Trouble School

04}}Back to School

August, 1999

Fred scowled at his new school, and wished his mom wasn't there so he could curse enthusiastically at the old building. It didn't look like much, at first glance. It was big, sure. Three stories of maybe ten-plus classrooms on each floor. And that didn't include restrooms and janitors closets.

It seemed innocent enough, just hanging out at the end of an old road with nothing else around but woods. The Salish Mountains could be seen over the tops of the pines, dull and blue and boring. The snow on their peaks had completely melted by this point.

Something about the building — innocent though it seemed — set Fred's teeth on edge. He didn't like it. Though that probably had more to do with the fact that he didn't want to be there than anything else.

The place was constructed from old rusty bricks that didn't look like they were crumbling, but Fred knew looks could be deceiving.

"Why's it so fucking big anyway?" He wanted to know. "There's only a few of us, so why the monster school? Why not like a—"

"Not another word, Frederick!" His mother snapped. He scowled down at her. His mother was a short woman, though no less vicious for it. She was kinda scrawny, with hawkish features, short iron brown hair, and feline blue eyes. She was by no means petite, just small. And evil.

Very evil.

Fred scowled at the school again. What kind of woman would send her son to face that alone? It was un-fucking-fair. Not for the first time, he wondered if she really was the one who'd given birth to him. They looked nothing alike.

"You get your sorry worthless ass into that building! I don't wanna see you until school lets out, y'hear?" She demanded, waving her long talloned finger under his nose. She'd gotten them done again, he noticed, and the scars on his arms itched at the memory of the last time she'd had them done.

Fuck you, part of him wanted to say, but the rest of him didn't dare. He still had to find a job, so he didn't have any money. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck sleeping under the goddamn bridge again with no food. Jeanette was the sort of woman who wouldn't hesitate to lock him out of the house because he'd given her lip. He knew she would, because she had.

Countless times.

So all he did was duck his head and start for his new school.

{ { o } }

Syd didn't look at her dad when he pulled up to the obsessively large brick building. She kept her headphones on, Guns and Roses playing just loud enough to be heard by others, but still quite enough to not completely kill her ears.

And anyway, it was an excuse to ignore him, and pretend she couldn't hear what he had to say. But the left side of her headphones had been broken for quite a while, which meant she could hear him.

But he didn't need to know that.

She kept her face blank, and stared out the windshield of her dad's ancient car at the creepy brick school. A dulled metal number was nailed above the glass double doors at the front, but they were too far away for her to see what the number was. She didn't really care.

She just waited for her dad to finally kick her out of the car, because she knew he would. He always did. If she pretended not to want to go, the sooner he'd kick her out, and the sooner she could be rid of him.

If only temporarily.

"I can't believe this," he seethed, his big blunt hands clutching the wheel till she heard something crack. She wasn't sure if it was his whitened knuckles or the wheel, and she didn't want to find out.