Chapter 1:

Part I:

The Beginning

September 1994

I WALKED UP to the bus stop, hoping maybe today would be better. Maybe today wouldn't be one of the bad days I had so often. For instance the day before... the day before was a terrible day. I had come home crying again. My name is Brandon, and at the time this all began, I was eleven years old. I was just barely old enough to be in the sixth grade. I attended Holden Middle School, where I was everyone's favorite kid to pick on. My town is just about twenty-five minutes away from Albuquerque, NM. Close enough to go in if we want to during the evening, but far enough away to be away from the smog and other city troubles.

I had hoped when I moved up to the middle school to have a new start – perhaps losing the problems I had before in elementary school, but they'd only compounded and gotten worse. All of this was going through my mind as I walked the block to my bus stop.

As I arrived I watched cautiously to see if there were any plans in action that I needed to be aware of. The bus stop consisted of a dirt lot that had a volleyball court from a neighboring church in it. It's really just the standard dirt lot you see all over the southwest, with plenty of weeds and rocks. It definitely wouldn't have been a destination for me other than it being the bus stop.

I looked down at my watch and saw that I had arrived about five minutes before the bus would arrive. Looking around further I saw Luke had gotten to the bus stop already... not good. As I saw him, he turned around and gave me a narrowing look before heading over my way.

"Well if it isn't little Brandon. I'm surprised you came back to school today after yesterday. I see your arm is starting to turn a nice purple today... Maybe we can make your legs match it!" He said laughing, a couple of his friends came up and started to taunt me together. "You know on a lot of guys your spiked hair means they shouldn't be messed with. But on you it really doesn't do you any good!" Joe, another guy taunted.

The bad part was that Lucas was actually just a lieutenant in the group of guys that gave me trouble. If these guys were already getting on my case it would only get worse. I could tell this was about to get out of hand real fast. Joe started to make a grab for my arm about the time that the bus pulled up – thankfully it was early that day.

"What are you kids doing? Do I need to write you all up?!?" Our bus driver Miss Amy screamed at us. They instantly let me go, but I knew that this story would get to my mom (another bus driver) before I got home. Great... another day of hell all around. So much for today.

As I took my seat my eyes started welling up – I couldn't help it – I'd dealt with this nonstop since I was in first grade. It seemed like no matter what, there was always another bully to make it their personal mission to torment me. I didn't do a very good job of dealing with it either, so it just kept happening.

It didn't help that I wasn't big enough to come off as a threat to anyone. At four-feet-two-inches, and seventy-five pounds, I was the smallest boy in my class. There was one girl, Nikki, who was shorter than me, and kept me from having the honor of being the shortest in the entire class of a-hundred-and-eighty kids. I was also a year younger than a lot of the kids since my birthday had just fallen inside the deadline for my grade level. My parents had wanted to keep me from entering kindergarten that year, but the preschool I was at insisted that mentally I was ready. They were right on that part – I was one of the smartest kids at the school – but emotionally I was a baby in comparison. Something the kids always enjoyed reminding me.

By the time the bus pulled up to the school I had regained some control of my eyes and wiped them dry. I got off the bus and took my instrument into the band room storage closet. Then I waited outside the main door to go in for the day. I could feel the stares of the other kids burning in my backside. I was scanning around the waiting area for anyone that might give me trouble. That's when I noticed Matt had joined up with the group of guys that had been with Lucas. Matt was the leader that I spoke of earlier.

He had brought his own group with him to make a formidable gang of kids. As far as I could tell their entire goal in life was to see how miserable they could make other people. I was easily on the top of their list of targets.

I could hear Lucas snickering to Matt how he had caused me to cry already that day. They were more than ten feet away, but I could hear them very clearly. I had developed very good hearing as a result of my torment – it was a defense mechanism. I'd learned early on that being able to tell when someone was going to bother me was the best way for me to avoid trouble. I saw them point at me just as the bell rang and I tried to hurry to my locker before anything else happened.

As I got to my locker I opened it quickly and grabbed my books, putting them into my backpack as quickly as I could. I closed my locker just in time to turn around and stare at Matt and Lucas right behind me.

"So I hear Baby Brandon made another appearance this morning. Maybe baby needs to go back to day care instead of Middle School?" Matt sneered at me. As he did so he grabbed my arm and shoved me into my locker. I landed on my good arm, that hadn't been bruised, right on top of one of the locker dials. I was instantly in tons of pain, and I knew that I had a new bruise to match my other one.

I did my best to try not to cry – I knew that was what he wanted, but then he punched me in the stomach as he walked away from me. I was crying as I walked up the stairs to my first class. As I walked in Mr. Krantz, my teacher saw me.

Mr. Krantz asked, "Brandon why don't you go to the bathroom and wash your face?"

I nodded, "Thanks," and sniffled at the same time as I headed for the bathroom. I managed to regain control and went back to class... This was not going to be a good day.

When I went back to class and sat down I relaxed a little. At least I was in a sanctuary of the classroom now. This class was biology – my favorite academic subject of the day. Mr. Krantz was by far the hardest teacher I had ever had though. A point that was going to be made clear today.

"Morning everyone, I want to give you a chance to see what your grade is going to be when it comes out on your report cards Friday. I'll call you up one at a time to show you."

I sat there waiting as he went through the names until he got to the J's. "Brandon, you're next." As I looked down at his paper I almost fainted... A C?!?!?!?!?!?

"Is that a mistake Mr. Krantz?"

"No Brandon, it looks like your vocab notes are what knocked your grade down. Make sure you write neatly next nine weeks so we can get that grade up."

To say I was miffed would be to put it mildly. I could clearly see I wasn't the only one, and I was sure that nobody was getting an A in his class if I wasn't. I had been a mostly A student since second grade... A C did not sit well with me.

"Psst... Brandon." The girl next to me, Amy, said. "What did you get?"

"A stupid C..." I said as quietly as I could through my anger, trying not to lose it again. Thankfully I was too shocked to cry. "What did you get?"

"A B-, I had an eighty percent exactly. Laura got an eighty-eight over there. She's got the highest grade I've heard of so far." We were going to keep talking but Mr. Krantz gave us the teacher glare, so we both shut up.

A couple minutes later Mr. Krantz stood up at the front of the class and started talking. "Many of you are no doubt shocked at your grade, indeed some of you I was worried that you might faint." The jerk smiled as he said that... "In my class I take very literally the meaning of the names of the grades. An F is Failing – I handed out five of those in this class. He started graphing the numbers. A D is nearly failing, I handed out seven of those to this class. A C is average, I handed out thirteen of those in this class. A B is above average, I handed out two of those in this class. And finally an A is excellent and superior. I did not have any A's in this class, this nine weeks."

He continued to speak for ten minutes on this topic before we moved on. I had a seventy-nine percent, one stinking point away from being a B. It was clear I was going to have to work a lot harder to get an A in this class. At least I found out I had the highest grade of any of the boys.

I went downstairs from Biology over to my social studies class. Amazingly I managed to make it without incident. Maybe today could improve? Mr. Randolph was my social studies teacher, and he smiled and said hi as each of us walked in. He was a different kind of teacher... in most ways he was actually probably a terrible teacher... but at least as class went on today I found out I had an A+ in his class. Of course it seemed like the only thing we did in his class was watch America's Funniest Home Videos...

When I finished that hour though, I was off to my favorite class – Band. I had just started playing saxophone this year and I was really pumped about it! Mrs. Remar was also good about keeping control of the bullies in my class – something I greatly appreciated. Especially since Matt also played saxophone. I was first chair though, which meant that I had some space between him and myself.

I sat down and we began playing a number out of the book. "Saxophones you're playing too loud!" Mrs. Remar seemed to love saying that... That period went well. I was excited about playing and having a good time in that class. I found out from Mrs. Remar that I was receiving an A+ in band, and also got to see her chew Matt out for doing something stupid... I definitely felt like the day was turning around.

I put my saxophone up quickly and took the shortcut from band to the choir room through her office. Having two electives as a sixth grader was definitely nice.

I WALKED INTO the choir room and sat down on the front riser where I stood due to my short size. Mrs. Schultz greeted me as I came in. She was the one person in this school for whom I believe more students picked on than me... As a new teacher she was making just about every mistake in the book of mistakes, and making up some new ones. Even I would place bets on the possibility of her running to her office crying some days.

"Brandon, here, this a new piece we're going to sing. Go ahead and put it in your folder." She handed me a piece of music as she said that.

"Thanks Mrs. Schultz." I looked at the piece, it was called, All The Pretty Little Horses... 'Yeah that was a real manly song to sing,' I thought to myself. I was sure the other guys were going to have a field day with this piece. Oh well. I looked at it and thought it sounded like it was going to be a pretty piece.

Everyone joined me on the risers as they came in. Mrs. Schultz was in her office grabbing something when one of the boys next to me started snickering from some joke that a guy named Pete had told. I was really hoping that it didn't have anything to do with me. In the meantime another girl, Ashley, tapped me on my shoulder to get my attention.

"Brandon can I touch your hair?" I had my hair in the spiked hair style that was quickly fading from coolness, but was still unique. I wanted to say no – I didn't like people messing with it, but it was pretty much stuck up there so I said, "I guess."

"This feels so cool, I was expecting it to be hard and pointy, but it's actually really soft. Amy feel this!" Ashley said.

"Ooh, this isn't what I expected either, Brandon what do you do to make it stick up?" Amy asked.

"Well you know, I just stick my finger in the light socket everyday and it just does this. Hurts a bit for a second, but it saves tons of time!" I said jokingly.

Amy and Ashley chuckled a bit. Amy said, "You know Brandon you can be funny sometimes, I wish more people gave you the chance to do so." She said sweetly making my face turn red.

"You're also the only guy I know that can blush like that!" She said making me really embarrassed. I didn't know what to think about this. I wasn't used to her paying any attention to me. I wasn't exactly in her social circle. Well... at the moment I wasn't really in any social circle!

"So really, what do you do?" She asked again.

"I just take a comb and some water and run it through it backwards. Then I spray some hairspray on. I used to have to put gel in it, but it does it on its own anymore." I replied.

"Cool," She responded.

Soon about four of the girls were enjoying the fact that my hair stuck straight up but wasn't stiff. I'd been spiking it for about four years at that point, so it really did do it on its own. It was getting a little long now for it though (about an inch and a half long,) and I was going need to cut it if I wanted it to keep from having to gel it.

In the meantime one of the boys that had been laughing leaned over and told Jordan (another girl to my right) something to which she looked at me and started laughing... Yep whatever it was it had to do with me.

Soon Pete couldn't contain his humor anymore. "Brandon, have you seen the movie, The Christmas Story?"

"Umm... no?" I replied cautiously. Whatever this was it wouldn't be good.

"Because other than your hair you look just like Ralphy," he said in a manner that wasn't nice.

Another boy, Robert, asked me, "so do you have a BB gun?"

"Yes, why do you ask?" I asked. I hadn't seen the movie before so I had no idea what was coming.

"Because you'll shoot your eye out!" He said. He and his friends laughed really hard. So did the rest of the class unfortunately.

Thankfully that was the moment that Mrs. Schultz decided to try teaching the class. She was a much better target than me. "Okay, up until now we've been singing songs with just one part this year. The new piece I handed out has three parts, and I want to go ahead and split everyone up into their proper parts. For now I want all of the boys on my right side and all of the girls on my left side."

It was an amazing thing actually, we had about ten boys in our choir class in addition to the twenty girls. You don't see that in a lot of choir programs. I moved over to the right side and we started working on the piece. About five minutes later she was working with the boys on their part, when she heard me having trouble getting down low enough.

"Brandon, would you try singing this instead?" She had me singing the soprano part though I didn't know it yet.

"Okay," I said. I was very proud of how high I could sing. Looking back at it now I wished I had joined a boys or even a children's chorus. I loved singing and know that I would have had a great time being in one of those groups. I had no problems reaching those pitches at all.

"Okay Brandon, would you move over next to Amy there?" I was petrified now... oh no... this skill backfired big-time! Now I was going to get more crap from the kids about this. So much for things getting better this morning... As I walked over to stand by Amy, I was glad that she at least smiled at me. On the far side of the choir the other guys snickered. This couldn't get any worse I thought.

Mrs. Schultz spoke up, "Now class Brandon has a lovely voice that at certain times in history would have meant he would have been treated like royalty. Boys that could sing high were accorded a very high place in the choirs that were in the kings courts..." I tuned it out, I was wrong, it could get worse. After three minutes of terribly screwing things up more for me, we started singing again.

As class ended I left as quickly as I could, not looking or speaking to Mrs. Schultz as I left for lunch.

WHEN I GOT into the lunch line I heard snickering behind me. I turned around to see it was Pete talking to Matt. Great.

"Brandon, just ignore them, they're just jealous." Amy said as she appeared next to me.

"That's easier said than done," I said trying to keep control of my voice. Couldn't anything go right in my life?

"Personally I really like your voice. I think you can actually sing higher than I can." Amy said trying to cheer me up. I was kind of bewildered. It wasn't like we'd never talked before, but at the same time for her to talk to me in public was new and unexpected.

"Thanks Amy, I appreciate it."

"You're welcome."

We didn't say anything else as the line wound through the lunchroom. I actually was feeling a little better about myself, one of the hottest girls in my grade at school was talking to me. I got my wonderfully healthy meal of French Fries and went to have a seat by myself at a table as far away from Matt's thugs as I could.

I had one fry to go when Matt and Lucas came up to me. "Hey Ralphy, don't shoot your eye out!"

A kid nearby asked, "Why are you calling Brandon, Ralphy?"

"Because he looks like Ralphy from The Christmas Story," Matt said as loudly as he thought he could get away with without being yelled at. "And he cries just as much too!" He said while grabbing my last fry and pushing me off of my seat.

"Matt!" A teacher said from across the room. "Come Here!"

I was beside myself and went from the cafeteria to the bathroom crying. I couldn't believe it, not only did I have a bad nickname I didn't want, but it was going to spread through the school like wildfire now! Not to mention Matt was going to blame his getting in trouble on me. I stayed in there for a couple minutes before one of the PE Coaches came to check on me.

"Brandon, are you alright, Bud?" Coach U asked.

"Yeah, I guess." I replied shakily.

"You've got to stop giving him what he wants. Anytime he can get a reaction out of you he's feeding off of it. If you can even at least keep from crying immediately after it you'll make some progress. Or, and I'm not saying this, stand up to him and push him back."

"He's twice my size though..." I said.

"Yes he is, and he may very well use that against you, but even just standing up to him will cause him to realize there are easier targets. Just think about it Brandon, I need you to go ahead and move on though, you can't stay in here. Matt will be out of your hair today and tomorrow – I can promise you that."

"Thanks Coach." I said as I left. I decided to go by the snack bar real quick to get a coke and a Reese's.

From there I went outside and found a spot on a low, decorative, stucco wall and tried to stay out of sight. I somehow succeeded until the bell rang and I went inside for PE. I went in and changed as quickly as I could – but not quite quickly enough.

"Hey Brandon, the girls locker room is on the other side of the gym," an eighth grader named Bryce said.

"Ha-ha you're very funny." I replied.

"I know I am, kind of like that face of yours," he said as I tried to get past him and go into the gym.

"Actually I understand I'm supposed to call you Ralphy now, I sure hope you don't shoot your eye out with that BB gun of yours." He said as he finally let me walk by. As I walked by he tried to trip me, but thankfully that was one thing I was good at recovering from. I stumbled for a step but kept on going. I made it to the safety of my line and we began warming up.

Mrs. Bradley, our fifty-eight year old PE teacher, got up to the front of the class and said, "Okay class today we're going to run the mile. Everyone will do four laps around the track and I'll time you." I groaned, I played soccer and could run for short distances at a time very well, but I was terrible at the mile.

We walked out the door and another kid tried tripping me. I again managed to avoid falling. After we all lined up at the starting line she yelled, "Go!" I ran as well as I could, but I was much slower than any of the other boys. I managed to run it in nine minutes and twenty seconds. That was by far the fastest time I had ever run the mile.

By the time I was done I was exhausted and sat down on grass next to the track to rest. Amazingly I wasn't the last person. That honor fell to the kids that didn't care and practically walked the whole way. A couple minutes later Nikki came and sat down next to me. She was the girl I mentioned earlier that was smaller than me. She was just shy of four feet tall, and was usually pretty nice to me.

"So Brandon are you going to go?" She asked in and excited manner.

"What are you talking about Nikki?" I asked.

"Haven't you had English yet?" She asked. I shook my head. "Well you'll find out more when you have English, but they're offering that trip to Florida this summer through the school. Ms. Fitzgerald came up from the elementary school today to talk to all of the sixth graders that came from Maple Elementary. They'll call you out of class to talk to you. Since it was unexpected for us to go to the middle school instead of being at the elementary school again they decided to go ahead and offer the trip to us so we don't miss out."

So for those of you that are a little confused, our elementary school offered a trip every year to sixth graders to Florida. It was a really cool trip, and we all had hoped to be able to go. You had to pay/fundraise your own way to go though, so not a lot of people went. In April, our school board in all its wisdom, suddenly voted to expand the middle school to include sixth through eighth graders this year. All of the sudden we found ourselves in a new school a year earlier than we expected. That's a whole other fun subject, but one of the reasons we were all mad about it was this trip.

"So are you going?" I asked.

"I'm hoping to, I'll talk to my parents tonight about it. I'll tell you tomorrow what they say, okay?" She said.

"Yeah, that would be so cool." I now had a reason to look forward to going to sixth hour!

I had been to Disneyland in California that previous summer for the first time and it had been really cool. The previous summer had actually marked a huge change for my family. My dad had worked at his company for ten years now, and they got bought out by a larger company. In doing so he had to cash out his entire pension.

That had enabled us to move out of the trailer I had grown up in, and into a real house. My parents had also surprised me in July with a trip to Disneyland. I had grown up in New Mexico, and had never previously been outside of the Four Corners States. My parents weren't rich though, so I didn't know whether or not we could afford this. Still... maybe, just maybe!

I talked with her for a few more minutes. It was kind of funny because the two of us were like a couple days apart in age (she was older) – between that and our height I had always been friends with her. We talked about how we were excited about how band was going so far. (She played flute) Class wrapped up pretty soon after that and I went into the locker room to change.

After a four minute hell session where, I discovered that Ralphy was definitely going to stick, I managed to get out of there without any more physical violence against me.

I HURRIED ON to my English class, going down the one hallway that connected that wing to the main school, and down another to get to the oldest wing of the school and up the staircase. This led to the room of Mr. Tamera, probably the worst English teacher of all time. To get you to shut up he'd say, 'shut the mouth.' The more I think about it I had a lot of bad teachers that year!

I sat down in my chair, and after he called roll he called those of us from Maple Elementary to go down the hall to an empty classroom where Ms. Fitzgerald was waiting.

"Hi Ms. Fitz!" I said as I walked up and gave her a hug. She had been one of the few teachers who had really tried – and somewhat succeeded – to keep my life from being as rough. I hadn't even been in her class last year and she had still helped as much as she could. She had taught sixth grade at Maple Elementary, but chose to stay there instead of moving up to the middle school this year with most of the other teachers.

Right behind me Amy greeted her just as enthusiastically – as did most of the other kids. There were about eight students present for the meeting. I saw they had not invited some of the students, like Matt and Lucas, who were from that school too. I knew they had English this hour and should have been here for this. I wasn't going to complain though.

"How are you all doing?" She asked. "You've all grown a bunch since I saw you all last year. Well I'm guessing most of you have heard about why I'm here to talk to you, but just in case here it is!" She said enthusiastically, but not condescendingly, as only a good teacher can.

"We've received permission to offer the Florida Experience trip to you guys even though you're not at the elementary anymore. We decided to only offer it to students that passed all of their classes last year and were from Maple Elementary. The district approved that and we're going to do it that way!" She smiled as she said that.

"I won't keep you long, but basically if you go you'll go for six days and five nights to Orlando, Fl. We'll go to Disney World, Kennedy Space Center, Universal Studios, and the beach among other things. Your parents are welcome to come along if they want to. We're willing to help you organize some fundraisers, but you do have to pay for it on your own. Do any of you think your parents might be interested?"

Amy, Kyle, and I raised our bands. The other kids shook their heads, I don't think their parents had a chance of affording it, and they unfortunately already knew the response they would get if they asked. I didn't honestly think my parents could either, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask. I looked at the stuff that they gave me. It was only seven-hundred dollars to go on the trip! That was cheap and I knew it.

As we left Amy spoke to me briefly, "Brandon that would be so exciting if we could all go together. And, it looks like we won't have any of those jerks with us either!"

"Yes that would be nice wouldn't it?" I replied as we went separate ways. My thoughts had paralleled hers. There was a meeting next week for anyone interested. I only hoped I could get my parents to go to it!

I got back to class getting plenty of stares of "why did he get to go?" But I couldn't answer even if they asked, Mr. Tamera was droning on about some stupid tense thing. I understood it within one minute of his twenty-six minute lecture we had to endure. I got the feeling he had droned on fourteen minutes before that too! All in his broken English. Shouldn't an English teacher be able to speak English?!?

I left that class still on a high from my hopes of possibly going on the trip. I got to Math and did my homework quickly while he talked on. I had my homework done and when I looked at my watch I saw that I still had thirty minutes of class to go. I checked the odd answers with the ones in the back of the book and fixed the two I had wrong before looking again to see that I still had another twenty five minutes. One of my other nemeses was sitting behind me and started giving me crap.

"Jeff, leave me alone okay?" I said. He was a jerk, and a wannabe cool kid. While he was a rung higher on the ladder than I was, he wasn't much higher. The main reason he wasn't much higher was because he was a big fat oaf to... to put it nicely...

"Why? Ralphy, what are you going to do about it? Cry? You're just a wimp!"

"Just knock it off!"

"And what if I don't?" He asked. I'd had enough today, he was going to get it.

I stood up and reached down and grabbed the hair on the top his head and yanked as hard as I could.

"OWWWW!!! Stop that!" He cried. The other kids nearby were watching and all amazed that I was actually successfully taking on one of my antagonists.

"Not before you promise me you'll stop picking on me!" I suggested to him.

"Alright, I'll stop!" He fairly cried.

I turned around in my desk expecting to be getting sent to the office by my teacher, but Mr. Martin just turned around at that moment and looked at me. He gave me a wink and turned his attention to something on his desk. I couldn't believe it. I actually accomplished something and got away with it! That never happened to me.

Once the bell rang I grabbed my saxophone from the band room and ran to the bus as quickly as I could. When I got on the bus I heard kids talking about my 'fight' with Jeff. It certainly seemed to have earned me a bit of respect. I still got called Ralphy as I got on the bus though, so I knew it wasn't enough to get away from the new nickname. But progress is progress right?

I shouldn't have thought I got away so cleanly for the day though. As I was getting off the bus I saw Matt was behind me. How did he get on my bus? He doesn't even ride this bus I thought!

I tried to hurry across the street and get down the block to my house but he caught me just after crossing the street. "Hey Brandon hold up! I still owe you for what you did to me earlier!" He said while he grabbed at my backpack.

I couldn't go anywhere at that point so I turned around. "What did I do to you?!? If I remember correctly you were the one picking on me!"

"Ooh we're talking back now that we fought like a girl to beat up Jeff, huh?" He said pushing me backwards. I stumbled but managed to stay on my feet. I was frantically trying to think of a way to get away from him.

"No, I'm just sick of your shit is all." I replied. I slowly walked backward to a yard that had some rocks in it.

"Ooh you think you're all big now cussing at me? Well let's get this over with runt. Because of you I was in ISS today, and I'll be there tomorrow and Monday!" And with that he started to rush towards me. I decided I had only one chance, to use his movement against him.

If I could trip him he would fall the opposite direction from my house. The time he spent on the ground might give me enough of a head start to make it home... Everything slowed down, and I did a move that I used a lot in soccer to fake out my opponents. I leaned in the opposite direction than I was going and he fell for it. I then stuck out my leg and he bowled over tumbling head over heels two times.

Of course, I didn't see that part because I was already running as fast as I could for home. I got my key out of my pocket in the hope I could make it there, unlock the door, and lock it before he got there. I needn't have worried that much because when I got to my door I saw he was nowhere near me. That kind of puzzled me for a moment; I figured he would be right on my heels. Still I decided not to chance it and locked the door quickly behind me.

I collapsed, crying on my bed, why did every day of my life have to be a living nightmare?

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