Eskimo:
Michigan
By Mary C. Paul

"I can't talk to you people, and I'm certainly
not going to a shrink!" That was the one thing he
remembered most vividly about that argument. His
mother suggested he go to a psychiatrist. His father
shook his head and laughed the whole time,
demonstrating his inability to take anything his
mother said seriously. He didn't think his son needed
to see a shrink, but his son's mother did not believe
he was fine at all. He just had to go along with it
until J.D. predictably showed his immense disapproval
and ended the entire argument for them. He hated
being in the middle, so did his father, but his
father hated it because he thought everything was
fine. J.D. hated it because he knew everything was
far from being fine. He knew how screwed up things
were, but he refused to let anyone else notice, or
worse yet, intervene.
Now he was...Where was he now anyway? He didn't
even know where he was. He couldn't remember the
state, and he couldn't think where he was sitting
thinking about all this nonsense. Well, the state was
a mystery, but he figured out where he was now. He
was in the boiler room. It was the only place that he
was ever left alone. No one came down there. No
teachers, no teenagers. The perfect hiding place was
all his. The best source of solitude he could hope to
find. Home away from home. Not that he had a home.
His father was booked solid years in advance. After
everywhere they had already been, they still had
Texas, Kansas, Ohio, and California. At least, that
was as far ahead as he could remember. There were
plenty others after, and maybe even a few in between
he had forgotten. Hell, there were ones he had been
to he had already forgotten. Then, there were ones he
couldn't forget, like Pennsylvania, Nevada, and
others too numerous to mention, even in thought. The
ones he remembered most vividly were the ones he
wished most he could forget.
That loud, obnoxious bell rang and even pierced
the bowels of this cavernous boiler room. Classes
were changing. He couldn't remember which classes he
was cutting either. He knew he was cutting to smoke,
but smoking turned into thinking, and thinking turned
into sleeping, and sleeping--sleeping turned into
nightmares.


"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
That was a stupid question. It looked like she
was cleaning blood off her hands in the school
drinking fountain. "Jesus!"
She was unfazed by the blood. As far as she was
concerned, it came right off with no problems. "Don't
worry. It's not mine." Her voice was soft and velvety
with a gentle femininity to it that did not seem to
belong to her. Her voice was like a disguise. A wolf
in sheep's clothing, if you wanted to be cliché. It
was so perfect. Cool, calm, calculated.
He smiled a baffled smile at her. "Whose is
it?"
She stopped washing her hands, and gazed up at
him with those incredible light blue-green eyes. She
smiled at him as if that were his stupidest question
yet, and let out a mildly amused chuckle. She looked
at him like he should have known. "Yours."


Wake up, J.D. Why was he thinking about her?
Why was he dreaming about her? She was states ago!
Maybe it was because she started this. If it weren't
for her, he wouldn't be drifting back and forth
constantly crossing the boundaries of insanity and
then suddenly crossing back. When he first arrived
somewhere, he'd go to school like any normal person,
dressed like one of the assholes with some inane
desire to be accepted into the new society of his new
surroundings. It never happened. It always failed,
and he would immediately put an end to the nice guy
act. He'd break out the bike, the trench, the
earring--the works.
He'd become an entirely different person
without warning. He then got more attention than he
ever received trying to blend in, but it was always
from assholes, or the reigning bitches of the school.
Every now and then, he'd be randomly approached by
some beautiful young girl who thought he was dark and
broodingly sexy like this. Of course, none of them
ever approached him before he broke out the gear that
made him look like a rebel. He'd have a brief fling
every once in a while, but he never looked for it.
None of them would ever be her. None of them really
gave a shit either. When he told them he was leaving,
they'd shrug it off, and before he was even packed,
they'd be all cozy with someone else. It never
failed! Everywhere he went, the same bullshit.
Nothing was ever different except for his locker
combination.
He'd get worried every now and then, because
he'd find himself going further over the edge, and
crossing the line of insanity more and more often. He
knew if he crossed it enough times, or ever went too
far, the line would disappear forever. He didn't
worry so much about it when he was crossing the line.
It was when his mother started worrying about him
that he made a conscious effort to step back from the
brink of losing his mind. Then, they'd move, and the
cycle would start all over again. He had dozens of
chances to reinvent himself, and he always wound up
on the same two-step program. Of course, there was
more to his insanity than just acting insane. There
was shit from the past that he tried not to drudge
up, but that was too much and too personal.
Where was he again? Oh, yeah. Boiler room. The
bell rang. He looked at his watch, and it turned out
he slept through the remainder of his classes. It was
time to go home. He picked himself up off the floor,
climbed the steps, and entered the halls. They were
crowded with petty teenagers consumed by petty
bullshit. The second he walked out of the boiler
room, they started staring. Strength. He needed to be
strong. He ignored them all. He walked down the
hallway with a cool, indifferent air about him, and a
deliberate glare in his eyes that drove fear into the
minds of everyone he passed, but some of them just
didn't respond well to fear. They liked to laugh it
in the face, and if they were going to laugh at J.D.
in his face, they had better have been prepared to
reap the consequences.
All around him were the whispers of just such
people. People begging to be screwed with to end
their taunts once and for all. He could hear some of
them practically scream it in his face. "Fuckin'
faggot." "Who the fuck does he think he is!" "Let's
kick his ass." Like he always said, nothing changed.
All those states and all those schools, and they
couldn't even come up with anything different or any
new lame-ass thing to say. He remembered he brought
his gun--more gear he'd stop bringing, then start
bringing again.
If they were so anxious to kick his ass, why
didn't they try it. Nine times out of ten, the
assholes were all talk, but there was that one that
always came along that would genuinely want to start
shit and wind up running away after pissing his
pants. He got off on it, an incredibly inflated sense
of self-esteem and power. Very intense. Moving around
a lot, getting left back because he was always
cutting--not that he wasn't smart, because he was
brilliant, a legend in his own mind--and living life
alone. All those problems went away when he got high
on this feeling. Otherwise, he was just a faceless
person in a crowd full of faces. The jocks, the prom
queens, the cliques, the geeks, the outcasts, and the
cool kids. He wasn't a part of any one of those
groups and he wouldn't want to be. If he wasn't J.D.,
who was he? He was a lost, scared teenager alone,
isolated and locked out in the cold to die. But not
now. Now he was a powerful god against the world, and
the world was losing. They were all pitiful from the
height of this power trip he was on, and damn, that
strength felt good.
He was approaching the glass doors out of the
school, when one of the dickheads decided to step
forward as asshole of the day and block his exit. He
raised a single eyebrow at this guy's blatant display
of arrogance. He obviously had no respect for a
psycho when he saw one. That was fine by J.D. though.
He would teach him respect.
"Are you gonna move, or you want me to move
ya?" J.D. gave the impression that he didn't give a
shit, but this intimidation game was going over well
with Mr. Captain of the football team.
"Do you have any idea who I am, faggot?"
"An asshole would be my first guess. Are you
gonna move?" Very calm, cold, calculated. As usual.
In this situation, J.D. could scare the shit out of
anyone with brains. Brains being the operative word
since it was never applicable to the one out of every
ten that was stupid enough to pull stunts like this.
"Nah, I'm gonna stay right here. I wanna see
you move me."
J.D. raised an eyebrow and let out one of his
deepest, darkest laughs. "Well, if you insist." J.D.
reached around this guy's arm, grabbed the door
handle and yanked the door open as hard as he could,
using every muscle in his body. The dickhead ducked
and fell through it as it smashed against his back
and shattered in the way that safety glass breaks
into thousands of tiny pieces. Fragments scratched
his face, and his head, and even got into his eye as
the frame of the door swept his feet out from under
him, knocking him back through the breaking glass. It
came crumbling down on top of him with the whole
school watching from behind J.D., who was standing
perfectly still, watching in satisfaction with
unwavering pride that he had taken down one of the
many tyrants in the school. Blood was dripping down
his face, and he was whining and weeping like a
pathetically helpless baby. "Dreadful etiquette, I
apologize." J.D. smirked down at him just as he
stepped over him and through the now open door,
leaving as though he had no problem, no
confrontation, only gratification that is so potent
it could only have come from shoving an asshole in
his place.
He walked the entire distance home. His bike
was in the shop. Some asshole, whose identity
remained unknown had run him off the road a few days
ago, but that was fine by J.D., because he would be
prepared next time someone screwed with his bike. He
had been prepared other times in other states and it
always turned the tables in his favor. He was
practically high on the feeling, like he was
immortal, and couldn't be touched.
He was crossing a major highway in the middle
of the street, without a streetlight, without a stop
sign, cars flying by at light speed, but only one
came close to hitting him. The man stopped his car
inches from hitting J.D., but J.D. just stood there
and glared at the driver like it were his fault. He
casually strolled up to the driver's side window,
leaned down and spoke with that raspy voice in a
perfectly rational-sounding tone. "Here's how it
works. I walk. You stop. Got it?"
The man was dressed in business attire, nearly
scared shitless. "Yes."
"Good." J.D. reached inside the car, and the
man moved back in his seat, terrified that J.D. would
try to rob him or hurt him. Instead, J.D. pushed the
cigarette lighter in and withdrew his arm from the
inside of the car to pull out a Marlboro and place it
loosely hanging from his lips. Cars zipped around
them honking with tires screeching against the
asphalt. J.D. reached back inside, withdrew the
cigarette lighter and lit his cigarette without
saying a word. He took a deep puff off the cigarette
and released it out his nostrils like a dragon
breathing fire and smoke. He looked at the man in the
car, who was obviously uncomfortable and feared for
his safety.
"You can go now." With those words, the tires
screeched as they struggled to take off at record
speed, but before the car even moved an inch, J.D.
tossed the cigarette lighter back inside the window,
landing squarely in the man's lap. By that point, the
car had already started going, and the man lost
control of the vehicle. He swerved right into the
high curb off the highway, and a car coming up the
road in the right-hand lane smacked right into him.
By time that happened, J.D. had already turned
his back and continued crossing to the other side. He
heard the accident piling up behind him, but he'd
already experienced enough excitement, and witnessed
enough handiwork for one day, so he kept going,
unaffected by the ruckus in the background. He wanted
to get home. No doubt there hadn't been some
excitement at home too, excitement which centered
around how his day had been at school.
He walked in the house to see his mother
watching television. She was engrossed in the news,
some special report about a major accident on some
major highway, and they were looking for a suspect,
and all that shit. Didn't interest J.D. in the least.
Why should it? He already knew who caused it. It was
that asshole in the car who nearly killed him. He
should have laid down in the road, let it look like
an accident, and he could have scared the shit out of
the driver with charges of vehicular manslaughter.
His mother felt sorry for the poor bastard though.
She was talking to herself about it, for Christ's
sake!
"Oh, isn't that awful."
"Not really, Ma. I've seen worse."
She jumped slightly. She hadn't heard him come
in, but the look on her face indicated she had been
anticipating his arrival for one of her infamous
talks. Then, she started it without even saying
hello. "What is wrong with you, Jason!"
Ah, the school called. Expulsion. Suspension.
He didn't care which. He had no intentions of going
back anyway. This didn't matter to him. In fact, he
thought of it as a gift, a blessing, but his mother
saw things differently. She desperately wanted him to
be normal, to be happy. She had one of her worried
expressions on her face. He started thinking that
maybe he should tone it down for a while. He couldn't
stand to see her like this. He was going to have to
calm down. For now. At least until they moved on to
Texas.