Tomorrow
by Mark Raymond Falk

They had pushed him against his locker in the morning.  When his head banged on the metal, some of the other kids laughed.

It had been the same the day before.  All of the name calling and sucker punching had been going on since the beginning of the year.  Some of the teachers would watch or turn away or pretend not to notice.

“Hey Charlie,” one boy said.  “Why don’t you take a look in the mirror, faggot?”  And then the same boy grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and he half-pulled, half carried him across the bathroom floor.  “Look at what it says, faggot.  It says Charlie is a four eyed faggot.  Isn’t that what it says, faggot?”  The boy let go of his shirt and gave him one last shove against the sink.

He hung around the library after the final bell rang.  The other boys were in the parking lot waiting for busses and parents.  The last thing he wanted was to be seen walking alone off school property, open and exposed.  He ran his index finger over the spines of shelved books.  He found a detective novel and tried to read the first few pages.  Each time he heard a step, he looked over his shoulder and lost his place.

“You don’t have to go home, honey.  But I’m afraid you have to get out of here,”  the librarian said sweetly.  She smiled, then patted him on the back.  “I’ll see you tomorrow Charlie.”

“Yes,” he said.  “Tomorrow.”  And then he slung his bag over his shoulder and made his way out of the library towards the back exit of the building.  As far as he could tell, the rest of the boys must have gone home.  He took a deep breath and then stepped out.

His feet had barely hit the ground when he heard, “nice glasses fat boy.”  Two girls, in matching sweaters and pony tails looked away from a TigerBeat magazine, and pointed at him.  The girl who had done the talking, she smiled like an angel and said, “have you ever seen such…,” but before she could finish, a new red sports car pulled to a stop and honked the horn.  “Nice glasses fat boy,” the little angel said before climbing into the backseat.

He cut through the parking lot and headed across the school yard.  He only had three blocks to walk before getting home, but it felt like so much more.  He waited for something or somebody to step from behind every bush, parked car, crack in the sidewalk that he passed.  He waited for an insult or a punch in the face.  He waited.  He reached his hand to the back of his head and ran his fingers over the bump.

“How was school?” his mother asked, smiling.  “Did you make any new friends today?”

“Charlie has a girlfriend!” his little brother belted out.  “I saw him talking to some girl in the hall today."

Little Katie Jackson had called him a nigger and then she had walked away.

“She was wearing one of those funny sweaters with the horse on it,” Charlie’s brother offered.  “All of them girls are wearing those sweaters.”

“All of those girls,” his mother corrected.

Charlie looked at his mother and his little brother, and then he shrugged his shoulders.  “School was about the same,” he said.  And then he walked down the hall to the room that he shared with his little brother, closed the door, and climbed on to his bed.  He opened his school bag and took out some things.

In the morning he put the things back in.  He walked to school, like he had the day before.  He found his way against his locker again.  He heard the talking again.  And when he noticed that none of the teachers were looking, he reached into his bag.  He squinted from behind his glasses as he turned his father’s handgun on a pony-tailed girl.  His fat black fingers delicately cupped the trigger.

School was the same.  But it was different.

BIO: Mark Raymond Falk attended the University of Texas – El Paso where he majored in English before the real world interrupted and he went to work on a cattle ranch. The cattle ranch, generations ago, was part owned by his grandfather. He currently lives in McCamey, TX with his wife Victoria and their German Shepherd, Bowie. In his free time he writes and thinks about Maximillian’s Treasure, allegedly buried within seven miles of his house in Castle Gap. He is currently at work on his first novel. His short story, MIKEY’S OLD MAN, was published in the February 2009 edition of Plots with Guns. For more information visit http://falku.wordpress.com