Suburbia - ch. 1

Ch. 1
A small suburb outside of a forgotten town near a busy intersection that leads to the metropolitan capital of international trade would seem to be a perfect place to raise a family. A local school was nestled in the center of the town near the community church. The neighbors were friendly and generous and they often helped with your groceries if you needed. After all they had coffee together every Sunday after communion. Everyone knew each other by their first names here.

The streets had always been clean and everyone's lawn was dressed with pink flamingos and American flags. Children often played in the streets until dark and even when dusk settled, there was never a worry if the children would make it to their beds at night. It was a perfect little suburb in every way and in a perfect place for middle-class working Americans. It was also a perfect place for an imperfect maniac. It was only a matter of time until the citizens of Brownwood awoke from ignorance of their perfect utopian order.

Jimmy was a young boy who had skipped kindergarten. His parents always had high expectations for him and they were impatient. Drawing between the lines and finger painting was not in Jimmy's future. The cookies and milk during nap time was certainly out of the question. Jimmy was a year younger than the rest of his peers from here on out, he wasn't smarter than his peers nor was he stronger than them. In fact, Jimmy wasn't good at much of anything except screwing up. He never worked well under pressure and still his parents continued to demand things from him that he simply couldn't perform.

This was Jimmy's second year of high school and it was a challenge from junior high. Maybe the freshman year of high school is a fluke, maybe it gets better. Jimmy's thoughts put to words, written in his small diary that he kept hidden under his bed at home in his perfect house, his perfect room. His sophomore year was going by slowly and Jimmy didn't make it on any of the athletic teams again. He was even laughed away by the chess team. How low can it get?

Rejection, this is a word Jimmy knew all too well.

Every day was like the day before it. You wake up and go to use the bathroom. You come storming down the stairs where your father reminds you not to make such a ruckus because grandmother was still sleeping. You go to the kitchen where your mother has already prepared a bowl of cereal, one egg cooked sunny side up, and two slices of toast. Then after breakfast there's a shower, cleaning your bed, picking up your homework from the night before and stuffing everything into the backpack.

Get on the bus where the children mock you and say your mother is the town whore. You evade the jerk in seat 6B that tries to trip you every day. How annoying, Jimmy would question if that kid ever got the hint. You find a seat, you sit down, you look out the window and feel the bus bouncing underneath you and from time to time there's a jolt in the rear of the bus as the vehicle slams into a pothole where B Street and Main intersect. This is often the highlight of the day.
Then there's school where you go to class, you get your hard work returned with bloody marks smeared about as if your assignment had been used as a napkin to clean up after Sharon Tate's untimely end. Jimmy never appeared shocked by this ritual, by now this is a custom habit and now he was never fazed by the sight of blood. He only shrugs, stuffs the paper in his bag and goes to lunch.

High school is just another term for popularity contest. The best time to witness the high school phenomena is during the lunch period. No one ever really knows anyone and everyone is trying to be someone else they admire because they believe that person is someone they aren't. Sometimes these particular people come together and have things in common. Sometimes commonalities were navel piercing, black hair and trench coat or the nerds. Sometimes the jocks beat the crap out of each other but they remained together if only because they wouldn't be able to fit in with the pot-head section that stared into space contemplating the efficiency of a piece of string.

Jimmy though, he had no group and couldn't find anything in common with anyone else in the school. So he often just ate alone. Another two years of this, he thought to himself. Another two years and all of this would be over. Jimmy was never too bright.

French fries pummel the back of Jimmy's plaid button up shirt. Salt shines on the fabric as he looks over his shoulder and gives a vicious stare at the group at another table near him.
He pushes his glasses up against the bridge of his nose and with his most intimidating voice he roars at the kids that attacked him, "Stop that!" The sound from his voice was as intimidating as a dying mouse.

This was one of the groups that took a liking to Jimmy. Not in the way one might think, but they loved to pick fun at him. He could never dress properly and it was never in style or the latest fashion. The popular kid group, no, it was more like the fashion East California group; the anti-Jimmy group.

Why the kids never listened to the demand was beyond Jimmy's understanding. It's not that Jimmy was autistic or anything, he was just sheltered and never belonged. These childish pranks were foreign and alien to him. Little Jimmy grew up into bigger Jimmy and bigger Jimmy was still learning how not to be so little.

After school the schedule remained the same. You wait in the auditorium that was also the cafeteria as well as the street brawling arena. This is the part where you wait for the number of your bus to be called out and to exit in a calm and respectful manner. There was nothing calm about a herd of wild stampeding hormone driven teenagers escaping the confines of the dreaded education system.

By the time Jimmy finds a place in the herd after his bus is called and by the time he gets pushed aside by the bigger kids at his bus site, there were never any seats left. He was always stuck sitting with another outsider. Jimmy hated him more than his little hate group at lunch. This kid was a disgusting waste of air and a lard ass that smelled like wretched vomit or soggy diarrhea drying in the afternoon sun in summer.

Tomorrow would be a different day though. Tomorrow would be filled with excitement and adventure. Maybe he'd find a treasure map and explore the depths of a cave being chased by the mob or perhaps he would climb down the side of a chasm and plant a strange rare bonsai tree. Maybe Jimmy should stop watching so much television.

The giant slob seated next to Jimmy took most of the seat and Jimmy was hanging by a mere thread with his left hand clutched to the top of the green canvas of the bus. His knuckles were turning white and he asks "Lard Ass" to scoot in a bit.

Lard Ass just smiles a toothy metal smile. The colored bands on his braces were multiple colors and chosen by a blind orthodontist apparently. He shrugs and attempts to scoot over but with that much blubber it would take a miracle. He shrugs and picks his nose instead.

What took like forever was only a short thirty minute drive from stop to stop until reaching the corner to where Jimmy lived. He practically flooded out of the seat like an avalanche trying to escape the grotesque thing seated beside him. He nearly trips over his own excitement, but he recovers beautifully as he tries to play it off as if it was intentional. The children still laughed at him.

Another day at school was completed. Jimmy looks up to his parent's perfect two-story house and he spins around the mobile basketball goal in the drive way. He didn't play with it much but he did enjoy the thought of having it. The goal was the last present given to him for Christmas by his uncle. He passed away soon afterwards. Uncle Joseph was probably the only person that Jimmy could relate to; his only friend.

This was not the normal evening for Jimmy when he was staring out the window of his room. He noticed a red convertible mustang cruising by his house. He paid little mind to the cruising kids at first until that same vehicle made a third and fourth pass around the block. Like any good kid that had wonderful overzealous parents, he aimed the lens of his high powered telescope at the license plate and zoomed closer to gaze at the kids in the backseat. The anti-Jimmy club was up to something tonight and it was a safe bet that it wasn't another food fight.

"Man that kid is such an idiot!" Roger said he drove with one hand on the mustang's steering wheel. His other claw was rubbing on Janice's bare leg. He desperately hoped to hit a bump and accidentally grope a feel on her more delicate parts.

Janice slaps at Roger's greedy paw and frowns at him, "Stop it Roger, that's not appropriate. What the hell are you thinking?" She acted as if she disliked the affection but between her legs there was a different urge.

Janice pulls her platinum blonde hair up into a pony tail as Roger chuckles and shrugs at her question, "Hey Don, what do you say about tomorrow?"

Donald Travis was a rich kid that had his college of choice primed, chosen, and paid for. He was a senior and the star player on the football team. If they were lucky, the team would go to state this year, all graced by yours truly, superstar 'Donny T.'

"Man, I'm with it, Roger. Love to see the look on that kid's face! It'll be classic," Don falls into a barrel of laughs as Rachel rolled her eyes and helped tie back Janice's hair.
Rachel leans over and whispers to Janice, "Think they'll really do it?"

"I don't know," Janice replied, "I really don't care."

Rachel is the light hearted one in the group and she only chose to hang out with the anti-Jimmy group because of Janice. Janice was the first person to talk to her. The two of them instantly became friends and Rachel was introduced to Don soon after. Rachel had been having second thoughts about their friendship these days. This little group was becoming more trouble than what it was worth, so she would think.

Don looks over to Rachel and notices her dislike for their devious plan, "What's wrong baby?" He gave her those puppy dog eyes and rolled his lower lip down.

"Oh just shut up," She said to him. "I'm still not talking to you," She reminds him.
Rachel looks over to Roger and places her hand on his shoulder affectionately to make Don jealous. She asks him to take her home, it was getting late and the weather was beginning to grow colder and all she had to wear was her slinky blue jean mini-skirt filled with holes and a halter top three sizes too small for her breasts.

Some parents dislike the fashions their children pick up. The new trends and fads were always alien to the generation before them. Sometimes a generation gets lucky and they notice bell-bottoms back in style. Unfortunately, this time of year the trend was mini-skirts again. No father wants their daughter dashing outside looking like Jimmy's mother, the town whore.
Rachel was well prepared for this. She was relatively smart and knew that her parents would never approve of her current appearance. She always packed a more conservative set of clothes just in the event she saw one of her parent's cars parked in the drive way.

Roger looks over his shoulder and winks to her while flashing a million dollar grind, "Alright Rach." How could he deny her, she was one of the cheerleaders and for all Roger knew, he was going to score with her before prom.

Don punches Roger in the opposite shoulder, Don was far too jealous for his own good and Rachel knew it. Rachel thanks the driver and smirks deviously knowing that Don's blood was boiling. She turns away from the two men and looks at the speeding road near the tires.

Rachel's parents hadn't made it home yet. There was no need to change. She never liked sneaking around undressing in the blackberry bushes. Even though this was Brownwood she tried to be less ignorant than the rest of her town. At least there isn't a threat of thorns driving into her ass today.