It

The boys and I started hanging out in elementary school because we knew that soon we would move up to the most notorious and violent junior high in the Commonwealth. I think just about any junior high in the United States was more fucked up than Marijuana Junior High but the school was messed up by the standards set by our leader, the Queen of England.

We were not the only boys to organize ourselves to take on the challenges of being teenage. There were several other groups (they would be called gangs now I suppose), mainly composed of violent hockey players, ready to survive by whatever means necessary. Most of us would eventually be recognized when we appeared on To Serve and Protect, a tv show produced to publicize the colourful citizens of Sliverville.

"Hey I saw you on To Serve and Protect last night!"

"I was so fucked up!"

"You fell right out of your car when the cops opened the door."

"I puked all over that cop's shiny shoes. I think I'm going to be on next week's show too."

"What did you do?"

"Same thing!"

When we first got to junior high there was some hazing. Eggs were tossed and people were thrown into walls here and there. It was not much.

The worst of the older students had already graduated to a life of full time crime but they often paid visits to the school to beat people up. One time a group of them took us on in a classroom. We soaked up their taunting and went to walk outside. In the hallway one of the young full timers took a shot at It.

It was the quietest, nicest big lunk you could imagine. But he was hard as a hockey rink's ice surface. It's older brother, who could lift the front end of Peterbilt off the floor by himself, had taught It how to take care of himself. And It had no sense of pain at all. He was my lab partner in chemistry one year. While everybody else would use tongs to remove the chemicals they had boiled up over a bunsen burner, It used his bare hands. He would smile as he carried the boiling liquid like he was performing in a circus freak show.

It avoided the shot taken at him and broke the bully's nose so badly the motherfucker probably still cannot breathe properly through it. The full timers never gave us any trouble after that.

It was befriended by the jocko homos as soon as word got around about that incident. His flash of brilliant self defense saved him from spending his lunch money on dope for the next several years. He still bought beer for his old brothers though.