I </3 NY

[MurderWeasel]

((Aaron's past continued from When I Grow Up...))

It was a warm spring night in 2004, and Aaron Hughes was standing on the balcony of his family's twelfth floor apartment in Manhattan, looking out over the city streets and crying. The day had been one of the worst of his life, but then, that was sort of standard operating procedure these days. Each day of school brought new horrors and miseries, with the weekends offering the only release from the suffering.

He had taken to feigning illness as often as possible to avoid going to school. Anything was better than facing his classmates. His mean spirited, ignorant, banal classmates.

He didn't know why they tormented him. Well, more precisely, he didn't know which reason was the greatest, though they all boiled down to one main thing: he wasn't like them. He didn't conform to their standards. He didn't follow their rules. He hadn't been crushed into some sort of soulless husk by the public educational system. He still had his imagination.

Quite simply, he was better, smarter, and more creative than his classmates, and they delighted in finding ways to make him pay for it. He was teased. His name was graffittied on bathroom walls, along with such witty statements as "iz gay". He was the butt of every joke, the target of every bully. He had been hit, albeit only once, and when he had reported his abuser to the school, and the guy had gotten suspended, well, then "crybaby" and "tattletale" had been added to his expansive list of shameful honorifics.

Today had been the worst day ever. He had been sitting alone, not bothering anyone. Minding his own business. Reading. He'd been reading a Dungeons and Dragons book, the Monster Manual, when they'd come over to him. Three boys, all taller than him, all bulkier than him, two on the middle school football team, the other in wrestling. He'd immediately known that he had no chance of escape, just damage control.

***

"What have you got there, Aaron?" the tallest, and apparent leader of the expedition, asked with a sneer.

"Nothing."

"It doesn't look like 'nothing' to me," said the wrestler, who, though only an inch taller than Aaron, must have packed one and a half times his mass.

"Fine," Aaron said, slightly impatiently, "You've seen through my cunning ploy to deceive you. It is, in fact, a rules manual."

He could almost hear the gears grinding in their heads. He was expecting one of them to chime in with an idiotic comment to the tune of "it looks like a book to me", but no one did. The silence just stretched uncomfortably. Aaron palms were starting to go slick. What did they want? What were they waiting for? Could they possibly still be trying to puzzle out what his statement had meant?

"Let me see," the leader said, and, seeing no alternative, Aaron just let him, handing the book over, hoping against hope that the fellow wouldn't get grease on it. Books were very important to Aaron; he was the sort of person who couldn't buy used books because he wanted all of his collection to be in perfect shape.

As the guy paged through the book, with his cronies leaning over his shoulders, Aaron began to think up a plan. He'd avoid talking as much as possible, if he could do so subtly. He would answer their questions curtly and politely, but not in a conversational manner, so they'd hopefully get bored and leave, parting with nothing but a few insults. He would come up with some witty version of the event that cast him in a better light and share that with his few friends next time he saw them, instead of the truth.

The three guys were "ooh"ing and "ah"ing in a fake, campy way that had Aaron quietly grinding his teeth. He was pretty sure he'd be breaking out worse than ever the next day. Stress always gave him pimples.

"What's this?" The shorter football player asked, pointing at a picture of a dragon.

"It's a dragon," Aaron responded.

He realized as the big guys returned to the book that he didn't even know their names. All his tormentors had sort of merged into a big blur. Were there as many as there seemed to be? Probably. It seemed the whole school hated him. It had been that way for a long, long time, albeit more overtly in the past three years. Middle school brought out the worst in people.

The boys kept paging through the book, and then the leader stopped. He leaned down really close to Aaron and said, "What is this?"

"It's a nymph," Aaron said, glancing at the drawing of the scantily-clad (and that was being generous) woman. After a brief pause, he decided to elaborate. "They're Greek mythological..."

"It looks like porn to me," the guy cut in, "Are you bringing porn to school, crybaby?"

"It isn't pornography, it's art..."

"It looks like porn to me," the guy said again, "You'd get suspended for that."

His friends chuckled. What a game this was.

"Why don't we make sure that doesn't happen," the guy said, and then, without any warning, he ripped the page right out of the book and stuffed it in his pocket. Aaron actually stood halfway up, reaching out towards him, snarling, and for just a second, he thought he saw a flash of something (fear?) in the boy's eyes, but then common sense and sanity reasserted themselves and he sat back down and feigned a wheeze.

"Cough," he explained weakly. His eyes were starting to brim with tears. They'd trashed his book. They'd gone ahead and committed the ultimate act of ignorance and malice.

"Let's just make sure there's no more porn in here," the wrestler said, but the leader, maybe a bit shaken by Aaron's near reaction, said, "Nah, it's OK. We'll just get rid of it to be sure.," and pitched it into a garbage bin, where it landed with a splat on a half-eaten hot dog soaked in ketchup.

By now there was a crowd watching. No one said a thing. No one intervened. The janitors who patrolled the cafeteria had somehow missed the whole thing. Yet another crime, yet another offense against Aaron which would go unpunished.

That was the way the world worked.

The three boys turned and walked away, and Aaron just sat there for the rest of the lunch period. He managed to hold in his tears as he stared at the trash can and seethed.

Only one thought brought him solace: he was, indisputably, undeniably a better person than everyone else in the room. He wouldn't have sat by. He wouldn't have picked on someone weak. He would have been better than that.

He was better than that. He was better than all of them.

***

By the time his mother had come out to the balcony, Aaron had stopped crying, and was merely contemplating the city, with its omnipresent smog and throngs of people. It was so busy. Everyone was moving all the time, and none of them gave each other even a passing thought. Such a huge city, so full of people from everywhere on the planet, but, in the end, they were all alone, weren't they? Each person the center of their own little universe, their own little island of reality amidst the seas of anonymity.

"Aaron..."

He nodded at his mother's voice, but didn't turn around. She was used to this by now. He'd done the same thing after he was chewed out by his teacher for getting a "D" in math last semester. He'd done the same thing the day he was hit.

He'd done the same thing every day this week.

She walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. He stood still, but felt the tears coming again, and tried to choke them down. He couldn't cry. He couldn't put this on his mom. It wasn't her fault, and she couldn't do anything about it.

"What's wrong?"

"They ruined my book, mom," he said, and then he did cry again, gasping and gulping as the tears ran down his cheeks. She hugged him tightly. She ran her hand through his hair. Gradually, the tears subsided.

"Oh Aaron. I'm so sorry you had to deal with that. We'll buy you a new one. We'll file a report..."

"No. That'll just... that'll just make it worse," he choked.

"Oh Aaron," she repeated, and then, after a few seconds of silence, "Just remember that you're a good person. You're a great person, and someday you'll show them that, and then they'll all regret what they've done."

I'm a great person. Maybe. Maybe not. Better than them, anyways.

And someday I will show them all.

His mother held him for a while longer, and then, finally, turned him around so she could look him in the face.

"Aaron, there's something else I need to talk to you about."

"Go ahead, Mom."

She fiddled with her shirtsleeve a little, then said, quietly, "How would you feel about moving?"

Before he could say anything, she hurriedly said, "Your father's been offered a better job. It's in Saint Paul, Minnesota, right across the river from Minneapolis, where grandma lives. There's a good high school there, I heard, Bayside Secondary. You'd have to leave your friends, but I think you might like it."

Friends...

Aaron didn't have any friends, at least not any good ones. Donnie had just sat by today, watching the whole thing. At D&D on Saturday he'd deny it, of course, and he wouldn't contradict Aaron's version of events. His other two group members only spent time with him because he'd run the game for them. They didn't really care about him outside of it. He could have been a computer for all they cared.

"I'm fine with that, mom," he said, "I'll miss my friends, but I think a change of scenery would be nice. And I'd like to see grandma more."

His mother smiled, kissed him on the forehead, and said, "Thanks Sweetie. I'll make dinner. It's Casserole. Your favorite, with chips crumbled on it and everything. It'll be done in an hour or so."

She slipped back into the apartment, leaving Aaron alone once again.

He looked over the city again, and added to himself, barely above a whisper, "I think a change of scenery would be nice.

"Besides, I hate New York."