x + x

Mold

Lucas.

He was always quite an interesting person, from what I've heard anyway.  He was never the sort of person that people loved. In fact, people mostly thought of him as an object. Something they could play around with, and someone that didn't need to exist. Someone that was... out of place.

He was an easy target, since had no shield to protect him from any harm or evil, people could do anything they wanted to do to him. They thought it was fun to take his toys and ruin them, that it was fun to see the tears around Lucas' face as his voice softened underneath his heavy breaths.

"Hey, fatass!" They would say to him during the lunch breaks. Lucas watery eyes is what made them laugh. Lucas heard this every week. It was always the same people who said it. But why did they do it? Lucas looked just like an average boy does in his child years, he was never underweight and never overweight. He was healthy. And he was supposed to be happy, like any other kid around nine years of age. But he wasn't.

From what I heard, he often locked himself up in the school bathrooms, to be able to escape from all of the harsh words from the mean kids outside. Whenever he came home he would ignore eye contact with his parents and go straight towards his room. That was the only place he felt safe in. A place where he could cry without being laughed at.

Innocently, he was playing some sort of ball game with his friends, one day. The game was popular at his school, and they had painted several squares where they could play it on. The game was simple; there was one big square, and inside of it was four other squares. In the middle was four tiny ones, where you were supposed to start the game on. If the ball, often a basketball or football, touched your square and you didnt pass it to someone else before it was outside of your square, you'd lose.

Two of those squares were painted next to eachother. In one square was Lucas and his friends. In the other, his bully, Larry, and his friends.

As one of Lucas friends made him lose, he began to run after the ball that had started to roll away. He planned to throw it back and go to the line next to the square, so he could start over and play again. But that never happened. As he turned his back to Larry and his friends, he got shot in the head. The hard material of the basketball that had just hit his head hurt. It hurt a lot to him. Larry and the others laughed. But why did they laugh back then? Lucas wasn't even crying anymore.

Lucas threw back his own ball to his friends, turned around and grabbed Larry's ball. His face showed no emotion. I don't know exactly what Larry thought when he saw Lucas staring back at him with cold eyes. But I assume he was surprised. Perhaps even scared.

Lucas pointed at the ball, held it out, dropped it and kicked it away. Since he had been his football team's goalkeeper for quite some time he knew exactly how to kick it so that it would get as far away as possible.

"What are you doing? Fetch it back!"
"No"

This was the moment people started to think different of Lucas. His eyes just stared into Larry's for several seconds, and out of nervousity, Larry let out a laugh. None of his other friends did. Good for them, I assume. Because Lucas then did an unlikely thing, at least for him. He took a step back, and kicked Larry on his inner leg.

It must've hurt a whole lot, because Larry ran inside and started to cry. His friends tried to comfort him. Lucas just went back to playing the ball game with his friends.

The day didn't end with that, absolutely not. Lucas and Larry both got sent to the principal's office. Larry had lied about the whole thing and said that Lucas had kicked him right between his legs.

Even though the teachers and the principal knew about the bullying, they didn't do anything about it. They said they would, but they didn't. And it seemed like they defended Larry, the bullier, even more than Lucas, the victim. At home, Larry's parents rang home and accused Lucas of punching Larry until he fell to the ground, where he was later kicked. How Larry's parents could have believed in that will forever remain a mystery in my eyes, as Larry had no injuries other than a little mark on his inner leg.

Larry was like mold. Something no one wanted near them, but still something that they get and is hard to get rid of.