Eddie

I'm not quite seventeen

on the verge of

panic

no girlfriend

no awards

nothing to show for

except that god-awful

chicken pox scar

on my wrist

and a collection

of vinyl

your mother would be

jealous of.

The doctors say

My self-esteem

is low

and my hope

is gone

I say:

"I am

human

and

I

need

to be loved

just like

everybody

else

does".

Pour the glass of water. Open the orange bottle. Push down and twist the cap. Label reads: "May cause dizziness. May cause drowsiness, use care when operating heavy machinery" and "May cause blurred vision". Take out tiny white pill. Swallow. Every night. The same routine, and I haven't even yet turned seventeen. Close the cabinet, look in the mirror. Eddie staring into Eddie. Take a mirror selfie. A picture of Eddie staring at Eddie. What a miserable, lonely looking Eddie. Delete. Delete. Delete. This is every day. Every single day I'm walking on eggshells around myself, half afraid of becoming lost within the darkness of my thoughts, and half afraid of the bubble of sunshine and rainbows everyone else is standing under half the time. You know, there are the Tiggers and the Eeyores, and I'm definitely not a Tigger, and I'd kick you in the pants if you called me Eeyore, or even tried to compare me to any of the sadly mentally unstable characters of The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, even though, sometimes, I think Christopher Robin is somehow a real person and is controlling me like a puppet, here, standing in the bathroom, looking at myself, and my small life, in this small house. Am I the only one who has had that thought cross my mind at least seven times? Seven. That seems to be very a very unlucky number for me, which is kinda ironic I guess, but in order for you to understand how the number seven is so unlucky for me, and how lucky the number seven is for everybody else, in the goddamn world, I must take you back to where this all began for me.

It all happened on a not-so-eventful day at school. I was in the 7th grade. (There's that number, seven). I was sitting in keyboarding class, mindlessly typing words into Word, staring at this ugly and annoying paperclip that seemed to be asking me a lot of stupid questions like: "How can I help you today?" "Do you need me to spell check that for you?" Then, every time I hovered over a word to correct it that damn thing would flip around and do some stupid dance, like it was making a regular celebration party out of correcting my horrible grammatical mistakes. I wanted to punch that paperclip right between those buggy, beady little eyes that always seemed to move around, this way and that, when I was typing. It was actually beginning to creep me out, when, all of a sudden, the world's worst event ever occured. A series of chain reactions, I guess, but it was all leading up to this one moment.

This wasn't the first time that I had felt angry, and sad, and confused, it was just the first time people actually saw it, the first time they recognized that something wasn't exactly right with me; from that moment on, I would be labeled as Eddie "the crazy one" for the rest of my schooling. I never meant for it to happen that way. It just seemed that everything was going wrong that week.

Number 1: Shelley Gardner:

Possibly one of the cutest girls in our class. Possibly the object of my gaze for the past week. I tried to keep a low profile about it, not like I was stalking her in any way, I just so happened to be in the same place at the same time as her, a lot. A whole heck of a lot. I'd eat lunch on the other end of the table from her, glancing up from my brown bag lunch, the stench of bologna and cheese on my breath as she casually walks by the trash can and threw away her lunch. She would always smile at me, and I would smile back, while consciously wondering if I had anything stuck in my teeth or something. One day, I forgot my lunch so I had to buy one of the school lunches, which, might I add, are really not that great. Anyway, she offered to take my tray as she was walking over to the trash can. I said "sure", chuckling nervously as she bent over to grab my tray and I came face to face with them. Those big, beautiful melons. I just wanted to lean forward a little bit and rest my head on them, and go to sleep as if dreaming on two soft pillows, her breasts, and forget about everything else. But just as soon as I was about to completely lose it in the middle of the lunch room, she starts waving her hand in front of my face, saying "Are you okay?", and I realize that I've just spent the last twenty seconds looking at her boobs and not her face, and even though she was asking me a question I still couldn't stop staring at them and I just muffled "yes" under my breath. Even from far away, it seemed to me that they were some kind of art, sculpted, a masterpiece, if you will. But goddamnit, what happened next was absolutely unforgivable. I mean, I don't even know why I said it. Looking back now, I can't even explain why the thought came to me, but it all just came out like vomit as soon as she started to walk away:

"I'd love to touch those..." I said, snickering under my breath.

"Excuse me?" she replied.

I repeated myself a little louder so she could hear me. I even stood up and took a few steps closer to her.

"I said," I pulled my lips next to her ear and whispered: "I'd love to touch those sometime."

She glared at me with the most disgusted look on her face. Her lips curved downwards into a frown and she loudly barked so everyone could hear:

"You perv! Get away from me!"

At that point, everyone around the table had turned around to look at me. There I was, standing in the cafeteria in my black boots, jeans, and my Metallica shirt, looking dishelved and dorky and weird. I didn't quite fit in at all, especially at that table. Fucking preps. I hated them. I jerked my head back around to look at Shelley, who had already stammered out of the room. I saw a few of her friends scurry after her, giving me the most evil glare as they left.

I got as far away from the preppy table as I could, hoping honestly I could just find somewhere to hide. The whole time, I was thinking to myself: "What is wrong with you, Eddie?!", "What were you thinking?!"

But mostly, I was thinking about Shelley, and I don't even know why. It's not like she was all that amazing. I just liked her boobs. A lot. End of story. But not really the end of the story because that afternoon, I had the pleasure of sitting in Mr. Benway's office, explaining to him exactly what happened at lunch, and it was super awkward, especially the way he tried to talk to me about it.

"Look, Eddie, I know you are growing, and you are changing," he paced back and forth behind his desk as he glanced out the window. He had a tennis ball in his hand and was bouncing it off the glass of the window and back to him. "But that doesn't excuse your behavior," he said.

"You see this ball? This ball is you. Right now, you are aiming at the window, you are trying hard to get through this window or this wall, but you can't. You can't make it through the wall because you are not ready to. You have to bounce back. That's the only thing you can do right now...and I know you'll bounce back, I know you won't let something like this continue to happen at my school, right? You will quit this funny business."

I roll my eyes and look down at the hole in my jeans, pulling at some of the thread and letting the pieces fall onto the carpet.

"I can see the changes...you have changed a lot since last year, but don't forget who you are, Eddie."

Mr. Benway used to be my tennis coach. I USED to play tennis. I also USED to be friends with all those polo-shirt, khaki pants wearing preps at that lunch table. But something changed. I don't know exactly what. It was like I woke up one morning and just felt sick of the same old routine, the same old friends, the same old life. I was sick of feeling like I was pretending to be something I wasn't, or was, or at least, just something I did not feel I belonged to.

"I know you think this acting out stuff is your way of rebelling, but you're not fooling me. So, try to be more respectful." With that, Benway handed me the tennis ball and dismissed me back to keyboarding class. That's where I left off, anyway. Well, Alex, this jocky prep that I USED to be friends with, comes into the class, and, while I'm just in the middle of typing, not even aware what was going on around me, he comes in and grabs me, pushes me against the wall, and yells right into my face:

"WHY ARE YOU HARASSING MY GIRLFRIEND?!"

Oh yeah, did I mention Shelley had a boyfriend? Yeah, she was dating Alex. So he pushes me, and I push back and I want to take that tennis ball and just shove it down his throat. I think to myself how nice it would be for me to take a tennis racket and just beat the living hell out of him, and then I remember, someone in class that sits next to me ironically plays on the tennis team this year, so I take out the racket. Everyone in class is gasping, and the teacher, oh yeah, Mrs. Stewart, well, she was in the teacher's lounge for the time being, but when she came back, she started yelling and screaming down the hallway for help.

I felt kind of sorry for her, that I had to put her through this today. She's a nice lady, but this asshole had it coming. Anyway, Mr. Benway comes in and is grabbing me by the arms, yanking me off of Alex. This isn't looking too good for me, and he is looking PISSED.

The rest of my afternoon was spent sitting in the counseling office with my mom. They were all talking about this "deep seated" anger and rage I had in me. They were fearful for me. They thought I could turn into some weirdo that would run in and shoot up the school or something tomorrow. It was kind of ridiculous. From then on, I was known as Eddie "The Crazy One", well, at least to some of the kids at school. Some of the other kids didn't think it's bad what I did, some even applauded me for beating up Alex.

The next day at school, this kid came up to me. He had this wild grin on his face, and he was a short geeky looking kid (probably a freshman).

"Eddie Spaghetti, my MAN!" he says, raising his hand to give me a high five. I watched as some girls passed by us, and I could hear little pieces of their whispering to each other, but I couldn't make out exactly what they were talking about. They looked disgusted with me, so I assumed it was mean. Then, Derek stumbles in front of them and says "Hello, ladies" in his supposedly charming but to me very creepy way of addressing girls. Both of the girls push past him, sticking out their tongues in disgust, one of them even flipped the bird back at him as they walked away, which made me chuckle a little bit. Girls. They hated all of us. We couldn't win.

I made only one friend out of that whole ordeal, and lost seven friends, basically. I mean, they weren't really my friends anymore at that point anyway. I had stopped talking to them long before that, so I didn't feel too bummed about it. But all that frustration, all that pent up anger, just led me to be referred to these "doctors" who were supposedly going to "help me" and so then, I became a mindless zombie, swallowing sugar pills every evening because my mom thought somehow it would help. So I've been doing that for about the past four years, and now I'm here, and I STILL can't stop thinking about Shelley Gardner's boobs.