“What if everyone in the world gave you one dollar?”

I posted that in the forum right before I left for school. The weather in Portland Oregon was ready for summer. I really wanted to see if I could support myself. Leave school. Maybe even leave home. If anyone could help me, it was the internet. I needed to get out of school. I hated it. And I hated how adults always said, “you’re just saying that now.” Well yea, when you’re getting bullied by the teachers, it’s not a school anymore. It’s a prison. No joke, I wanted to kill my bully, who weirdly enough, looked like a bulldog. A short, buzz-cut idiot named Mr. Kahoot. And while I wanted to kill him, I didn’t wanna end up like one of those whack-job school shooters. I saw a problem and was taking actions. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.

Mr. Kahoot was crazy, but mostly, he was just mean. He was mean and he wasn’t into me. He was the math teacher and the football coach. It was hard to tell which he was better at, ’cause he might as well have done both at the same time. Kahoot only liked the dumb-fuck football players that got with the hot, anorexic girls in school. He hated everyone else. He especially didn’t like me. Most likely ’cause I was fat, and refused to play football. I wanted to keep my head straight, not become a box of idiot by being a lineman. Kahoot didn’t like that, and I didn’t like him.

On the last day of class, I came in and sat down. I was tired, probably because Mom woke me up to clean her throw up. Bad medication, I figured. I put my tired head on my desk and felt something whack my head. It was an eraser. “You didn’t sign in. What are you? A fucking idiot?” said Kahoot. Laughter broke out from the jocks, and Kahoot smiled at them, then just shook his head. Disappoint. That was the last thing that midget told me. If I had a gun, I would have shot… okay! This is why I need to leave school. I didn’t like where my head was at, and I wasn’t gonna become one of those people.

From that moment onward, I promised to never set foot in a school again. The internet was my palisade. I could do whatever I wanted there. The new Star Wars trailer came out: I knew how the movie ended. I could spoil it for anyone if I wanted to. If they got on my bad side.

So an annoying thing always happened when summer break started. My birthday was the week after school ended. I always invited people over, and no one showed up. No one showed up, ’cause they all went on vacations with their family. So after 11 years of disappointment, I decided to shake things up. I was gonna have everyone over that night. The day school let out. I dug out a fire pit. I even told Mom people were gonna come over. She was thrilled. The only talking I did all day was telling people about the party. Johnny was for sure gonna be there. That was cool, ’cause Johnny was like me. He hated all the right teachers. He made jokes about which teacher’s car tires he would slash. He was such a pessimist. I loved it.

After the Mr. Kahoot thing, I went straight to my computer. Whenever someone crossed me, I’d get ’em back. How, you ask? Leaking that someone’s address online. I made sure to leave it somewhere that would get some TLC. So you bet as soon as I got online, I found Mr. Kahoot’s address. His number too. And his credit cards, passport copy, SSN, account information (and my god was he behind on his mortgage payments). How did I get all this info? Ask Mr. Kahoot. He says I’m a fucking idiot.

In Mr. Kahoot’s class, there was toss-up. A toss-up between who he hated more: Me, or hockey players. Kahoot would regularly fail hockey players. Now, the hockey players weren’t the nicest to me, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Which is why I helped the hockey jockeys that day. If you went on the website for Portland Junior High School Hockey, you wouldn’t see any information on practice locations, game updates, tryouts, or highlight reels. Instead, you saw Mr. Kahoot’s stupid grin from his school badge. And in nice big letters, all the information you could ever want. Especially if Kahoot failed you ’cause you play hockey instead of football. Tell me who’s the fucking idiot now, Kahoot.

They never found out it was me… because I was good. Some people needed wit, some needed their fists while others needed mirrors and makeup, biceps, glasses, guns, knives, or even their brains. All I needed were these fingers. I typed like a fiend. It was the only thing I was the best at in school. I could type 169 words per minute without even looking down. 98% accuracy.

I made every click count on a keyboard.

So now all I had to do was get through the bonfire I put together for my birthday. But Mom had different plans. And right before my friends showed up, she had a fit. She started puking all over herself. She was yelling for me. She wanted help going from the couch to the toilet. Couch to toilet. Couch to toilet. And then my friends started to show up.

“Don’t let them see me like this,” is all she said. So I sat her back on the couch, and ran to the door to meet my friends.

“Go around the back. I’ll be out in a minute,” I told Emma and Tom.

Then I zoomed back in to check on Mom.

“Go, be with your friends! Just keep your phone on you in case… in case,” Mom said.

“In case. Gotchya. On it.”

“Happy Bday Hef-tay,” Emma said throwing a well-wrapped box almost 10 feet in the air. I watched the box, then felt a huge hug from Emma, and then Tom. Tom from Texas. I was not expecting that. Tom then thumped from behind and sent all three of us down into the lawn. “Gah, Tom you’re such a dick. Look at my halterneck!,” Emma yelled, getting a huge skid mark on her dress. I wanted to laugh at Emma’s skid, but I didn’t want to upset Emma. She and Tom were like a thing, but I was def Team Emma. Choosing sides with Tom wouldn’t help my chances, so I kept my mouth shut.

I started the fire and before I even sat down—text message from Mom. Emma and Tom got into a fight, and I started an intricate tango, from bonfire to couch to toilet to couch to bonfire as friends started going around back. I repeated this dance at least 7 times.

Finally, with all my friends there, I sat in silence. Emma and Tom had finished, Johnny was Johnny, and Oli and Diana and Mel were trying to have their own conversations so they weren’t being rude. Everyone knew Mom was dying. Everyone knew what I was doing. We just didn’t talk about it. The only thing was, I couldn’t think of anything else. So I sat there.

One by one, everyone trickled away, picked up by their parents or older siblings. Maybe to Cinemark, or anywhere that wasn’t my dumb back yard. Pretty soon it was just me and Johnny. He was salty.

“You said there would be food, dude.”

Shit I forgot to make food. “Um… I think there’s punch. And croutons.”

“Croutons. That’s okay.” He pulled out his phone and started texting rapidly. Then he put it back in his pocket. “Well, looks like I gotta leave soon too. Got a thing, like, tomorrow. Yo, you hear about the hockey website?”

“Um,” I paused. “N…no.”

Johnny pulled out a pack of cigarettes and packed it against his thigh. “Dude, someone hacked it. They put up Mr. Kahoot’s info, like all of it, on the website. Check it out, it might still be up. Word is, whoever did it might go to jail.”

Fat chance. “Whoever did that must be a fucking idiot,” was all I said.

“Whoever did that is fucking awesome. Kahoot’s a chode.” Johnny then put a cig in my mouth. I’d never considered smoking before. But after the worst last day of school ever, who gave a shit. “I’d shoot Kahoot myself if I ever got the chance,” said Johnny lighting both our cigs with the same flame. I guess I wasn’t the only one with the gun fantasy. Johnny stayed as long as his tobacco was on fire. When that was spent, he “had to go.”

And eventually it was just me, staring into a fire. Into the caveman cable. I was not going back to school. I wanted to travel the world. I’d… make a website or start a band. But I vowed I would never feel as lonely as I was tonight. The embers chipped and chiseled into a million little puffs of energy. Eventually, the fire was as nonexistent as my social life.

I peed on the fire, then went inside. Mom was still up. Oh joy.

“Where are your friends?”

“They left, Mom.” I turned to go downstairs.

“Well why’d they leave? It’s not even 9:30.”

“I don’t know, Mom. They had to go.”

“Well. Where did they have to go?”

“How the fuck should I know?” I whipped back. Mom looked down, face blank. She was used to my temper. She looked ashamed. I really hoped she wasn’t ashamed of me, cause my day sucked.

“Well how can you just let them leave like that?” she barked, “It’s Friday night, and they’re your friends. What, are they going to do? Something illegal?”

“MOM! How should I know? They had to go. Okay? Damn, it’s not like you helped.”

“What did you say?” she was looking up now. THAT got her attention.

“Nothing.”

“What did you say? What I’m sick, is that it?”

“No, Mom, it’s just…” I couldn’t finish the words. It wasn’t her fault, but, it kind of was. She did spend the last 5 years eating a metric ton of garbage food, but still, I said, “Forget it, Mom.”

“No, don’t forget it. I did this? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” She was propped up now. Her sunken eyes peered up at me beneath her scarfed head. She was a cold, granite tomb of her old body. Every moment was pain. She had a sucky life, and I knew it. Glad I was along for the ride.

“I didn’t ask for this, okay? You think I want to have my son clean up my puke every day?”

“Yea, well that doesn’t change a thing, Mom, ’cause I still clean up your puke.”

“Well, I’m dying.”

“You’re always dying, Mom. That’s all you ever do anymore is fucking die and now it’s everyone’s fault.” I wasn’t even looking at her spewing this shit out. The words didn’t seem real stumbling out of my mouth. I couldn’t help but let her have it. Goddammit, I wanted friends. I wanted a normal life. I wanted to be able to go on vacations and not have to walk into school every day and have everyone pity me cause, I was the poor kid with the dying mom.

I wanted a real life, and goddammit, she was holding me back.

“You’re always fucking complaining and whining, and making me do everything for you. I have to clean up your vomit off the toilet. I have to take out your smelly tampon garbage. I can’t have any friends because of you. I’m sick and fucking tired of it, Mom.”

All 300 pounds of her stood up, red-faced and furious. She walked right into my face screaming. She didn’t have an ounce of disdain for me. All I saw was fear and shame. I could tell she wanted me to have a normal life. She just wanted me to feel normal but instead, we had each other.

“What, you think it’d be better if I wasn’t here?” she said.

“You shouldn’t BE here, Mom, you should be in a hospital. They’re not trying to fucking kill you.”

“You little ‘sshole” she hissed. “You ‘sshole. You… ‘sshole”. I had a brief flashback of Mr. Kahoot yelling in my face this morning. Mom’s dying-of-cancer breath was almost worse than his smoker’s breath.

She left the hospital a month ago out of fear. Fear of dying or fear of actually getting better.

Either way it would disrupt the little nest her cancer had created for her. No husband, no family in town, no other children. Just me and Mom.

“I should kick you out of this house,” she bleated.

“And what? Clean up your own puke, and pick yourself up off the toilet? WHO’S GONNA TAKE CARE OF YOU, GENIUS?”

“Don’t talk to me that way.”

“Fuck off.”

“Don’t you talk to me that way,”

“What the fuck does it matter?”

“DON’T FUCKING TALK TO YOUR MOTHER LIKE THAT!”

She lifted her limp arm and slapped me. Right in my neck.

For a normal, healthy person, it was crap slap. For her, it was impressive.

Without thinking too hard, I clenched my fist tight. In.021 seconds, I pushed my knuckles into Mom’s left jaw. Her eyes lit up like Christmas as my punch moved her whole head.

Mom thumped, with all her layers of fat, onto the floor.

I stomped down into the basement to get my laptop. I didn’t know where I was gonna go. Maybe someone would let me crash at their place. Halfway back up the stairs, I slowed down. I didn’t hear any yelling. There wasn’t any crying. There weren’t any creaks on floorboards. There weren’t any hushed calls to 911. I crept upstairs and just saw mom. Lying there. The pile of her bones and flesh on the floor, motionless. I gently set my laptop on the stairs and ran over to her. I gathered Mom up into a sitting position. The touch I used on her was the exact opposite of my punch. She made one movement: a head shake, back and forth, in slow jiggles. It reminded me of my babtsya. Babtsya always shook her head back and forth like that. It was usually when she talked about Dido Orest, my grandpa. I’d never met him, but he sure made babtsya shake her head back and forth.

“Mom, oh my god. I… Mom, I’m sorry. I just…”

She couldn’t look at me. It was like I knocked the human right out of her. Those sunk-in eyes were colder than a Cleveland winter.

I hit a cancer patient. Worse, I hit my mom, the cancer patient.

“People go to jail for that,” she uttered. That was all she could say. That was all she would say to me until Sunday.

I took her to her bed. I treated her like a queen. After that day, all I could do was think of her. All the crap she’d been through. Getting the divorce. Moving us to Portland. Getting the cancer. Raising me by herself. Trying to give me a normal life. And I repaid that debt with one thunderous punch. She wouldn’t be able to leave the house for the next three weeks from the bruising. I even bruised her bones. It didn’t help her leukemia. The swelling ultimately got infected, but by some miracle, some prayer I said later on that night, I didn’t kill mom.

I knew how broke she was. She refinanced the house, whatever that meant. She couldn’t work. She tried that textbook company, but she knew it was nothing. She was down to nothing. She had one foot in the grave. I’d bet she thought a lot about what she would leave for me: debt.

And still she wouldn’t let me get a job ’cause she wanted me to have a good school experience. A normal experience.

I went into my room, opened up my laptop and jumped into the forum.

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[What if everyone in the world gave you a dollar?]

I could afford to pay for Mom’s treatment.