"Well I don't think I'll make it through another day
It's eight o'clock and all ain't well
My brain hurts so much it's startin' to decay
And I'm livin' in my own private hell"
-Twisted Sister, Be Chrool To Your Scuel(1985)

Morning came about as quick as you'd expect for a guy who never went to sleep in the first place. Slow and painful like a constipated man on the porcelain throne.

Golden boy Dakota was already at the breakfast table and dressed in the Clark Gable t-shirt under a denim jacket. I myself was sporting one of my Mötley Crüe shirts and acid wash jeans. I'm going to take the time to tell you now I don't regret anything I wore back then. Three different types of cereal and a milk carton with a missing kid stamped on it were sitting on the table. I picked the corn flakes.

"How'd you sleep?" Dakota asked in a raspy voice. His eyes were half shut and he was probably about to fall into his own bowl. He was never a morning person.

"I didn't," I replied.

He nodded. "I figured as much. We have to leave in, like, fifteen minutes."

"Will do," I saluted.

We cleaned our breakfast stuff up and got in the car for the twenty minute drive to the school. Since the driver picks the music, I got to listen to American Top 40. It was all pop stuff.

The school was the same as ever with students milling around aimlessly. We parked in the lot- a part of the grounds that I never saw much of. It used to be the tennis court until the school cut funding to all sports except track and football. Lots of cigarettes were stamped into the ground along with broken glass. It wasn't very pretty.

Some DnD guys were hanging out by the entrance of the school. They had their dice and everything else in a briefcase and seemed to not notice the pitying looks they got from everyone else. Across from them on the other side of the entrance Jason Sude was accepting cash from everyone who owed him drug money. Sitting under a sad graffitied and carved oak tree was Eddie with three of his friends.

Sitting on a big rock that had been tagged many times were the Assassin Game members. A younger girl sat in between all of them, putting names into a hat. Reggie Paper was going around with his VHS Camcorder taping everyone.

The school bell rang and Reggie booked it into the school, Jason stuffed his money into his pockets, and the snobs flicked their combs one last time through their hair. The normal people shoved through the smallish doors into the school.

There were many, many classrooms to be found inside. Most were arranged the same way- American flag stuck on the side of the green chalkboard, and the teacher's desk in the front and to the right. The desks were bolted to the floor incase a goddamn tornado came through or something. It smelled sad, like despair and misery. And maybe urine. Kids pissed themselves all the time because there were only two bathrooms, one on each floor, to service more than four hundred kids. Although you could've ran into the gym and used the ones in there as long as the gym teachers on duty didn't see you.

Science class was the first period of the day. Miss Patata was an absolute shrew of middle age, and everyone hated her, even her coworkers. There was no foster of creativity in her classroom, only a dull sense of boredom. Once she fell asleep on her desk and we rolled her ink blotter in her nasty red hair. She didn't notice for the rest of the day.

She was so dumb and nobody knew why she wasn't yet fired. Get this- when I walked into her classroom she gave me the evil eye and said, "Mr. Stevenson, I've heard your mother passed away over this week. Hopefully this will not affect your studies." I was like- "I just got rid of one of the terrible nags in my life, I don't need a second."

Today the first thing she did was launch into an informative ramble on the evils of technology. The lights were off, the shades were pulled down, it was warm, even her piercing squawks couldn't harm my ears. I laid down on my desk and slept.

Those robots always got to me. I don't know what it was about them but Freddie Kruger never had anything on my imagination. Those cold, steel gazes. Those animatronic voices.

I jolted awake and swung out with a lot of force at something soft and squishy but hard at the same time. This caught Miss Patata by surprise and the ruler she had been holding to slap my open wrists with fell from her hands. It clattered onto the floor noisily. A roughly hand-shaped red mark was on the side of her face.

"Mr. Stevenson!" She shrieked with vengeance and malice.

"Yes, sir?" I said, still a little confused.

Obviously she didn't like my answer, and so in retaliation she picked the ruler back up and slapped me with it a couple more times. Swack. Swack. In rapid fire.

"GO TO THE OFFICE IMMEDIATELY!" Miss Patata shouted, pointing.

I sighed and pushed my chair back away from the desk, taking the few books I had with me. Stepping through the doorway, I turned around briefly to see many of my classmates trying to hold in laughter. Miss Patata was trying to phone ahead to the office with her back turned to them. Eddie flashed me a thumbs up and a grin.

Feeling a little bit like a hero, I took my time walking up to the office. It was silent with everyone already in class. Many trophy shelves lined the halls, filled with the same track trophies and color guard banners from all the years past. Valedictorian pictures from years dating all the way back to 1912 when the Ridgeton school system was founded hung at eye level.

Inside the office, the secretary gave me a nod, indicating she had gotten Miss Patata's call. Inside the room, the walls were a cool forest green. The only AC unit in the school made a steady hum. The ticking of the clock above the check-in desk fought to be heard over it.

I took a seat next to a kid in a black duster and large sunglasses on top of his dark hair. I knew him to be Freddy Madden, another one of Eddie's friends. He and I never hung out much, but I kind of knew him from around school and he was a closet-dweller like me. While I had gotten out that year, he was still labeled, 'unfit for a classroom setting.'

"Love the shirt, bro," was the first thing Freddy said when I sat down next to him. One leg was crossed over the other, and the one on the ground was bouncing up and down. He tapped his fingers against the thin arm rests.

I looked down. "You like Mötley Crüe?"

"Yeah man, I love all that kind of stuff. My brother Kurt listens to it on full volume, turning it up until his eardrums bleed," he said, talking fast, like someone would steal his words if he didn't get them out quick enough.

"Sounds like quite an event."

"Yeah, sure is. So what are you in for?" Freddy asked.

"Slapping Miss Patata after she hit me with a ruler," I said nonchalantly.

His eyes grew wide and a smirk appeared on his face. "Man, good job."

"What'd you do?" I asked back.

"Hardly matters, nothing cool like what you did. Did she scream?"

"Oh yeah. So, I wanted to ask, Eddie said he was starting a band. You two are close, so I figured-."

He sat up a little taller in his seat, nodding so hard his sunglasses flew off. "Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm the drummer. I get a real kick out of it. Dunna-dunna-dunna and a dit-dit-dit." With every dunna and dit he mimed rocking out on his set. When he had finished his manic episode he picked his sunglasses up and bowed at my applause.

"Mr. Stevenson, the Assistant Principal will see you now," said the secretary. I thanked her, set my books down on my other side, and said bye to Freddy.

Mr. Wood was a middle aged black guy who had been going through a midlife crisis for quite some time. His office was really a glorified custodial closet leftover from when they renovated. It was still pleasant. He hung record covers from the ceiling and played some soft jazz to keep a mellow vibe. Usually he wore floral prints rather than suits and ties to work. I respected him.

"Hey, Peter," Wood called. "Heads up!" With the stuff of college football players, he lobbed a soft kiddie football at my head. I caught it using fast reflexes I hadn't thought I possessed. "Good catch!" He enthused. I smiled and sat down in a teal beanbag chair, putting the football on the floor. He sat down across from me in his own purple one.

"Now, let's get down to business. Miss Patata phoned Lucy at the desk this morning with some troubling news. She said you physically assaulted her," Mr. Wood looked back at me. "You're a good kid. There's an explanation here to be found."

"Yes sir, there is," I responded. "I was sleeping in class, you see, and had a stress reaction."

"A bad dream, as it were? It's okay, Peter, I get those too. That's why me and my wife don't sleep in the same bed." Sometimes Mr. Wood was a little too personal. He acted more like your uncle than your Assistant Principal. Which I guess is preferable in most cases. There was a good time when at a pep rally on July 3rd he showed up in an American Flag suit. On a day when the thermometer hit 107 he showed up early and at the front entrance handed out Popsicles.

"Yes sir," I said.

"And what else?" Mr. Wood propped his head up on one purple-clothed arm.

"I kind of forgot where I was. I swear if I had known I wouldn't have slapped her," I said.

"So you did not punch her in the face?" He asked.

"Uh... No?"

"I see. Your teacher demands I use strict punishment for you, but I do not think this requires a caning. By the looks of your hands, however, it looks like you've been strictly punished enough. How about you just pass the word around that you got three swats for your misdemeanor?" Mr. Wood suggested. He was just so great it was hard not to like him.

"I think that sounds doable, sir," I replied.

He chuckled. "I will see you later, Stevenson, but hopefully not for a bad reason next time."

"Okay," I said, going back the way I came. I flashed a thumbs up to Freddy and he responded with a whoop so loud it made the secretary spill ink on all her papers. She threw them in one big heap into the trash can. My books and I were out of there.

The bell rang between periods so at least I didn't have to see Miss Patata for the rest of the day. After that was shop class, where we were repairing desks and also using paint scrapers to get gum off the bottoms. Ray Charleston also had it this period, and the whole time he looked like he wanted to take a power saw to my head. His nose was starting to take on a sickly yellow sheen. The bruise was almost gone.

I was never sure what I had done to annoy him. Maybe because I brushed off all his attacks. Some kids are just plain mean, or they have something going on at home. Whatever Ray had going on at his home must've been extra bad.

He walked up behind me as I was in deep concentration, focusing on a large chunk of green goo. "You better watch your back," he whispered in my ear. I turned around and punched him. Lightly, so he wouldn't fall back and knock all the sawhorses over. He growled, animal-like, and crawled away. I turned back to the task at hand.

I found myself in English class fighting to stay awake to write an essay reflecting Holden Caulfield. It was much easier to just look over the shoulder of my seat buddy and write down theirs. I had no interest in picking apart a book that didn't need picking apart. For me, books are always ruined by over analyzations. In my opinion, a conch is a conch, Central Park ducks are Central Park ducks.

Was this defining and highlighting text going to teach us to be model citizens? Or how to survive in the real world?

Imagine this-

"So, Johnny, your last interview question is; describe the meaning of the book title, The Catcher in The Rye."

"But I'm applying for the dentist position!"

"That's no excuse! Talk the Rye or go home and cry!"

See what I mean?

What had kept me up the night before never resurfaced. The people that knew me knew enough to avoid speaking their condolences to me. As far as anyone else went, I took a precautionary measure and ate lunch alone in the library behind a magazine rack. No one bothered to look for me. I pretended not to feel bad 'cause I knew I had brought it on myself. I never thought that it would matter to me later on.