Bully (Finly chapter One draft)

PART

THE FIRST TIME THAT I SAW A FINLY I WAS IN THE BOY'S LOCKER ROOM. The day started like any other. I woke late for the wagon that picked us up from the Outskirts and brought us to Westside Junior High. Had I known that moving from sixth grade to seventh would be like walking into an alternate dimension, I would have chosen not to go. 

They ride a bus. Make it more modern, just broken down. Everything is Ancient, junk in the Outskirts. The city is white, glass, polished, minerals with trams and power run off aqualight. Make a moment where Atreyu is listening to Material Gurl in his headphones. 

I stood beyond what you'd call my front yard, on dry sand, along the harder packed sand of the road. Roads in the Outskirts weren't made of white marble like the city proper. Roads out here sprung from continual use — and changed with the seasons, depending on flooding. 

It was low tide and there were no storm warnings for any time soon. School would start on time today. I stood at the wagon-stop with my sandmask over my mouth and nose. I looked stupid, but my mother had insisted. As soon as I heard the wagon coming, I was going to take the mask off. No one wore sandmasks!

At least she hadn't forced me to leave the house with a suncloak. Low tide had been going on for more than an hour. The air was already hot and the sun was beating its rays hard. I could feel the sun on the bare skin of my shoulders. My vest was buttoned, I wasn't brash enough to leave it unbuttoned like some boys.

My domed hovel was behind me. It was covered in barnacles, coral, and anemone that attached themselves to its metal and glass sides. Today, it was sitting atop a dune, like the crown of a colorful head — tomorrow the landscape could be completely different if a storm comes through. Mother said there was only a twenty percent chance of a storm. 

My neighbors' domed homes were adorned with colorful wildlife as well. Packed sand walkways and roadways were lined with seagrasses that waved as if caught in ocean currents, when in fact the air was dead — and in low tide, dry. My science teacher explained that the seagrasses were able to wave and undulate via organs called flotsam sacs. It was the same organ that allowed fish and whales to swim in the sky. 

I heard the buggy before I saw it. My stomach tied immediately into a knot.

A few months ago it wouldn't have mattered. I never knew stepping out of sixth grade and into seventh grade would be like walking into an alternate reality. Last year I was popular. I hung out with Jaysen and all the other boys that lived in the Outskirts. Being a friend of Jaysen's prevented me from getting picked on by anyone in school, even the popular jocks. I had lost all of my credulity over the summer.

The wagon was being pulled by a giant hermit crab. It was a baby compared to how big they could grow. Their shells weren't disposable like other hermit crabs. Their shells grew with them. Most adult crabs lived out in the Dunes. When they died, often their empty shells were washed up against the stark-white highrises of the city. This is where we got our homes...And thus they were formally called shelter crabs. 

The wagon wheels were deflated rubber tires that squealed with every rotation. The wagon was open-top. I wanted to keep my sandmask on, but I couldn't afford to provide Jaysen any ammunition. He'd been riding me pretty hard already and it was the first week of school. It was obvious that there was no salvaging our friendship, which honestly, based on how he'd been treating me it was hard to believe we had been friends. I stuffed my sandmask in my pack. 

The driver sat upon a constructed seat, almost like a hammock, that hung suspended between two spikes of the shelter crab's shell. He held a crop stick in one hand along with reins in both which were strapped to the crab's large pincers. The wagon was pulled by chains that were hooked to a ring that was drilled through the crab's shell on the backside. Traveling via shelter crab was slow, as one could imagine, but the city didn't care to build tracks for their trams out here. So the crab wagon would cart us to the nearest tram station to the northeast. 

Jaysen and his gargoyles, people that used to be my friends were sitting in the back of the wagon. Jaysen's vest would be unbuttoned, showing off his sixpack. He was the first of us to get them. He was also the first to get hair in his armpits and on his balls. I could attest that he definitely had hair in both places, but I wasn't honestly sure if he was the first. His were the only balls I'd seen other than my own.

I climbed the steps onto the back of the wagon. My hands were sweaty. I began the walk of shame down the aisle looking for a seat. Ever since I was ostracized by Jaysen and his gargoyles...I couldn't believe I'd been friends with them! ...My strategy was to find the first empty seat. However, all the first seats were filled with other outcasts. Even worse, was the fact that they, when they saw me, would nonchalantly move their bookbags and whatever else they had with them to cover any available space they may of had, so that I couldn't sit with them. To allow me to sit with them would just give Jaysen and company another reason to make fun of them. In junior high, anything you could do to stay off the prey list, you did — even if it went against your nature.

I could feel Jaysen's eyes on me the whole time. His gargoyles were quiet for a moment, waiting for Jaysen to make his move, watching him from their peripherals. I was Jaysen's most favorite prey. 

There was an empty seat near the middle of the wagon.

PART

THE CRAB WAGON MADE ITS SLOW SCUTTLE TOWARDS THE LAST STOP BEFORE THE TRAM STATION. We were still in the Outskirts, actually going further towards the Dunes with the curve in the packed sand road. Jaysen hadn't made any move towards me. Sand gathered around my nostrils, causing me to have to breathe through my mouth, which only caused sand to slip into my throat. I wished I wasn't such a pussy and would just put my sandmask on. 

Out here we were truly in the Outskirts. Unlike my neighborhood, which was littered with shelter crab shells, here the sand was littered with metal scraps from cars and old buildings that the Gripes had used to border their clamming lands. A partially swallowed car had writing spray painted on the side: GRIPE CLAM FARM. 

The road wound its way towards the last student's stop. Tiny dustdevils danced in the open fields of sands and gathered dunes. None of the twisting sand posed a threat to the wagon, except for everyone's lungs if they passed through one. 

We came to one last stop before the tram would take route to the tram station. This was the last stop. The last poor underclassman that couldn't afford a dolphin taxi to school. The Gripes were clammers. They'd get up in the early hours of the morning, just before the sun rose and dig up their various clam traps that they set in their yard or plots of land they bought out nearby. I never understood how they got the views to pay for all the plots of land they had. The Gripes were always dirty from digging through silt and clay...Warden included. He stood at his stop, his white hair was unkempt. From this far away I could see silt shadowing his cheeks. Truthfully it was accentuating his chiseled jawline. 

Warden Gripe was the dirty kid in school. He used to just be dirty, but as our bodies started to transform with tufts of hair growing in mostly unwelcome spots, he started to become the smelly kid — even more so than Gregory, the fat kid. Last year, in sixth grade, we had gym together and I noticed he'd started to wear deodorant, but his smelly nature wasn't easily forgotten. 

Before this summer, Warden was at the bottom of the totem pole of "coolness."

Warden climbed the stairs onto the tram. He had headphones in his ears. He had a defiance that I admired, like he didn't care what people thought of him. Though, he'd been dealing with how people felt about him since the start. His family had always been poor clammers. 

I could see his eyes scanning for a seat without actually looking like they were desperately searching. It was a trick that I was trying to perfect. I'd have it by the end of the school year. 

I'd just done the hunt for an empty seat. I knew that there weren't any. Without realizing what I was doing I pulled my bookbag from the empty space on my seat. I could see the flicker of relief in Warden's eyes — it was only there for the slightest moment. Maybe he wasn't as uncaring as I'd thought. 

Warden sat down and I knew that I'd just put myself lower on the hierarchy of popularity. I had given Jaysen and his gargoyles more ammunition. I swore that I heard Jaysen snicker from the back of the tram. 

"Thank you," Warden whispered. I pretended that I hadn't heard him. I was looking out the window, being that I was seated on the inside of the bench. 

The landscape turned from metal scrapes and car parts and dunes and sand to white roads, white domed shelters, and white impossibly high skyscrapers. Everything was pristine here in the city. Sandsweeps were out, dust caked to the shoulders of their uniforms, with their brooms, constantly sweeping sand away from the streets and walking areas. 

The wagon was pulled faster upon the white roadways towards the tram station. Once on the tram it would only take about five to ten minutes to get to the school. Westside Junior High was the furthest school from Center City. It was actually pretty close to the tram station. The transfer from the wagon to the tram came with no problems. The tram was open to the public, not just students. So It was easy for me to find a car with a bunch of people I didn't know. I even lost Warden in the process. 

I was a coward. 

PART

THE FIRST TIME THAT I SAW A FINLY I WAS IN THE BOYS' LOCKER ROOM. Had I known that moving from sixth grade to seventh grade was going to be like walking into an alternate reality, I would have stayed home. "You staring at my junk, faggot!?" Jaysen spat the words with such malice. 

Before the summer, if Jaysen was talking to me like this I would have assumed that he was joking and it was just some prologue to a play-wrestling interlude to release some of our adolescent aggression. I mean, our bodies were starting to make us feel things, telling us to feel things that didn't make any sense to our child-self!

Now — looking into the true fury in his eyes, I knew he was waiting for an answer or he was going to hit me! "N—no," I stammered. How quickly my exbestfriend was able to cow me. 

With my peripherals I was desperately trying to find someone, anyone, that I thought might save me. The locker room wasn't exactly populated. It never was when Jaysen and his gargoyles were about. Luckily for me, Jayseon only had three of his gargoyles in gym class. The fourth asshole with him was skipping class to be here. Jaysen had been planning this. There were two other kids in the locker room, but they'd be foolish to say anything against Jaysen. He had enough manpower to control the situation. Calling for the gym teacher would only offer me physical abuse faster than if I bared through the fear and tried to talk my way out of it.

"What do you mean faggot, I saw you looking! I was standing over there in my loincloth and you were straight up staring!"

"No I wasn't," I squealed. 

"So you wanna see it?" Jaysen sneered. He pressed his hips out, throwing his package closer to my face.

I didn't want to say out loud that I'd already seen it. ...And perhaps that's the reason that I was here — in Franklyn's headlock with Jaysen's junk too close to my face! "I think he wants to see it," Jaysen said to Franklyn. "Turn around dweebs!" He snapped at his gargoyles. I could hear and see dirty bare feet shuffle as they all turned around. I imagine that Franklyn closed his eyes. 

And to my horrified surprise, Jaysen pulled himself out from the cover of his loincloth! I didn't know what to do other than cry an unintelligible, "No!" 

"You like that?" Jaysen asked me. It was swinging too close to my face. "Make it hard."

"Dude! What are you doing?" Franklyn asked unsurely. 

"Shut up dweeb! Just hold him. I'm going to give little Trey what he's always wanted." Jaysen smiled that smile he always got when he was about to do something truly outrageous. Like that time he jumped over a deep ravine that had been carved into the rock of the Outskirts with his bike. Everyone else was too scared to do it. Jaysen just barely made it across.

He was fully hard now.

"Jaysen...No," I said weakly. He pressed the tip along my lips. I could feel myself want to throw up or thrash Franklyn's arms off of me. 

"Jay," Franklyn said again.

"I said hold him!" Jaysen pressed his tip against my lips harder. I was crying now. He parted my lips. I was going to bite him. It'd be the last thing I'd ever do — but I was going to bite him!

"Jay," Franklyn said again. I could feel his grip on my head loosen. Franklyn didn't agree with what Jaysen was doing. It wasn't often that anyone stood up against Jaysen. 

"Just hold him fucker!" Jaysen put his hands on the back of my head. This was it!

"Let. Him. Go!" In the momentary distraction, Franklyn dropped his grip. Only Jaysen and his gargoyles were in the locker room now. ...And Warden. 

"What did you say punk?" Jaysen snapped. 

"I said leave him alone." Warden said again. His voice didn't waver like mine would have. He was defiant. Tears were streaming down my cheeks, but I wasn't openly sobbing. Boys don't sob. For the first time, I truly looked at Warden. He was handsome — for a dude. I don't even know why I thought about him that way, but there was no other way to describe him, at least in that moment. Perhaps there was something different about him that I just couldn't put my finger on. The moment seemed to hang in the air like a thousand years. 

Yea — perhaps his jawline was a little more pronounced. His face was clean of silt. His eyes held a sort of alien luminosity, like his irises were crystal reflecting sunlight. In the creases of all of his joints there was a dark light. I wasn't sure if it was a trick of the undergroundlike lighting of the locker room, but they gleamed like black scales with hints of violet and royal blue. His hair was white, gleaming like a pearl. I had never seen it do that before! He was different.

"What you gonna do about it, clamboy?" Jaysen asked. He'd already placed himself safely back in his loincloth. Franklyn and the rest of the gargoyles were standing at Jaysen's flanks. They were ready for a fight. 

"You don't want to do this. Just leave." Warden said. He spoke so evenly. 

Jaysen laughed, "Twerp, I'll kick your ass with one hand over my crotch." As he said, he cupped his balls with his left hand. He shook it a little in my direction. "I guess you want a piece of this too, huh Warden. I guess I can't blame you. You going to get jealous Atreyu? Or can you share?" It happened so fast. It was so unexpected! Jaysen slapped me. It was open handed and fast and hard!

Warden moved like a blur. I swear I couldn't even see him move! The only way I knew where he was in the locker room was by the luminescent black and purple scales that seemed to form on his shoulders and elbows. I wiped dried tears from my eyes. Jaysen was on his back screaming. Warden was straddling him. I was staring at his back. There were definitely scales coming in and out of view on his neck and along what I could see of his spine. 

The gargoyles stepped back in horror! Some yelled. I didn't know why, until my brain caught up with what I was seeing. Black and purple-scaled tentacles writhed in and out of view from the sides of Warden's body. 

"He's eating him!"

"Jaysen!" The gargoyles were screaming.

"Go get coach!"

One of the gargoyles tried to escape, but a tentacle shot out, clearly coming from somewhere on Warden's body! It wrapped around the gargoyle's ankle, it was Bradly. It easily yanked Bradly back, keeping him in the locker room. Bradly was screaming like a little girl now. 

I heard the door to the gym open and close. Warden looked back at me. His eyes were definitely glowing! "What's going on in here!?" The gym teacher asked before he came around the corner. All of the lamps shattered, their green-blue glow leaving the dank room in darkness. I lay there — petrified. 

When the lights were finally turned on, Jaysen was in a coma — and Warden was no where to be found.