Chapter 1

Everyday When You're Walking Down the Street

I woke from another nearly sleepless fall night to a pile of unfinished homework at the foot of my bed. A days worth of Mr. Ratburn's unreachable standards were sure to give me yet another night of agony.

"Arthur! Get ready for school!"

"Coming mom!"

I threw on my clothes and ran to the door. I imagined the other kids pretending to be sick, or getting up as slowly as possible to avoid going back another day after what had happened to Binky, but they were cowards. I was afraid of course. who wouldn't be, but I always made sure to run towards the fear, to throw myself at it in the hopes that the fear would subside. Most days it did. As I opened the door I prayed that this would be most days.

Just beyond the door came a torrent of noise

"Sloppy, sloopy, gloppy, gloopy,

Happy-happy, hoopy-hoopy…"

That incessant song. I covered my right ear to block the noise as it came from D.W.'s doorway. Most days I wished the whole doorway would disappear, but this morning he only wished the noise would stop.

To the right I could hear baby Kate. My sweet sister. even the shrillest cry was sweet coming from her. I stopped by the doorway to press my ear against it. I wanted to enter so badly, and watch that sweet smile paint the room with the kind of joy I didn't deserve, but I had no place in there, no place in interrupting such blissful innocence.

"I'll conquer the world for you little dove," I whispered to her. Elwood would be mine one day. I would start with my classmates. I would make Ratburn pay, and the nightmare would be over. I would be their hero. Only then could I face her as a brother.

"Dopey, doffy, screwy, blue-y,

Gooey, chewy, fooey, dewey."

The music was turned up to drown out our nagging mother.

"D.W.! Get out of your room and get ready for school!"

"Fuck you mom!"

I could barely make out D.W.'s voice amongst the torrent of nasty sounds that came from her room. There was something ragged about her voice. Something desperate, like the worst thing that could happen would be somebody walking in on her. Maybe the Binky incident hit her harder than it hit me. Maybe she had given up on life. Maybe. She had a new distraction

My mom caught me staring at the door as I turned away from Kate. "Come downstairs Arthur. I'm making pancakes."

Whatever was beyond that door was too much for mom to face. I contemplated what it could have been as I walked down the stairs.

I caught my mother in the middle of making breakfast. "Eat this up quick. you've only got 10 minutes to get to school."

"So I'm going by myself?"

"Yeah Arthur, you need to start walking more. You don't want to wear the husky sized jeans forever do you?"

Another wonderful bout of sympathy from mom. She knew what Ratburn had done to me, what his workload had done to the other kids. She read about binky's breakdown in the paper, but she wasn't there. She never saw anything like what I had seen that day. She never had the blood of the person she loved sprayed all over her face. She could never know that the very idea of walking to school was an unbearable torture, that every microsecond of what I had experienced that day was burned into my skull, rotting away my fleeting innocence.

She sat down at the table, and served me my pancakes. She caught my eye. Maybe she saw what was inside me. She could see that the small kindness of driving me to school would cut some of the tension.

"I'll… I'll drive you to school honey." She dug into her pancakes.

I could always tell that she was pretending to understand, but we both knew that, since the binky innocent, there would always be a part of me that she could never know. Still she tried.

"Absolutely bus-a-looey

Crazy, lazy, crazy, crazy buuuuuus!"

The songs final crescendo preceded a loud moan from D.W.'s room. There was always something…deranged about that music that set me on edge, but this time I could barely stand to sit still and hear It, as she would surely repeat it. "Can you take me to school now mom?"

"Of course honey."

307 seconds passed. I counted every one until the car pulled up to school. It had been four months since the incident, and everyone else had been on edge.

Elwood elementary was a quaint little school in a quaint little town. All around it were the screams of happy children. Nearly every corner of the suburb looked like the photographs that fill out picture books, but inside the school, the pictures you could take would look like the set photos of a psychological horror film.

Tucked away in the deeper recesses of the school was the darkest little corner of Elwood city. Mr. Ratburns third grade classroom.

I entered the doorway and walked past the halls. So many eyes shifted to me. They all knew where I was going: teachers, staff, older, and younger students. None of them looked me in the eye, not a single one. It must have been so easy for them to ignore my class, and pretend that it never existed.

Finding the class was as easy as turning a single corner after entering. A long, but narrow hallway filled with lockers lead to the classroom. I opened mine. It was number 302, right next to the classroom door. I quietly thanked god that Ratburn hadn't entered the room yet, which left my classmates to their unique little quiets before the storm that was his green jacket.

"Weaklings," I thought to myself. I dared not say it out loud. They could never know how much i hated all of them.

"Arthur!" The only thing worse than the crazy bus music was the voice of buster Baxter. Every time he opened his mouth I prayed that somebody would scratch the nearest chalkboard so I could hear a more bearable sound.

"Hey buster."

Buster was an annoying little prick, but he had his uses. He was eccentric, strange, attention grabbing. He was the perfect friend. I was plain, simple, and forgettable while in Buster's shadow. Nobody would ever expect anything from me, which was exactly how I liked it. I was a quiet observer, hiding in plain sight, waiting for my moment.

"Are you ready to go to class!?" something about buster seemed disjointed. "I'm ready to go to class!"

"I… uh."

"are you excited!?" he blinked hard and snorted "I'm excited Arthur!"

"I'm excited too Buster." I was used to forcing smiles, faking joy, but this was the first time in years that I felt like my false smile looked unnatural. I had never seen Buster like this.

"Are you, are you okay Buster?"

"Yeah Arthur I'm sorry man I'm just a little jacked up. Francine showed us all this new thing and it's been awesome! It's really helped us with our homework and…"

"Whoa hold on buster. Slow down. What did you say?" I was prepared to step over the early grave Buster was eating himself into, hell I would even welcome the notion if he hadn't been my friend for so long, But Buster was on something, and I could not let it kill him too soon.

"Buster you need to tell me what's making you so excited about class."

"Well Francine's in the classroom and she has..."

"That's not what I was…" I interrupted.

"Come on in. Let me show you." Buster grabbed my arm and pulled me into the classroom.

I walked into a tornado. The students were all running around, playing with smiles on their faces. Did they not know what room they were in?

"Not what you were expecting, was it Arthur?" ,Buster smiled, "I mean it's awesome, everyone is happy and there's no stress anymore.."

I turned around, still in awe of what I was seeing. "Yes but how Buster? How is everyone so happy?"

"Well uh… we finished all our homework," suddenly Buster didn't want to speak. A shadow crept over his face.

"It's called cocaine." I turned around. It was Francine, carrying a confidence I had never seen before. Maybe it was the new gold chain she wore around her neck. I realized that Buster was afraid, as he cowered behind my average form.

Francine put her hand on busters shoulder. "It's okay Buster. he's one of us. You're not narking on me." her tone was sweet, but powerful, like hers was the voice of god.

"I'm sorry Francine. I'll leave you two alone now."

I was afraid she would wave him away. Without Buster, I was naked, and alone, but luckily Francine paid little mind to me as I had wanted. She walked off and whispered to several older kids who were standing at the end of the classroom before Ratburn entered.

"Alright class, homework on your desks. Let's get this started." he declared with his nose up. almost pitied Ratburn sometimes. He was so broken from years of disappointment, years of students who just didn't care. I wondered if he felt like the warden of a small prison that was tucked away in the corner of an otherwise happy school, or if he still sat in the blind hope that his deranged methods would one day enlighten his students beyond the limits of the rest of the school.

Mr. Ratburn noticed a few unfamiliar faces sitting casually by the windows. It was only then that I got a good look at them. There was a white bunny, her eyes obscured by her bangs, and two filthy dogs, one grey, and one brown. Their eyes must've met Mr. Ratburn's as he nearly leapt back in fear upon seeing them. "Um…what grade are you students in?"

They gave no response.

After a long silence, the bell rang and Mr. Ratburn cowered behind his briefcase. The older students remained motionless until Ratburn collected himself. They left, eyeing him all the way to the door before giving Francine the thumbs up.

Buster leaned in toward me. "They came the day Francine brought the cocaine."

"Why are they here?" I asked.

Buster peeped over at Francine to make sure she wasn't listening then whispered, "To make sure none of us nark on her mostly. They also help her sell us the stuff." Buster put his head on his desk and groaned, "Why does the bell have to ring so early? I need another fix. I can't wait until after class."

Mr. Ratburn walked around the class noticing the finished homework, his expression becoming happier by the moment. "Class, you've really done well today!" He continued to walk around, passing by Binky's empty desk, shivering before he reached mine only to notice that I was the only one who hadn't complete the assignments.

I looked into Ratburn's eyes and watched them turn from pride to anger. Ratburn moved on to greet the more worthy students. I pitied him at that moment more than ever. Finally, after years of torturing his students and punishing them for the Harvard job he could never obtain, despite his master's degree, Punishing them for the unreturned lust he had held for his female coworkers, punishing them for the sister who refused to challenge her students, punishing them for the control he could never exert over them, punishing them…for his own cowardice. After all that, they finally showed results. He wasn't crazy. He wasn't a monster. He wasn't that weak little ten-year-old boy that couldn't stand up to his own dad. How could I tell him it was all a sham? How could I reveal that the pride of Ratburn's entire life, the result to all of his ridiculed methods was a casual coke dusted chore that his students farted out in an afternoon? The rest of the day was filled with Francine's creepy older students trying to put coke into my hands in the brief break periods between classes.

Finally I was driven home. My father was drunkenly passed out on the sofa, wallowing in his miscarriage of a catering business. My mother sprinted to the counter to finish declaring bankruptcy before she went to her night job at the taxi dispatch service. I didn't care about them or their pathetic miseries. Their failed abortion of a second child. All I wanted was to see Kate before I went to bed.

Passing by the crazy bus music once again, I finally felt worthy to walk in and see her, my baby sister. Nighttime tried to fall in through the window as I opened the door, but a little sun rose in the room as the smile grew on her face. One day she would make the whole world glow, but for now, she was mine. She was my last hope for a future that I thought none of us would ever find, a good future.

I kissed her on the forehead and whispered to her, "You're the only one I care about, Kate. Let the rest of them die so that you can grow up without failure surrounding you." She smiled at me, her infant mind unable to grasp the feelings that arose every time I saw her amongst the whores and failures that filled my household.

"Sloppy, sloopy, gloppy, gloopy,

Happy-happy, hoopy-hoopy,"

That fucking song. It was time to see what was happening in d.w.'s room

I quietly prepared to open the door so as not to disturb Kate.

"Dopey, doffy, screwy, blue-y

Gooey, chewy, fooey, dewey"

I threw open D.W.'s door to find her face buried into a small mountain of coke that was sitting atop her toy box.

"Absolutely bus-a-looey

Crazy, lazy, crazy, crazy bus"

She picked up her head. She barely seemed concious. Her eyes pointed away from her coke dusted nose, and glared at me "Hey!"

Her cry threw me off balance, and I fell to the floor.