Chapter One

A Chapter by Anthony Sinclair

'Can I see Anthony please?' the soft-spoken man inquires of my teacher Mrs. Hera. She looks at him knowingly and then nods toward me to go with this man. I know what he is here for. I saw him doing his observations yesterday. I thought that it couldn’t be me he was observing. I had been controlling myself so well. It was a coincidence. But there was the other day when I broke down crying because I had been late to class, causing my grade to go from a falling B to a strong C. This exchange of words between the two adults made me realize it wasn’t a coincidence. Dr. Masser, the school psychologist, had been observing me yesterday. And now he was here to go have a “talk” with me. I quickly made my way to across the span of the room before more of my peers could enter the room too. We briskly walked to the end of the hall. The psychologist’s office. It was the room I had dreaded being sent to since I had started being out cast by my fellow peers at Benjamin Middle School. Filled with Bengal pride I had been rejected by almost everyone, and those who hadn’t openly made fun of me stared quizzically at the back of my head whenever I turned around. They wondered why I was so different from them. And they weren’t the only ones. I asked myself each day why I couldn’t just have friends and be normal. But I wasn’t normal I was branded with the mark of a target placed on my back. And as people kept throwing knives at my target and stabbing me in the back, the initial pain became less and less. Sure I cried into my pillow when I got home, sobbing for hours at a time. But who doesn’t do that for fun every day? I ran thought through my mind wondering what had pushed my teachers to report to Dr. Masser that I was upset. More importantly how did they even know? As we walked together down the hall he mumbled something incomprehensible to me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘I said that you’re not in trouble’

‘Oh ‘was my brilliant reply. My face must have shown worry. However I knew I wasn’t in trouble. Everyone knew what was going on if the psychologist came for you. As we approached his door he took a large key from the pocket of his slacks, and vainly attempted to insert it into the door. There was something blocking the key from going in. I looked around, scared that someone I knew could see us. Dr. Masser call the janitor walking by. After an inspection that felt like it lasted a year the janitor declared the lock had been tampered with and the locksmith would need to be called. The insightful janitor also told us he thought it could have been ice. The school clearly had a much lower expectation for janitors than students because I do not portray myself as a genius but even I have the common sense to tell that if a door is in the middle of a hallway where the heat is cranked up to 82, there’s not going to be any ice blocking the key. I looked at Dr Masser expectantly waiting for him to say to go back to class and that he’d ruin my life tomorrow. But of course he didn’t. We strolled over to the Vice Principal’s office at a turtle’s pace. We sat down in the uncomfortable vinyl chairs and proceeded to talk about my feelings. Little did I know this was going to become a reoccurring concept.