ING 4.1
Jeremy Walton was my worst nightmare in middle school. He was too big and too stupid for his own good, and he became a bully because of it. He wasn't my nightmare because I was scared of him, I wasn't. I was never a pushover, and I would never back down from a confrontation. Or even a fight.
But Sammy would.
Jeremy was able to get under my skin in a way that no one ever had. Taunts and cruel insults from him were my lot all throughout middle school, even if he didn't ever dare touch me. And on and on, well into high school too. Which is where I first met Sam. And all the physical frustrations that Jeremy wisely saved up whenever I or any of my buddies from the baseball team were near, exploded out of him when Sam was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Sam never told me or anyone else. Of course, I'd sometimes notice him hiding a bruise on his back when we were changing for gym class or trying to keep up with Mrs. Ginsbey's rattling about the Spanish Inquisition and take notes with his left hand instead of his dominant right.
When his parents divorced during sophomore year, I let myself imagine the obvious injuries were his dad's doing. But they didn't disappear when Mr. Griffin left their house to live by himself. I still feel bad about thinking that now, because Sam's parents are still two of the most kind and civil people I've known to date. Even after their divorce.
Before I found out about what was really happening with Sammy right under my fucking nose, I never believed that kids would ever really be psychotic enough to actually beat each other up and try to shove someone inside a locker. For real.
Thinking back, I know how blissfully ignorant I was. High school was a great experience for me, full of happy and defining memories. Right up until the week leading up to graduation. I'll never forgive myself for not realizing how awful it all was for Sam at the time.
Sammy had been so quiet inside that small blue locker, shocked and ashamed. He never made a single sound and only texted me where he had disappeared to at the very end of the school day. To make sure no one else would find out what had happened. I remember opening his own locker in the deserted hallway after almost everyone had left, thinking that it might be a joke he was playing on me. But there was a small, crying boy inside when I swung open the door. Silently sniffling and dropping himself into my arms. I swore then that I would kill Jeremy the next day.
But I was too late. When I stepped off the school bus the day after, I found about half of the student body making a ruckus and crowding in front of the school's entrance. That usually meant one of two things. Dead raccoon or a fight. When I'd pushed and prodded myself to the center of it all to see what was up, my jaw dropped in awe. A red-faced Sam was straddling a pale-faced Jeremy on the concrete at the bottom of the steps up to the school's entrance. Two bloody fists, a lot of shouting and a pathetic, crying asswipe of a varsity football captain with two missing teeth. Whoops, cheers and swearing all around. One boy sent to the principal's office. One boy sent to the dentist. One suspension right before graduation for Sammy, and one horrendous prom photo for Jeremy Walton.
The memory still makes me chuckle and Sam never misses an opportunity to do a dramatic retelling of the events. Which I never tire of.
But this past week a new... smudge, had appeared on the map of that little trip down memory lane.
It was my first full week working at
Slice&Dice
. I liked that the coffee machine was so close to my small office. It was convenient. I got to work and stay focused without having to travel half a mile and back for a cup of coffee and being forced into three different chats with new faces about the latest threads of office gossip every time I craved some caffeine.
However, I'm not the only guy that craves coffee at least three times a day. Every time Lucas got coffee from the machine in that perfectly placed corner at the side of the glass wall of my space, he popped his head around the edge to look at me. And if he had too much coffee already, he checked in on a colleague nearby. A few times he even came into my office to ask me about something I was working on. And even when I had answered his deepest and almost impressively philosophical questions about the most mundane tasks in my portfolio in the shortest ways I could manage, Lucas would still find excuses to show his face about every half hour. He was relentless.
And then, he started to remind me of him. Jeremy Walton. Whenever Lucas met my eyes, I saw Jeremy and I could feel my fists clench.
In frustration.
With myself.
Because I didn't see Jeremy the bully.
Nope. I saw Jeremy, the sad, shocked boy in a tux and two missing teeth. An emotion I never even thought he was capable of, and I had never seen in those eyes before. First and only time I ever felt sad for him instead of feeling the need to push him in front of a speeding truck.
Jeremy, that is.
It was early Monday morning, after that... eventful Saturday. I was alone at the Slice&Dice art department, to pick up the first batch of drawings I'd need to use as inspiration for my work on some side-content for
Trials and Errors
. Lucas popped his head around the corner with a smile, startling me.
"Morning. Want a coffee, Dev?"
I nodded silently, turning back to the drawings. Calling "Good morning, Lucas." as an afterthought.
Half a moment later, he came over to me. "I figured you were a plain black coffee kinda guy, am I right?" He set a paper cup with steaming black coffee on the desk I was standing at before actually looking me in the face. The bags under my eyes and the lack of any expression on my face threw him right off whatever game he was trying to play.
Trying to look as if Saturday night hadn't affected me at all had been a lost cause. I'd failed miserably at trying to get some sleep as well as hiding the fact that I hadn't gotten any. I just hoped he wouldn't bring it up now.
"Fuck, did you completely forget to sleep last night or what?" He asked.
"Don't worry about it... Thanks for the coffee. Plain black, perfect..."
I left him standing there, taking the drawings and the coffee with me to my desk and closing the door behind me without another word.
I knew he was secretly checking on me every time he came strutting by, examining me through that glass wall. Those eyes. He looked at me as if I was terminally sick with something, and he gave it to me. Again, not at all the confident, unbothered impression I'd wanted to make on my first actual day on the job.
I tried to focus on my work, but Lucas's constant passing by my office was driving me to near insanity. Every time I caught a glimpse of him, my mind flashed back to Jeremy. To Sam, to that day outside the school. And to sad, awkward prom nights. And pregnant pauses.
It made me feel stressed. Maddeningly so. And after two days of it, I decided I couldn't continue like that anymore.
