The Longest Ride Home

      After school, when I climbed on the bus, I was shocked and dismayed to see that the bus had three times the normal number of students crowded on it. Most of the new addition of kids normally took other buses with routes that ran parallel to mine. I guess, since they lived within walking distance, they had come along to see the bloodletting, my bloodletting, to be more specific. Some of the kids were friends of Billy’s. Some of them had just come to see blood, anyone's blood. The rest were just curious to see how badly the "Coward of the County" would be beaten.

      The entire bus ride home was torturous. Many of the kids were jeering and threatening me. As we neared my bus stop, I got up from my seat. I was feeling a surge of adrenaline as a raw edge of vomit threatened to spill forth. Yet a part of me started to feel oddly cold, numb, detached, even a bit robotic, and oddly powerful.

I deftly folded and handed my Hubble coke-bottle glasses to my sister.

      She cried out in fear and concern, "Oh, Laz, please be careful."

      I barked back at her, "Shut up!"

      I felt bad as soon as I yelled at my sister. I think I yelled at her, partly because I did not want to look like a sissy and partly, I suppose, because I wanted to seem tough and in control. Mostly, I did not want to feed on her fear. Mine was more than enough!

      As my sister and I got off the bus, almost three-quarters of the kids on the bus piled out eagerly behind us.

      The mob was hungry for blood. We were only one short block from my house. A part of me wanted to make like Jesse Owens or Ben Johnson and hightail it to my house.

      Yet mostly, I was just tired of avoiding confrontations- tired of the fear, tired of the irrationality of it all. I just wanted to get it over with. Billy and I faced each other, and the large crowd of kids swelled around us, howling and jeering their taunts.

      I am not sure if my mind was trying to escape the stress of this situation, but as I looked away from Billy at the mass of kids around me, in my mind’s eye, I saw a frightful, straining mob of barbaric peasants. They were adorned in scruffy clothing made of leather, furs, and other crude materials. The atmosphere was one of expectancy, of waiting, and thrummed with the conflicting desires within the group.

      Some of them wanted to see the blood, pain, and defeat of the tribe’s outsider, which of course was me. Yet, in many I sensed a desire to see the feared champion –Billy -- miraculously defeated. Of course, if the champion did what was expected, then everyone in the mob would kiss his ass, as per usual.