would often take to violent fits of rage, which eventually caused his eviction. For the most part, the place had been fixed up pretty nicely, but the landlord did after all have a budget, and so only the necessities could be done to repair the damage. Jimmy’s mom accepted that at the time because they had no were else to go. It was the only local place within their price range.

Jimmy knew that his mother was still asleep, so he shut the door behind him quietly and went about his business without any noise. As he washed his hands, he looked in the mirror to further examine his face. About half a dozen acne marks scattered across a pale complexion with wide brown eyes, a small nose, and a thin mouth. He rubbed some cream on the acne and sighed. His looks were certainly not going to be his ticket to popularity around this place. He could, of course, always hope that his looks might improve over time; that this was just the effects of puberty, and that it would go away soon. But that thought never helped much to him. It always made him think of his father, a man who was sure to be ugly until his dying day. Although his father was a generally unsavory sort of person altogether, as he was the reason for their escape to Middle Valley.

At any rate, it was a good as it was ever going to get, and Jimmy grudgingly accepted this fact as he exited the bathroom and went to the kitchen to fix his breakfast of cheerios and milk. As the minutes moved onward he went from sitting at his kitchen table eating, to sitting in the front seat of his mother’s blue Minni van in the student drop off lane out side of Middle Valley High. He hugged his backpack close to his chest as the line of cars pulled forward. The anxiety in his chest was pounding faster than his heart could even dare to keep up with, and the supposed-to-be-calming-but-not-really words coming from his mother beside him were not helping to tame it .

Little did he know that the woman in the driver’s seat was just as anxious as he was. She looked on at her son, and feared that she had not done the right thing by bringing him there. She worried that he would have trouble fitting in. A boy as smart as he was would have no problem with the academics, but the kids were a completely different issue. As the nights leading up to that morning passed, she had not lost sleep over whether or not he would succeed, but whether or not he would get swallowed up by the pressures of high school life. As he stepped out of the car, she was forced to let go of these fears. In the end, all she could do was give him words of encouragement and a small “I love you” before he shut the door and took the first steps towards the beginning of his new life.