Serrated

When Grant was a child, he was what the neighbors called “odd.” He would often keep to himself, examining the on-goings of ants and slugs and toads. But Grant could often be seen just watching. Watching the other children. Watching the adults. Watching for something to happen.

His peers could sense he was different, felt it almost as clearly as being stung by the Erickson’s electric fence ‒ a common game among the 12-year-old boys.

In the bathrooms, Grant would gaze at the other children as he washed his hands. He would contort his body, mimicking the movements of the other boys.

He listed the patterns in his mind, a sort of checklist for the behavior others expected him to exhibit:

Walking with a slouching posture meant you were cool.

Shrugging your shoulders meant you couldn’t be bothered.

It was like learning a second language, one made up of the flex and release of muscles and joints rather than the flicks of the tongue and ululations of the throat.

Facial features, it seemed, were much more difficult to imitate.

If you are happy, you show your teeth, Grant had thought, grimacing with both his top and bottom layer of pointy enamels protruding.

His classmates had veered away from him.

“What the hell are you doing, Rat?” Megamark, a 200-pound 6th grader, had spat. He was the one who had coined the vermin nickname after finding Grant digging in a dumpster the year before. It had nothing to do with eating, Grant had tried to explain, and more that he was hunting for something cool to use as a homebase for his pet Iguana. “Get sick of the trash in your sewer? You hungry for some people meat?”

Grant had let his lips fold over his teeth, unsure how to proceed.

The giant pre-teen stepped toward him, his chest puffing out until it almost touched Grant’s own. With his left hand, the boy pulled his shirt up just enough to show the end of a pocket knife, worn and rusty, shoved into the top pocket of his cargo pants.

Grant cocked his head at this, his curiosity getting the best of him as he reached out to grab it from Megamark’s possession.

With quick precision, Mark snatched the red shaft, flipping it outward to reveal a bent blade the color of crusting blood. Most of their audience started to flee, not wanting to be implicated with a weapon involved.

It occurred to Grant that at this moment, he should be responding with the rumored fight-or-flight response ‒ a phenomenon their science teacher Mr. Owsley had preached about from behind his lectern of crumpled paper balls and pencil shavings.

Grant’s arm raised slowly, stretching. Wide-eyed, the last of the classmates who had stayed near the toilets, watching the confrontation unfold, shuffled out the door.

The week before, Mr. Owsley had shown the class videos of antelope fleeing hungry jaws. One poor soul frozen on the edge of the watering hole with his head inclined to the sound of approaching hoofs. He was the first to be eaten, having frozen in alarm.

Dully gleaming in the low-wattage bathroom lights, the blade perched on the thumb of Mark’s clenched hand. It called to Grant, sang to him a tale of quests and triumphs. His pointer finger landed like a delicate butterfly on the edge of the siren knife, running down it as he tested the promises of its song.

The skin on the pad of his finger caught a ragged stretch of serration, bidding a drop of blood to the surface. A question. Immediately, he popped the tiny wounded appendage into his mouth, sucking on it.

Fight-or-freeze kicked in now, but not for Grant; Mark’s shoes had melted to the floor. Only moments before, Mark had been bloated with confidence, power, as he grasped that knife ‒ but now terror had hold of the reigns.

Mark’s grip on the switchblade loosened and Grant easily pulled it from his fist. As soon as Grant’s fingers grazed the pudgy chunk of skin between Mark’s pointer and thumb, a sultry, blinding warmth punched him in the stomach. It burned, but in the most pleasant way ‒ something Grant would later equate to a shot of scotch not gingerly taken.

Staggering back, Mark took halting steps toward the door. His eyes were basins, filled with questions dipped in raven ink.

“Frickin’ freak,” he stammered, his voice squeaking with the first hints of puberty. Grant’s grin spread on his cheeks, a wild thing not much used. With a flummoxed glance over his shoulder, Mark left Grant to stare at his slack jaw in the reflective glass ‒ alone.

Although he wished it were different, Grant knew he wasn’t the same as the other boys. His mother always told him he was special, but he felt the more appropriate term was solitary. He was one unlike anyone else he knew.