Other Worlds

Alexander Greene

August 29th, 2011

"Alex come on you're going to be late! School starts in like 30 minutes!" My mom yelled. "Okay, I'm coming!" I yell back. Today would be the start of my 3rd grade school year, the year where my powers started to show, even if I didn't know it at the time. I was only 8 around this time, my mom doesn't even have her gray hairs yet, though with how I was back then I'm surprised she didn't get them sooner. Mom was a tough lady, though, and she wasn't going to let an 8-year kid stress her out. My mom was born smack in the middle of Trenton, New Jersey, and the neighborhood she lived in forced her to be a stone-hearted bitch. But when it comes to me, she treated me like a baby chick, always protecting me from even an ant. I was, or should I say am, an only child so it would make sense that she would hover over me the way she did. On our way to school she would play music in the car, it may have been an old Altima from the early 2000s but I remember the songs that she'd play sounding so good. The songs she played were my dad's, or so she says. I never met my dad as he left just as I was born, but it seems like he was a good person. I remember how mom used to tell stories about him every night before I went to bed, about how he went on these crazy adventures with people with superpowers, people who could fly and move things with their minds. Of course, me being a little kid I would be so entertained by these stories, I believed my dad was a superhero. Now, though, I know what he meant. And no, I don't believe in superheroes anymore, just supervillains.

Anyways we made it to the school, Judah Meier Elementary School. It was an ok school, being an inner-city school and all so you can't really say it's a great school but it's the best we could do right now. Mom gets out with me and we walk through the front door and head for the front desk. The lady at the desk was this mid-20s looking woman who wore this dark makeup. She looks at me and asks, "Drop off?" My mom nods her head. "Yes, it's his first day here and he doesn't know where to go." She said. "Name?" The woman said. "Greene, Alexander?" Mom said. "Room H203." The woman said. My mom smiled and pulled me along in a hurry. "I don't like the way she looks, all dressed in black with all that dark makeup on her face looking like a damn vampire. Don't let me catch you with a girl like that." She said. I'm not sure why she's talking about being "with" someone to an 8-year-old but whatever. We finally get to the classroom after going up and down stairs and hallways. Mom knocked on the classroom door, and a couple of minutes later the door opens, the smell of vanilla assaulted my nose, making me sneeze. "Come right in...Alexander?" The teacher said. I nodded my head yes and walked in. "Don't worry about him, he's a good kid, just soft-spoken." My mom said. "Hm, where I'm from we speak when someone says hello. Have a good day Ms. Greene." The teacher said. Right before she closed the door my mom yelled, "Have a great day green bean!" I slunk into my chair while some kids in the back laughed at me, which alone sums up my entire elementary life past that point, being laughed at, the joke of the class. Doesn't help that I wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, never making above a B-. And the teachers knew this! Yet they didn't care. Thank you, Judah Meier, for being full of arrogant pricks, In fact, I got into my first fight at that damn place.

April 23rd, 2013

Ross Kneely, the 5th-grade hockey star and probably most popular kid at my school, tried to pick a fight with me by pushing me on the ground and kicking me in the stomach. I'll be damned if I didn't do something, it's like my mom always said: "If some jerk tries to hurt you, you make sure you beat him so badly that he'll be too busy recovering in the hospital to do anything." So I got my ass kicked in under 4 minutes. Ross and his band of goons started laughing and taunting me, which made me so mad I got up and hit him with the hardest punch I've ever thrown up to that point. He fell to the ground and stayed there, I thought I had killed him got scared. The area where I hit had faint burn marks around where my fist landed. He got up though and ran to the teacher crying like mom said he would. I got suspended...