shakespearemom

 Here’s part two of my blog novel, waiting for your response. I tried to get it done by yesterday, but I was swamped with other work. Let me know what you think. If you want to read part one, it is also posted under the “Choose Your Own Novel Adventure” heading. Here goes:

I can still remember the morning it happened. I’d had a bad week. Carl, a thug who’d already been pulled back a grade twice, making him the biggest student at school, had finally noticed me, and just that week he’d given me a black eye, sore ribs, and a broken toe. You might wonder why I didn’t run screaming home to Mom and tell her all about him. She might have called the principal, sicked the nurse on me, and even raised up all the teachers to help. 

But I didn’t need any help. I was a superhero, right? I just kept waiting for my superpowers to kick in. I’d walk home, imagining myself fighting back, with inhuman power, knocking Carl down and fighting back hard enough he never picked on anybody again.

Too bad that’s how it all fell apart. Carl was waiting for me outside Biology, one hand punching the other’s palm, like it was practicing for me. He walked behind me on the sidewalk, scanning for teachers. I know he was doing that, cause I was doing it too. Why did band have to be the only classroom around the back of a building? I should have gone the other way around. It was longer, but more kids went that way.

But he was right behind me, the building’s corner inches away. Too late to change direction now. 

Even so, I tried. I turned on him, willing myself to shove him back with force, to get to safety. I couldn’t move him. I looked up into his face, while his huge arms grabbed my scrawny ones. His cold blue eyes told me I was dead, and in one movement, he’d pushed me into the alley, against the cement block wall. 

“Don’t ever shove me again,” was all he said. 

I didn’t. But a surge went through my veins, like hot steel. I’d never felt it before. It heated my face, pulsed through my brain, and even worked itself into the tips of my fingers. It was enough heat to blind me, but I ran at him anyway, yelling I don’t even remember what.

Honestly, I don’t remember anything else. Just the feeling, the rage, the pain of humiliation pushing back, finally, after so many years. I felt protected, felt strong, felt superhuman, and for the first time since I was six, I felt capable of anything. 

It was only after the heat passed, after I could see again, that I realized what I was truly capable of. It turns out I’d blackened both his eyes, broke two of his ribs, shattered one of his clavicles, and even did some damage to his neck vertebrae, enough that he was still in his brace at my trial. I’d also hit a teacher when she tried to pull me off him, though I only found that out at the trial itself. 

Yes, I’d done enough damage I was tried for it. I was sixteen, old enough to know better, or so they said. And the fact that I didn’t remember any of it didn’t help. That just made me sound psycho. I was found guilty and sentenced to two years at the juvenile detention center, with psychiatric treatment also a requirement. Mom was there to see my sentenced, her face pale and drawn. She was ashamed of me. All this time she’d wanted me be be a hero, and I grew up a villain. She sat right in front of me, too, and I had to turn away. 

And that look of hers killed me the whole time I was in there. I stayed the full sentence, too, for I had another fight with some other kid, when he tried to do the same sort of thing Carl had. I’d lost my mind then, felt the same hot surge, and he didn’t look too good when I was finished with him. Still, after two years, they had to let me out. They gave me a new set of clothes from somewhere, and waited for my parents to pick me up. 

But my parents never came. Even the caseworkers were a little shocked by that. I waited for a few days, reassured that they’d sent my parents mail informing them of my release. They hadn’t heard a reply, but that wasn’t so rare. What was rare is that my parents hadn’t come to get me. Why kind of parents did that? 

But you see, my parents weren’t heroes, either. I told you they weren’t. Seems they’d moved while I was in there. No forwarding address, no friends to tell me where they’d gone. I tried searching for them on the Internet, tried calling relatives, but nobody had seen them. Nobody offered to take me in, either. 

So, there I was, 18, with no high school degree, no job, no friends, no family, no nothing. What was I going to do now?

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Okay, let me know what you think, what you want to happen, what you hate, what you like, etc. I can’t promise to get the installment in on Fridays, so you might have to wait for a Saturday morning (like this morning), but I will get it in, nonetheless. Remember, this is a ROUGH draft, written and posted, without a few days of down time, without a huge revision, etc.

Oh, and it does get brighter, for those who find the whole thing depressing. At least, I’m intending for it to get brighter. Then again, I have no set plans for it. What do you want?

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