"Jimmy!" he heard from behind him. Jim turned, knowing that whatever Carlston had in store for him would be anything but entertaining - at best, humiliating.
"What d'ya want." He didn't say it as a question, despite that fact that it was. The face of Carlston McIntyre loomed just above him, a fact that constantly pissed Jim off. Why couldn't he at least be taller than his enemy?
"Oh, nothing it's just... we thought we should give this back to you," he snickered, pulling a crumpled up piece of electro-paper out of his back pocket. Jim snatched it away and quickly unfolded it - what was this? And how bad would it be?
The hologram of the solar surfer he'd sketched earlier popped up before him. He was still pretty proud of it (the solar sail was the largest he'd ever done before, and yet the hidden compartment in the board would still keep it secure and as light as all his previous models. The shape of the board itself had better support for his legs, and hopefully, it would go farther before it needed to be charged again), but shame filled him as he felt the eyes of his schoolmates on the picture. He scrunched it up again and shoved it in his pocket as Carlston roared with laughter with his friends.
"There goes Jimmy the mechanic! Gawd, what a loser."
And then Jim turned around and punched him in the face.
Carlston staggered backwards into his posse. They caught him, and when he turned, his eyes burned with hate. "So that's how it's gonna be." He took a swing at Jim, which he managed to absorb with his shoulder instead of his face.
The next thing Jim knew, they had gotten a hold on each other and were flailing about wildly, trying to injure. The people who'd been standing around cheered, quickly joined by others. Jim took one, two, three hits to the stomach before nailing Carlston in the nose. Blood poured down his face as he tackled Jim to the ground.
Carlston pinned him down and gave him a few hard punches in the jaw before Jim pushed him off, and they rolled around in the mud, punching and kicking and ripping until Jim felt a few pairs of hands pull him away. He struggled against them, wanting nothing more than to hit Carlston straight to the Spaceport.
He heard vaguely someone shouting, "Enough! Boys, to the Lieutenant at once! I said, Enough!" the voice repeated as Jim kicked out at Carlston's shins. He struggled against the two instructors holding him, and Jim did the same.
They were herded into the Lieutenant's office, resisting the whole way there. The instructors threw Jim and Carlston into the seats and activated some restrainers, effectively making escape impossible. Lieutenant Furchman glared down at the two boys, his face red with anger. Carlston looked at his feet, going for rebellious but ended up looking ashamed. Jim held Furchman's glare, not even blinking. Eventually, it was Furchman who looked away.
"I've had it with you two! Everyday, I swear it, there's something! Hawkins this, McIntyre that - I've had it! Tell me, now, who was the first to throw a punch?"
Carlston smirked at Jim, but didn't say a word. Jim glared at him, knowing that he didn't even have to be a snitch for Furchman to get the truth. And again, Carlston had won. Jim heard his blood pounding in his skull even over his laboured breath.
Furchman walked slowly, neatly, around his desk. He paused, standing perfectly straight, inbetween the two boys. "I see. Carlston, you have a week's punishment. See Instructor Brent for your duties. You may go." The restrainers were lifted from Carlston's wrist, and he rubbed them absently. He wandered slowly to the door, trying to overhear what would become of Jim. Furchman waited until Carlston had accepted defeat and left before turning to Jim.
"And you, Hawkins. This is the last straw. I've never, in all my years as an instructor and a lieutenant, had such a misguided delinquent as you. Despite all of our school's best efforts to help you, to provide our best services to you, you scoff at the rules and regulations put in place for yourownsafety!You have never tried, once, to see the error in your ways. You've never once given a thought as to what might happen because of your actions! I just don't know what to make of you. Unless you start making some good decisions here, Hawkins, I don't see any future for you at all. So, step it up. Any more slip-ups will result in permanent suspension, do you understand?" Jim looked up at his, an amused smirk playing across his face. The Lieutenant sighed. "Face it, Hawkins, you're going nowhere. I just hope you don't drag others down with you. Get out. Now." The restrainers were lifted and Jim slid out the door, glaring at his boots as he did so.
Jim walked home, remembering his solar surfer had broken down the night before. He shoved his hands in his jacket pocket and, feeling the electro-paper with his drawing on it, pulled it out. Glaring at its smooth surface, he threw it as hard as he could into the ditch by the road. He jammed his hands back into his pockets again, ignoring the stares the lady walking down the road was giving him.
"The rules and regulations put in place for your own safety," Jim muttered in a barely recognizable mockery of Furchman's voice. "Huh. The rules never did much good for me now, did they?"
He scuffled through the door of the Benbow Inn and ran up to his room. He spotted his mom through the corner of his eye, but ignored her half-hearted wave to him. If the blood on his face hadn't tipped her off that something was wrong, she would find out soon enough from the school. They always notified her when something had happened, so much so that she and the secretary were good friends. Jim almost laughed - that maybe could've passed for a bright side to all this.
He slammed the door to his room, threw off his jacket, changed into a clean black shirt and scraped some of the mud off his pants. Looking at his reflection in his window, he wiped off some of the blood that was streaming from a cut above his eyebrow and his nose. Jim heard a soft knock on his door, and threw open the window hastily.
"Jim?" his mother called softly. Clearly, she didn't know yet, or she would've sounded furious. "Can I come in?"
When she got no answer, Sarah Hawkins pushed open the door and looked around. But Jim had already disappeared out the window, heading to his shed upon the cliff where he kept his solar surfer safely hidden. He decided to stop at the river along the way and clean the remaining blood off his face and hands, and then sprinted up the steep slope that led to his cliff - or so he called it. He'd never seen anyone else around, and he figured whoever'd built that rundown shack was long gone.
He repaired the glitch in his board in almost no time at all, wondering how the hell the Lieutenant could judge him like that when he barely even knew him. Feeling a sudden wave of anger come over him, he kicked the board into gear and took off. A memory came to him suddenly, one of his earliest ones... it was before his father had left, and back when Jim believed that anything was possible. His mother would read him stories, about exciting adventures, and faraway lands, and planets with riches beyond imagination... but as Jim cleared the edge of the cliff, the memory was gone, replaced by pure and untainted exhilaration. That was years ago; this was now.