I guess in the end my curiosity won over my anger because when I met with him after class I didn't yell at him again. I just wanted to listen to him.
"You mentioned your father before, that he would never let you dye your hair like that. I think that's fairly normal for around here though isn't it?"
"Yeah", he said nonchalantly shrugging his shoulders, "I guess it was more of the way he went about it."
"And how did he go about it?"
"Well he would... are you sure you want to hear this? You know I don't talk about this to anyone. I'm trusting you with this."
"Yes of course. You can trust me."
"Thank you Harley, it feels so good to have a loyal friend like you. All the kids I went to high school used to bully me."
"How come?"
"I don't know. I guess I just wasn't popular or something."
"That's no reason to bully someone."
"I know but the other kids didn't seem to think so. They would push me into lockers and leave me in there the whole day till the janitor let me out."
"That's horrible."
"I guess I started to get used to it. Getting pushed into lockers, getting homework stolen, getting beaten up. A lot of people would spread rumors about me too so when I tried to make friends with decent people they didn't want anything to do with me. I even had a few people follow me around the school so they could push me down every staircase and shove my head into every drinking fountain. I was always looking over my shoulder afraid that someone was there waiting to hurt me."
"Why didn't you tell anyone what they were doing?"
"I tried but no one would listen to me. Somewhere along the way I got branded as a liar and for some reason not even the teachers would listen to me. I guess I felt like there was nothing I could do. I never fought back, I never wanted to hurt anyone, and nobody would listen to me."
"It's okay Jack I'll listen to you."
"Thank you it feels so good to talk about this, I've never been able to confide this to anyone."
"I really appreciate having your trust. What those other kids did to you was unfair and cruel and they should have been punished for it.
"I know I've been trying to get over it but sometimes I guess I feel like it affects things now like not being able to take social cues well. I never really had any practice with having friends before."
"It's okay you have a friend now and I'm not going anywhere."
After that Jack went into more detail about the kids who bullied him and I felt so honored to be trusted with his biggest secrets not to mention he was so interesting to listen to. And that was only after hearing about his high school, before the big guns came out and he told me about his family.
