IN most groups of young children, there is one child who doesn't fit in. In our story, the group of young children is a class of fifth grade elementary school students. The child who doesn't fit in is Alex.
Alex wasn't ostracized because he was smarter than the other students. On the contrary, he had some of the worst grades in the class. He wasn't strange in any particular way. For example, in the same class, Kevin's feet were bigger than the teacher's, Sarah was teased because of her cartoon mouse voice, and Daniel farted loudly and often. Each of these children were teased for their weird characteristics, but they still fit in. The other studetns understood them; every human has something strange. The problem with Alex was that no one could put their finger on what was strange with him.
It was the last class of the day on Friday when all the students realized that Alex was different. It was Mr. Gates's math class, and since it was Friday and the smell of the weekend was driving the kids crazy (like a group of sharks smelling blood in the water), Mr. Gates decided that his lesson could wait until Monday and he let the kids be kids for about twenty minutes. Once he wrapped up his brief and half-hearted lecture (he was looking forward to the weekend even more than his students), his announcement "Free time!" was met with cheers and animation more fitting to a Roman crowd in the Colusseum than a class of eleven year olds.
Alex stayed in his seat, looking at his textbook, although not really studying it, but still focused on it. Almost everyone else was out of their seats and talking, moving around, and doing any number of things they'd been told all week they couldn't do. The girls were mostly chatting in small groups, the boys were laughing and hitting and kicking each other. Some students sat and read comic books or played videogames alone, but were soon swept into the chaos when a friend came by and slapped whatever they were looking at out of their hands. Everyone except Alex, without much reluctance, joined in the noisy, frenetic mass of children. Kevin, the one with the big feet, fat body, and (by the admission of everyone in class, including himself) ugly face, was shooting spitwads at everyone. Some dodged, some were hit. Of those, some would simply laugh as they wiped the glob off their faces, others would scream, many would throw something back at him, a few looked horrified, and at each reaction, he would let out a deep ogre bellow of a laugh, which got louder after each consecutive scream, laugh, wail, or revenge strike. He was whipped into his own furor, drunk off of the effects (negative or otherwise) that he was having on his classmates. At the zenith of his excitement, he wadded up a big piece of paper, summoned the last of the mucous from the deepest reserves of his sinuses and throat (truly the last, as he had already expended so much on the faces of the other children), muddled them both together in his big, puffy mouth, and, with his face red and eyes wild with excitement, rashly spat directly into Alex's eye.
He froze, realizing what he had just done. The groups of girls, the running, laughing, hitting boys all fell silent. All eyes were on the dripping gob covering Alex's eye, and then on his other, uncovered eye, waiting for a reaction. nothing came. Not fear, not anger, not sadness, not a tear, not even much surprise.
Mr. Gates didn't know what to do. Kids usually sort this out themselves. One kid gets hit with a spitball, then he hits back in retribution; justice is served. Or the kid cries, which is annoying for Mr. Gates, because then it is his job to dispense justice, otherwise he'll hear from the poor kid's parents about why the teacher is allowing this sort of thing to go on in his classroom. But he had no clue what to do in Alex's case. He wasn't crying, so he might not (probably wouldn't) tell his parents what happened, which meant Mr. Gates wouldn't get a call. But Alex wasn't doing anything himself to pay Kevin back. After about five seconds (which seemed like much longer), Mr. Gates said, "Alex. Don't you need to ask me for the bathroom pass to clean up?"
Without a word, with the wad still covering his eye, but now leaking spit and snot down his cheek, Alex got out of his desk, picked the pass up off of Mr. Gates's desk, and left the room, which immediately turned into a beehive of murmurs and whispers all about the same thing.
That weekend, since no one in the class could make sense of what happened, no one talked about it, although they all thought about it. It was terrifying. Kevin had a dream that Alex was stabbing him with a butcher's knife. Mr. Gates kept fighting the idea that Alex would come to school on Monday and flip over desks, tear maps and posters off the walls, and break computers. Kathy, who had almost cried when she saw what happened to Alex, had a dream that Alex himself was crying, crying so much that his eyeballs were floating in a lake of his own tears.
When Monday came, Alex was still on everyone's mind. The students still only talked with their friends, but everyone was looking at Alex out of the corners of their eyes. Everyone was waiting for him to do something, to show them something, to confirm or deny their suspicions or their theories about him. but he just sat at his desk like any other day. He never raised his hand to be called upon, and he always sat at the back, out of everyone's way. That's why no one had ever really noticed him before. but now it was impossible for him to be ignored.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the other students and even Mr. Gates watched Alex in apprehension and wonder, but on Thursday, things lightened up in class. Again, Kevin was the one to shift everyone's ideas about Alex. He was the only one bold enough or dumb enough, or maybe was just the person who was the most anxious about waiting to see what would happen. So he knocked Alex's pencil case off his desk as he walked by. The sound of the wood pencils and metal pencil case on the hard stone floor rang throughout the room. Everyone braced for the few seconds of awkwardness they were expecting; the same few seconds they experience last Friday. But before it could happen, and because he knew he had to do something differently this time, Kevin said, "You idiot," loud enough for everyone in class, even Mr. Gates, to hear. The rest of the class laughed lightly, a slight snicker, then Kevin kicked a few pencils across the room, at which point the snickers turned into cackles. Even Mr. Gates smiled and felt relieved.
Imbued with the confidence Kevin's stunt had given them, the rest of the class started picking on Alex. Jimmy hit him in the head with a paper airplane when Mr. Gates wasn't looking, and then Peter flipped Alex's book shut when he was.
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