So I'm not supposed to mention his lip at all?
"Hey, shitlip! Didn't you hear me?"
Eli gripped the straps of his backpack tighter, hunching his shoulders higher, as if with enough force he could simply slip into his oversized sweater like it was the protective shell of a turtle. If only he was like one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he thought briefly; if he were like Raphael, he could easily whip around and deliver a solid kick to the face of one of these assholes.
Instead, he tensed up as he found himself shoved against the lockers. He turned back around and instinctively curled his arms up in a protective stance, eyes darting wildly to see if maybe just one guy in the locker room might come to his aid. But it was useless. Coach McGee had already left to get ready for the next gym period, and any other stragglers were turning their heads and looking away, not wanting to get involved and bring the attention of Kyler and his crew upon themselves; or maybe Eli simply wasn't worth protecting.
Brucks stepped up to be the one manhandling him this time. He wrenched Eli's arms away from his skinny frame like he offered no resistance at all, reminding Eli just how weak and pathetic his futile attempts at guarding himself actually were. Brucks then slammed his open palm against the locker by his victim's head, making him flinch for good measure, affirming to everyone that he was the one in control, he was the one with the power, and he could hurt Eli anytime he wanted.
Kyler and the other boys behind Brucks laughed when he cracked an ugly grin and grabbed Eli by his chin. "Dude," chuckled the bigger teenager, "didn't your rabbi know that when he circumcised you he was supposed to cut your dick, not your face!" Their uproarious, mocking chortles rang in Eli's ears, and he could feel all of their contemptuous eyes glaring at the scar on his upper lip. He tried shrinking away again, but Brucks maintained his hold firmly, forcing Eli to keep looking at their voyeuristic gazes.
"I bet the only girl who's kissed this ugly mug is his mom!" Brucks pressed further, squeezing his hold on Eli's face until it forced his lips to purse.
Kyler laughed the hardest at that. "What chick would want a guy who gives blowjobs to weed wackers?" Why did Kyler and his gang have to be like this, Eli hopelessly wondered? Kyler could have any girl in school he wanted, he was the perfect catch: athletic, confident, with an attractive face that had no hideous blemish disfiguring it to boot. Why did he have to torture Eli with the reminder that he had none of these qualities? Why did he have to keep bringing it to Eli's attention that he was a loser, a freak, a weirdo who would never get a girlfriend because of that ugly scar on his lip?
"Holy shit, is he gonna cry?" guffawed Brucks, bringing Eli back to the present situation and with it the realization that his eyes had against his better inclination grown red and puffy, and were struggling not to let loose the wet tears hiding behind his rapidly blinking lids. Why was he so weak? This was only going to make it worse.
The only thing that saved him from further ridicule was the sudden ringing of the bell over the intercom. Kyler scooped up his backpack from the floor and called out to his friend, "Yo, drop the nerd for now, let's get to Bio. You know what the coach said would happen if you're tardy to another class." Listening to his pack leader, Brucks gave a last patronizing pat to Eli's cheek before backing off, and the group left the locker room with one final laugh at his expense; just like that, it was over as quickly as it had begun.
Allowing himself a loud sniff, Eli wiped his nose on the back of his arm. A blur from the corner of his vision startled him, and he practically tripped over his shoes in preparation to dart towards the showers in case Brucks had decided it was worth possibly being suspended from a wrestling match to pick on him some more. But instead of Bruck's bulk, this newcomer shuffling up to his side was all bony elbows and knees. Not an enemy, but a friend.
Demetri looked down at his companion with resolved pity and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Well, there were about a dozen ways that could've gone much worse," he sighed in his usual defeatist tone. "But at least you listened to my advice and didn't try talking them out of it this time. I told you, that only incites them more." Eli had almost wanted to laugh at how Demetri, of all people, had given him advice about not mouthing off to someone. "If you can't avoid them, better just to let them project their misplaced hostility and get it over with."
Sniffing hard again, Eli could only meekly reply, "Y-Yeah…."
Seeing how shaken his friend had become by the encounter, how he was clearly trying and beginning to fail to hold his tears back, Demetri made an attempt at reassuring him. "Don't let those troglodytes get to you. C'mon, that knuckle-dragger didn't even know the difference between a rabbi and a mohel, are you really going to take what he says to heart like he's spouting some kind of real wisdom?"
A spark of fury lit up inside Eli, so fast it caught him by surprise. Demetri had been there the whole time, heard the whole thing go down, and hadn't lifted a finger to help him. He didn't intervene, didn't run to get help, nothing. But just as quickly as that spark ignited, Eli dampened it, snuffing it back out with the understanding that there was nothing Demetri could have done. If he had spoken up, Kyler and his crew would have simply included him as an acceptable target of their bullying, just as they had in the past. And teachers were useless, even if Demetri had grabbed one it wouldn't have made any difference.
Nothing made a difference, nothing would make them stop hurting him.
The second bell rang, and more students began scuttling into the locker room to get ready for the next gym class. "Late for Physics," said Demetri cynically with a shake of his head. "Well, I gotta get going, otherwise I'm gonna ruin my academic career." He gave Eli a sad smile and asked before leaving, "Wanna meet after school and head over to the mall? I'm feeling up for some comic books and Chinese food."
Eli tried to return the smile, but only managed a half, well, something instead; the only expression he could wear on his face at the moment was complete wretchedness. "Y-Yeah," he stuttered softly again. "Sounds good…." It did truly sound good, and Eli knew he would feel better once he got some orange chicken into him and could pick up the latest issue of Suicide Squad. But that knowledge did nothing to help him recover at the moment, and as soon as Demetri left, Eli became alert to the looks the other guys in the locker room were giving him. And he couldn't take being gawked at anymore.
Screw Biology class, he thought to himself as he hid his upper lip behind his hand and raced passed the other boys as quickly as his feet would scuffle towards the nearest bathroom stall. As soon as he sat on the toilet, the tears broke from their weak dam and spilled down his face unhindered. His chin trembled, and Eli tried his hardest to at least control how loudly his sobs escaped from him.
If you want to be something other than a nerd with a scar on his lip, then you gotta flip the script
The hour couldn't pass fast enough. Eli felt he must have glanced towards the clock a hundred times, waiting. Each minute seemed like forever, and he had run out of patience. His foot wouldn't stop twitching. He looked at the clock on his bed stand yet again. Ten more minutes. No doubt it would be the longest ten minutes of his entire life. Worse even than those ten minutes of complete silence when he'd screwed up reading from the Torah during his Bar Mitzvah.
With a sigh, he picked up the remote and exited out of the episode of Star Trek he had only half-heartedly been watching on Netflix and tried to find another episode that might hold his attention better. No good. His mind just wasn't into it right now. He was so absorbed in the mission at hand that even DS9 couldn't hold his interest.
Letting out a grunt of frustration, he picked up his phone and opened the Instagram app. Scrolling down, he passed by the video Aisha posted of some new move she and Miguel had practiced at the dojo, and he didn't look at the most recent photo that Demetri took of his recently-acquired DVD collection of Doctor Who in HD. Eli didn't have time for any of that right now. He couldn't even spare a thought about how sad it was that it took only a few seconds to get through all the new content on his feed, since he was following so few people.
He wasn't interested in any of that. He just needed a reminder why he was doing what he was doing. So he kept scrolling until he found what he was looking for.
The picture had been completely ordinary and unassuming. Just a photo of Eli smiling at the beach, taken simply because it was a nice memory he wanted to share. One would think he had committed some unspeakable crime from the way the other kids had piled on him. All he'd done was smile….
Nice smile, fugly
That had been the first comment.
lol did u make out with a razor blade or wut
That was the next one. And they kept going.
What's on your lip, totally gross barf DX
kill yourself uggo
Whoa you got herpes?
I'll pay $10 to the first chick who posts a pic kissing that lmao
Ain't nobody kissing that mouth
Cover that up next time bruh
sorry you must be this hot to be at the beach, loser
freak
Lip.
Eli took a deep, calming breath as an even deeper frown settled over his features. He scrolled through even more comments. They weren't confined to that one picture, but on others he had posted as well, some that weren't even selfies. They just kept going. They had been so mean, and they just wouldn't stop. He'd almost deleted his Instagram account multiple times over it. Now he was glad he hadn't. He'd needed this last reminder. Sensei Lawrence had been right….
A knock on his door almost made him jump. "What?!" he asked, a little too sharply. God his nerves were shot to pieces.
"Eli?" came his mother's voice from behind the door. He could hear it so clearly in her tone, that concern, that desire on her part to have the sole power to make everything better for him. She couldn't though. Sometimes she even made things worse. She never meant to, but she did, like the time she called the school and had them make an announcement on his behalf to stop the bullying. "Eli, I just wanted to be sure you didn't want any dinner. I'm about to put away the leftovers."
"I told you, I'm not hungry!" he snapped in return. He knew that hostility was only going to ring his parents' alarm bells even louder. Now they were only going to try harder to pry into what he was doing. He'd caught their looks of worry when he'd stormed into the house, brushing past them in the kitchen, clutching the Wal-Mart bag in his hand like it was a life-preserver, and telling them he didn't want the hot plate of brisket and potatoes they'd laid out for him at the table. He was going to his room, he'd said, and he wanted to be left alone.
In the past, that had always signified that he was about to have a breakdown over getting bullied, that he was going to bury his face in his pillow and cry. That's probably what his mother thought he was doing now. Crying like the complete wuss he'd been his whole life. Crying over how people who didn't even know him had decided to hurt him.
Not this time.
Eli looked down at his phone again, gripping the sides of it tight with his stained fingers. His eyes swept over the fifty-three hateful comments under the beach picture again, steeling his resolve. Sensei Lawrence's insults at the dojo had been just as callous as those left by the other students from his school, but he had been right about one thing: nobody in the real world was ever going to stop picking on him just because he begged them to, nobody was ever going to stop commenting on his lip until he gave them something else to talk about.
The alarm he'd set on his phone vibrated, alerting him that he had successfully made it through the hour. Eli couldn't leap off his bed and rush to his bathroom fast enough. He leaned over the tub and wrenched on the faucet, and as soon as the shower head started raining down cold water, he dunked his head under it. Hands flew up to rinse as quickly as he was capable. His eyes watched the clear water at the bottom of the tub turn azure, and he briefly wondered if it would stain, his mother would be mad about that if it did.
No matter. That wasn't what was important right now.
Once he was satisfied at the sight of the water clearing up again, he turned off the shower and pried the towel off the nearby rack. He dried his hair until it was just a little damp. As he tossed the towel aside, Eli reached his hands out and grabbed the bottle of freeze spray and his comb, almost knocking off the container of Manic Panic from the sink in the process.
He'd watched the videos at least a dozen times that day. He knew what to do. Dropping his head down, his fingers worked, combing out the middle of his hair on his head. The spray hissed out of the bottle. He used so much in his frenzy that he started to cough. Why was he so insistent at getting this done as soon as humanly possible, he couldn't be sure. Maybe he was still afraid that his resolve would melt, that he was too weak to go through with this.
He needn't have feared that, however. Remembering Sensei Lawrence's words, rereading those comments, that warmed the fury igniting in his chest, guiding his movements until he set the comb and spray back on the sink.
Eli raised his head and his eyes penetrated the reflection staring back at him in the mirror. This familiar stranger. Where just a few seconds prior his movements had been like lightning, now his hand raised as slow as an iceberg to reach up and lightly touch the stiff hair raised high on his head, as if to make sure that it was actually his, whether this reflection was really him. Sure enough, it was he, the one sporting that electric blue fanning mohawk. That was him. The new him. The real him. When people saw him coming, they would see that hair before they ever noticed the scar on his upper lip.
They would never see meek little Lip.
A smirk curled at the corner of Hawk's mouth.
Nobody was ever going to hurt him again.
