Fatso

Thank you for continuing to read these stories.

This too is a hybrid of more than one story.

You won't enjoY it, but it needs to be read.

"Hey Fatso! You really gonna eat all that?"

Robert doesn't look up from his tray, the one containing the same food as the boys who taunt him, but still he is Fatso, not them.

"What's the matter?" another one says as Robert tries to pass quickly. "Your mommy too busy stuffin' her own face to make your pussy-boy lunch today?"

They erupt in laughter, these kids he's known since they entered Kindergarten together, though they didn't hate him then.

Robert sits at his table alone and he looks down at his tray and he cannot eat. He hears them laughing and planning. He stands to go. He leaves the tray where it is. He starts for the door that will lead out onto the quad and he is almost there. He can reach out and touch it with one more step, but he doesn't. The boys shove themselves into his path. They stand against the door.

"Leavin' so soon Roberto," the leader says to him.

"I'm just going to sit outside," he explains.

"What about your lunch?" he asks and pokes Robert in the stomach. He can feel his belly jiggle and he knows that this thin handsome boy can feel it too and Robert is so embarrassed. He would give anything to be anywhere else.

Another of the boys comes up to them then and he is carrying Robert's abandoned tray of food. He tells the group that Robert is a selfish prick, that there are kids starving in Uganda and he just leaves an entire tray of food on the table. Robert doesn't know what to say.

"You should fucking shoot yourself you know that? You really should," says one boy.

Robert is stunned. His heart begins to race and he can't find is breath under all of their laughing.

They have been mean to him for years. They have been the meanest boys he could ever imagine. But they have never been this.

"Ha, yah that's a good idea," says their leader. "Your dad's a hunter right Robby? You should just blow your face off with one of those guns. Maybe that would clear up these zits," he says, poking him in the cheek this time.

Robert looks from one boy to the other and they are laughing and high-fiving each other and he knows that this will never end. It won't end and it will only get worse and nobody is coming to help him. He will have to help himself.

All at once he pushes passed the four of them and they are so busy celebrating their torture of him that they are not ready and he gets beyond them and to the door and then he is running through the quad and he is running and running and running.

He is running to his house and he is thinking about what they said and he is thinking that maybe it's the only help there is.