I've edited the beginning of ALIENATED. Thought I'd post it for comparison.
Summary is still the same:
Nate is a loner with anger management issues. After being suspended from high-school for fighting, he is
sent to a private school for troubled teens. There he meets Alexia, a beautiful
blond, who tells everyone she's an alien from outer space. (This is not
exceptionally remarkable as her other classmates include a quirky autistic, a
brooding pyromaniac, and an overly chatty schizophrenic.)
Nate doesn't believe she's really an alien. And Alexia doesn't believe Nate really is in danger of becoming a homicidal
maniac. But one of them turns out to be wrong.
♫ ♫ Pennywise- "Alien" ♫ ♫
Chapter 1
Nate's
fist slammed into the guy's face.
The
guy's nose snapped like a final straw.
The
ominous sound of breaking bone pierced Nate's ears.
Lunge. Swing. Punch. Crunch.
The
crunch crackled, wetly disgusting, hinting at what lay underneath-- without the
flesh of lips, the boy's exposed skull would be a skinless grin. Nate scowled
at the ghastly mental image. He glanced around, feeling surrounded by bone
heads locked into permanent expressions of amusement-- everyone snickering at
him just beneath their skin.
He
gave his fist a quick shake and then quickly reformed it, ready to throw a
second punch. The other guy-- Nate didn't know his name, he was just some guy,
some nameless, faceless guy-- was still reeling. The grotesque crinkle of
compressed nose hung in the air like an awkward accordion.
Gasps
popped out of nearby students. A soft, rushing yawn of sound that swished down
the hallway. Several of the on looking boneheads went slack-jawed like
dominoes-- mouths comically dropping open, stretching out from the point of
impact.
Boink, boink, boink... like dozens of
tiny caves. Mouths agape in dark delight. Echoing. Their collective whispers
rustling like restless bat wings.
The
some-guy's head had rocketed sideways from the impact of Nate's punch. No blood
dramatically spewed from his mouth; no blood whiplashed wetly in a graceful arc
through the air.
However.
The
same could not be said about some-guy's drool. That did in fact spew forth in
an aesthetic curve that any Grecian fountain would be envious of. Some of the
students in the hallway screamed. It was not immediately clear to Nate if the
screams were due to the fight or the drool. The drool had not actually landed
on anyone besides Nate, but several girls, all trying to outdo each other, were
loudly insisting that it literally
had gotten all over them. Like, literally.
All over! Literally.
Nate
wanted to present these girls with a dictionary, but he was literally
preoccupied at the moment. He shook the drool off his forearm, flicking it in
the general direction of the literal girls. They screamed. Nate distantly wondered
if they actually had precognizant super-powers. Got drool? Here, let me make
that true.
Some-guy
yelled something that Nate failed to process. He tried to focus. Nate's
heightened senses were now disorienting. Every noise sounded drugged and
surreal, not quite in sync with the action.
At
the first flood of adrenaline, less than a minute ago, his nerves sang and
danced, thrilled to be drowning in the rush. His thoughts had been hyper-aware--
distant but clear. Time had not slowed like a fight-scene in a movie. But a
pocket of extra thoughts had seemed to stretch out sideways in his head, giving
him the illusion of enough space for his racing clarity to seem leisurely.
But
now it was all getting tangled. Actions suddenly displaced and skipped around.
Every movement grew strange and nonsensical, set to the wrong background music.
A smeared soundtrack of sickening snaps---
straws and bones and bat wings and whatever other things made snapping noises.
Noises that might exist for the future cueing of memory-- prophetic glimpses
later to be remixed. (SNAP! Fingers!)
Memories to be recalled and reshuffled.
Nate
shook his head, trying to make the timeline snap back into place with the
audio. He considered punching the guy again. There was a little blood coming
out of his nose now, just a couple of drops. The guy tested it with his middle finger.
Nate waited to see if Some-Guy was going to throw another punch.
The
guy had called Nate a crazy psycho. Really, that would have been fine. But then
he had gone on to make a disparaging comment about Nate's mother. Nate was very
sensitive about his mother. That was when he'd decided to hit the guy. More
accurately, it was when he decided to stop preventing
himself from hitting the guy. Some-guy had actually thrown the first punch, but
he'd missed.
Adults
tended to assume fights were always provoked, and that they were always Nate's
fault. Nate, what did you do to provoke
the fight?? His Dad never understood that he just existed. That was enough.
During
the five-minute break between classes the hallways were full of students. Nate
hated the crush of other people milling around him, the laughter and causal
touching of happy people. He was not a fan of crowds. He also didn't like the
whine of the fluorescent lights in the hall, they egged on the black rage in
his skull, made him feel like he couldn't think.
Even
when people were not insulting his mother, his thoughts were often scrambled
with blood and violence. He had wanted to stab the overhead light in the eye
socket. Short-circuit it. Fry its brains out. Then some guy had irritated him,
said things, and knocking the guy's lights out instead had sounded like an
acceptable substitute.
In
a school of fish, the odd one out gets eaten by the shark. In a school of
children, it's more like being in a crowd of cannibalistic piranhas.
If
Nate had been weaker or smaller, if he didn't fight back, he would have been
bullied but he probably would have stayed out of trouble.
Clearly,
not a priority.
Nate
wanted to fight.
But
apparently, some-guy did not want to fight anymore. His nose was now bleeding
profusely. He held up his hands, palms out, in a gesture that indicated
cessation and said, "Whatever, Man." It seemed to be over.
But
then it wasn't.
A
slender girl ran up to Nate and slapped him across the face. Nate stared down
at the top of her head. She was a blur of pink shirt and black mascara.
Apparently, Nate had just punched her boyfriend. For some reason, this made her
go berserk. She slapped, hit, and screamed at Nate.
Nate
was a chauvinist in the sense that he had reservations about punching a girl
full in the face, or, at all. He did not treat her as an equal. He just stood
there.
She
started hitting him harder. She was a surprisingly strong little thing. Nate concentrated
on not flinching.
He
kept his arms at his sides woodenly-- no deflection, no self-protection, just
absorbing it all in, taking everything she had to give. Nate wished his chest
and arms were as numb as his facial expression. Pain and swear words crowded in
on his thoughts.
Nate
wondered if there would ever come a point at which he could count on numbness.
He imagined his life continuing like this indefinitely-- being pummeled.
Perhaps he would reach an age where he was nerveless and unbreakable.
Having
absorbed so many mental and physical blows, year after year, his skin ought to
get thicker. Roughened and beaten into one huge callus. Skin aged and
strengthened, weathered into proper armor. Skin trained to take anything. A
deadened outer shell keeping everything vaulted.
But
for now, Nate was all chinks and cracks.
Something
always split through-- his eyes, his lips-- something would always crack and
give him away.
Instead
of fighting this weakness, Nate occasionally tried to use it to his advantage.
He let things slip though on purpose. He let some of the crazy shine through
the cracks, so that people would back up, so that they wouldn't peer too
closely at the rest.
He
focused on doing this now.
I am a big scary guy! He thought firmly.
You should be afraid of me!
Nothing happened. The girl
continued to hit him, not intimidated.
Annoyed
and embarrassed, Nate tried to channel evil super-villain thoughts. He coaxed THREAT to bleed into his eyes. He
glared.
I'm not secretly a nice person, Girl. Or
even if I am, my patience is running out, and I may punch you in the face after
all... I could kill you, I could kill you...
Nate
let her see that he thought about killing her. He hoped that would make her
uncomfortable enough to stop hitting him.
Luckily,
it did.
The
girl held his gaze for a second too long. She was spitting mad one second and
stuttering to a stop the next. She backed up, grabbed her boyfriend's bloody
hand, and fled.
Nate
had mentally classified the girl as tiny, but she wasn't. She was average sized.
Nate was just tall for his age. At sixteen, he stood at a decently filled out
six foot two. Even thought he wasn't overly skinny, he gave the impression of
being all angles-- a wiry creature made of elbows and sharpness. His eyes were
dark and so was his hair. He rarely slouched but often kept his eyes down; he
didn't shrink from people but he didn't find most of them worth looking at.
Administrative
authority had finally been roused by all the commotion. A fat beast of a man
walked purposefully toward Nate, coming to collect him and deliver him for
punishment. He spoke into a walkie-talkie. Nate went with him quietly.
The
school year was almost over; less than two weeks remained. Nate wondered if he
would be suspended or expelled. He glanced down the hallway that contained his
locker, trying to recall if there was anything left in it that he wanted.
The
man ushered him into the principal's office, holding the door open and
gesturing for Nate to walk in first.
"Here
he is. The boy he attacked is with the nurse-- she says his nose is
broken."
"Thank-you."
the principal said in a clipped voice.
The
man left.
The
principal wore a gray dress with a matching jacket. Tight through her middle, the
dress produced finger-sized fat-rolls that outlined her sides in links of gray
sausages. She straightened the large walkie-talkie that sat on the corner of
her desk and indicated that Nate should have a seat.
He
sat across the desk from the principal and watched her make phone calls. She
didn't call his Dad right away, she took care of other inconsequential
business.
Nate
waited, determined not to sweat.
He
did not want to give the woman the satisfaction of watching him grow restless,
uncomfortable, to ask what was going to happen to him. Nate did not oblige. He
waited her out. They both wanted the other to be the one to speak first.
However,
Nate had all the time in the world and the principal did not. She did have an
actual job to do. She could afford to waste a little time trying to assert
power, but not all day. Finally, she turned her attention to him and nastily
told him that he would be expelled.
Then
she called his father.
Nate
cringed, inwardly. Outwardly, he tried to look unconcerned. Part of him felt
bad. He couldn't hear the other side of the phone conversation, but his
imagination unhelpfully filled in the gaps.
"Yes.
I'll be waiting with him in my office." The principal said, itching her
chin on the left shoulder pad of her jacket. "There is paperwork you'll
need to sign... No, I'm sorry, he most definitely can not be sent home on his
own recognizance. You will need to come and pick him up."
She
hung up the phone and sent Nate into an inner room adjacent to her office. She
watched him through a large glass window. She continued to make phone calls but
Nate could no longer make out what she was saying. He considered learning how
to read lips-- not that he was all that interested in what the principal was
saying, but just because it seemed like a useful skill to have. He stared back
at her through the thick pane. He wondered if any student had ever broken that
tempting window. He fingered the seat of his chair thoughtfully and imagined
throwing it through the glass. Thin black lines crosshatched the window; Nate
didn't know what the lines were (Wire perhaps?), but he assumed they prevented
the window from being easily broken by a casually tossed chair.
Nate
spent a lot of time staring at the window while he waited. Two hours and eleven
minutes passed before his father arrived. When he finally did, he barely
glanced at Nate through the window; he immediately got into it with the
principal. Nate very much wished he could read lips at this point. His dad
spoke heatedly, but not loud enough for Nate to catch what he said. He argued
with the principal for a few minutes and failed to sign the papers that the
principal pushed across the desk at him. He walked toward Nate and opened the
door.
"Let's
go. NOW."
As
Nate had anticipated, his father did not look pleased. He looked sweaty, red,
and breathy. His father did not wait; he turned and stomped out of the office.
Nate scrambled to grab his stuff and ran out after him.
During
the ride home, the car filled with tense silence. Outside, the sun was shining
in a cloudless sky of deep and brilliant blue; the trees and plants lining the
street were lush and alive; birds were singing; squirrels raced along power
lines-- not a single one getting electrocuted.
Nate
sourly watched it all rushing past the windshield.
