Schizophrenia

Chapter One

The clock ticked and outside the birds chirped and all around me were the sounds of pencils scribbling on paper.  I looked down at the US History test on my desk and took a deep breath. Question one, I thought to myself. In what year did The Great Depression start?

You don’t know this, an old croon’s voice whispered in my ear. You’re so stupid…so stupid… I could almost feel the warm breath on my ear.

It’s 1905. A man’s voice said into my other ear. NO NO NO! It’s 2067! NO NO NO! Friday the 13th!

I shut my eyes. Just breath, I told myself. Just breath.

Maybe he should put a bullet in his head right now, a child’s voice giggled somewhere behind me.  A bullet in his head, bullet in his head, bullet in his head…

“Ten minutes!” Mr. Jefferson called right next to me, making me leap out of my chair. He kneeled down next to my desk and softly asked if I needed to leave the room.  I weighed my options: On the one hand, we had ten minutes left and I had twenty questions to go. With the voices always speaking into my head, I could barley concentrate on the first, and if I left, I could take the test over.

But on the other, much more important hand, if I stood up and left—again—I wouldn’t hear the end of it for the longest time. “Oh look at poor Ben”, “”Don’t talk to him, he might explode” “Hey skitso, hearing voices today?”; I was still hearing “Sir-Pukes-A-Lot” from the time I puked while reading Romeo & Juliet out loud in English class last year.

But by then, half the class was already staring and whispering and pointing and ultimately I decided that I was doomed anyway.

The air outside was crisp like November usually was. Seagulls were diving from the air and devouring the trash left behind from lunch. Not a soul was to be found anywhere else on the campus. It was like an old western ghost town, empty and creepy.

I sat against the wall close to the door and rested my head against the rough painted wood. Out here it was quiet. No voices had followed me. It was just me and my own head, finally alone.

 For about ten more minutes I sat, basking in the silence, until finally the bell screeched above my head and the classrooms spit out their kids. Many of them stared at me as they past, but I didn’t care. I was still trying to hold on to the last tendrils of silence that were leaking away. But it was too late. The voices were drifting back to me.

Vermin! Exterminate the vermin! One voice floated quietly over the din of the crowd.

I HATE THEM!! Another voice screeched in response. Instinctively I threw my hands above my ears. Kids around me laughed and pointed and whispered to each other, but I didn’t notice much. Blood rushed in my ears and the lights began to blur. I could feel myself beginning to faint, as I often did. I held on as long as I could, taking deep breaths and blinking slowly, but I knew I wasn’t going to last long. As darkness began to creep on the edges of my vision, I caught a glace at someone staring at me. It was Vonnie, the new kid from Ohio. No one knew him and no one wanted to. He was almost as weird as I was, always tapping on things and biting his nails and drawing creepy things on all his school papers. For a split second our eyes met and I felt this odd feeling flow through me. It took a second for me to figure out what it was then it hit me—understanding. I felt like he understood what I was going through.

And then I was out.