Stutter | Max Mayfield

TWO | NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK

"Don't be nervous, Jacob," Andy sighed to his son. The whole morning, Jacob had been silent. He woke up to Andy blaring AC/DC, got dressed, ate cereal, and dragged himself to the car — all without saying a single word. "The kids will like you, I promise."

"S-Sure." Jacob mumbled, staring out the window and observing the other teenagers his age walk into the school. All of them had something in common. Whether it's that they liked sports, or comic books, or even music — they all bonded off their intrests. Jacob maybe shared some of those intrests as he was confident that one student would like AC/DC or the arcade, but it didn't matter because his stupid stutter would get in the way.

"First step to have a smooth first day is leaving the car, son." Andy joked, nudging Jacob's shoulder. Jacob sighed, reaching for his backpack and unbuckling his seatbelt. "I promise you the kids here are nicer than in Chicago. You just have to talk to some to find out."

"N-Not h-happening." With a deep breath to calm his nerves, Jacob pushed open the car door and headed towards the entrance doors of Hawkins Middle School.

It wasn't even five minutes before Jacob's first day was ruined. After a couple steps, a harsh body collided with his, causing Jacob to fall to the ground with a huff. "Watch where you're going, new kid." A boy chuckled, high fiving his group of friends. Jacob narrowed his eyes at the boy, causing him to laugh even harder. "Chill out, new kid. Don't want to make a bad first impression, do you?"

Jacob rolled his eyes and stood up, dusting his clothes off. The small amount of confidence he had that this school might be better than his old one was gone. Everyone here was just going to be assholes, just like in Chicago. Except he didn't even have to talk to anybody for them to be jerks in Hawkins — they just were.

The inside of Hawkins was boring and generic. There were lockers and thin hallways full of people. Jacob reached into his back pocket, pulling out the crumbled piece of paper with his schedule on it.

        First Period : MR. CLARKE - SCIENCE

Jacob moved around the hallways, pushing past the other students and ignoring their dirty looks. He didn't realize that his first class would be on the other side of the school and the people suddenly disappearing from the hallways and the loud bell made his stomach drop.

"O-Of c-course I-I'm late." Jacob mumbled to himself, hurrying his steps until he was basically skipping. He quickly saw the science classroom and rushed inside, but he wasn't as sneaky as he thought as everyone's eyes were on him. Jacob's cheeks heated up as he tried to look at anything but back at the students eyes.

"Ah, a new student all the way from Chicago. Everybody, welcome your new classmate Jacob!" Mr. Clarke had a giant smile on his face. Apparently the students weren't as excited as he was as the whole room was silent. "Why don't you take the empty seat in the back, Jacob?"

Jacob nodded and walked his way to his desk, a sigh of relief escaping his lips as he entered the seat and dug through his backpack for his science textbook. It wasn't long before a couple mumbles made him look up from his bag and straight into the eyes of four boys — except these four boys were the morons from the arcade. They quickly spun around awkwardly, causing Jacob to furrow his brows.

Mr. Clarke started the lesson by slamming a replica of the human brain on his desk. "Meet the human brain. I know. I know, it doesn't look like much. A little gross even, right? But consider this. There are a hundred billion cells inside of this miracle of evolution. All working as one. No, no, I did not misspeak. I did not stutter. A hundred billion."