Sheldon
East Texas-1990
He never knew how it came to this, and it was partly due to his inability to sense and understand social cues. Cornered after school at the edges of the school yard, no one was around to help him. He looked at his attackers, boys his own age but not as thin, not as clumsy, certainly not as smart.
"How smart do you think you are now, Sheldon?" One of them asked, the ring leader, the head bully. He was standing in front of him while two others were holding his arms behind his back.
"My intelligence still exceeds yours, and always will, since you don't even understand the most rudimentary equations-"
That was all it took. The ring leader scowled, perhaps feeling some of the inferiority that Sheldon was pointing out, but anger eclipsed that or was caused by it, and he punched Sheldon as hard as he could right in the stomach, and Sheldon doubled over in pain, unable to breathe.
Leonard
New Jersey-1992
Leonard understood social cues, and by 12 years old had learned to hide the bulk of his intelligence from the masses, but it didn't help. He was still small and bespeckled, he was still timid and easily made to be the target of the other boys.
It was a chase, a chase that he was destined to lose. They were bigger and stronger and faster, and all his calculations lead him to one conclusion. He would be caught and tortured in some way.
He ran down the halls of the school. Everyone had left, most everyone. The halls looked dusty and unused when no one was there. He could hear them gaining, heard their sneakers on the polished linoleum. He could feel his breath tearing in and out of his lungs, felt the dizziness starting, felt himself longing for his inhaler. He couldn't stop to use it now. He ran on.
He rounded one last corner and he could hear them, right behind him now, and then he felt the strong hand on the back of his jacket, and he was yanked backwards with such force that he fell back and landed on his butt.
"Thought you could outrun us?" one of his antagonizers asked, looking sadly amused. Leonard shook his head, no, he hadn't thought that. Hoped he could, perhaps, but he didn't think it at all.
He was dragged to a locker and they shoved him inside of it, he was small enough to fit.
He heard the raucous laughter and felt the walls of the locker closing in on him, and it wasn't helping his asthma one bit. He could see some light from the slats at the top of the locker, but he felt the darkness around him trying to suffocate him. He heard the footsteps receding and he banged on the inside of the locker, hoping it would just pop open. No such luck. So he banged on the door of the locker and starting yelling and screaming for help. There had to be some late working teacher or a janitor still within ear shot.
Howard
Pasadena, California-1993
Howard sat on the steps of the school, waiting for his mother. His father had recently left them, and since then Mrs. Wollowitz hadn't been the greatest at remembering to pick up her son. Food and cheap wine and soap operas were killing her pain, and Howard understood that to some extent, although his father's absence had more to do with him in his mind, more to do with him than his mother. He wasn't what his father wanted or expected, he wasn't a jock, he wasn't sturdy, he was barely healthy. He was skinny and prone to every cold and infection that made its way to southern California. Did his fierce and burning intelligence make up for this? Not in his father's mind, apparently.
But there were still other things to worry about besides his father's absence. He knew this and remembered to worry about them now as he saw one of his prime antagonists making his way toward him.
"Hey, guys, what's up?" Howard said, seeing that there were others appearing from behind bushes and stairwells. He stood up, backing away, but steadily chattering, pretending that he was cool, that maybe that would fool them. Howard viewed the other kids at his school as dim witted, their minds slow to make connections. But fooling them in this way didn't work, and in some way he also understood that they could only feel like a part of the group by excluding other people, namely him. He was scrawny, he was weak, he was hopelessly out of style, he was intelligent in a way that was nerdy at best and ridiculous at worst. So he gave up his chatter and turned and ran, knowing that it wouldn't take long for them to catch him and descend, like a pack of wolves devouring a lamb.