Kids Can Be Mean: A Heartless Story by Gary Paul Libero

His note blamed, like, Everybody.  No one actually read it, but some freshman on the baseball team, his dad’s on the local force, he knew everything that went down.  Word trickled from his mouth to locker chatter a day after the incident, the same day the teachers couldn’t stop yapping about the presidential ballots being recounted three times over and questioned what this world was coming to.  There must have been, like, an insanity cloud over the world that week.

I’m no doubt included in that Everybody statement, but totally shouldn’t be.  Trust.  Kids can be, like, so mean.  I’m not the one who went sticking magnets inside his locker to make the little bent nails cling to the outside, in the shape of a miniature dick.  That got laughs for days.  He’d no sooner swipe all the nails onto the floor and they’d be back up by next period.  No one knew him very well, but weren’t afraid to have giggle at his expense.  I mean, at least I tried helping the kid.

I didn’t make up that stupid nickname either.  Brad.  I always thought that was, like, his real name and everything.  That’s what everybody called him.  Brad.  Suze told me the boys from his gym class tattooed him as Brad and it stuck.  Suze had some classes with the kid and said teachers even called him Brad because they never look at their class rosters and just go along with what they hear in the halls.  The nickname was in reference to his, like, smallness.  Ya know, down there.  Suze heard that Brad always showered after everyone finished in the stalls, but one day the entire class waited for him, like a trap, by his gym locker.  Suze said they snatched his towel from around his waist and his junk was there for all the whole class to laugh at.  I guess a few of them held the kid against the lockers or something and whipped a wet corner of the towel at him.  Rat tails, they call it.  They said his dick was tiny as a finishing nail, hence the nickname.  Leave it to the jocks and woodshop rejects to come up with that one.  The kid looked like a Brad so I never questioned it.  We’d be in the same huge school system for, like, ever, but never really crossed paths.  So many kids, so many classes, so many cliques, it was impossible for everybody to know everybody.  But Brad blamed each and every one of us like we all rat tailed him at one point in his academic life.  I’m not like that at all.  Trust.

The baseball frosh leaked more details on Brad’s incident that managed to filter through the halls faster than Suze’s bleacher blow-job adventures.  The frosh’s father must have had mouth diarrhea at the dinner table, I mean, this kid knew everything, or, like, claimed to know everything.  Whatever the case, it was enough to keep the frosh eating lunch on the senior’s side of the cafeteria for a few days.  Mr. Fucking Big Shot all of a sudden.  Rumors spread that Brad’s mother told the detectives she thought he overdosed on marijuana.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  OD’d on weed!  Me and Suze almost shit over that one!  We’ve smoked enough at senior parties to, like, kill horses.  I doubt Brad even knew what weed was.  But when Brad’s mother found him swinging by one of his belts in his bedroom closet, there was, what she thought to be, a huge water bong on the floor laid over some porno rags.  The mouthy frosh made the story out to be this huge scandal, like Brad was some kind of closet pervo who did himself in trying get off, ya know, like rock stars do.  Sex and drugs and all that.  His theory never really flew, but there were plenty of other ones to keep the lockers chattering.

Suze said the word around the junior’s hallway was that Brad was some kind of masochist.  It was a spin-off of the freshman hall asphyxiation rumor, but this one, I don’t know, people make up some crazy shit.  Suze heard Brad was all cut up in his quote-unquote petite region.  Weird scars and whatnot all around his crotch.  I guess terms like BDSM were flying all over junior hall and made Brad sound like, this cool outsider who took a wrong turn down Jerk Off Junction.  I even heard some of the juniors say how they have brothers and sisters into that shit and that they’d be doing it soon too.  Like they even knew what the fuck BDSM stands for.  I mean, even Suze was clueless.  Juniors think they know, like, fucking everything.

The supposed bong turned out to be a penis pump and I couldn’t help but feel responsible for that.

No one really knows this, but some of the jocks pooled their drinking money and came to me and Suze with, like, a proposal.  They probably saw this in a movie because someone’s always paying someone else to do their dirty deeds on the big screen.  Two hundred bucks to quote-unquote go one some dates with Brad and get the scoop on his small dong.  Suze questioned why they didn’t just ask him themselves, like, for free.  They said it didn’t work that way, ya know, with guys.  Suze, she’s like, so quick, said to them, “But you have no problem ripping off his towel in the showers to gawk at it, you fucking homos?” Suze said she could never figure out the male fascination with the cock-n-balls.  I mean, the guys in our school would rather flunk every subject before they’d let this kid forget about how tiny his piece was.  That’s what they concentrated on, those fags.  Their parents are proud, I’m sure.  The nails, the nicknames, some would just stare and point at his cock in the halls.  Kids can be so mean.  And now they were willing to pay money for more ammunition to fire at Brad in the halls.

Suze sneered at their immature offer.  I took the two hundred.  Do you know what kind of kegger you could have with that dough?  Trust, I had no intention of, like, playing a part in the kid’s suicide.  I just wanted to have a killer bash.  I mean, my parents were going out of town for two weeks and everybody knew it.  I couldn’t not have a party, and no one ever pitches in beer money, so this was opportunity was, like, golden.  What’s a few dates, I thought.  Besides, I got the money up front and could have told these idiot jocks anything they wanted to hear, so long as it made Big Brad look bad.  A few of the meatheads tailed us on our dates, to make sure I actually went out with him, but they don’t know what went on between us.  In private.  They weren’t sophisticated enough to, like, mic my tits or something, so they had to trust me.

Brad was easy enough to crack.  We never had problems, me and him, so Suze helped me scheme a way to break the ice and pull off a date without making it seem like a date.  I need a tutor, I told him in the hallway, right out of the blue.  It was my idea not to dress in anything revealing skin and Suze agreed, totally.  Jeans and a cute halter were enough to make the boys sweat, but a skirt would have sent Brad bursting into flames.  We didn’t want to intimidate the poor kid, although the blonde hair alone, even in pigtails, may have been enough for that.  I made up some story about how I was flunking most subjects and just needed help in general, which wasn’t entirely untrue, I had Ds in two subjects.  Home Ec and Math.  I didn’t know what Brad excelled at, if anything, but it had to be something and I prayed it was algebra or trig.  I mean, the kid didn’t have that many friends, and people like that usually turn to books.  Or drugs.  He didn’t run with the wastoids though, I knew that much.  At first he said he’d have to think about my request and a couple days later he agreed to help with my studies.  He had a hard time looking at me eye to eye when we spoke in front of his locker.  He just stared at the floor, shuffled his feet and kicked at his locker door.  I suggested we study at his place and he jumped at the idea.  My first thought, was like, I’d be the first girl to ever enter his house, for sure.

The few times I walked through his house, rows of framed family pictures on the walls stood out.  A photo history of Brad’s life, or rather, the many stages of the train wreck in his mouth.  Mangled teeth like broken fence posts at such an early age, then braces to attempt repair, then the here-and-now, a decent set of choppers but still something not right about them.  Brad was an only child, so much as I could tell from the photos.  Some of the pictures brought vague memories of this kid from back in grade school.  I remembered seeing him in the hall, but never really seeing him.  He was just a face, ya know?  You wouldn’t think twice about bumping into him, knocking all the books in his arms to the floor.  And he wouldn’t say peep.

Long story short is that we ended up having a lot in common, just like in the movies I thought the jocks pulled this idea from, that put me in this situation in the first place.  Brad was nice enough, even with that dark mop of a hairdo covering his dome and the bad teeth.  We listened to the same music, which was like, a total shocker.  He had imported CDs of Lifehouse and Creed that I’ve, like never even seen.  He offered to burn them for me and of course I said yes.  Two hundred bucks and free CDs, total fuckin’ score for me!  And oh, I found out his real name.  Chad.  Close enough to Brad I guess, that’s what probably made his nickname that much funnier to, well, the entire school.  His mother called his name to help her with something while we were studying, algebra of all things.  Turned out he was a math whiz, another score!  I doubt his mother needed help with anything and just had questions for the lone fruit of her loins.  Who is that girl?  What is she doing in our house?  Stuff like that, I imagined.  She looked at me strange when Chad introduced me as his study partner, but was, like still polite and everything, offering juice and snacks.  Classic. Fucking two-faced suburban life.

Randy, Todd and one of their nameless goon friends followed me to his house the few days I went there.  I watched them trailing in my rear-view, riding in Randy’s shitty hand-me-down pick-up, laughing the whole way.  I hate them, really.  I mean, they throw the greatest parties and everything, but they can be so fucking mean.  Sometimes when Chad got up for the bathroom or something I’d peek out his window to see if they were still outside.  They always were, playing air guitar and drums, banging their heads to shitty metal music.  Losers.  They parked down the street a bit and always waited until I left, then they’d leave too.  Chad never noticed them; even on the day he confessed he, like, liked me.  I swear it was a scene right out of the fucking movies.

“Gina,” he said, “I think you’re really cool, not like I thought you’d be, ya know, like you seem to be kinda cold at school.  Do you think we could ever, like, see each other?”  I acted surprised and flattered at Chad’s confession and didn’t know how to answer without crushing him under two tons of teenage embarrassment.  But I mean, it’s not like this doesn’t happen at least twice a week with random guys waiting at my locker to ask me out.  Actually, I was shocked he had the balls to even spit the question out.  He’s a shy one in school, ya know.  Anyway, Suze and I didn’t plan on this happening, so I improvised, just like they taught us in Drama, and went with it.  Chad wasn’t totally repulsive, minus the bad teeth, and we made out, most of that Friday afternoon in fact.  That turned into heavy petting on his bed and then it happened.  The crying I mean.  Him, not me.  He went on about his quote-unquote problem and the medical names the doctors had for it.  Congenisomething Micropenis.  Jesus, if the jocks ever caught wind of that, Chad’s immediate future screamed school transfer.  Trust.  He said how his penis, yeah, he used the word ‘penis’, has been like this since birth and the doctors, all the doctors, said there was, like, no easy way around it.  Chad spoke in this tone, like, I didn’t know he wasn’t packin’ much in the first place.  I mean, was he oblivious that news got around most, if not the entire school?  Whatever, I told him it wasn’t a big deal and immediately heard Suze in my head saying I should have picked a better phrase.  She’s so quick.  After some resistance, he let me unzip his pants and Jesus H. if this thing wasn’t the definition of the smallest common denominator.  I mean, if he was black, it might be mistaken for a lone pube hovering over a tiny mound of, what could only be balls.  Chad’s face went beet soup and he ripped up his pants and got all angry because I chuckled a bit.  Not because it was funny or anything, it just caught me off guard.  He had to understand, I’d been with some of the football players.  Everybody knew that.  I apologized, but it didn’t help.  He like, packed up my books in a fury and I tried telling him there were things out there that could help him.  Pills, creams, devices even.  He didn’t want to hear any of that and rushed me out the door, mumbled something about having good luck on my algebra exams.

Chad wrote his goodbye note and did the deed a week after that incident in his bedroom. Supposedly, according to that know-it-all frosh, the letter didn’t give much of an explanation for Chad’s action.  Just that he quote-unquote blamed Everyone at school for ruining his life and not accepting him into the fold, that kind of teenage tragedy thing.  I really can’t see how I’m like involved in any of this.  Chad didn’t know about the jocks and their two hundred bucks and I never really told Randy and those guys anything new about Chad anyway.  Especially not about that micropenis word.  They even wanted their cash back but I told them to go shit in the preppy baseball caps.  My time is money.  Plus I had to make out with him.  Jesus.  That last week Chad was in school wasn’t much different from any other week.  The penis nail art still showed up on his locker, people laughed and pointed, same shit, bigger pile.  I don’t remember seeing him at all that week; then again, I wasn’t really paying attention.  Suze is always talking my ear off about some boy between classes.  And now I have to find a way to tell this story, minus a few details, to the detectives in the principal’s office if I hear my name announced.  They’re calling us down, over the P.A. system, one by one.  Rumor is they’re not interviewing the whole school.  That would take, like, till eternity I imagine. They only want to speak with the kids Chad actually had classes with and anyone they saw him talking to in the halls over the past few weeks.  That’s where I figure I come into all this.  People, like had to notice I was talking to Chad, at his locker.  I don’t think anyone is stupid enough to mention the money and the deal we had behind Chad’s back.  I’m mean, Suze knows better, I’m not one hundred percent on the jocks though, but I think they know they fucked up and would never cop to it.  That’s how it is with guys.  Trust.

The school set up grief counseling, in the Guidance Office for the next three days.  Any student feeling the need to quote-unquote talk out their feeling is welcome to speak with the grief group, facilitated by Mr. Grisolm, the advanced English teacher and Ms. Stone, the head guidance counselor.  Some kids from my Current Events class are down there now, taking advantage of get-out-of-jail free card the school issued.  I’m thinking about whipping up some Drama class tears and going down there myself.  It might help my story too, if I like, get called for an interview.  Plus, if I have to listen to Mr. Tagliere’s rant about the presidential ballot recount again my head will like totally explode.  He keeps rambling about ballot chads, how they ruined this election year and, like, how something so small shouldn’t matter in real life.  Suze is in the desk next to me, holding her nose, trying not to laugh at this.  She can be so fucking mean.

GARY PAUL LIBERO is 33 years old.  He lives in Connecticut with his wife Sarah.  Gary intends having his short fiction published in the immediate future while completing work on “Geekfish”, his first novel.