Day of the Underdog

“Easy out! Easy out! Everyone scoot in,” Jimmy Hawkins sings to his PE classmates as Liam Dawkins steps to the plate for his turn to kick.

The coach rolls the ball. To Liam it seems the ball is traveling much faster than when other kids kick. Liam believes Coach Dirks favors popular athletic kids, that he can’t stand the uncoordinated little guys like himself.

Liam runs up to kick the ball and misjudges the speed, kicking too soon and falls on his back like Charlie Brown after Lucy rips away the football. The class laughs. Tears start to form from embarrassment, but he wills them back.

“Oh, strike one,” Jimmy exclaims as he taunts Liam by exaggerating how silly he looked missing the ball.

“Come on, Liam, can’t you even kick a ball, you loser,” he hears Steve Grossman, the team captain, yell as he gets to his feet to try again.

Jimmy leads his team in taunting Liam with a chorus of, “We need a batter, not a broken ladder.”

The coach rolls the ball. Liam kicks the ball, and it immediately spins foul.

“Come on dork. It’s kickball. All you have to do is kick the ball,” Amber Snell, the bully of a girl who is next in line says to him.

This time Liam takes a deep breath and steadies himself. There’s taunting coming from the opposing team and complaining from his own team, insults from both. There’s so much being said at once he can’t sort it all out. The ball is rolled. He closes his eyes and kicks. Fair ball! Liam runs to first base as fast as his little legs will take him. Jimmy fields the ball and throws it. He nails Liam in the head and knocks him to the ground.

“Out,” the coach yells. “That’s game. Go to lunch.”

“Way to go, loser.”

“Nice job, dork.”

“We could have won if it weren’t for you, geek.”

Liam scowls at everyone who comments and bumps into him as they pass by on their way to lunch. He knows that if he were bigger people wouldn’t mess with him as much but being only four-foot-three and skinny as a rail at age eleven, everyone knows there is nothing he can do to retaliate.

At lunch Liam sits alone. Nowadays it’s a choice. Once upon a time, he tried sitting with other kids, but they would run him off. Even the nerdy kids didn’t like having him around. They made fun of him for poor grades and insisted his small stature, shy, awkward demeanor, and huge glasses were a bully magnet they didn’t need. Now, Liam just assumes eating in peace rather than being around people who make fun of him and steal his food.

Recess follows lunch. Liam walks the perimeter of the playground hoping no one will bother him. Most days he gets by unnoticed, but there are times when someone makes sport of picking on the little guy. For some reason, nine out of ten times, it’s Amber and her gal pals who go out of their way to make his day a nightmare.

“What’s wrong with you that you can’t kick a ball,” Amber asks rhetorically as she shoves Liam to the ground.

“I don’t know,” Liam whines from the ground.

“Maybe he’s handicapped. Are you handicapped, dwarf,” Vicki Ashcroft asks him, snidely.

“I’m not a dwarf!”

“Of course you are, look how little your feet are,” Becky Reynolds says as she stomps on his foot.

The girls all laugh as Liam writhes in pain. Tears start to form from humiliation, but once again, he wills them away. The bell rings, indicating that recess is over. “Saved by the bell, dork,” Amber says as she and the other girls leave Liam lying on the asphalt.

Liam sits in the back of the classroom always hoping to go unnoticed. It never works. He feels like Mrs. Applebaum seeks him out every time she has a question because she knows he doesn’t have the answer. Liam tries to keep up with the homework, but he has a hard time comprehending and retaining information, mainly because he struggles with focusing. It’s not that he doesn’t try, but he can’t control the part of the body that controls the body. It runs on its own and does what it pleases. His assignments are always incomplete. That gets him yelled at and humiliated at school, then again when he gets home.

“We got your report card today, son. What do you have to say for yourself,” his father asks the moment Liam walks through the door.

“I did the best I could.”

“The best you could do is a D in art. Everything else is an F. You even got an F in PE. How do you get an F in PE,” his father asks, enraged.

“I’m not good at sports.”

“You must be pathetically bad to get an F.”

“Really, Liam. Do you think we are going to believe you’re putting forth effort when you got an F in music? All you have to do is open your mouth and let sound out,” his mother says, shaking her head in disappointment.

“Look at some of the comments your teachers wrote. ‘Never participates.’ ‘Refuses to socialize.’ ‘Doesn’t focus.’ ‘Never completes assignments.’ We’re ashamed of you son. You need to get your act together. Until then, you’re grounded,” dad says.

Liam goes to his room and cries tears of anger and rage. He isn’t sad, he's fed up.

The next day, Liam gets on the bus. His usual seat is taken. He journeys towards the back, no kids allowing him to sit with them. He’s getting awfully close to the imaginary boundary that separates the quiet kids from the rowdy ones. “You can sit with me,” Liam hears Johnny Waters say. Liam cringes as the bus driver yells at him to sit down. Johnny is good friends with Jimmy and Steve. He’s part of that popular group of boys that’s really athletic, does good in school, wears all the latest fashions, and lives to torment Liam. Having nowhere else to go, he sits down. Immediately, his glasses are pulled from his face and a game of keep-away breaks out. Every time he stands up to try and get his glasses back, Johnny punches him in the nuts. When they get to school, he exits the bus hunched over and crying.

At the beginning of class, Mrs. Applebaum collects the math assignments. In his anger last night, Liam forgot to even start it. When he tells her he doesn’t have it, she marches to the back of the classroom and drags his desk all the way to the front, positioning it in a corner facing the wall, shaming him as his classmates roared with laughter. Liam doesn’t see what it resolves other than embarrassing him in front of everyone. For the rest of the day, and until his teacher decides otherwise, he will be staring at the gray painted cylinder blocks that make up the school’s wall.

PE rolls around and today’s game is dodgeball. Liam’s worst nightmare. He hides behind the bigger kids to start, knowing that certain kids like to aim for his head. As people were being knocked out though, Liam realized he better start dodging. Balls zip over his head as he dunks. They whiff under his legs as he jumps. He is surprising himself by how well he is doing and how long he is lasting. He is the last one left for his team. Then he comes face-to-face with Jimmy. Liam freezes like a deer caught in the headlights. Jimmy’s eyes gleam and he smirks, firing the ball as hard as he can. Liam closes his eyes, feels it hit his chest, brings his arms up and catches it. Jimmy is out, and he’s teased by the other kids on his way to sit down. Johnny is the last one left for the opposing team. He and Liam are both in shock that Liam caught the ball. Johnny scrambles back to retrieve another ball, but Liam tags him, winning the game. It was such a great feeling being the victor for once. An even better feeling when his teammates congratulated him as they left for lunch instead of the usual name calling and shoving. Liam can’t wait to tell his parents. Certainly, this will make them proud of him for once.

Later in the day, Jimmy, Johnny, and Steve corner Liam in the bathroom.

“You think you’re some kind of big shot now, just because you got lucky,” Jimmy says to him in a threatening manner, pushing him up against the wall and punching him in the stomach.

Liam folds over and drops to his knees. “Look at the poor little baby,” Steve says as he lifts him to his feet and knees him in the nuts.

“Next time, just go out like the loser you are,” Johnny says, and he kicks him in the ribs.

When Liam gets home, he’s a stressed-out mess and just wants his parents to comfort him, but his dad insists on teaching him to fight, telling him he can’t be a pussy all his life.

“Okay, boy, get your hands up,” his dad tells him. “I want you to try and slap me.”

Liam goes to try and slap his dad. His dad swats it away and slaps him in the face. Liam looks at him in shock and rubs his face where it stings.

“I told you to get your hands up,” dad scolds.

Liam gets his hands up and tries again to slap his dad, but his dad swats his little hands away and gives him a combination of slaps across the face. Liams eyes water from the sting.

“Protect your face, and when you swing, swing like you mean it,” his dad tells him.

Liam gets his hands up then swings as hard as he can at his dad. His dad dodges and slaps Liam so hard he falls to the ground with his ears ringing. Liam breaks into tears and runs for his room.

“Fine! Be a pussy! See if I care,” his father shouts behind him. Grabbing his beer, he plops back down on the couch and turns on the news.

Liam is glad his seat right behind the bus driver is available today. He sits hugging his backpack, ignoring the other kids who taunt him from the back of the bus. Today is a big day. It is going to be the day he finally stands up for himself.

At the beginning of class, Mrs. Applebaum asks Liam if he wrote his poem to read to the class, expecting him not to have done the assignment.

“I’ve got it right here, Mrs. Applebaum,” Liam says. He stands up in front of the class and reaches into his backpack. Instead of a poem he pulls out his dad’s handgun he found in his dad’s nightstand. He shoots his teacher in the stomach then opens fire on his classmates. He pauses after several shots. They were screaming, scared and confused. Some of them sprayed with blood from the kids he hit. In that moment he was happy that everyone understood for once what it was like to live as Liam Dawkins day-in and day-out. He wishes he could enjoy the moment longer, but he knows there are extreme ramifications for such actions. With a smile on his face, he puts the gun under his chin and pulls the trigger.