Three
So. My name is Jim Korey and I'm your average Joe. First; no, not that Jim and no, we're not related because our last names are entirely different! Anyway, I live in a city named Marrilynd somewhere in the… south. The place is surrounded by mountains and I just wanna say… I'm guilty for… most of the things I'm gonna reveal. It's pretty stupid and I'm a silly person and I'm dumb—but before I continue with my self-degradations, I should mention that I'm also a nerd.
When I say nerd, a lot of people would think I mean someone who's just book-smart. Hell no! I'm talking about being the actual, stereotypical nerd. I have the thick glasses, the sweater vest and hood compilation, completed with a whole headful of wild black hair in a mop top and a tired beanie. Only, my hoodie is a military green weather-proof anorak jacket. I always look like I'm ready to hibernate for the winter. Yes. It's that bad. Maybe we could leave the fact that I'm six foot two out of it and call it a day—
But anyway, just like every typical nerd, I have a typical bully. Someone who pushes me around, takes my stuff and constantly tries to be the bane of my life.
The funny thing about these people we call bullies is that they have the best manners. Why? Because whenever they want something from you they announce it beforehand. Y'know, in sentences like, "That's a nice pen, I'll take it."
"Gimme that shirt,"
And the all-time favorites, "Gimme your lunch money," and, "Write my homework."
…But the thing with my bully would have never worked in a million years because I had a humongous crush on them—her—and I am a really creepy person, really.
The dynamic between us had been different before and during Senior High. Before, we were different versions of ourselves and now we're still… different versions of ourselves. The point is, my bully hadn't always been my bully. It started when we started our second semester of seventh grade. Violet—that's her name—changed from the person I knew into the person I got to know.
It started small, with her teasing lightly in light fun, calling someone's dress a handkerchief or a napkin. But it's all fun and games till someone starts running the whole damn school! Her thing with me, because I was this giant, smart guy in an anorak jacket and a beanie, was for her to always get me to help her cheat during the class exercises.
It escalated from exercises, to quizzes, to tests and even to exams. Even as we started High School, she was still pushing me against walls and talking all gangsta to me. As Michael Bolton said, "When a man loves a woman…"
For a smart person, I'm really dumb.
Everything changed the day Violet came to me with yet another "request" for me to help her cheat during an exam. She came to me with her bangs and locks and was all:
"Ayo, nerd!"
She banged the desk in front of me, successfully usurping my attention from my book. I always managed to have my nose in two or three per day.
I looked up from my thick glasses, immediately coming to meet with this sweet potato in front of me, my heart fluttering. It was just the two of us in that class after school and she looked radiant.
"There's a small test this Friday, so I'm here to remind you that I'm going to need you to give me all the answers again. You do it, and you won't have to suffer by my hands."
Usually, I would've nodded along with her and waited for the test to arrive but due to some hormonal imbalances, I felt like… no… There had to be a change.
So I just stared at her blankly.
She did the only thing expected of a bully to do next. She threatened me.
"Hey, are you deaf?" She snapped fingers in my face. "If you actually think I wouldn't make you pay for this, then you better prepare yourself for a world of pain."
I blinked at her. She was threatening me, and yet she was the same height as me while I was sitting. I sighed under my breath.
"Christ, don't worry, Violet. I got this under control. I clearly heard you; you want me to help you cheat during the test because you're not smart enough to write this test on your own." I responded. "I'd hate for you to fail it and reveal to your parents that you're not an actual A student."
For the record, no matter how you look at this, that's not something someone should say to someone they crush on because, reasons! and it's definitely something you wouldn't want to say to a girl. Trust me.
Violet's eyes grew wide before a cruel smile smeared across her lips. She said to me:
"Oh, is that right, Mr. Smarty-pants?" She watched me shrug. "You have a really brave mouth all of a sudden. Did you forget what I said will happen if you don't do what I want?"
She stepped closer to me, her arms crossed and the smile vanishing off her face.
First of all, she was half my size and was so delicate-looking. I couldn't believe she had actually said that to me so I shook my head and laughed.
"Wow. Damn. Um. I'm sorry. This is my fault for encouraging this silliness, but…" I raked my eyes down her form, sizing her up. "...You don't… seriously believe someone your size could harm someone my size, right? Sweetie, you're four foot seven." I ruffled her hair in a condescending manner.
I saw her face contort in anger. One of the things I know about Violet is that if you call her out on her height or treat her like a baby, she'll lose her composure. Now mix those two together? We got an Angry Bird without a beak.
She smacked my hand away and flicked at my glasses. "Oh, yeah, smartass? You seriously think I can't make your life hell?"
"Show me what you got." I nodded to her, ignoring the glasses that had slid down my nose.
Violet huffed and darted her eyes around the empty class. The late afternoon sun was filtering in through the tall windows, lazily lighting up the whole room with sunrays. It was a calm and beautiful ambiance as fall was approaching, but we were disturbing it. Violet found a thick textbook lying on a nearby desk and picked it up, throwing it at me with all the strength I bet she could muster.
I barely batted an eyelash when I caught the thick book with a single hand, immediately setting it on my desk as I stood up and sat on my desk, crossing my arms at her.
"Thanks. I'd been meaning to read that." I said, looking down at her. Sitting on that desk, I was taller than her.
Violet's face turned red with fury as she watched me sit there like a king and she nodded quickly.
"Oh, I see! You think you're untouchable, huh?!"
She lunged at me, trying to scratch my face with her nails. I caught her wrists easily and pulled her to myself, turning her away as I pressed her back to my chest. Then I wrapped my arms around her waist. Basically locking her in my arms.
Violet clearly didn't like that. She started thrashing and kicking, her nails scratching at my sleeves as she snarled at me like a feral kitten.
"Get your filthy hands off me!"
She jerked her head back, trying to headbutt me with her crown.
I sighed, finding all this too amusing.
"Calm down, Hufflepuff."
"Don't call me that stupid name!" She spat, kicking and scratching at my sleeves still.
I could smell the cheap perfume on her and practically her desperation at this point. She knew struggling was pointless but she was stubborn. Growing up together, she was always stubborn…
Anyway, she pulled back her elbow and jabbed at my side. It wasn't that painful at all. I just laughed through a little grunt, grabbing her elbow and pinning it to her side. The cheap perfume mixed with the bit of her sweat creating a nice little aroma that tickled my nose so I held her snug and pressed my face into her hair.
"Don't do that. Don't." I murmured into her hair, feeling her feeble struggles lose the weak strength they had.
Eventually, she just gave up and accepted that I'd locked her in my arms, her heartbeat calming down. I could feel her moving her head around, probably still looking for some useless weapon to use against me. After a while of silence, I took a deep sniff of her scent and exhaled.
"Are you calm now?" I asked softly, peering over to her face.
She turned her face away, as expected, and I chuckled. I rested my forehead on her shoulder and groaned, my thumb rubbing unconsciously on her side.
"You tried to hit me with a book?" I asked.
"You deserve to be hit with more than that!" She countered immediately.
I raised my head and looked at her.
"What happened to you, Vi? What happened to us?" I rocked her from side to side twice.
"There was no us!" She exclaimed, making me pause. "There was no you and I, not since Elementary. It was just a survival of the fittest out there."
"So you decided to become a bully?" I asked, my chin rested on her shoulder. "That was pretty smart."
"It was better than being a nerd," she jabbed.
I winced in mock hurt, chuckling thereafter.
"C'mon. There has to be more to this. I can feel it. Hm? Hufflepuff?" I gently jiggled her. "Tell me."
And she snapped.
"I didn't wanna be your friend anymore!"
I froze, still holding her.
"Why—"
"Because you're a bad friend, Jim! Okay, you never have been a good friend, and you never will!" She cried.
My voice was low and quiet when I said:
"Vi, you know how I feel about you. If it's because of tha—"
"This isn't about your crush on me, Jim!" She barked.
"Okay." I held her tighter.
"It's about what a crappy friend you've been our entire childhood. Not once have you ever been there for me when you didn't have to flex it like someone we know." She went on, her breathing getting uneven as she tensed up in my arms.
I immediately got the hint.
"Is this about what my dad did to your dad? Hufflepuff, that was long ago."
Violet thrashed about in my arms so much I thought if I held onto her she'd hurt herself. So I let her go and she stumbled forward, swerving around to face me, this wild look in her eyes.
"This is about how your dad made a mockery of my dad!" She yelled. "Made a mockery of his family… made a mockery of me!"
I'll be the first to tell you the story myself. My dad and Violet's dad have… or had been friends their entire lives—just like me and Violet—and my dad is a filthy rich son of a gun who has… a kind of a rotten personality, really. He's the stereotypical wealthy person, owning more than one business, living in a big house, making donations to shiny up his exterior and Violet's dad… To put it delicately, he's the total opposite of my dad, with the same temper as his daughter and we share the same dynamic as them. My dad humiliated her dad in front of mass media.
Violet pointed her finger at me, her other hand balling into a fist. "Your dad… held a large charity at his place, took my family there and announced to the whole goddamn world that my dad was a drunk and he'd gambled my future away and that's why he was giving him a hand-me-down!"
"But Violet, he was helping him."
To be honest, my dad had pulled a sick move on Violet's family, announcing their problems to the media like that. I remember that Violet was in her pink Mini Mouse pajamas, and I remember thinking she looked so cute.
"He humiliated my dad! Friends don't tell the other one's problems to the world while helping them! And friends don't sure as heck stand aside and watch the whole thing happen! I was in pajamas, Jim! I looked homeless!"
Violet's angry voice filled the empty classroom and even echoed down the hallway outside. I'm sure she wasn't expecting me to have barreled across the room and started yelling at my dad for his words on live Tv, but she was right. I just stood there, and I remember feeling absolutely nothing. Matter of fact, I was proud of my dad. Proud of what he did. Proud of our lives. It hadn't hit me then that my dad was just being a jerk to his best friend. It dawned on me while Violet was huffing and puffing, looking at me like I had a bullseye on my face.
But you wanna know what my response to this beautiful, blonde apple of my eye was?
"Hufflepuff… I know you're upset… probably because you're being driven by all these centuries of countless hormones and whatnot and the stress about the test is bumming you out… I'm not gonna help you cheat this time, but– but… I designed a study schedule for ya and if you use it starting tonight, you're sure to ace that test this Friday on your own." I slipped the note into her pocket and gave it a little pat like it was treasure.
Violet was quiet. Her erratic breathing stopped and her eyes widened at me. I stared back at her with this dumb neutral expression. And then she slapped me across the face, knocking the stupidly expensive glasses off my face.
She was beyond enraged.
"Y'know, you're just like him." She shook an accusing finger at me while I slowly turned to face her, my cheek hot from her unexpectedly strong slap. "You're just like your dad. Self-absorbed, proud, arrogant and egotistical! You belittle everyone around you!"
I silently watched her as she spoke, tears welling in her eyes.
"You say you like me, but what do you do? What do you do, Jim?!" She cried before her expression hardened. "You and your dad… you're two peas in a pod. You're snobby, narcissistic, you're on your high horses! And maybe my dad and I are on our stubborn mules but at least we have hearts."
The last part was a bit ironic for a bully to say but that wasn't the point. The point is I was making my crush cry, my bully cry. She paced around while I stared speechlessly and suddenly paused.
She shook her head.
"Y'know what? That's it. I'm done. We're… we're done, Jim." She declared, voice cracking. "This is it. You and your dad can eat me and my dad's asses. Keep your high horses! Later, nerd!"
And with that, she stomped out of the class, leaving me gawking at the empty space she had stood at a few minutes ago. I couldn't stop her. She had made me realize a whole lot of things about myself that I was oblivious to. Somehow, I felt empty, deprived and thirsty after that conversation, if I can call it that. And not at all in a literal or physical sense.
I picked up the glasses she had slapped off my face and stared at them. One of the lenses was cracked, a shape of a heart visible among those frivolous lines. Well, two pieces of a heart split apart. It wasn't funny.
I spent a long time sitting alone in that empty class until security came with my driver looking for me. I told my dad about it when I got home.
"Violet and I had a fallout," I said to him while he sipped whiskey on his armchair.
"Who's Violet?" He casually asked, flipping through a Vouge magazine. He must've been in there, like always.
That made me mad. I hated how indifferent he always was. "Violet." I just repeated.
"Oh. Jack's kid." He huffed nonchalantly. "What d'you fight about?" He turned a page.
"We had a fallout." I repeated myself for the second time, feeling my frustration build up.
"She'll come around." He said.
My jaw clenched.
"No, she won't." I answered, voice unnervingly calm. "She slapped me, broke my glasses and told me it was over."
My dad looked up at me for the first time ever since I walked into his study and stood a meter from him.
"Good, those ridiculous things were getting old anyway."
I tilted my head, my fists balling at my sides.
"Y'know, she said something. Something that I realize how severe and true it is. We're assholes."
Dad paused for a fraction of a second before he scoffed lightly, closing his Vouge magazine and setting aside his glass. He looked up at me with those condescending blue eyes that I saw every time I looked in the mirror.
"Jimmy, how we act and live isn't supposed to make you care about what people think about us. It doesn't matter." He shook his head. "Violet's just acting like your mom when we were kids, okay? It's not that deep."
The air got knocked out of me.
"Not that deep? Not that dee— dad, I like her! Okay– I had her in my arms a few hours ago and now she's gone. Probably for good. All because of us."
"Your mother played this game on me, too, son, and she came running right back to me and later we had you. She was being a little stupid and came to her senses." He said.
"Oh yeah? She did, huh?" I nodded, not willing to let that go. "Look how that turned out, yeah? She divorced you and took half of everything! Why, because she had deluded herself into thinking you could actually change!" I yelled.
My dad went quiet, the smile getting wiped off his face.
"Everything's gone to shit because you're my father! You're the person who's in my life!" I screamed, panting.
My dad gawked up at me, his expression unreadable.
"James… you're going to want to sit down. Calm down." He said gently.
That just enraged me to bits. He was doing the thing.
"No I don't wanna calm down! and you sit down, Frank!" I roared, feeling the tears stinging my eyes.
That was the most angry and most emotional I'd ever gotten. I'd called Violet the hormonal one and here I was screaming at my dad. He stood up.
"Jim—"
"Screw you!" I shoved him back and stormed away, shutting myself in my room like a nine year old.
That's how I found out I was a jerk. Days later Violet went on a date with this guy Milo, likely one of the guys she had the guts to push around. I figured out later he was a kid she used to tease back in kindergarten. He was tall, blonde and I could tell she wasn't with him for his money or his looks. They went on dates every day, passing in front of my house in the evenings, dare I say, hand in hand.
I'm not going to drone on about how much it hurt to see the girl I liked holding another guy's hand every day while I watched from a damn balcony…!
Because it did...
But I'm over it. I guess.
The two got hitched while we were in college and Violet invited me. I went there. My dad didn't. I couldn't care about him but I spent a few minutes there during the vow exchange and then ran out to go scream at the wall somewhere. I got back to the wedding again and stood there, watching as people congratulated Violet and Milo on their marriage. I just… stood there, in my stupid green anorak and broken glasses, watching by the wall of the tent like some lost mutt!
…Anyway, a few years after graduation, here we are. We're still in the same city, Violet and Milo have a three year old they named Pepper. I'm a digital forensics analyst practically working for my dad as his businesses are a gold mine for hackers.
A lot of the stupid things in my life are starting to have a meaning now. I don't talk to my dad about anything other than business now; I wear that anorak jacket all year-round as my shield; I wear glasses all the time because even if my eyes don't need them, my heart needs them—as cringe as that sounds. I don't talk, I don't go out, I don't date– to the point where colleagues think I'm gay! I don't drive, and I live in a different wing of the mansion a distance from my dad. I'm the epitome of a nerd and I'm glad I'm still wearing these glasses because it gives me a comforting delusion that I don't look like my dad.
Everyone has changed. I have evidence that proves that my little study schedule had helped Violet in all her tests and schoolwork and even in college. I know for a fact that she's still using it today to pursue further studies. It was that good. She's never pushed anyone around ever since our fallout, and I can tell she's a good mom. Certainly not perfect but she and Milo are managing just fine.
…My dad's into drinking now…
I apparently have a little sister; my mom remarried. They ambushed me this one time on my day off when this blonde little creature barreled into my knees. My mom's happier now with this guy named Jasper. They sneak up on me sometimes.
I don't get lonely, but on days when I don't feel right, I just lie down, wear my anorak, put on the broken glasses and sleep on the couch. I wake up hours later in tears, feeling cathartic.
Everyone's happy, everyone has someone. Everyone except me and my dad. We're the villains here. We're the jerks. We're the ones who have everything and nothing at the same time. As the saying goes about the feathered birds and togetherness, we live together in the same big house but he's the last person I'd go to if I wanted to have a conversation.
I just have one question… between Violet and I… who in the hell was the bully?
It's always the man's fault, and I can sure as hell tell you it was me and my dad's fault.
…Maybe it was the anorak jacket.