Adam Binks and The Boundless Invasions of Personal Comfort Zones

One • Adam

By general rule, I am a simple man.

I like 100% cotton in my shirts. I like white rice with peas and carrots and PB&J without the crusts. I like Star Trek and reading the Odyssey. I like listening to Jimmy Buffet while I do my math homework, but never while I do my science homework. I like shaving my hair short because I don't like it any other way.

But what I definitely do not like is being shot at in my fourth period.

Of course, that's really getting quite ahead of myself.

Hi, I'm Adam Stetford Binks. I'm fifteen years old, live with my dad, and attend class at the Michelle Kerner School for The Gifted, which we basically all know is just a non-hurtful word for 'kids so smart they'll never actually function in society', A.K.A. losers.

And that's fine by me, by the way. It's pretty clear that I'm a loser. I don't mind it being said.

I wouldn't say I'm the weirdest of my peers at Michelle Kerner, but I'm definitely the only one who's like... this.

Allow me to take a moment to tell you about my fourth period.

At a little mahogany desk in the front of the room, my poetry teacher Ms. Fern taught her lessons and drank her herbal tea.

The student desk right up front was occupied by a blonde boy named Noelle Johnson, who had an IQ of 148 and an empathy level of .003. He knew basically everything there was to know about everything, except for how to feel an emotion. Once, we'd taken a day of 'healing' when Cosette's grandmother died, and he had just sat in the corner doing sudoku puzzles.

To his right, a girl named Cosette Fitzgerald was nestled into a large blue beanbag. Cosette meant the best, and was very smart, but she was beyond overwhelming, and acted so sickeningly sweet she practically gave you a toothache. She was energetic to a fault and had long black hair in cornrows and areas of lighter skin on her dark face from vitiligo.

To Noelle's left, the atrociously spontaneous and hotheaded Victor Hernandez carved up a pencil using the dislocated razor blade out of a handheld sharpener. Vic was nearly everything I wasn't (first and foremost, willing and able to abbreviate his first name), and I would be lying if I said that didn't lead to the two of us having our fair share of arguments in our shared and oh-so-small environment.

I sat, in a desk of my own, behind Vic. Next to me, in a squeaky wooden rocking chair, sat Rowan Sanders, a kid with a cane for his bad legs. He was one of those hippie-stoner types, and in all my three years at Michelle Kerner, I'd never seen him remove his knitted cap.

On this particular day, we had all been listening to Ms. Fern's rather emotional lecture on Robert Frost when there came a strange tapping sound from one wall.

Immediately, Vic jumped up, looking around as if he thought something was imminently about to attack us.

"Sit down, Vic," Ms. Fern said in her soft, wispy voice. "There is nothing to worry about, sweetheart."

Vic didn't answer, instead just shot Rowan a look that was almost pleading.

Rowan didn't have time to react at all, though, because right then was when the wall crumbled into itself, showering all of us with pieces of the cinder block.

But that wasn't it. I'd barely registered the wall's absence when I felt something whoosh just past my ear, staking itself in the wall behind me.

Somebody was shooting arrows at us.

Suddenly, I felt someone's hand on my arm, and before I could swat them off, they pulled me to the ground behind a barricade of overturned desks.

I looked to see Vic, fuming, with his hand still clamped on my arm hard enough to leave a mark.

"Are you insane?" He hissed as more arrows whizzed overhead. "Don't just stand there!"

"What do you mean?" I asked heatedly. "I-"

Vic huffed, letting go of me and grabbing Cosette by the wrist to get her attention.

"Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, deal with that!" He told her forcefully before standing and rushing out of view.

Cosette quickly sat next to me and smiled nervously. "Crazy weather we're having, huh?"

"Why are there arrows shooting at us?" I demanded.

Cosette's face fell, her mouth dropping open. "You can see them?"

I laughed harshly. "Yeah! Kind of hard to miss, don't you think? They're arrows!"

Cosette started to say something, but that was when Noelle, with a large bloody gash on his cheek, crouched down on my other side.

"Cosette!" He yelled. "What is he still doing up?"

"I don't think he's-" Cosette began to protest.

"Put him out!" Noelle cried. "We don't have time for this!"

"What? What's going on?" I asked, looking between them desperately.

Cosette cringed slightly, raising her hands up like a shield and looking to me. "I'm really sorry to do this, Axel."

"Adam. My name is Ada-"

And then everything went black.