The Lights In the Sky

Chapter 10

I met Susan Norton after the first time I got violent. Despite the fact that I play football, I'm usually not very aggressive. Or, I wasn't before. I was at my locker with the door open, getting ready for lunch. Putting all my books away and all that. Frank and Deborah were already down there, so I was in a bit of a hurry. I started hearing whispers in the hallway. It was strange, because they were hushed but also louder than everybody else around me. As if somebody was speaking directly in my ear. They were words I could understand, too, not those weird noises I had been hearing. I kept my face buried in my locker. Put my hands on either side to hold me there. And all of a sudden I was overcome with anger. My jaw clenched and I had this thought, like if I didn't get somewhere else, out of the hallway and away from all those people, I was going to kill somebody. It was that quick, too. One second I was fine and the next I wanted to smash somebody's face in.

It was just bad timing, really. The fact that that kid walked past me right at that moment. I think he was a freshman. Walking with his friend. Gossiping. And he asked really low if I was that kid. The one with all the scratches. I didn't even hesitate. I turned away from the locker and grabbed him by the neck. One quick movement, like there were eyes in the back of my head and I knew exactly where he was standing. His hands went up around my wrist, but I didn't stop. I took him straight back into the lockers across the hall. His head hit pretty hard. There was a light reflected in the locker and when his head smashed against it, the light creased into a halo around his head. And then I just didn't move my hand away. My teeth were grinding together but other than that, I don't think I was making any face. His face started to turn so red that his freckles disappeared and his friend started screaming at me to let him go. That I was killing him. When I finally did let go, the kid collapsed to the ground and I looked around and everybody in the hall was staring at me. Some had their hands up over their mouths. Mostly they were just standing there, not moving. The lights went out and they were just shadows. Shadows standing in the darkness, watching me. Waiting to see what I would do. Faceless and formless. They weren't my friends or my classmates anymore.

I shoved my way past them all, running toward the side doors of the school. Every few steps, another shadow would walk into my way and I would push them aside. The doors came open so fast I don't even remember touching them. And then there was blinding light and whiteness. And more shadows standing there in it. I blinked hard a few times, trying to clear my vision. My heartbeat pounded like drums in my ears.

Deborah said my name and it all went away. The real world appeared in a flash. The dying leaves rolling across the grass and the tan sidewalk and all the people watching me. She walked up to me and grabbed me from behind by the shoulders. I put one hand up onto hers and felt her cheek land on my shoulder.

"I'm here," she kept saying. "I'm here."

Frank opened the door for me as she led me back into the school. The other students were lined up like soldiers down the hallway, their eyes locked on me. There are these videos online that you can watch. I don't know if they're real or not, and even if they are, I don't know why you'd want to watch them. But I heard about them. Videos of these soldiers in the Middle East, American soldiers, taking puppies from children and throwing them off the sides of cliffs. Why they do it, I can't imagine. Maybe because they want to make the kids hurt for being born in another country. Or maybe, in their minds, they're sparing the puppies from having a sad life in a poor place. But I think that when those few soldiers do that kind of thing, there are still a few others left who realize how sick it is. And those good soldiers probably look at the bad ones a lot like the kids in the hallway were looking at me that day. I was someone they looked up to. We even passed the freshman kid I choked and he looked at me like that. Not with fear, but with shame.

Deborah and Frank were naïve enough to take me back to the cafeteria, as if we could just go on eating our lunches and pretend nothing happened. I sat there, no food in front of me, staring down at the ugly blue table. Deborah tried to talk to me. She asked me what was wrong, what the kid said that made me so angry. I remember tracing lines with my finger against the tabletop. Frank didn't try to talk to me. He knew I wouldn't say anything. Not that he ever saw me like that before; I had never been like that before.