When you analyze it as objectively as you can, is it really necessary? Is it?

A Different Lens: Understanding William

By

Terrence Orson

COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER: The author owns none of the characters. The idea is based on true events we all know, but it has a different perspective. Hence, the title. Some elements of established canon have been discarded to suit the author's purpose.

CHAPTER ONE

Know your enemy (credit goes to Waterfront3000). Do you?

He floated above his chair in the back of the seventh grade class. His desk, which stood in the corner on the side of the wall opposite the windows, was slightly misaligned from his row and column. From this point in Miss Simian's class, William Voles, an eyeball with a green pupil and white wings protruding from his sides—a snitch like the the one in the Harry Potter movies, had the best view of all his classmates. He watched them socialize and do their classwork. He sat away from everyone, knowing why.

None of them was his friend. He was a silent student if you didn't count the sound of his wings flapping. Even then, though, you could get so used to it that you might not even register it. Other than that, even a still object made more noise than he. It was because he had no mouth. The only voice that came from his was that in his mind. You could only hear him if he whispered in your ear. His peers found his silence, which meant to them that a lot was on his mind, combined with his appearance, a wide-open eyeball, creepy, like Hans Strudel in those Toaster Strudel commercials. It's not because he's German, nor because he wears Lederhosen. I couldn't care less about the character's nationality or traditional attire. It's because of the strange circumstances occurring in the commercials, combined with Hans' disturbing expression: a very wide-eyed grin. I mean, if a stranger came up to me out of nowhere making that kind of look and wouldn't change it, I'd feel uncomfortable letting him/her near my kids that I don't even have yet.

He was like a security camera in the classroom, watching your every move. In fact, he did. He observed everyone in the class.

Many of them disliked him. William was a snitch, after all. His species' prime function was etiquette awareness for any place to which they went. He knew the rules of the classroom, and the reason he watched everyone was to make sure that they stuck to them like cement. William only did what he did because it was what he knew. He had been raised since birth to observe—he was an eyeball—and report if necessary. Whenever someone misbehaved, he would fly above everyone to Miss Simian's desk and whisper the offense into her ear. Then, she would get up, go to the person's desk unless she felt like staying at her desk, and reprimand them in front of everyone. It was either humiliating for the rule breaker, or he would just shrug it off and think, Whatever, yet still have nasty thoughts about William. They all knew it was he who put them in the spotlight.

Behind William was a white poster taped from the back to the top side of the bulletin board. The sentence written on it summed up William's creed. In big black all capital letters:

DO THE CRIME, DO THE TIME.

To the right side of it—from the perspective of someone facing it—was a more colorful poster with two pictures. On top was a face acting silly in the midst of a sea of laughing yellow faces. On the bottom, that same face seemed forlorn in a purple background of emptiness and solitude. Each image had a red caption at the bottom.

Goof off, and the class laughs with you…

…but you stay after school alone.

To the left of the center poster was one with sky blue text in a wacky font on a yellow background.

Self-control is knowing you can, but deciding you won't.

Beneath those was the list of class rules, which was also written on a poster hanging from the whiteboard at the front. In parentheses, there was a reminder at the bottom of each poster:

(These rules aren't suggestions. They are enforced.)

William spent the class period in the back of the room in front the class rules poster and the maxim poster, detached from everyone. No one looked his way. No one…except Darwin Watterson.

Darwin, a ten-year-old goldfish that had grown legs, sat in the second row in the column nearest the ceiling-high windows. His brother, formerly owner, a blue twelve-year-old cat named Gumball who usually sat next to him, wasn't here today because he had food poisoning. He thought it had come from the chili he had yesterday. His father had cooked it, and only Gumball had eaten it.

Darwin saw Dad making the chili as he came home off the bus, but Gumball, who'd gotten detention for talking in class, didn't. Gumball came home some time later, and got some for a snack.

"Hey, Gumball," said Darwin, waving and walking into the dining room.

"Hey, Darwin," Gumball replied with a full mouth, waving back.

Darwin glanced at the dish in front of his brother, and in an instant, worry swept over him. Sweat beads started forming on his head. "Uh, what are you eating?"

"Chili," Gumball answered.

"Dude, Dad made that!"

Gumball held the spoon in his gaping mouth as he let his brother's words sink in. He felt the heat of the chili condense on the roof of his mouth, and it suddenly felt sickening. He tightened his stomach. Keeping his mouth agape, he put the spoon back into the bowl, put the bowl in the sink, then lied face up on the couch. He clutched his belly, which he expected to start hurting soon. When it didn't, he went back to business as usual: playing video games with Darwin until his mother came home, chewed him out, and made him complete his homework.

When Gumball woke up this morning, he started throwing up on the floor by his bed. Darwin went to school with only his little sister, a four-year-old pink bunny named Anais. Going to school without Gumball was something he had never done before. He was used to having his brother with him there, and he usually tagged alongside him, making an unspoken promise to stay right by his side.

Now that Gumball was absent, Darwin sat in class silent, bored. But that meant that he didn't have any reason to get in trouble with his brother.

Gumball had behavioral issues at school, often committing acts that ticked off his peers and the school staff. Darwin had been spared the two hours of tedium in detention yesterday by having gone to the bathroom at just the right time. Now, he imagined he was feeling the same as Gumball had yesterday as he reclined in his chair, his green shoe clad feet sticking out from under the desk. The only difference he could perceive between now and detention was that some other students in the class were talking in the background, which they were permitted to quietly do once their assignment was complete, which was so in Darwin's case.

He wasn't silent because he had to be; it was because he had no one to talk to. Some of his classmates were his friends, but they were more familiar with Gumball than with him. Plus, they all had their own circles of friends, but Gumball and Darwin were somewhat drifters.

With a few minutes before the class change bell, Darwin turned his head just enough so that he could see William. Soon, William noticed him and looked back. It seemed like there was some connection forged between the two. Suddenly, Darwin didn't just see William as a creepy looking eye in the sky; he saw a normal student.

William had no friends, but that didn't mean he wanted it that way. He had even extended friendship to Gumball and Darwin earlier in the year, but because of his lack of a mouth, they couldn't understand. He planned on trying again, even though Darwin had whacked him through the window with a tennis racket because he had attacked them using his psionic eye for supposedly rubbing their friendship in his face. He soon saw this act as a misunderstanding, too, after having had time to recover. This time, he would try to communicate in a way that could be understood. All he had to do was wait for class to end.

Looking at William, Darwin regretted what he had done to him. It was assault—ironic since Darwin was a self-proclaimed paci-fish. In fact, he was fortunate that William hadn't told Principal Brown on him. Darwin had written an apology to William, but he had never heard back from him. He feared he and Gumball were unforgiven. Of course, he couldn't understand if he was told face-to-face. He could only hope.