Chapter IX

New car smell. Snow mixed with dirt and gasoline splashed under the tires of the candy red PT Cruiser my mom rented. We were pulling in to East Grande Avenue. Brehm Preparatory School. It resembled a concentration camp from an episode of The Twilight Zone I had watched the night before. Death’s Head Revisited.         

            “Oh, look Zach! They’re having a snowball fight.” I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I wasn’t about to make myself look weak in front of her. Especially after I found out why we were here. “This looks like a great place.”

            “I don’t want to go here.”

            “Just give it a chance.”

            “No! I want to go back home. I don’t want to go to school here!”

            “You better not go into the interview with that attitude.” I bit my lip. F**k you. A week after I got out of the hospital and this happens. How could she?

 

 

 

            “Well, your test grades look very good, Zachary. I would even go as far to say you belong in the ninth grade curriculum here at Brehm. What do you think, Mrs. Daugherty?”

            “I don’t know. I’m not sure how helpful that would be to him. He has a lot of difficulty in the classroom. Putting him a grade above his peers might create some social problems.” Dr. Collins, Brehms’ headmaster looked over to me but didn’t smile.

            “Zachary, will you excuse us for a moment?””

            “Do I go in the waiting room?”

            “Yes.” Still no smile. My mom smiled. But it was fake. Shuffling my feet, I walked out into the lobby, and waited next to the receptionist, Susanne. Her walls were filled with news clippings and pictures of Steven Tyler. She didn’t look up from her computer. Questions began to seep into my thoughts. What if they don’t like me here? What if they don’t understand me? What if my roommate is mean? What if the dorm is dirty? What if the food is bad? And above all, why was I being taken here? I knew it was because I was bad. Because I misbehaved, and threw tantrums all the time. But it was so hard for me to believe that I had been so bad, that my parents wanted to drop me off at some place that I’ve never heard of, in the middle of a state that I’d never been to, in a country half way around the world. Sifting through my memories, I tried to figure out what it was that I did that landed me here. What was the straw that broke the camel’s back? In the middle of my thoughts, the door swung open.

            “Zachary, would you like to step back in here?” No, I didn’t, but I did anyway. “Zachary, it is my pleasure to welcome you to our program here at Brehm.” My mom sighed a breath of relief. “We’ve decided to place you in the eighth grade. Your roommate is another young man named Zachary.” He smiled at this. “He will be here shortly to show you around the school.

 

 

 

            That night in the hotel room, I became violently ill, due to my unfamiliarity to the southern Illinois water, but I knew my anxiety about the school made it all the more worst. Excretion came out of both ends. Vomit flowed from my mouth, diarrhea poured from my a*s; simultaneously. And it was episodic throughout the night. By morning time my sheets were smeared with the combination, and the bathroom floor was covered with it, excluding two white, tiled, knee shaped, spots in front of the toilet. I guiltily pretended to be asleep while the black hotel maid cleaned up the mess wincing at the sounds of “Oh, po’ baby, po’ baby.” It should have registered as a sign that the school was no good. But it was right around this time that I embraced the idea of boarding school, because it meant that I didn’t have to be under mother dearest’s wings any more. It was right around this time that I got the slightest taste of freedom, and ran with it, perhaps farther and faster than I, or anyone for that matter, should have ever ran.