The Swirlie
Going to the bathroom had been a mistake. As Max gazed into his reflection, terrified and protesting, in the porcelain bowl, growing nearer by the millisecond, time slowed, giving him time to reflect on the past five minutes.
He should've known this would happen. He did know. He'd tried his best to avoid it, to hold it in until he could retreat to the safety of his own home, where there wasn't a Tyler and Derik waiting in the shadows during their off period, patient predators ready to pounce. He'd tried to run, to fight back, but the pit bull and cheetah had him outmatched in every physical category. It was a game to them, and Max wished they hadn't chosen him to play with.
Grimacing as he was forced to his knees, his arms held painfully behind him, his head pushed ever closer to the bowl, Max tried his best not to give them what they really wanted. Every week, sometimes twice a week if he let his guard down, they would do something to make him squeal, to make him cry. They chanted their nickname for him, "Criesalot", a wretched mispronunciation of his unfortunately similar last name 'Chrysolite'. Nothing would stop them. No amount of begging or pleading or appealing to what little sense of sympathy would stave off the inevitable.
His head passed the bowl, and he'd only a passing moment to inhale and squeeze his eyes tight before it was plunged into the shallow waters. His struggling heightened and his ears, submerged as they were, could hear the muffled laughter of the two older boys for just seconds before water started rushing, swirling around his fur, splashing against his cheeks, soaking his shirt and pulling his glasses from his nose. The whole ordeal lasted only a few seconds, but to him, an eternity had passed, and he'd suffered too many of those already.
The pressure on his arms slacked as Derik, the pit bull, released his hold. Max pushed himself up, coughing and sputtering, toilet water streaming down his face and drenching more of his shirt. There were names called, and he was jostled around a bit, but he didn't care. His entire focus was directed on one simple thing.
Don't cry.
He wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. Not this time. No more. The red panda slumped on the floor and pulled his knees to his chest. Don't cry. His bushy ringed tail curled around him, draping over his sneakers. Don't cry, don't cry. He kept repeating it to himself, mumbling under his breath. Each time got harder and harder, and he swallowed, his eyes glowering at the floor.
Tyler nudged him with his foot. "Hey, what? Ya mad? Gonna do somethin' about it?" Max didn't respond. He kept looking straight down. "That's right! Nuthin'! You're gonna do nuthin'! Ya know why? Cuz you're a bitch! Just a punk-ass squirrel-tailed bitch! Hey!" The cheetah kneeled until his face was only inches away from Max's. "Hey. Hey, ya gonna cry?"
"Shut up..." the red panda muttered, but that proved to be a mistake. The drop in his internal focus caused a fracture in the resolve he'd built up. His face screwed up, and he fought with all his might to keep the tears from welling up in his eyes. He could feel them gathering underneath his eyelids. If one slipped through, he wouldn't be able to stop the rest from following. Water dripped from his hair on to his nose, the fetid scent stinging his already burning nostrils. He heard a sound not far away like the rustling of papers, and realized far too late that Derik had disappeared. In the stall, he couldn't see what was happening, but it didn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to know that the pit bull had opened his backpack and was rummaging through.
Ignoring Tyler's taunts and quips, the red panda scrambled out of the stall, a "Hey, quit it!" on his lips. He was cut short, though, when cheetah's paw stuck out and sent him tumbling to the floor. Max landed roughly and had only just started to get up when he felt a paw pressing down right between his shoulders with enough weight that he couldn't even get his arms underneath him. He watched helpless as Derik dumped out the contents of his backpack, including a particular green sketchbook, which the pitbull picked up and started to thumb through. "M-my sketchbook!" he cried out, groping the air in front of him. The cheetah easily outweighed him by fifty pounds, and Max's arms were soft. He was stuck.
"Wow, look at this shit!" Derik laughed, flipping the sketchbook around so Tyler could see. Max grimaced; he'd tried so hard to keep his talent a secret. The sketchbook was filled with a variety of concept drawings, from pieces he could paint to fantasy characters and landscapes. When Derik tore a particular page free and dropped the sketchbook, a well within Max broke, and he gave the two bullies exactly what they asked for.
He cried.
"Why?" he sobbed. "Why won't you just leave me alone?! I didn't do anything to you guys!" His question was met with another roar of laughter, intense enough that Max could finally pull himself out from underneath Tyler's paw. The cheetah was too distracted by his guffawing to notice the red panda slinking along the floor, though it didn't matter as Max wasn't trying to run away. He crawled along the floor, tears streaming down his face and dripping on to the floor, until he'd reached the mess that was once neatly organized in his backpack. Gingerly, he picked up the shambles of his sketchbook and cradled it to his chest. "This used to be my dad's... and you guys ruined it...."
Derik stepped over the red panda and tapped Tyler on chest with his knuckle. "Hey, let's get outta here. I'm hungry," he said.
"Dude, ya just ate an hour ago!" The two of the broke into a banter with each other, leaving the bathroom, and leaving Max alone on the floor, wet and humiliated. His words had been completely ignored, insignificant and meaningless.
"I hate them..." the boy whimpered, rubbing his cheeks, but no matter how hard he tried, as soon as he dried his cheeks, they would become wet with more tears. This is why they did it. This is why they teased him so mercilessly. The crinkled pages of the sketchbook became spotted as his tears dripped on them. "I hate them so much...." He kept repeating it to himself, more and more, but the more he did so, the more he wanted to cry. It didn't make sense. He wanted to be angry, not sad. It wasn't his fault.
"What..." he asked himself, suddenly confused. The question on the tip of his tongue wasn't what he expected. He thought of the hyena that always bumped against him to make him drop his books. He thought of the zebra who always poured milk on his head. He thought of the sparrow who kicked his chair, or the otter who always shot spitballs at him during English. He thought of all of those who were mean to him, and wondered aloud, "What's wrong with me?"
Moving was supposed to be a chance to start over, to abandon the challenges of his old life, but despite the distance of hundreds of miles, nothing had changed. Four years ago, he'd moved here with his mother to escape, only to find out within the first week that he was still as trapped as he used to be, or perhaps even more so. "It's my fault," Max whimpered as he slowly gathered his spilled belongings, arranging them as he always did, and stuffed them into his backpack, all except for the green sketchbook. He stood, clutching it to his chest still, when a ringing bell sounded over the intercom. He froze for a second, his fur bristling, before he hurried tucked the sketchbook into his bag with the rest of his stuff.
Grabbing a pawful of paper towels, he started drying the water from his hair, and he just finished when the bathroom door opened again, letting in a cacophony of sound from the voices of students in the hall. He bowed his head and hunched his shoulders, making himself as small and inconspicuous as possible. He dared not look at whoever came in.
Maybe it was simply luck, but whoever it was made no acknowledgement of his presence. Max wiped his brow, drying the soggy curls that clung to his forehead. When the boy washed his hands and left, the red panda allowed himself to breathe before tossing the damp wad into the trash bin. He tugged his backpack over his shoulders and headed out the door.
The hallways had mostly emptied by the time Max tentatively stepped out into it. Most of the kids were outside waiting for the buses to line up, or hitching rides with their older friends who could drive. Max envied those kids who could ride the bus. Free busing was available for those kids that lived over two miles away from the school, and Max's home was 1.6 miles away, according to the map. Of course, the fact that he lived in a pit on the edge of the city, with roads as wavy as a roller coaster and sidewalks unmaintained for years went unaccounted for. The rundown shacks filled with crack-heads and squatters terrified him, their property sectioned off with chain-linked fences and guarded by pit bulls and rottweilers trained to be vicious and mean. By the time Max had reached the front door of the school, his stomach was churning enough to make him feel ill.
No one approached him, said hi or goodbye. With the exception of those who liked to pick on him, he was nearly invisible to everyone. His paw tightened around the strap of his backpack and he picked up his pace. He didn't want to be around here. No one would care if someone jumped on him. He knew that for a fact; it'd happened before. He'd told his mom that he tripped and tumbled down one of the steep hills. "Just one..." he mumbled to himself, leaving the school grounds and following the sidewalks of the inner city. "If I could just be friends with one person...."
It wasn't for lack of trying. No one would give him a chance. He'd gained the reputation of being an oddball; one gotten only a few months after he and his mom had been forced to move. Though quiet and private now, Max was nevertheless seen as clingy and annoying to those people who did try to reach out to him back then. His overeagerness to start over had backfired, and now, all he could do was trudge through the city streets alone, head down, tail dragging along the ground.
Max started rounding a corner, passing by a gas station, when he heard a gruff voice. His name was called twice before he finally looked up and saw Chris, dressed in a striped orange and white vest, his name on a little white badge pinned over his heart. The gryphon was leaning against the brick wall of the gas station's convenience store, a cigarette in hand, a wisp of smoke trailing from his nostrils and out of his beak.
"Oh, hey!" the red panda said, jogging over, his sneakers kicking up bits of gravel. He sat on a filed wooden post that served to mark the parking spaces. "Are you working today?"
"Yeah, here'in a few. Ya doin' okay?"
"Pfft, yeah, I'm fine," Max said, puffing his chest out, but the gryphon leveled his gaze, and Max felt himself wilt away under it. "Why, what's up?"
"Anybody could see ya moping around like that. What's buggin' ya?"
"Nothing is!" Max insisted.
"I can't help ya if ya don't wanna actually take it," Chris said, tapping his cigarette and knocking loose the ash which fluttered in the wind before settling down amidst the other dirt and grime that cities tended to collect.
"I dunno what you're talking about...." Max shuffled uncomfortably and dropped his eyes. The last thing he needed was for Chris to think he was a loser like everyone else.
The gryphon brought the cigarette to his beak and inhaled before leaning back against the wall. "Whatever, man. If ya tell me, ya tell me. If ya don't, ya don't. I don't care."
"It's just... it's not a big deal, okay?" Max grumbled. "A couple of jackasses just gave me a swirly, is'all. It's not like they beat me up or anything...."
"What'd you do?"
"Huh? I didn't do anything to them!" the red panda tried to growl, but his voice ended up being a squeak. He started pouting.
"That's not what I mean. Look, did'jya cry?"
"No!"
Chris leveled his beak directly at the red panda, snapped it and gave him a serious look. "Are ya lying ta me?"
Max bit his lip and drooped his ears. "Maybe I did a little... but they tore up my Dad's sketchbook!"
"And ya didn't kick their asses?"
"What? Hell no!" The suggestion caught Max so off guard that he nearly lost his balance and had to catch himself from falling off the wooden post. "They're way bigger and stronger than me, and there were two of them!" he said, holding two digits to emphasize the fact that he'd not only been outmatched but outnumbered as well. "They would've murdered me!"
"But they would've left ya alone after that."
"That doesn't make any sense!"
"Only reason assholes like that pick on you is because they know you're weak." Chris took a final draft of the cigarette before flicking it away. "You're not gonna tell anyone cause you're too busy trying to pretend you're some toughass, so they get a free ride. I mean, think about it."
"Yeah, but..."
"So what if they beat ya up once? They'll stop picking on ya 'cuz they know you're gonna fight 'em back. They might try a few more times, but if ya don't make it easy, they'll leave ya alone." Chris looked down at the cheap sports watch wrapped around his wrist. "Look, I gotta get going. Stop being a nitwit and chill out."
"Bye..." Max mumbled as he watched his friend leave. He turned around but flinched when a car honked at him for stepping in front of it. He waved his apology at the driver and hurried on his way, catching hints of faint curses directed towards him. For a few minutes, the shock put Chris's words out of his mind, but as he walked along, he found himself pondering more and more.
First came denial. "What's he know, anyways," the red panda grumbled, sulking while he kicked at a discarded cigarette package that someone neglected to toss into one of the few wastebins lining the street. "He's probably always been big. There's no way I could fight." He reached under his glasses and rubbed his lower eyelid with his finger. Even though several years had passed, he could still remember the painful sting of the shiner, something he didn't want to feel again.
Max pulled his foot back and kicked as hard as he could, though the cigarette pack only flew a few feet further before bouncing out into the street and getting run over by a passing car. His distraction destroyed, the red panda stuffed his hands into his pockets and continued along. The streets became more dynamic, with sharp inclines and descents that caused his leg muscles to strain. By the time he'd reached the summit of the highest hill before his home, he had to pause to catch his breath. "This place sucks," he groaned, looking down before him.
Gone were the tall buildings of the city, replaced by cheap fast food joints and 'affordable' housing and apartments, interspaced by the occasional scrawny tree in a vain attempt to make the neighborhood less desolate. The apartment he and his mom stayed at was at the bottom of the hill on the left in one of the two complexes that didn't have fences and gates to section it off from the public. Max started down the hill, trying his best to modulate his speed and not go tumbling.
By the time he'd reached the bottom, he could hear a familiar raucous laughter belonging to a small gang of jackals that always hung around a beat-up sedan. In all honesty, he'd never talked to them, though his mom insisted they weren't bad people. Like every other day, he hurried by them, his stomach burning, and like every other day, they didn't even notice him. He reached his building, jogged up two flights of stairs, and after fumbling in his pocket for a plain brass key, unlocked his door and slipped inside.
"Mom, I'm home," he announced, the scent of hours old Chinese food wafting through his nostrils and making his stomach growl. He kicked off his shoes into the corner and set down his backpack, pausing to look at the large frame of his dad in full military decoration hug up right next to the door. "Hi, dad," he said, quietly with a fractured voice, a ritual he'd repeated every day for as long as he could remember. "I miss you."
The apartment was fairly clean, if only due to the starkness of it all. The living room had a ratty old sofa in dire need of a upholstering and a scarred and dented coffee table, its wooden top covered in torn envelopes that once housed overdue bills and fast food, surrounded on two sides by plastic folding chairs. Against the wall was a blocky television, an ancient relic in the world of flat screens, balanced on a tiny stand with an antenna rank taped down to its top with duct tape.
He could hear the sound of running water, and followed it from the living room into the hallway. The bathroom on the right was open, and he could see his mother's tail sticking out. He paused a few feet away and knocked lightly on the wall. "Hey, Mom?" he called out tentatively.
The tail twitched, and the water stopped. "Maxie?" a voice called out, and Max's mother leaned out to gaze at her son. Her voice was light, befitting a woman in her lower thirties, but stress had caused some of her cheek fur to dull and become tinged with hints of gray. She wore a red polo and dark pants, her uniform for her job in a 24-hour fast food burger joint. "Oh, baby, I'm sorry! I didn't hear you come in!" She opened up her arms and kneeled, and Max rushed into her arms, squeezing her tightly. "Did you have a good day at school?"
Max squeezed her again, before letting go. "Oh, yeah, it was okay," he lied, faking a wide smile.
"Are you getting on along well with your friends?"
"Mmhm!" It hadn't always been so easy to lie to his mother, and at first, he couldn't have imagined doing something so heinous, but he'd come to realize that he had to, for her sake. When he had come home crying that fateful day a few years ago, he'd expected his mom to take care of him and make him feel better. What he hadn't expected was that his mother would leave everything; her job, the home that her parents had owned before they passed, their roots and connections, and all her friends; all to put him in a different environment so that he wouldn't be bullied. She went from earning a lower middle class wage to barely staying afloat even with welfare.
He couldn't make her do that again.
"I'm sorry I have to go," she said, grabbing a brush from the bathroom and running through her shoulder length hair. "I'm running late as is."
"I'll miss you," Max said softly, and his mother ran her paw through his curls. "Please be careful, okay? What time are you gonna be home?"
"Oh, I will, baby," his mother said, kissing him on the cheek. "Make sure you get your homework done." She grimaced for a moment before giving him a sad smile. "You should make sure you get tucked away in bed. I'll try to be home to give you a goodnight kiss, okay?"
Max swayed his tail, pretending that it was wagging on its own. He smiled, but it was excruciatingly difficult to make it seem genuine. "Okay, Mom," he said, but his voice broke a bit.
"Don't worry, honey," the older red panda said, pulling him into another hug, even tighter than the one before it, but far briefer. "We won't have to deal with this for much longer, I promise, but I really need to get going! Keep being a good boy, okay, Max? I love you."
"I love you, too, Mom," Max said, stepping aside to let his mother rush by. When the door closed, he pulled his glasses off his snout and trudged into his bedroom, a tiny alcove with a simple plastic desk, a metal rack that served as a makeshift closet, a small wooden nightstand and a bed. He stepped past clothes, dirty and clean, strewn over the floor, and headed straight for his bed, a plain twin with a wire-spring mattress covered by a quilt that had once been his grandmother's. He fell face-first, his nose aching soon after as his pillow was too thin to serve as much of a cushion.
Max lay there, motionless, just letting the seconds tick by, before turning over on his back and staring at the fan with the broken blades above him. All this was his fault, a sacrifice his mother had made for his sake, and now they both had to pay for it. He felt his eyes grow wet. "Stop crying," he growled softly at himself, but it was a useless gesture. He couldn't stop himself. "Just stop it... it's your fault! You keep crying!" The madder he got at himself, the more the tears would flow until he finally reached the point where he couldn't cry anymore. He rolled over on his side, cradling himself, sniffling every few seconds.
It wasn't until the day turned into evening that his stomach finally won out, and Max sat up and let his eyes adjust to the low light. His mom's words passed through his mind, and he grimaced. He didn't want to open up that backpack and cry again. He wiped his eyes with one arm while groping the bed for his glasses with the other. When he finally found them, he left his bedroom and headed towards the kitchen which bordered the living room. The bulb for the florescent light flickered for a second before finally humming to life, bathing everything in a pale blue light. The refrigerator was tucked in the corner and was small enough that even he could almost see over it if he stood up on his toes.
"Aww, Mom..." Max whined, thrill and depression mixed in his voice. In the fridge, underneath a yellow stickynote with his name on it, was a lunch portion of shrimp fried rice, one of his favorite meals. The shrimp cost extra, but even though money was so tight, his mom has spared the extra expense. "Thank you," he said, praying that his words would somehow cross miles, through brick and mortar to reach his mother.
He had heated up the meal and drawn a bath for himself when inspiration struck. Maybe he wasn't tough enough to defend himself, and maybe things wouldn't get better, but he would try not to cry. "For you, Mom," he said, dipping his paw into the water and yelping almost immediately. "Ach! Owwie...too hot." Max forked a clump of fried rice into his mouth while he waited, and minutes later, when the water had cooled enough not to be scalding, he set the food down beside the tub and submerged himself, letting his thoughts run wild.
The bathtub was small and plain, but Max was short enough to nearly lay flat with his knees slightly bent. He blew bubbles in the water for a moment before sitting up and eating his dinner. The shrimp, though slightly dry from overcooking, was delicious and his Mom had even coated the dish with a single packet of soy sauce, just like he liked it. The water had dropped to a few degrees north of lukewarm by the time Max finished eating and reached for the nondescript bar of soap, and shortly after, tiny suds floated on the surface of the water.
Finally clean, Max climbed out of the tub, drained the water and toweled himself dry, from his toes to the tip of his tail and the top of his ears. He ducked underneath the sink, opening the cabinet and pulling out a squirt bottle filled with vinegar and a box of baking soda. Sprinkling the baking soda around the tub, he sprayed around until there was a chalky paste. The strong scents made his nose itch, but if he could do anything to help his mom out, he'd do it. After fifteen minutes of waiting, he washed the paste away with water from the sink using an old plastic cup, and once the tub glistened, he stored everything away again.
The windows had turned dark by the time Max left the bathroom holding his dirty clothes. He glanced down the hall, towards the front door where his backpack was, and his heart sank. He'd not yet done his homework; the fifty Geometry questions involving isometric figures, the Biology report over the dissection they did, the English essay over the parody 'A Tail of Two Cities', all due tomorrow, and all not even started. He would have to stay up all night to even make a dent, but that wasn't the problem.
Max dumped the day's clothes in his room unceremoniously and hesitantly made his way back to his backpack, unzipping it and pulling out the green sketchbook. Its bindings, which he'd worked so hard to keep in a pristine condition, were in shambles; the threads were torn, the glue had come undone, and the pages were folded, bent or tattered. He looked up at the large picture hanging up on the wall in front of him. "I'm sorry, Dad," he said, his eyes burning but he swallowed and fought back his tears. "I thought I could keep you with me, but they destroyed it...."
The red panda's tail curled around his body while he balanced on the balls of his feet, hugging his knees. "I wanna be tough like you were, Dad. People listened to you and respected you. They wouldn't have messed with you at all." Max wiped his eyes and swallowed roughly again. He set the sketchbook down and began sorting out his bag. He could at least get everything the way he liked it before he was inevitably embarrassed in each of his classes for not doing his homework. Most of his other books thankfully weren't too badly messed up; the last thing he needed was for his mom to be charged for replacing books that cost hundreds of dollars. Sliding the last book into place, he zipped his backpack back up, picked up the sketchbook and headed back to his room.
He slumped on his bed after grabbing a pencil from his desk, flipped to the first clean page he could find, and started to doodle. He drew two arrows, one right on top of the other, the military insignia for 'Corporal', and underneath drew the letters CDC. He repeated that, adding different flourishes, until he finally made a pattern he liked, with big bulbous letters that flowed elegantly, with little wasted space.
Closing the sketchbook, Max smiled sadly before pulling himself out of bed and setting the book on his desk. He flicked off his light, drowning himself in darkness, and stumbled blindly forward until he felt the edge of the bed press against his thigh. He crawled into it, pulling the soft quilt over his shoulders, and let his tail curl around him. "Goodnight, Mom, Dad," he said softly as he lay there, waiting for sleep to take him.
He was fast asleep when his door creaked open, and though he was not awake to feel his mother's lips against his forehead, he smiled anyway. In his dreams, he was embraced by both of them, and he murmured, "I love you," in his slumber. His smile broadened when he heard it back.