Ferndale Middle School was within walking distance of their apartment so Terrence thankfully didn't have to take the bus (although next year he would, when he entered high school). But the walk was bad enough. He was known to have a volatile temper, of course, so the other boys didn't get in his face so much as yell at him from across the street, always ready to scatter and run if the other decided to give chase. Unfortunately all of Terrence's "friends" (the quotes serving to illustrate that said boys were not really his friends so much as co-bullies and therefore not often associated with outside of school hours) lived on the other side of town and he didn't see any of them before reaching school, forcing him to walk alone while cowardly seventh- and eighth-graders taunted him from afar. Terrence didn't care that they didn't like him, he just wondered why they couldn't find someone else to pick on so early in the morning. Upon reaching school he had maybe ten minutes of clowning around with his "friends" before first period, where the real hell started.
First period was English, which he never did well in. The books they were assigned to read were boring, often confusing, and took too long to read so he didn't bother. He hadn't in fact really sat down and read a book all the way through since fifth grade. Writing essays was marginally better because he was always able to make up something to write about based on the discussions in class – Mr. Fredrikson knew very well that Terrence wasn't reading the assignments but he couldn't argue with the boy's creativity.
By now the class was a little more than halfway through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, although of course Terrence hadn't touched it. Today he paid for not doing the reading assignments when Mr. Fredrikson called on Terrence to describe the relationship between Huck and Jim, and Terrence came up empty, which got him laughed at. The start of another hellish day.
Second period was Chemistry, with Mrs. White. Terrence wasn't bad at Chemistry as long as he had a competent lab partner to walk him though the experiments but he bit the big one when it came to the bookwork. He looked forward to the lab days. Today was bookwork. Strike two.
Third period was the joy known as Spanish. Terrence was lousy at it. He frequently got his words mixed up and often said things that struck the class as funny, and on one occasion he had mispronounced something on accident but Senora Masters had assumed he meant it on purpose and reported him to the Vice Principal. She'd had a beef with him ever since, and never cut him any slack. Today she made him read a small passage from the textbook aloud, and it took almost fifteen minutes because she wouldn't let him stop until he had done it right. The rest of the class enjoyed this entertainment immensely.
Next was Lunch, during which Terrence busied himself hunting down and punishing as many of his Spanish classmates as possible. He paid for this time-consuming project by not getting anything to eat. It was at least a little worth it.
On to Geometry. Personable, petite, blonde, vegetarian Ms. Yeates was easily Terrence's favorite teacher, merely because she was always nice to him, even when he hadn't done the homework or couldn't answer a question in class. If he earned a low score on a test she merely gave him the low score and no accompanying lecture or disapproving look. He wished all his teachers were like her. Unfortunately the subject matter was pretty much completely over his head. Today he spent the majority of the class making threatening gestures at frecklefaced Jimmy Taylor, who retaliated by pelting him with the multicolored rubber bands they used on pegboards to make geometric shapes. He would have been glad when class was over if he didn't have History next.
Terrence absolutely loathed History with a passion. Not so much because it was boring and he couldn't fake his way through the homework as easily as he could in English, but because of Mr. George. Mr. George was a jowly, balding, bespectacled, perpetually scowling man with hair coming out his ears. None of that mattered so much as the fact that he didn't seem to like children at all, and he definitely didn't like Terrence. Mr. George was one of those grownups who believed that there are no good or bad children, just a bunch of kids who have gone rotten and all the rest, who could do the same at any time. Terrence was of course already deeply rotten as far as Mr. George was concerned. He never called on Terrence in class because he didn't believe in "wasting my valuable time on people who don't have a brain in their head" which actually served Terrence quite well, but he more than made up for this by frequently keeping Terrence after class to remind him what a failure he was. Some people would call this "tough love" but Terrence just called it - well, a number of other words he had learned on late-night television that he shouldn't have been watching in the first place.
Thank goodness he was able to end his day in Gym, where he didn't have to worry about books or whiteboards or equations. Unfortunately they were doing Swimming this semester, which wasn't as physical as he would have liked, but it was better than nothing. Still, the knowledge that as soon as he got home today his Mom would swing by to take him to pick up his new glasses ruined any fun he would normally have had dunking the sissy kids and at last he gave it up and snuck out of the pool early, risking detention (on purpose of course). But he wasn't caught, and, after changing in the locker room, walked home.
He'd just opened the refrigerator to find something to replace his missed lunch when the phone rang. It was Mom.
"Sweetie," she said after greeting him, "I'm sorry but Mr. Samir needs me to stay late tonight – it's very important. You don't need me to come with you to the doctor's, the glasses are all paid for and…well, I'm sure they remember you."
Terrence pulled a face, which of course accomplished nothing as Mom wasn't anywhere where she could actually witness it. "Mooommm," he whined.
"I don't want to hear it," Mom interrupted swiftly, her voice laced with fatigue. "You are to go on down to the doctor's – you remember where it is, past the library – and pick up those glasses. You can take your skateboard, but wear your helmet and pads, okay?" Ah, the famous helmet and pads. Terrence thought he may have stuffed them under his bed as soon as he got them for his last birthday, he couldn't remember anymore. Obviously Mom knew he wasn't going to wear them but at least no one could say she didn't ask him to.
"…Terrence?" prompted Mom as her son fell into a petulant silence.
"Yeah, fine," was the mumbled reply.
"Tell Mac I'll be home a little later than normal and I'll pick something up for dinner, okay? No snacking, either of you."
Terrence rolled his eyes. "Yeah, fine," he repeated, thinking more of how his own mother expected him to go hungry than of telling Mac, who was still at Foster's, anything.
"See you later honey."
"'Bye."
Scowling, Terrence hung up the phone, and, realizing he still had the fridge open, shut the door. There wasn't much in there by way of leftovers anyways. Hoarded away in his nightstand drawer was a bag of miniature chocolate bars though so he grabbed the whole thing and stuffed it into his backpack after dumping its scholastic contents in the middle of his room. Then he fetched his skateboard and left the apartment, locking the front door behind him. He had the foresight to find solace in the fact that his going to the optometrist alone meant there was no chance of Mac tagging along and making fun of his new glasses the first second he put them on. But that was the only positive thing about the experience Terrence could come up with.
Although he skated about halfway to the doctor's Terrence wound up tucking his skateboard under one arm and walking very slowly the rest of the way. He wasn't exactly in a rush to get there. The whole way he seethed in silence about how unfair the whole thing was. Glasses. This was the end of everything. Whoever heard of a dumb kid with glasses? Everyone knew only the smart kids wore glasses. Those smegheads at school were certain to just love this, not to mention Mac and his asinine blue imaginary friend. It was time to start stockpiling more food in his room, that way he could spend the whole summer in there. At least there were only a few more weeks of school left. Of course, then there was high school...Terrence groaned inwardly. Swell. He started to entertain thoughts of joining the circus; maybe if he was lucky they'd let him clean up after the elephants.
Reaching the optometrist's, he entered reluctantly and looked around the large, quiet waiting room. There was one man sitting and reading a magazine, and he spotted the young receptionist he had yelled at last time behind the window with her back turned, so she hadn't seen him. Good. No – no, he didn't care if she saw him or not. He forced a scowl. So what if she didn't like him, he didn't care. He didn't need to talk to her anyways, the Vision Center where glasses were prescribed and picked up was down the hallway to the right, so he went that way without the receptionist ever noticing him.
The Vision Center was empty save for the same lady who had fitted him for frames last week. She was an unsmiling, but not unpleasant elderly lady who had introduced herself as Sally. Coolly ignoring his protests, she had done her job with infinite patience, much to Mom's relief.
Sally spotted him lingering in the doorway, scuffed skateboard tucked awkwardly under one arm, and still scowling for all he was worth.
"Come along now, young man," she said evenly. "Let's see how these fit." Out of a drawer she pulled a pair of glasses, and Terrence at once recognized the black frames he had let his mother pick out for him last week. She beckoned him in with two fingers, and he barely scooted forward an inch or so. "Are we a three-toed sloth?" she queried, arching a silver eyebrow, Terrence clumped the rest of the way over to her insolently.
"Here we are." Sally unfolded the glasses and held them out, earpieces towards Terrence, and waited expectantly. Terrence slowly set down his skateboard and shrugged off his backpack before taking them gingerly.
"They aren't poisonous," Sally spoke up when Terrence looked at the things in his hands in distaste, holding them away from himself as if they were dripping mucous. "…They go on your face," she smiled wryly when Terrence continued to hesitate.
After throwing Sally a cold look Terrence slowly slid the hated things over his ears. He blinked a few times in confusion, then turned slowly, looking around the Vision Center, his eyebrows knitted in concentration. That was weird. He lifted the glasses and looked at a poster beside him on the wall, then put the glasses back and looked through them. He lifted the glasses, looked, then dropped them and left them there.
Sally cleared her throat softly. "Well I have to dust the displays," she said. "I'll be right over here." She turned and went to the children's frame section and began wiping down the mirrors, all the while watching Terrence out of the corner of one twinkling eye.
"Wh…What?" stammered Terrence, unable to take his eyes from the pictures and small printing on the poster. "Oh. Okay." He moved right up to the poster, so that it was only inches from his face. He took his glasses off. The printing wasn't entirely impossible to read, but it took a great deal of concentration to make out all the letters, and distinguish say, e's from o's. But when he replaced his glasses everything was fine. Everything was fine. The e's looked like e's and the o's looked like o's and Terrence didn't have an ounce of trouble identifying each and every letter. He read a passage on the poster and it only took a moment. The same passage might have taken him a minute normally. And the pictures...the edges in the pictures really did look like edges, not just two colors beside one another, barely blurring where they met.
Terrence felt his heart beating very fast. Was this it, then? Was this the thing he needed to stop being so stupid, a pair of glasses? Maybe he was smart after all. Could it be as simple as that? He felt a sort of hope filling him.
Sally stepped up beside him. "How do they fit, dear?" she asked him. She was smiling a kindly grandmotherly smile, and Terrence smiled awkwardly back, feeling a bit guilty for calling her an "old cow" the week before. "They're okay," he said. He let her feel the earpieces and shook his head when she asked if they were too tight, then listened politely while she explained the best way to clean the glasses, how take them off with both hands to reduce strain on the hinges, and how to set them on the frames instead of the lenses when placing them on a table. Then she gave him a hard case to keep them in when he wasn't wearing them, and soon Terrence, reunited with his backpack and skateboard, found himself back in the waiting room.
He felt strange, drained somehow, and his stomach flopped a bit. He figured it was because he still hadn't eaten and he started to reach for his backpack to get some chocolate when he spotted the receptionist at the window, looking down at something in front of her. Again, she hadn't seemed to have noticed him.
Swinging his backpack off of his shoulder Terrence started for the glass doors but something held him back, and he looked again at the attractive young dark-skinned receptionist. Mom was right, he realized. She had looked as if she may have started crying last week when he screamed at her. Why had he been so angry? Now he wasn't sure. His stomach flopped again, and he looked into his backpack at the bag of chocolates.
"Um."
The receptionist looked up from her appointment book and instantly recognized the thirteen-year-old boy who had been in just a week ago to see the doctor and who had been an unholy terror his entire visit. She tried to remain professional. "Yes?" she said carefully.
"Um," he said again, and then shakily, "I'm sorry." A crinkle of plastic wrap and an opened bag of individually-wrapped mini chocolate bars was thrust towards her. "I, um…here." Surprised, she took the bag slowly.
Terrence took a breath. "I'm sorry…" he mumbled again. He looked up at last, and was treated to the sight of the receptionist smiling at him. It made her look very pretty. "Thank you," she said brightly, and he swallowed and offered her a crooked smile of his own. Then he left.
He wasn't really hungry anyways.
After leaving the optometrist's Terrence dawdled outside, meandering his way slowly homewards, just taking in his surroundings. He read every sign, watched pigeons strutting on the grass, even examined his red flannel shirt, surprised by the thin grey crisscrossing lines. He'd never known they were there before. He'd thought the shirt was just red. Knowing that everyone else had known the lines were there while he hadn't until now was a strange feeling. He could see something now that had always been there, and he was grateful to finally be let in on such a secret.
Maybe he didn't have to be stupid, he thought as he walked slowly, observing the new, clear way the divisions in the sidewalk looked as they passed under his sneakered feet. Maybe now he could do problems at the whiteboard like everybody else and not have to stand there trying to sort out what all the markings meant. Maybe he could do his homework quickly, like Mac, and get it in on time. Maybe Mr. George would stop calling him a waste of space if he turned in the assignment tomorrow…
The assignment. His homework. Terrence shrugged his shoulders, feeling the emptiness of his backpack, regretting leaving all his school stuff at the apartment. He should hurry home, then, and get started. Dropping his skateboard, he stepped on it and pushed off; but then he stopped short. He was in front of the library. Libraries had books, he thought brightly. Maybe there was one assignment he could do without going all the way home.
Terrence walked into the library carrying his skateboard and looked around a bit nervously. He wasn't exactly well-acquainted with libraries; the one at school was inhabited by a strange troll-like librarian who had a dowager's hump and was rumored to have a glass eye. Terrence didn't much like going in there because she always watched him with that lopsided stare, one eye just not quite pointing in the right direction. Indeed, middle schools seemed to employ some of the strangest people Terrence had ever encountered. And that was certainly saying something, considering some of the stranger people he had encountered already in his short life.
Not spotting any trolls, Terrence ventured hesitantly deeper into the alien surroundings, gazing about himself at all of the shelves of paperbacks surrounding the front desk. The book he needed might be in there somewhere, but how to find it? He was at a loss.
"Young man?"
Terrence spun around, on the verge of blurting out excuses, that he hadn't done it, that it was some other kid. He started to pull his backpack off to show that it was empty when he saw that the speaker, an older gentleman, was smiling kindly down at him.
"Do you need help finding something?"
Terrence hesitated, taking a breath. A librarian, then. And not a troll. Good. The man was wearing glasses, and Terrence couldn't help becoming self-aware that he was wearing glasses too. He suddenly felt a bit of a bond with the stranger – they had something in common.
"Um," the boy said, his typical way to start a conversation. "Yeah…I need a book…for um…for a class at school."
The man nodded sagely. "I see," he said seriously. He raised a bushy eyebrow. "Does this mysterious tome have a name?"
Not sure if the man was referring to the book or the class, Terrence replied, "Um, the book's called Huckleberry Finn."
The man nodded again. "Yes, yes, a fine book. Action and adventure. Well worth the read. Samuel Clemens was quite a man."
Terrence didn't have any idea who Samuel Clemens was but followed the librarian obediently to a shelf beyond the front desk where he was handed a well-read copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade). "I hope you find it worth your valuable time," said the man gravely, and he winked before he walked away. Terrence watched him go, slowly realizing that the old man was just being friendly in a goofy kind of way (Probably somebody's grandpa, he thought), and went to find a place to sit. He slid his skateboard and backpack under his chair and pondered the book. Huckleberry Finn. Glad it's not my name, he mused wryly. It's probably a dumb book but I guess I can try it. He opened it to the first page and read:
NOTICE
PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narra-
tive will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a
moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to
find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.
Terrence laughed delightedly, ignoring the glances he got from other library patrons. Whoever Samuel Clemens was, this Mark Twain guy sure could start off a book.
Although he couldn't quite grasp all of the vocabulary (and he was quite surprised at some of the words – were those allowed in school?) and although occasionally he found bits a tad boring, Terrence read avidly for hours, trying to at least catch up with the rest of the class. In truth he still read rather slowly, as he needed to sound out each word in his head (which was the only way he could sort out the dialects anyways), but compared to just this afternoon, he felt like he was zooming along. He was shaken out of his concentration by the library man who appeared at his elbow, smiling, and touching his shoulder.
"Now, it's getting rather late," he said solemnly, peering over his glasses at the boy. "Is anyone at home waiting on you?"
Terrence blinked up at him. "Um, what time is it?" he asked.
"Getting on to seven o'clock. Sun's about down, and the streetlights are on."
Terrence turned white. "Oh God!" he exclaimed, dropping the book on the table. "My mom'll kill me!" He jumped up and drug his backpack and skateboard out from beneath the chair.
The librarian picked up the book. "Well let's get you checked out quickly, then," he said.
"Oh, um, thanks, I have one at home…Thanks!" Terrence blurted over his shoulder, hurrying for the door. He glanced over his shoulder once more and waved at the librarian as he shrugged on his backpack, then he ran out the door and skated frantically down the darkening street.