The Life of a Cricket

Why has no one cut the grass? It’s so long… from this close it makes one wonder, how does a cricket find it’s way through this rural jungle? It must be proud when it finds its way. Maybe that’s what they are trying to tell us when the room goes quiet.
It’s funny, the things you think when you’ve just gotten your face thrown to the ground.
And yet, as I picture it all in my head, I wonder exactly how the scene looks. I wonder if these people are in fact realizing how vile they are. I can see the spray of spit as the fist makes brutal contact with my face, the glint on my glasses from the sun as they fall and shatter at my feet. My third pair this week.
The name is Jordan, but I have many other aliases given by my brilliant peers. What is it whispering in their ears, encouraging them to do so? Did the shoulder devil have a coup and take all control over the angel? Or was it really that traumatizing that they didn’t get that pony they wanted for their third birthday?
Everyday has blended into one of ache, monotony and contemplation. I have discovered more muscles and parts than I knew I had through their bruising and tenderness. It’s the same schedule; up, punch, class, nosebleed, lunch, and they somehow manage to fit in a new bruise or two before home. If this keeps up, by the end of my high school career, I won’t need to buy a mask for Halloween, I’ll be one.
If people were to describe me in one word, the most common picked would probably be immaculate. Maybe that’s what instills such fear and ignorance. Or maybe it’s the thickness of my glasses, the articulation of my words.

Or that I’m just not as cruel as them.

None of them seem to appreciate the worth of a life. Any life, every life is a masterpiece, an intricate display of god’s overwhelming intelligence. In PE class, every pause of my teachers screeching speech in which he would preach about fitness, body builders, and irrelevant dumbbells, every pause would be filled with the elation of a cricket. They had gotten somewhere, they had made it through, the joy in their voices was one to be cherished, the rapturous splendor in their song to be remembered.
“ I’ll give a quarter to whoever finds and kills it”, came the southern drawl of my teacher.

So now there is a price on life.

And Tony was the one to start the search. Tony. Even his name implies the cliché. Yet he smiled his ambrosial smile, scanned with his placid, yet pleasing, eyes, and gently picked up the cricket in his flawless, russet hands. Oohh if only.

“I’ll just toss him outside, no need to mash the little guy. Don’t forget my quarter professor.”
All the girls giggled their obsession, and the guys smirked and nudged. I couldn’t help but smile and sigh. Such control. He could have declared himself king, kicked them all to the ground, snapped his fingers and demanded laughter.

And they would still love him. Goddamn, I would still love him.

Just as all my thoughts had been consumed by the horror of my life, my disdainful father who refuses to understand why I won’t fight back, the bruises on my skin, and my core, the teacher’s who seem to always look the other way, in she came.
A beak of a nose, with small eyes peering around it. A spray of freckles, and the round face to encompass it all. Her mousy brown hair fell lank from her chaotic bun onto her slumping shoulders. She clutched her books as if they were her final friend and her only hope. She took one of the many open seats surrounding me –they made it a point to avoid - and gazed through my nonsensically thick glasses with her beady, pale green eyes.

And I knew, she was perfect.

No words were exchanged. Words were trivial, insincere. After that one concentrated, fervent gaze we had seen all we needed to.
I gave her my locker number, and she nodded her understanding. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she could have read the number from my mind through those raking eyes.
I got out of class early. There is no way I would let them get to me now. Not today, not after that.
I knew she was there before I got there, and in a silence filled with so many words, we walked down the road to our asylums, our backs to the place of anguish.
As we walked down the street of steaming black, the sun heating our hair and flushing our faces, I felt the electric shock of her hand. She side stepped, and giggled a high pitch giggle that meant so much more.
She came back to my side, and I captured her hand in mine.
Never had I felt such magnificence, shock, passion, luster, beauty, and adrenaline. I screamed my elation. I sang my song of joy and devotion. I had found my way. I had fought through my rural jungle, and I had won.

Or so I thought.

My song was too joyous, too intense, too passionate. They had heard. And they were coming.
In my exhilaration I didn’t hear them come, didn’t see the hand descending on me. Didn’t know until I felt the iron grip on my shoulder, the wind tearing through my hair, and my head leaving a dent in the pavement. I didn’t look up until I heard her scream. I stood up and drowned out her screams with my own.

They had grabbed her, chanting their brutality, dancing their dance of destruction. My face red hot, fingernails ripping into my palms, and feet taking me to the last place I expected to be.

And all I felt was an explosion of pain in my hand and the crunch of his face.
And that was all he wanted me to feel again. This wasn’t a cruel game anymore.
This was a hunt.

All I could hear was the heaving of their breaths, the cracking of my ribs, the wheezing of my esophagus, and the footsteps of my fleeting life. I half expected them to hang me on a cross.
Light. Rushing, searing, impaling my pupils. Even through the blood in my eyes, and the numbness of my very bones, I could see Tony’s face, and I could feel his hands, his flawless hands, the hands that would blow the final trumpet. I could feel them as he lifted me into his arms, and carried me from that circle of dark, jeering pain and into the light. His light.

“A quarter for whomever kills it, right?”

All went deathly still as Jordan’s final line was uttered. The savages gathered round, gawking at their bloody destruction.
And the last thing that Jordan saw was the glint of the quarter in his upturned hand. The last that Jordan felt was the hot breath of the heaving heathens. The last that Jordan tasted were the tears from her pale green eyes. The last that he heard was the chirp of a cricket, declaring his joy, for he had found it’s way at last.