What a terrible day, Brad thought as he finally reached the sanctuary
of home after the prolonged journey from school and dropped his packsack beside
his bed; flopping himself face down onto the soft pillows with a grunt.
It had started off well; he went through the day's events in
his head: got a ride from Jerry so he didn't have to take the stupid bus, met
up with Cheryl for a little pre-class 'face-time', but then in English class it
had all gone to shit.
He got a D on his essay, even though he'd paid good money
for 'Stankly' to write it for him. Then in science class, Raymond couldn't get
their diluting experiment to work so they BOTH failed the assignment. He'd have
to have a talk with those two geeks for slacking on HIS work.
At lunch, as he was telling the gang about the hilarious
joke he'd pulled on the wheezy kid a few weeks ago on the stairs, Brad had choked
on his water and some had come out of his nose in a spray and all his friends
had laughed at him, even Cheryl!
After that he had been in a real bad mood, so when he had
gone to his locker to put away his books for the day he'd kept messing up his
combination, got angry and reefed on the door which had popped open with a
sudden gust, causing all his pilled up papers and text books to come falling
out onto the floor.
It had taken him forever to jam it all back in, so he was
running late went going for the bus home, and as he sprinted to catch it he'd
tripped on nothing at all and twisted his ankle, missing the bus as well. So he
had had to wait and take the late bus with all the stinky creeps from the badminton
team.
It was like his day was cursed.
Oh well, he perked up, at least it was done and he could
play some video games before dinner.
Turning on the TV and powering up the consol, he sat on the
end of the bed to play, but there was a glare on the screen and he couldn't see
anything.
With an annoyed sign, Brad got up gingerly on his tender
ankle to pull down the window shade.
At the bottom of his pull, he felt a sharp stab on the back
of his hand as he caught it on a loose nail poking up from the window sill and
gave a shout in pain, letting the blind slip out of his hand as it snapped back
up to the top of the window with a loud bang.
The force of the retracting blind knocked the roll from its cradle
and it flew up to hit the ceiling fan as its blades rotated swiftly around.
Flinging off the fan blades, the blind roll whipped into
Brad's shelf filled with his judo trophies and flung them up into the air like
a catapult.
Some smashed down onto his desk, cracking his laptop screen,
while a few others crashed into his other shelf holding his collection of model
WWII tanks, obliterating them all into shards.
But the heaviest one, he'd won first place in a tournament
by choking out Warren Zelman, came flying, base down, onto his head as he
watched dumbfounded.
Before he blacked out and crumpled to the ground, Brad's
body turned toward the window, and in a dopey daze, he could see across the
street; was that the wheezy kid wearing his dumb nerd glassed, just standing
there, staring up at his window?
Out on the sidewalk across from Brad Gulfort's house, Simon
looked up as he watched the chaotic events unfold through Brad's bedroom
window.
As Brad went to his knees and then slumped out of sight,
Simon smirked to himself and thought back to a few weeks early when the idiot
had tripped him going up the stairs to their first period English class.
Everyone had laughed at Brad's hilarious 'joke', but the
fall had caused Simon's glasses to drop off and break on the hallway floor.
So he had had to order a new pair; a very unique model off
an occult site he had found on the internet, and they had finally come in yesterday.
He had worn them to try them out at school today, where he had
first seen Brad in their first and second period classes together, then at
lunch in the cafeteria with his blockheaded friends.
After school he'd passed Brad again in the hallway as he was
struggling with his locker; then watched happily from his seat on the departing
bus as his tormentor tripped on the sidewalk outside.
Simon took off his glasses and gave them a polish with the
special cloth they had come with. Yes, they had been worth paying extra to get
his prescription filled in a rush.
They worked just as advertise; these, Hex-ray Specs.
