Chewing Gum

The cafeteria was bustling, with kids walking down aisles and talking with friends and shouting profanities. A fight broke out in the lunch line when one kid shoved another. The assistant principal tore them apart and got punched in the face, receiving a black eye and a shattered left lens on his glasses.
Adam and I sat at the table in silence, watching the fight. We didn’t care much, though- we were just watching out of curiosity. We both hated the school because we were more mature than most of the kids there. They treated us badly. But that was fine, because we didn’t like any of them and we acted condescending. Adam was more when it came to math and science, and me by knowing all about the happenings in Congress in civics class and reading The Sound and the Fury while the other kids read The Outsiders.
I really could have cared less about their insults, anyway. The best they could come up with is making fun of my weight or my hair or something. I had curly hair. They thought of pube-head. Brilliant. And it’s not like I could blame them, either. They were only teenagers. They didn’t know any better.
“Goddammit,” Adam spat, and I looked at him. He had his face pinched up and he slammed his fists on the table. He lowered his head and his bangs drooped over his face. I was used to his little bursts of rage and I wasn’t perturbed. He was frequently angry and I got tired of caring. I feel bad… but I guess I can say that I used it to my advantage sometimes.
“What the hell?” I asked him. As used to him as I was, I liked knowing what bothered him, just so I could manipulate him later if I needed to borrow money. That’s only one of the ways I took advantage of him.
“Look at the sign,” he said, and pointed to the wall to the left of him. It was a poster for the school-wide paper drive. Our school, Palm Lakes, couldn’t pay that much to teachers, and the teachers didn’t feel like buying their own paper.
“So what? Damn, Adam, that sign’s been up there for a few days now,” I said and took a small bite out of my sandwich. He looked back up at me. His eyes didn’t look angry, though.
“What kind of school are we in where we can afford security cameras around every corner and can’t afford paper?” he asked. I thought about it and swallowed my food. There were cameras on every corner, but I didn’t think much of his suspicions.
“Does anything about the school make sense? Take a look at it’s name. You ever seen a palm tree around a lake?” I asked back.
“It was a rhetorical question,” he said and scowled. I didn’t pay much mind to his attitude or his anger. I never did. Our friend Jake walked up to us and sat down. He began drumming on the table.
“What’s up, man?” he asked me. He tried to take some of my food and I slapped his hand. He wasn’t one of our kind, the kind who felt superior to everyone. He was a normal kid, but he was nice, so we were friends with him.
“Where’s that voice coming from?” Adam asked angrily. This was an insult to Jake. He wasn’t even five feet tall yet. He stopped drumming and punched Adam on the arm. Adam rubbed it and looked down again. Jake was as used to Adam’s outbursts as I was.
“What’s his problem now?” he asked me. There was a whole gamut of things Adam could get pissed about. I told him about what he had said and he shrugged. He was interested, I could tell, but he knew there wasn’t much more I could tell him.
“Wanna buy a Tech Deck?” he asked us, and Adam slammed his fists repetitively. The school’s current trend were little finger-skateboards. Pretty much everyone had one. Pretty much no one knew how to use them. And everyone criticized each other because of that fact.
“Oh, Jake, the hypocrisy of it! Everything here is so hypocritical… They know what’s going on, it’s a conspiracy against us! You and me, Will, they hate us so much…”
“No thanks,” I told Jake, but he could’ve gotten that far by himself.
“You and Sarah make out yet?” he asked me and I blushed. Not because we had, but Adam thought that middle school relationships were “hogwash.” He didn’t know that Sarah and I were a couple. He looked up and stared right at me. His eyes still weren’t angry. But they looked like they had a film over them, keeping him away from the rest of the world. He stared into my eyes, and for a moment I had a deep, incomprehensible sympathy for him. Then I realized that I had no sympathy for him- I wasn’t even looking at him.
“Good God! This day just keeps getting worse and worse!” he yelled, whoever it was. “My best friend, oh, just as hypocritical as the rest of ‘em! You’ve made it clear as day, it’s not a conspiracy against us! It’s against me!” He had a genuine look of horror spread across his face.
“So what, Adam? Why do you care if he has a girlfriend anyway?” Jake yelled at him. This calmed him down for some reason. He breathed more evenly now.
“Either way, don’t talk about that! Not here! If they have cameras, they have microphones!” I tried to comprehend what he was saying, but then I looked around and saw that he was drawing attention to himself. I tried to shush him, but to no avail.
“Dude, is Adam okay?” Jake asked. I drew back into my chair and bit my lip. I turned red. Adam was standing on his chair.
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen him like this,” I told him, truthfully. Once, we had gone to a zoo and he bit a zookeeper. He was angry that they had caged animals. Even then, he had kept his composure. Now, he was just announcing anything that came to mind to the crowd surrounding him.
“I am not on drugs!” Adam yelled. I glared at him, half-hatefully and half-pitifully. I would’ve killed someone for him to stop.
“No one accused you, Adam,” I whispered. He looked down at me, his eyes sad through the film. The real Adam was in there, trying to tell me something, but failing because of the haze.
“I know, but I know you were thinking it! I pick these things up, see? How else would I know about the gum?” he shouted. I was really beginning to get worried. Not just for his sake, though. I mean… he was my friend and all, but it was embarrassing to sit there while he was going on a frenzy and people were staring at him, talking about us. As much as I hated the school, I cared somewhat about my reputation.
“What gum?” Jake asked. He was genuinely interested in what Adam had to say. His eyes glistened with curiosity. Adam’s eyes were covered with a haze of sadness and insanity. I realized that that was what was shrouding his eyes- insanity.
“The gum under the table, that’s the gum!” he bellowed. It made sense. Not the gum, but the insanity. He was virtually friendless, his mother was a drunk and his father a workaholic, and they both pressured him tremendously on his schoolwork. I tugged at his sleeve, trying to draw him back to Earth, but he just pulled his arm back. “The microphones are in the gum and the cameras are on the walls! It’s an invasion of privacy, my fellow students, and don’t call me crazy!”
“Adam!” I yelled. “Stop making a goddam scene! Sit down!” He jumped up and down and pounded his chest. I moved a couple of seats down and put my hood over my head. All the time, though, I had my eyes glued to Adam.
“Oh, you’re a gorilla now, huh?” Jake asked sardonically. Adam bent over and grabbed Jake’s collar. He was gritting his teeth and his knuckles turned white. I saw Angel, the security guard, walk over.
“You chew gum, Jake. Have you ever stuck it under a table?” he asked and slammed him down. I saw Jake get hurt, but I was too scared to do anything about it. He stood on a table now. “Have any of you stuck gum under a table? No! No, no, no, no, no!” I buried my face in my arms and went cold. I began to see him doing some weird, heated motions, but pretty soon my eyes were blurry from tears and I couldn’t see anything anymore.
“What you think you doin’ up there?” Angel asked him and helped Jake up. Adam stared down on him condescendingly. I wiped my eyes and watched intently.
“You heard me, Angel, and you know what I was talking about,” Adam said, realizing that he had put himself in harm’s way by shouting out his beliefs on the tabletops.
“Boy, I be lucky if I know one thing go on in your head,” Angel said and pulled Adam off the table. He went without confrontation, but he suddenly jerked away and stuck his hand under the table. He pulled out a piece of chewed gum.
“If I bit this, Palm Lakes would lose money on an illegal investment, and I’d have the ruined dental records to show it!” Adam babbled. I knew he was talking crazy, but I found myself siding with him in the high hopes that he wasn’t crazy and he was just daring. As Adam motioned to put the gum in his mouth, Angel grabbed it out of his hand and dropped it on the table. “Don’t play dumb, Angel! You know damn well what I’m talking about and you know it!” Adam yelled. “You know it!”
I was in utter disbelief. He was sobbing and Angel pulled him by arm to the cafeteria door. The entire room was silent, glaring at him and then me. I walked up to where Angel put the gum and picked it up. I was thinking maybe he was right. But then Adam went atop another table.
“I need to start taking over this damn world! There’s no time left! You all need to cooperate, and you know it! When I am king, you’ll be first against the wall!” he shouted to no one in particular. He was just yelling to appeal to whatever bad chemicals that were in his brain. I silently put the gum down, knowing he was dead to the world, and sat back in my seat. I figured I probably wouldn’t see him in school again for a while and I took a few dollars out of my pocket. I bought one of those finger-boards from Jake and went to sit with Sarah.
I’m not going to say I forgot all about him, but, admittedly, he was never really in the forefront of my mind. I made other friends and became more generally accepted. But can you blame me? I was only a teenager. I didn’t know any better.