My day stated normal. Or as normal as it ever gets at Stanley prep. Take my first class today: English. The whole middle school had read this book called Lord of the flies, where all these kids get marooned on a island and go psych. So for our final exam, our teachers sent us into the break yard to spend an hour without teacher supervision to see what would happen. What happened was a massive wedgie contest, between the seven and eight graders,two pebble fights, and a full-tackle basketball game.
The school bully, Oga led most of those activities. Oga wasn’t big or strong, but he acted like he was. He had eyes like a pit bull, and shaggy black hair, and he always dressed in expensive but sloppy clothes, like he wanted everybody to see how little he cared about his family’s money.
One of his front teeth was chipped from the time he’d taken his daddy’s golf cart for a joyride and ran into a PLEASE DON’T RUN anyway, Oga was giving everybody wedgies until he made a mistake of trying it on my friend Choji.
Choji was the only homeless kid at Stanleyprep. As near as my mom and i could figure, he’d been abandoned by his parents when he was very young, probably because he was so.... different.
He was six-foot-three and built like the Abominable snowman, but he cried a lot and was scared of just about everything, including his own reflection. His face was kind of misshapen and brutal-looking. I couldn’t tell you what colour his eyes where because i could never make myself look higher than his crooked teeth.
His voice was deep, but he talked funny, like a much younger kid-i guess. He wore tattered jeans, grimy size-twenty sneakers, and a plaid flannel shirt with holes in it. He smelled like a alleyway because that’s where he lived, in a cardboard refrigerator box 72nd street. Stanley prep has adopted him as a community service project so all the students can feel good about themselves.
Unfortunately, most of them couldn’t stand Choji. Once they discovered he was a big softie, despite his massive strength and his soary looks, they made themselves feel good by picking on him.
I was pretty much his only friend, which meant he was my only friend. My mom had complained to the school a thousand times that they weren’t doing enough to help him. She’d called social workers claimed Coji didn’t exist. They swore up and down that they’d visited the alley we described and couldn’t find him, though how you miss a giant kid living in a refrigerator box, i don’t know.
Anyway, Oga snuck up behind him and tried to give him a wedgie, and Choji panicked. He swatted Oga away a little too hard. Oga flew fifteen feet and got tangled in the little kids’ tire swing.
“You freak!” Oga yelled. “Why don’t you go back to your cardboard box!” Oga started sobbing. He sat down on the jungle gym so hard he bent the bar, and buried his head in his hands. “Take it back, Oga!” i shouted. Oga just sneered at me. “Why do you even bother, Shinigami? You might have friends if you weren’t always sticking up for that freak”. I balled my fists. I hope my face wasn’t as red as it felt.
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“He’s not a freak. He’s just...” i tried to think of the right thing to say, but Oga wasn’t listening. He and his big ugly friends were too busy laughing. I wondered if it were my imagination, or is Oga had more goons around him than usual. I was used to seeing him with two or three, but today he had like, half a dozen more, and i was pretty sure I’d never seen them before.
“Just wait till PE, Shinigami,” Oga called. “You are so dead.” When the first period ended, our English teacher, Mr Kisamae, came outside to inspect the carnage. He pronounced that we’d understood lord of the flies perfectly. We all passed his course, and we should never, never grow up to be violent people. Oga nodded earnestly, then gave me a chip toothed grin.
I had to promise to buy choji an extra peanut butter sandwich at lunch to get him to stop sobbing. “I... i am a freak he asked me. “No”, i promised, gritting my teeth. “Oga is the freak”. Choji sniffled. “You are a good friend. Miss you next year if...if i can’t...” his voice trembled. I realised he didn’t know if he’d be invited back next year for the community service project. I wondered if the headmaster had even bothered talking to him about it”. Don’t worry, big guy”, i managed. “Everything’s going to be fine”. Choji gave me such a grateful look i felt like a big liar. How could i promise a kid like him that anything would be fine?
Our next exam was science. Mrs, Tesla told us that we had to mix chemicals until we succeeded in making something explode. Choji was my lab partner. His hands were way to big for the tiny vials we were supposed to use. He accidentally knocked a tray of chemicals off the counter and made an orange mushroom cloud in the trash can.
After Mrs, Tesla evacuated the lab she praised Choji and me for being natural chemists. Our next period was sports, as I walked in the room, I remembered what Oga said, I started to sweat as I changed into my PE clothes, I came into the Gym and saw Oga and his ugly mates sneering at me “so dead Shinigami 1 of his mates snared, “Ok class” Mr eruka said “how about a friendly dodge ball match,” “Oga your the captain, ”and Shinigami, you can be the other captain, “now pick your teams,” Mr Eruka said as he sat down with a magazine, all the strong and popular kids went in Oga’s team leaving me with all the geeks, computer nerds and weaklings, except for Choji.
Mr Eruka went into a deep slumber as Oga blowed the whistle, the game started, balls where flying everywhere, suddenly the alarm went off, panic started, kids started screaming, then an announcement was made by the principle “ all students are to leave the school immediately” all the students ran outside. I tried to find Choji but there was a stamped of students that pushed me outside. A sudden fear ran down my body as I heard screams coming from the building, I started running towards the school gate, behind me were some kids who were screaming and running everywhere, as I stepped out of school I heard sirens, and I tried to make my way home.