HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL
Category: Poems

HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL

“Oh, yeah,” I had heard this about my good friend Buddy a few days before he put our school under lockdown. This was the day before Spring Break. “That kid f***s.”

“I don’t think he’s f***ed anything except his hand.” 

I felt so sorry for myself, listening to these kids yammer on while I just sat there. The cafeteria started to fill up with teenagers and I hated that feeling. 

The watching.

Not doing anything but still seeing everyone move and swell with pure, ravenous hunger. It felt like a booming warehouse. Except for the tater tots on the f***ing floor. 

The room was fully circular, and plenty of spaces for students to sit at. It was one of those progressive architects that made it-- in order to promote education and “study skills.” It somehow felt less special that way. Muddy brown walls and white floors. A mural on the east wall portrayed our school mascot, Roddy the Rainbow.

“Have you seen him?” the first boy said.

“Well, I mean, yeah,” the second boy replied, chewing baked beans and letting chunks of the mound crawl out of his mouth onto his lunch tray. “He’s my lab partner. This light-skin guy, always on Reddit, and sh*t like that. So weird.” The first kid didn’t seem to notice, or care, and was instead enthralled with lecture notes, as if the question he had asked previously was a vestigial organ from an animal alive seven thousand years ago. 

There was a lull in their conversation and the second kid grunted, signalling that he was going to the men’s room.

“Hey, David,” boy 1 looked at me. “Since when did you start sitting here?” He raised his eyebrow in inquisition. I swore to God that he was a gazelle and I was a leopard in our past lives. I felt flames inside my forehead.

I replied amicably, “I’m waiting for Mary,” because I was. We were going to sit outside for lunch, but she left me to rot in Hell. Boy 1 sniffled and rubbed a streak of snot on his sleeve. At this point, I know that his name begins with an L. Luke, or Liam? That was the question.

“Oh, Mary? She had to meet with Mr. McCormick last block.” L said this like a prayer. He had short red hair on the sides and a tiny shark fin on top, so slick with the dew of hair gel that it looked almost solid. He had a splash of amber freckles that mixed well with his chronic acne. He was almost always wearing our school colors- yellow and black. And he loved surprising girls with his d*ck online.

“Hey, Shaun. Where’s David?” Mary sat down with sunglasses on. I realized that his name was actually Shaun and not Luke, or Liam. Either way, it didn't matter at all because I hated him so much I wanted to take his baked bean glob and hurl it across the room. 

“Mary, are you blind? He’s sitting right across you.” He finally looked up at Mary.

“You probably can’t see me because I have my earbuds in,” I thought I was being funny when I said this but nobody was listening. Instead of laughing, Mary propped her sunglasses on her forehead and held back the tidal wave of curls pouring around her face. I knew she was using drugs again because:

1. She had sauntered into the dining hall, 15 minutes late, with three other girls from the c hall bathroom. Those three girls happened to be Theresa May, Sadie Beringer, and the asian chick in my gym class. Mary had started hanging out with these girls a couple weeks ago because for some odd reason Mary was bored of her real friends and wanted cheap thrills from some upperclassmen sewer rat mirror selfie dab pen pantied preppies. Mary was a great friend of mine, but I’m not entirely sure what her values were.
2. Whenever Mary got high during school, she would ask a lot of questions and look around the room about a thousand times a second. Usually the questions are about her complexion. I hope I am not making her sound shallow. 
3. Oftentimes, I start to hate women. I have no clue why.

“Salsa, be honest-- do I look ugly right now?” Mary looked pretty almost all the time. She got up and sat next to me instead of Shaun when she asked me this, as if to give me a better look at her ugliness. 

“Of course not, Mary, you’re beautiful.” I forgot to mention that Mary was my girlfriend back then. She just smiled at me but I could tell she felt like hugging me. She looked to her phone camera for guidance, and put some sort of goo on her lips.

4. She laughs a lot, of course. But she does that regularly too. To be honest, I like when she’s on drugs. It doesn’t really matter what kind. I’m the funniest, hottest, and most interesting guy in the room. To her. Finally someone’s life force. The feeling goes away too quickly.
5. Mary says that she can feel waves and moves her hands and feet in a circle because she wants to keep the energy of her body going before she dies.
6. She always needs more.

She fluffed her big, curly cloud of hair over her shoulders and stood up. 

“Do you still want to eat outside today? I’m down. I just have to go upstairs for Ap Macro so we should leave early.” I knew she was saying this because she wanted a bump without being seen by the cafeteria aides. She also wanted to sit with her new friends. She was wearing these really thin clothes that clung to her waist and her hips. She was always very self conscious for some reason. She was also concerned about never looking “black” enough, even though she was half black and stuff. Maybe that’s not black enough to some people. To be fair, Mary was also Jewish, Latina, and Middle Eastern. It’s true, though. She didn’t look like anything to me anymore.

When she stood up, she pulled her leggings up to her waist and shuddered her hips, looked at me and away.

Boy 2 sat down with a group of three other boys. They huddled around ugly Shaun and started slobbering their phone screens.

I don’t think I described what our school was like yet. I thought maybe it would develop with the story but im getting a bit bored with this and want to talk more from the objective perspective.

George C. Thomas High School. We didn't have an East, West, Or South version, but that might change if Philly gets more gentrified. Our school is just outside the city. It’s a public school, so there’s all types of kids. Urban and suburbanites. Kids that live at vape shops and kids who want to get into Harvard. It’s a decent size. We’ve got a big football field on the side, home games are always pretty weird because people show up drunk. Our school is a big mahogany monolith, though. It’s a giant square. A few poor housing facilities surround it and TONS of restaurants. Anyhow

“Yeah, let’s get out of this sh*thole,” I said. Mary laughed heartily. I started wondering what Shaun and his friends were talking about but I didn’t say anything. We left without a trace.

Somehow, I got home from school in one piece. 

“Yo, mom.”

Nothing.

I closed the door and my room glowed. The sky was pulsing and all my windows flew open. I had loved spring for the longest time until I realized what summer really meant. Sophomore year felt and still feels devoid of meaning. My head felt heavy and dark. My posters gripped the ceiling and my walls so tight that I couldn’t remember what color my walls were. I taped flowers and leaves on the windows so they got dried up and died. I loved my hardwood floors too. That was such a gift i could get after school. Hard wood. Cold. Shoeless feet.

Buzz. Mary buzzed me. 

“im outside” She texted me in all lowercase to seem cool. I looked out my window, towards the porch and there she was. 

“Mary!”

“Yo, we need to talk.”

She walked inside my house and into my room. Opened my door and the ceiling stopped beaming. I smiled, “Okay. What’s up?” She was sitting with her legs tucked underneath her as a seat while I sat cross legged on my bed.

“I’m breaking up with you.” a glass tear leaked out her eye and dribbled down like a worm. 

I felt like a butterfly.

Sometimes, I make myself sad for no good reason. 

Kat died the day after spring break ended, I wanted to kill myself, just to be like her. I didn’t even know her, honest to God. I knew that she had sh*tty friends. annoying, boisterous girls who were nasty to kids like me. Girls who talked to God through their loud and vodka. And people told me she smoked a lot of weed and nicotine. Even did heroin, one time. Rumors work like that.

But I hadn’t really met her. She used to always be in the ceramics room, and sometimes I would go over there to see Mary and her friends during my free period. She was always there, working in the back, painting some pot or spinning something on the wheel. And of course me, Mary, and Dylan would be screaming and honking up a storm as we typically do during school. Kat would always have her headphones in, totally tuned us out. I knew everyone in there hated us, except for her. I just wish I could have got the chance to see her smile before she finally did the deed. 

When Kat killed herself, the whole school went bonkers. She was a senior and she died on a monday. The school freaked out on tuesday. The response wasn’t instantaneous, but I don’t think anything naturally is. It felt more like a chain reaction. Her friends were the first to go. 

Yet, I don’t think those girls were right in the head to begin with. I was ‘hooking up’ with one of them. Her name was Hayleigh, mutated white names drive me bonkers, too. Her dad did the deed too. He purposely overdosed. And the needle went right in his arm, the death hole smack dab in the center of her goddamn name. Hayleigh. As if she didn’t already hate her birth name. So, when we finally broke up after a week, her reason was that I was a douche. I don’t know why she said that. I thought maybe it was because I was a freshman and she was a fancy senior. I thought we had a connection since we both had lacked dads. I heard she was cheating on me, too. I knew she was sad after we split because she gave herself bangs. Then, she started dating that douche named Jesus, maybe she had a thing for guys with superiority complexes. I felt relieved then, too.

Kat was so beautiful, though. Even more beautiful than Mary and Dua Lipa combined. Her friends didn’t see that, but I did.

Not that I’m saying I could have saved her at all. Maybe if I had referred her to a shrink, or given her a good back massage, hey. Maybe the depression would melt away. 

Or maybe she needed a real friend. That might be it. Her group was a bunch of fatherless dirtbag stoner rebels trying to be cool and flunking so many grades they got pushed back up their mom’s uteri. But who cares, ultimately. Anyways, so everyone in our school went berserk the day after Kat died. I knew just a couple days ago that those people had been spreading rumors about Kat doing too many drugs. F***ing chicks. Sh*t about Kat being a lesbian. 

She was pretty interesting looking, not gonna lie. She was always wearing these rippy skinny jeans or black yoga tights, which isn’t uncommon at our school. A lot of the girls wanted to look like her, though, I could tell. She seemed a little emo. She had this long brown hair that went down to her butt, she always parted it way to the side. The prettiest freckles I had ever seen, gold dust. She always had tye dye on too, and about a trillion tiny bracelets and necklaces on top of it. She didn’t seem like a whore to me, like everyone else thought. She seemed real honest. Freshman year was the year I learned that everyone else was a f***ing liar.

I met up with Buddy Carrey after her funeral. It was an open casket, lots of tears. The line to the funeral home went round the building three times over. I guess the entire senior class had skipped school that day to see her, pay their respects and all that. I was standing in line with Mary, and she was trying to look all miserable. The thing with Mary was that she wanted to look depressed, but she thought she was ugly when she cried. So, she didn’t cry. 

We were about 1/8th of the way there to the funeral home. The line we were in slowed to a limp. The autumn wind burned me. 

“F*** me gently with a chainsaw,” I muttered.

“Heathers?” Mary discreetly pulled out her phone from her cardigan and tapped it vigorously. I didn’t know anyone in the line, they all seemed lightyears older than me. The sky was bleak. Everyone was faking their own black hole, bleeding hearts. 

Some older man, about 40 or so, talked politely with the kids next to him. The guy told them a stupid story about how his neighbor roasted a squirrel in the barbeque. The kids listened sweetly, smiled about having something to distract them from the weightly guilt of their peers’ suicide. Three girls behind me were wearing dark blue, playing a game of “who has the coolest lanyard?”

I really hoped that Kat wasn’t watching over me at that moment.

When we finally got in there, we saw her in her casket. It was open. The only other dead body I had seen was my older brother’s. I started to wonder if there was any noble way to die. I said a quick prayer and kneeled in front of her body, saw her pretty freckles all done over with death. I shuffled through the crowd, out the door, while Mary looked at the pictures of Kat by the door.

I didn’t even notice the tears trickling down my cheeks. I guess I was pretty sad about the whole thing. I just sat on the rocks outside the home and watched all the sad saps mope through the door, their friends holding them up.

I watched Hayleigh sit quietly. Her face was made of broken glass, but she couldn’t cry.

I looked away, feeling stupid. I saw her out of the corner of my eye getting closer. Somehow, this all felt like my fault.

She stood in front of me for a while. I had no clue what to do. It felt like we hadn’t talked for years.

So I stood up too, and she gave me a giant, tight hug, and I cried some more. My throat knotted itself up and tied a f***ing noose. I felt like an idiot. 

Her smile was so faded away. I blew away in the wind. Felt like my clothes weren’t black enough. I didn’t deserve sympathy.

“I loved you, Hayleigh,” and that’s how I ruin every perfect moment. Say some idiotic thing like that. And I wasn’t even lying. Maybe it’s because I had no positive male reinforcement when I was growing up. Pure genius. I loved her at the funeral.

“I love you too, David.” I looked like a sobbing mess. When I cry, and I cry a sh*t ton, I have all this snot and all these tears leaking down. Ugly sight. She loved me, too.

“Goodbye.” I avoided her eyes and stuck my hands in my hair. Dying of awkwardness. I watched my loafers heel-toe away.

I hate the feeling when you can’t do anything except cry. My life is a cycle of feeling stupid. 

So, I was crying my brains out and walking past the long-ass line of other people feeling guilty. Feeling like they should be looking like me-- complete mess of snot and redness. And I’m almost at the car, I strode through the parking lot. 

And then I realize that Mary has the keys. I kept on walking down the side of the road with all the row homes next to the Schukyll River. I thought of jumping in and drowning myself or running into traffic. I just stayed on the sidewalk though. Until I got to the 7-11. And Buddy was right there, sucking on a black USB and dribbling smoke from his nose. He had some loose cash in his fist, a Pineapple Fanta in the other.

We made eye contact and I felt my skin burn again. I knew that me and him were only friends when it was convenient.

“Yo, David.” Bud grinned and I sauntered over to the spot where he situated himself. I grabbed his palm, which morphed into a hug, and a pat on the back. We both sat down against the wall, next to the recycling and not too close to the door.

“Ey, Buddy.” I felt my eyes sting with miserable red. My cheeks felt sunken. So did my brain.

He kept on smiling. “You look like a goth, man. Wearing all that black sh*t.” He grabbed my Star of David necklace to examine it, “I like your chain.” And dropped it, thud on my hollow chest.

“I’m dressed for a funeral.” I rubbed my eyes vigorously. “Can you help me?”

Buddy passed me his vape. I just stared at him.

“S’up.”

“I can’t do this school no more,” I said with intent.

“Ha-ha. Same dude,” Buddy took out a little white pill and washed it down with yellow fanta. “We should do something about that.”

Buddy’s eyes looked sad, but he was smiling. Then he fluttered his long, black eyelashes closed and he reminded me of Mary when he pulled a hat over his buzzed scalp.

“Do you have any more of those pills?” I asked. He stood up and gestured for me to follow. We walked to his red car. I got in the passenger seat and there wasn’t anything around. No trash or clothes. Except there was a gun in the back seat. He handed me a capsule when he slid into the drivers side.

“Xan,” Bud pulled out of his spot ferociously. I noticed his cheek was bruised. 

He took me to his house. We went to his room where he kept his computer. There were all these flashing christmas lights on the walls and black curtains so it was always night. I swear Buddy was a vampire. 

“Come kneel. I’m going to send a letter, then I’m gonna destroy the school, Shay. From the inside out. Are you listening? You look like a waffle.” Buddy flicked me to reality. I was seeing different colors. He kept standing up, then sitting down again. He couldn’t stop scratching his neck. He scratched it so much that there were pellets of blood poking through the wounds. “Shay. You won’t have’ta go there anymore. Because it won’t be there tomorrow. You don’t have to live in those sh*tty walls. You don’t. Do you get me?” Bud showed me screens, too bright. I couldn’t read what was on the screen-- obscure numbers and all that. Far too bright, and so much so that my eyes throbbed and burned with purple on the inside.

One thing I remember was that his room was clean. “Shay, I’m gonna keep you safe from them. They don’t give a f*** about you and me.” Buddy started yelling, then. He was getting fired the hell up. I had no clue what he was on about. Colors were awesome and I didn’t remember the giant hole inside my heart. 

Buddy stood up and lifted me up by my armpits. It made me chuckle out loud, I smiled so much at him. He let go and I fell on the floor. I was okay with that. Everything was good.

“They don’t give a sh*t about us. Maybe we can go back to the way things used to be. Have some." he put something on my chest but I didn’t look down. Then, he blew dust in my eyes. Buddy started taking off my clothes and I closed my eyes and felt miserable again. The night roared by quickly. He had been planning this for months. It seemed like a routine at this point. So it goes.

The next day, I woke up on my front lawn. Blood all over my shirt. Soaked through like water. I started screaming.

Screaming bloody f***ing murder. 

My mom opened the door and looked at me lying down from the porch and she started screaming right along with me. I had no f***in clue what was going on, in reality. I just felt like screaming was the right thing to do. I guess it was about 5 because my mom was still in her onesie pajamas when she drove me to the hospital. She didn’t even ask me how the f*** I was because she was so worried. 

We didn’t have school the next day because Buddy and I had murdered our headmaster.