Just Another Story about a Boy Trying to Find Himself in High School

Fiction by Grant Adair ’24

“Have fun on your first day of high school, Tony!” said my mom, as I stepped out of her car and onto the hard concrete sidewalk. I grabbed my uniform backpack filled with notebooks and began to walk towards the school’s intimidating entrance staircase. My mom was about to pull away until my brain processed what she had said.

“Mom!” I exclaimed, “You can’t say my real name on campus, remember?”

“Oh right! Sorry!” she smacked her forehead in a somewhat sarcastic way. “But I just don’t get why the school had to assign you those weird nicknames. Well whatever! See you after school!”

She pulled off and I began my ascent up the sleek black steps. The stairs were so polished that you could nearly see a perfect outline of your stature, so I stopped to examine how I looked on the first day of my adventure into highschool. My somewhat short, khaki covered (it’s a private school so all freshmen must wear khakis) legs were outlined about six steps in front of me. Then I glanced up at my navy blue button-down that was about two sizes too big for me and fit me like a glove--a glove worn by a baby. Next I examined my dark green tie, (my parents said that green and blue look unprofessional together but I was too tired to care at the time). These two colors together made me stand out more than I wanted to but I kind of liked how strange it looked. My face was a good few steps more in front of me. It consisted of no remarkable features besides the two beady black eyes that stared blankly back at me. I have always hated my eye color and continue to hope that one day I’ll blink and my eyes will become a new hue. They were clad in an almost grey outline of all the solitary late nights summer break had provided. My sleek pitch black hair was the reason I so despised my eyes. I have always blamed the combination of the two for the reason why it was hard for me to make friends. I understand. It’s weird when both a person’s eyes and hair are dark enough to almost shine like the stairs did before me. Now that I had gotten a good profile of myself on the first day I finished my climb up the stairs alongside a few other students, and stared at the massive concrete pillared entrance that had the words “TURMERIC HIGH, EST. 1941” etched in it before me. It was extravagant enough to be the entrance to the Notre Dame cathedral. The first thought that crossed my mind was “This entrance must cost more than most normal schools’ yearly budgets!”, next I thought, “Where does this school get its budget from? I’ve heard that the tuition is low and many kids get in on scholarships,” but I decided to not think much more about it and finally enter the building where I will be spending the next four years of my teenage life.

I’ve only ever had one true friend. I only knew him the last year of middle school until he moved off to another state. He did a lot for me the short time I knew him. He was very smart--not book smart however, but street smart. He could start a conversation with almost anyone and knew exactly what to say and when to say it, but the thing I will remember the most is the first day we met. It was a rainy and cold first day of school, my mom was running late to pick me up so I sat down on a bench outside under a pavilion. The rain had a soothing rhythm to it and I began to doze off, until suddenly a hand shook me awake. It was a guy my age and about my height and build but with one exception: he had dark green eyes. At the time I envied his eyes to a point where I almost got up and left, but some strange feeling left me sitting there on that bench with him.

“What are you doing here so late? Do you need a ride?”, he asked.

“No, I’m good.” I really did want a ride home, and he could tell.

“Man, I can tell a lie from the truth easily. I live with five siblings, that’s why.” He chuckled but I didn’t say anything back.

“What’s your name? I’d like to know since we’re sitting on the same bench and all.”

“Tony” was all I replied with.

“Well, mine’s Niles. Nice to meet you, Tony. Hope we can get to know each other this year.”

He said this all while not glancing at me, and staring at the rain falling in front of us and we sat there in silence until my mom eventually picked me up. After that we slowly became closer throughout the eighth grade year, Niles would begin sitting with me at lunch and we even had History together. He was the closest I had ever gotten to another kid in middle school. I still vividly remember the last day of school and the last time I would see Niles before he left. It almost mimics the first day I met him. I was sitting on the same bench outside but instead of a gloomy fall day it was a bright summer day, Niles managed to find me (like he always did) and we began to talk. We both knew this would likely be our last conversation together so the exchange had a somber mood to it. The both of us recalled stories from our past year and we shared some hearty laughs. After our final story we sat there in silence for a minute watching the other kids in our grade waving bye to their friends, getting into their cars, and leaving campus for the last time.

“I don’t know how you didn’t manage to make any other friends this year, Tony.”

“What?” I answer back to Niles.

“You know, after knowing you for this entire school year I think I’ve managed to finally figure you out. You’ve been one of the most interesting people I’ve met at this school, which says a lot from how many people I know.”

“I’ve never thought that about myself.” I was surprised by Niles’ comment.

“See, that’s where you’ve always gone wrong Tony, you think of yourself as an uninteresting person. You are genuinely the only person I would call a true friend at this school.”

Niles turned his gaze away from the carpool line and directed it towards me.

“If you wish to make it through not just high school, but life as a whole you have to have connections. Without them you will just float through life without support, and aimless wandering can lead to some really dark places, places where you would never want to find yourself.”

At the time I didn’t really understand what Niles had said to me, my brain could not formulate a coherent sentence. That simple idea of needing connections changed me, a person who’s gone his whole middle school career a loner. I will never forget this phrase for this is one of the last things Niles ever said to me.

“Well it seems as if I’ve got to get going now. It’s been a helluva year hasn’t it.” Niles earnestly said.

“Yes it has. Yes it has.” I replied.

“I’ll see ya around Tony.” And with that Niles turned and walked towards a truck that had pulled up, filled with cardboard boxes and miscellaneous furniture items. The truck pulled out of the parking lot and turned out onto the main road and just like that I was back to where I was at the beginning of the year, alone and without connections.

Taking my first steps into the school, I saw the massive scale of the grand interior of Turmeric High. I was in shock because the architecture was like what you would see at Buckingham Palace; from above the hallways would look like a labyrinth a minotaur would be locked inside for eternity. Directly in front of the main entrance the school had a massive courtyard filled with many trees and vegetation that poked a large circle out of the middle of the school. After staring blankly at the school’s colossal scale map, I finally found where the cafeteria was. I began my hundred yard trek towards the cafe to grab some breakfast, but my peaceful journey got broken by quite the event.

“Hey! Foureyes! Ya got any money for ya new friends?” said an obnoxiously loud kid.

“Ya, we’re a bit short on cash, me an’ him.” said what I assumed to be the loud kid’s friend.

Both kids were wrapped in football letter jackets which had the school’s name written across a football. Above the football were the kids nicknames one was “Bull” and the other was “Horns”. Bull and Horns, on closer inspection, looked like identical twins and, though not very tall, they had a decent amount of muscle on their bones. One interesting feature I did notice on the two bullies where both of their noses were slightly crooked, it looked as if one of the brothers had gotten punched and the injury transferred over to the other brother.

“I-I-d-d-don’t have any e-extra cash on me,” said the kid on the receiving end of the brothers beratement.

“Oh so ya do have some cash just not extra! Ya scared me there for a second. Horns, could ya collect our new friend’s ‘friendship tax?’” said Bull with a maniacal smile on his face. Horns ripped the boy’s backpack off, then brutally rummaged through the scared boy’s pockets and backpack.

“Look bro! You were right, Foureyes did have some cash for us!” Horns said while grasping a ten dollar bill. Suddenly off in the distance you could hear some old funk music blaring (I believe the song was “Love Rollercoaster,” I knew this because Niles would blast the exact same music during lunch). It was slowly getting closer until this skeleton of a kid turned the corner, and I immediately recognized who it was, even though I was out of the loop on most things. His right ear held an earpiece for where the funky music was coming from. The loud music was almost as if it was his walk-on music, if he was a boxer getting to have a fearsome fight. Appearance wise, he was taller than average, standing at about six foot, but what made his figure the most interesting was he looked like he weighed all of a hundred thirty pounds. You could almost perfectly picture his skeleton’s outline because his arms and legs had no muscle attached to them whatsoever. This skeleton was wearing a baggy black letterman that, on the back, had a skull and crossbones in the middle. On top of the skull it said “Brittle,” then below the crossbones it said “Bones.” When put together, it said “BrittleBones”. I have eavesdropped on countless stories about BrittleBones and how he was the top of the social pyramid at his old middle school, (which had around 3,000 kids) not out of respect from his peers but by force. As a sixth grader he was beating up eighth graders with ease; even though he was probably the scrawniest kid at school, he never lost a fight he got into, because he had, in his words, “won the birth lottery.” The opposite of what his nickname suggests, BrittleBones has a rare condition where his bones are incredibly hard to the point where his bare knuckle punches feel like brass knuckles and his kicks feel like a golf club. Along with his unmatched attacking ability, his defensive capabilities are insane as well: anyone who punches him in his ribcage (or any other bone in his body for that matter) ends up breaking the hand on impact. His skeleton is like full plate metal armor. But his most deadly weapon is probably his skull. His skull is his trump card to win almost any fight; it’s like getting hit with a twenty pound bowling ball.

“Hey, will you two quiet down? It’s the first day and I don’t wanna get a headache already.” BrittleBones said to Bull and Horns.

“What ya gonna do about it, ya scarecrow?” Bull forcefully asked. “This is going to be fun,” I thought, but at the same time I felt bad for the brothers, because they didn’t know who they were messing with.

“Hey, I gotta question for you two. Are you on the football team?” BrittleBones said while yawning.

“Did ya see the backs of our jackets, ya idiot?” blurted Bull. Brittle (as I will refer to him now) peeked his head around Bull’s shoulder and saw a big football plastered on his back.

“Oh good, that makes me feel much better for what I’m about to do,” says Brittle.

“Are you threatening me, toothpick?!” Bull shouts, as he goes for a surprise punch against Brittle. Bull landed a clean hit on his opponent’s chest, but instead of his foe wincing in pain, Bull himself dropped to the floor and began sobbing.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BRO?! YOU PUNK!” Horns emotionally exclaimed. Horns began to rush at Brittle but a swift kick from him to Bull’s rib cage easily dispatched his would-be attacker.

“God, I hate football,” Brittle said, with not a scratch on his body.

“Oh, and Foureyes, don’t forget to get your money out of that weirdo’s pocket.”

And with that Brittle continued his stroll towards the cafeteria without a care in the world, and that was the first experience I had with one of the most interesting and most fearsome fighters at my school.