Now I’ve seen some shit as a kid growing up in the projects.
Drug deals gone wrong in front of my elementary school, a drunk and high hobo trying to break into my middle school to stab each and every one of us (with a banana, we later found out), and my fair share of gang violence during my high school freshman year.
But none of these (and the many others I haven’t mentioned) even come close to the shit I’ve seen at this one fucking private school I went to for six years (and no, I wasn’t there for that long because I’d been held back).
I just received my undergrad diploma, and I’ve thought a lot about all the fucked-up things – things that defy any kind of explanation – that I’ve seen at my old high school.
Things so fucking unbelievable it only makes sense to post here and not anywhere else.
Are you ready?
Good.
Cause this won’t be a smooth ride.
Not by a long shot.
…
Now, these stories aren’t chronological by any means. I’ll only be writing what’s clearest to me. Sometimes, it’s one from Senior year, or my second junior year. It depends.
For now, though, I’ll start with my earliest memory.
Sophomore year.
The year I transferred to William Harrison’s Preparatory School for Gifted Youngsters.
Due to the aforementioned incidents I talked about (and all the others I didn’t), my mom had started to look into alternative schools for me right around March of my Freshman year.
God knows how my heart dropped when she admitted she’d worked her ass off at her three jobs just to pay the admission fee for the scholarship test.
Surprisingly, I passed with flying colors.
We had a huge blowout party with all my relatives, and later my old childhood friends threw me another party where we all drank ourselves to oblivion.
Needless to say, I was looking forward to the future.
Man…if only I knew how much and how fast things would go downhill, I never would’ve taken that damn test.
But hindsight, as always, is a bitch.
I remember the exact moment I knew that place was bad.
September.
First day of school.
I’d been feeling nervous about all the other rich kids seeing me in my mom’s old car, but that feeling disappeared real quick when I laid my eyes on the place.
To say it scared the shit out of me would be an understatement.
A brooding structure that seemed like a wave ready to engulf, and although its architecture preceded its reputation, I felt less safe than in any school I had ever gone to.
It was a sunny day, but the shadow that building cast over me made the air so cold it felt like winter.
My mom, on the other hand, didn’t seem to feel anything amiss, so she drove off after a friendly wave, and I went in through those doors, my brown paper bag grasped firmly by my slightly trembling hand.
…
I felt like a lost castaway as I travelled through those long hallways.
I knew which class I had to go to, but I just couldn’t find it for the life of me.
That place was like a maze, and never before that had I ever felt so out of my depth.
At one point, I got so frustrated that I just sat down on a stairwell I happened to stumble upon.
And it was on this stairwell, feeling quite dejected, that a certain someone called out to me.
“Hey, you okay man?”
I turned and found myself face to face with this guy who was wearing the same uniform as me. He had this kind grin and his round cheeks softly topped the ends of his smile.
I felt at ease for the first time since I’d entered the damn place, and I struck up some conversation with him.
His name was Derek, and he seemed like a real cool guy. I explained my situation to him, and he laughed it off, offering to take me to my class himself.
We had some small talk, and he also seemed like a real down to earth guy too. I’d been worried this school would just surround me with these rich spoiled white kids, but meeting Derek felt like a breath of fresh air.
We got to my class, and had to (unfortunately) part way. He was a senior (which to young me explained his coolness in an instant), but he said that we could catch up during break.
With that, he disappeared behind one of the corridors and I walked into my class.
I was robbed of the relief that Derek gave me pretty much the moment I stepped foot in there.
The lesson which had been going on grinded to a halt and everyone – and I do mean everyone, the teacher included – turned to look at me. Countless blue eyes stared me down as I sheepishly took my seat, trying my best to be as small as possible.
The lesson resumed as sharply as it had stopped, and all I could do was take notes, having gone from the most visible guy to the most invisible.
…
I tried to talk to the others in the coming days, but they all just seemed…odd.
They were nice and welcoming, but I could sense a certain…hollowness in them that gave me the heebie-jeebies. They also seemed to struggle in class, even though the material was real easy, and I often found myself fantasizing if there really was anything under those blonde tops of theirs.
As you can imagine, I’d eat my paper bag lunch all alone.
People around me would be chatting and laughing away and I’d just sit there chewing my sandwich in silence, wondering about whatever my mind found relevant at the moment.
But on one of these days, about a week after I’d started, I was eating my sandwich alone as always, when all of a sudden Derek sat in front of me.
I recognized his voice in an instant, but when I looked up at him, I froze when I saw the huge bruise just above his eye and the white patch that covered his left cheek.
“Dude,” I remember saying, “what in the hell happened to you man?”
Derek only smiled.
He talked about being neck-deep in his studies for the midterm exams, and only now had the free time to come down and visit me.
Although I was worried, I appreciated his company, so I didn’t bring up how he’d completely ignored my question.
Several days passed, and I spent each and every one of them talking to Derek during lunch. He was someone who’d just get cooler by the moment, and although he wasn’t the most literate when it came to pop culture and current affairs, we still found lots of common ground with each other. He admitted to me that he wasn’t the most popular guy in his grade – which I just couldn’t bring myself to believe – but he assured me that it was fine.
But from what I could see, it wasn’t just the student body that treated Derek poorly, but the teachers also seemed to be going along with it.
I remember bumping into Mr. Knight one day, the senior History teacher, and I casually asked him about Derek, remembering that he was a huge history buff.
But the guy just looked at me for a moment, a visible – although faint – look of confusion in his eyes, before walking off without saying anything.
William Harrison’s Preparatory School for Gifted Youngsters sure was a hell of a place, and not in a good way.
This was how most of my days went.
Going to school, taking notes, talking to Derek during lunch (the highlight of my day), taking more notes, going home, finishing any leftover assignments, sleep, repeat.
About four weeks in is when it happened.
I was in a particularly boring class, my eyelids struggling to stay open, let alone letting my eyes see what was in front of me.
The teacher’s voice seemed to drone on forever, and the last thing I remember before falling asleep was wondering just how the hell everybody else looked so damn focused on a guy that made you feel more bored listening to whatever he was saying than watching grass grow right in front of your face.
I awoke with a jump a few moments after things went dark.
The reason for this?
Well, the fire alarm was blaring like there was no tomorrow, the spinning white light blinding me like needles were being shot through my eyes and its screeching grated my ear drums to shreds.
I looked around hurriedly, and that’s when I noticed the first thing that made me feel uneasy about the whole thing.
No one but me was in the class.
I was the only one present.
In fact, it looked like no one had ever been there.
The blackboard, this ancient as hell thing, was as clean as a whistle, and it also lacked several large blemishes I’d noticed before.
In fact, everything seemed to have lost its sanding from age and exuded a pristine glow.
I would’ve probably sat there frozen like a deer in headlights forever had the smell of smoke not invaded my nose.
Just one whiff was enough to send my ass into a fit of coughing that I barely managed to get under control by pressing my mouth against my jacket.
I knew I had to get out quick, the fire being the least of my concerns.
I grabbed the door handle with my naked skin, and fought back the urge to cry as my flesh sizzled while I turned the knob.
The pain brought forth a new wave of adrenaline that made me even more awake than before.
Everything was on fire.
The hallway.
The paintings.
The Trophy case.
The flames clung to the walls as though they were made from dried and aged wood instead of concrete and steel.
Fire had seeped in through every crevice, and the ceiling above was covered by a cloud of black fumes, and the air itself was burning my eyeballs.
I ran from corridor to corridor, wondering if I was making the right turns, but it wasn’t very long before I found myself in a part I didn’t recognize at all.
The flames hissed and gnawed like whips, eager to sink their smoldering teeth into me.
My strength was running out, the adrenaline rush wearing off like a high, and I felt like I was out of options.
Well, until someone called out to me.
I turned my head as naturally as one could, and found myself facing a sight that no one could ever have prepared me for.
Derek stood not six feet away from me, his entire body a burning wick, and yet he didn’t so much as twitch a muscle.
“You have to get out of here,” he said, his voice somewhat raspy from his burned vocal cords.
“Y-yeah,” I told him, my brain struggling to process the situation “the school’s burning so we gotta-“
“That’s not what I meant.”
His voice cut the air like bullets, and I forgot how to talk.
“You gotta get out of here before it’s too late…and believe me when I say that it’s better to be consumed by fire than by this place.”
The last thing I can recall is reaching out to Derek, his skin a blackened mess that was one step away from soot by this point, but even with ten fingers in one hand I still couldn’t manage to grab ahold of him before everything went dark again.
…
I awoke with a jump, and everyone turned to look at me.
I looked around the classroom and breathed a sigh of relief, everything being as it should.
There’s no way to describe the relief I felt when I counted only five digits on my hand, but there’s also no way to describe the excruciating pain that I felt with no warning.
I turned my other hand, the one I’d been counting with, and stared at the terrible blister that was forming on my palm, my red sagging skin already encapsulated in a bubble of liquid held together by a thin membrane.
Oh Derek…
How I wish I’d listened to you.
Knowing what I know now, as I’m writing this, if I could go back to that day you warned me, as I sat all scared in class for no apparent reason, I’d have gotten my ass out of there before the bell would have even rung and never come again.
But since I’m writing this, you know I didn’t.
And trust me when I say this was the least interesting thing I’m going to be writing about.