Wake up to another day
Walking again this narrow way
Still feels like I'm going insane
Never thought my heart could ever take this pain
Break down, let the tears flow
This should be the time you should really let go
Stay true to what you knew
Yahweh never took away his eyes off you
Yahweh
Break away from the sins that hold you back
Yahweh
Break away from the world that holds you back
Step down from your world of pride
This should be the end of your pity party ride
Break free from the enemy's lie
Mount upon the wings of the Most High
Sky high is where we fly
Flap away your wings and don't be shy
Draw near to the days of grace
The day will come you'll always get to see his face
Break down the Jericho wall
Step down from the life of pride
I just wanna say this loud
No one to hold me back
Transitpoint rock this town
Demons don't hold them down
Yeshua who gave me life
Is the same God who takes me home
Plow man overtakes the reaper
No one is left behind
Watchman who stands on the wall
Preparing to battle it out
Transitpoint, "Yahweh"
It was the summer of 1990, and Jay's family's life was changing. Don and Shelly's salaries were raised.Don had cut off his long hair and kept his beard trimmed ,he also had a lot more work to do at his job at the Ministry of Electricity and Water than when he had first started. At times he would get stressed, but he was very much self-contained. Shelly also worked for the government, but for the Ministry of Education as a school teacher of eighth grade and up. Every day, she would come home from work and tell Don the news from school and the work culture, especially the different foreign teachers who dressed in their own national garb and spoke with their native accents. They would share funny things that happened during the day, then throw their heads back and laugh as they sipped hot malt from their favourite mugs while they sat overlooking the garden. This was their way of unwinding from their long, stressful hours of work. As their work pressure and salaries increased, Don and Shelly were also raising their standards for their family life.
Jay was beginning the fourth grade, which meant he was required to move up from the primary school building to the Logwood High building, where all the students from fourth through twelfth grade were.
A very strict faculty had been formed at Logwood High, and it was overseen by Mr. Bell, the clean-shaven, fat, bald principal who wore gold-rimmed glasses and a blue tie. He would have a small, wooden stick in hand as he patrolled the school, looking to discipline naughty students. The students had to wear uniforms—checked trousers, white half-sleeve shirt, and a blue tie. Shoes were to be polished until they shone. Mr. Bell would say that he should be able to see his own reflection in them.
Jay was still just a child, but he was being introduced into a system of fear, survival, and comparison. Suddenly, there were so many more subjects than usual, and they were more difficult. The students needed to carry heavy new books to school, which was stressful. The teachers were not always kind. The students' faces were different from the ones he had known in the primary levels. Some looked innocent, but some were selfish and some reeking of cheekiness.
During the first recess of his first day, a rather large boy came over to Jay and pushed him. Jay was not used to this kind of treatment, so tears quickly sprang to his eyes.
"Cry baby!" the big boy taunted as he walked away.
After school, Jay didn't tell his parents about the incident or that he was very uncomfortable in the Logwood High building. He felt scared and missed the warmth of his primary school years.
The next morning, as he stood at the front gate of his house, a big, yellow bus with "Logwood School Bus" written on the side drove up to the curb in full steam and blaring horns. On board were kids of all ages, shapes, and sizes—short, tall, fat, thin, girls, and boys. Jay climbed the steps of the bus and found a seat.
As soon as he sat down, someone pulled Jay's collar lightly from behind and whispered, "I am right here, squid."
Jay turned around to see who it was. It was the big boy from his class who pushed and taunted him. His front tooth was missing, and he had a round face with a mean grin and glaring eyes. Jay turned away and faced forward.
The bus drove up and down the roads, stopping by new houses for the children who kept climbing in. Some got seats, but when the seats were filled, they had to squeeze in or sit on laps. Jay was still small, so he was firmly embedded between bodies smelling of all sorts of creams and baby powders. The senior girls pinched his cheeks and said he was cute, but they would do it to many of the little ones, so he just sat still without saying a word.
The bus finally came to a halt at the school, and as soon as the bus door opened, the teachers helped the little ones down. Other children ran out of the bus in droves as they could hear the bell ringing and didn't want to be tardy. Jay hopped off and ran with everyone else to his class as directed by the teachers.
After he got to class, the stern-looking math teacher named Mr. Zain took attendance, and all the boys found their seats by the alphabetical order of their names. Jay sat down, and there was an empty seat right behind his. When he heard Mr. Zain call out the name Imed, fear came over Jay as he saw the big boy sit right behind him.
Once again, he gave Jay a mean grin and tugged at his collar. "Hey squid, always right behind you."
Jay felt his warm breath on the back of his neck, and it freaked him out. When he turned around, he sensed an evil presence around Imed. He could see that Imed's eyes looked like he was some other kind of creature, and there was a dark shade over him. A shiver ran down Jay's spine.
"What are you looking at, huh?" Imed asked in an irritated voice.
Jay turned his face away immediately. The attendance was done and class commenced.
There were different syllabuses of course requirements for each grade, and Jay's parents had enrolled him in a higher level for this year. His parents had decided to place him on a tougher course of study because they wanted to improve his mind and extract the best out of him. But in these tougher classes, Jay didn't have the freedom to say what he wanted because he didn't fully understand what was happening. Jay discovered that the standards expected of him and the rest of the students were very high. In most of his classes, when a question was asked, the teachers gave the student a chance or two, but after that, they relied on the rod and yelling to use fear and intimidation to get them to learn.
Jay didn't like that they never had a choice in their subjects; they had to do exactly what they were told. So Jay went through a whole lot of subjects—English, geography, social studies, science, history, and math. He liked a few of the subjects but got bored easily. Breaks came only after an hour, but the rest of the time, they had to sit still in their seats. They pushed the limits of how long a young mind could stay focused without getting distracted.
During math class, Mr. Zain walked up to him and saw him struggling in trying to solve a mathematical problem. Without warning, he quizzed him randomly on calculations. It was so fast that Jay couldn't understand. Then all of a sudden, he felt a hand whacking him behind his head. The blow was so hard that he saw stars and his ears rang. Jay was instantly filled with so much fear that he couldn't think clearly at all, let alone figure out what answer the teacher was asking for. He broke down in tears. Then he felt embarrassed as the whole class was watching him.
That evening, he left for home with a long face, and he cried in the bus. An angel sat right behind him, crying with him, but Jay was not aware.
Later that day when his mum picked him up at his bus stop, she saw him sobbing. "What happened, Jay?" she asked.
Jay showed her the notebook where Mr. Zain had scratched out Jay's attempts to solve the math problem, and told her how he got a beating.
At first, she didn't say a word. After a few moments' pause, she replied, "Don't worry ,Just do well, okay, Jay? That's why you are in school—to learn."
That night, Jay forgot to do his homework, and after dinner, he went to bed and fell fast asleep. Things were about to get even worse.
The next morning when he walked towards the school gate, he saw dark, shadowy figures snickering as they walked next to him. He started walking faster. Once he reached the gate, he lifted his head and saw an angel standing on the wall adjacent to Logwood High.
The angel looked towards the dark, shadowy beings and shook a fist at them as if to say, "Only for a time!"
Jay didn't know what to make of it, but he pondered on it.
When he was sitting in class, Mr. Zain walked in with a math textbook. The class greeted him in unison. "Good morning, sir." He wished them a good morning in return with a rather stern face, opened the cupboard and pulled out a wooden ruler.
Jay noticed that the two dark, shadowy figures that had jeered at him from the gate had also come into the classroom, but nobody saw them except him. The figures were still shadowy and blurry, but he knew they were there. The angel was nowhere in sight.
Mr. Zain said he wanted to see everyone's homework. All the students stood up as he walked past their desks. He used the ruler to strike students who did the homework incorrectly, and he punished severely the ones who hadn't done the homework at all. There was a lot of crying in class.
He was just two students away from Jay when he suddenly mumbled to himself, "Oh, I haven't taken attendance." Then he shouted, "Silence!"
There was no sound from any of the students out of fear of the brandished ruler.
"Roll call, everyone." He said and stopped checking the homework to go get his attendance register from his desk.
The remaining students, especially Jay, silently let out a deep breath of relief.
The names were called, and the names were answered in all different voices. Some were sweet, some were loud and, some barely could be heard, but there were no absentees because Logwood High was very strict on attendance.
After the roll call, all the children were asked to solve mathematical problems. The students who couldn't get it right the first time were given one more chance. After that, Mr. Zain would strike the students with the ruler.
Jay was terrified, but he couldn't do anything. Mr. Zain's attention then went to Jay. He was quizzed again on math tables, but he was not able to get the answers right at all, so Mr. Zain yelled at him.
The next class after math was history. A fat lady walked into the classroom and began to talk about world history and civilizations. Jay enjoyed listening to her speak until the dates came into play. All the students were scribbling notes in their notebooks as they wrote down the dates she listed. It was all flying around Jay's mind, bustling like bees. He felt it was too much for him to grasp, and though he tried his best, his mind wandered to what he would be doing after school.
Next was science class. Jay loved science but noticed that the male teacher had a few favourites—usually the girls—so the boys were largely ignored.
The bell signalling the end of class sounded, and all the students, including Jay, used the time for a bathroom break. On the way back to class ,Jay was making a few friends in the hallway when all of a sudden, and quite accidentally, he bumped into Imed.
"Hey, one of these days, I'm gonna box you!" Imed said.
The second bell rang, and everyone rushed to the next class. Suddenly, Imed grabbed Jay's sleeve. Jay tried to tug his sleeve away, but it ripped. Jay teared up.
"Let go of my shirt!" he said firmly.
Imed tightened his grip on Jay's sleeve. "What? Make me! Make me, you squid!"
Suddenly, they heard an older student's voice say, "Hey, move up to your classes quick!" A high school senior was looking at them.
The boys bolted into their classrooms.
* * *
Jay's schooling caused him daily stress. The teachers would take their wrath out on the children as and when they liked, but no one said a word against them. If the students had forgotten to do their homework, they were asked to stand outside the class. They instilled fear in the students of having to repeat a class if they did not do well. The teachers even went to the extent of pulling them out of sports or music classes in order to make them sit in extra academic classes. The teachers' actions were perfect in their own eyes because they were never checked by anyone in their classrooms. There was no way out at Logwood High.
Jay had no one to complain or say anything to because all the students were threatened by the teachers. Students who had complaints were asked to bring in their parents or were thrown out of class.
The teachers weren't the only ones Jay had to fear. He saw many fights in school, and ego-headed boys and bullies seemed to be swarming everywhere. Though he managed to avoid most of them, some did threaten him during recess intervals between classes. Fortunately, he always managed to escape when the bell rang because no one wanted to be caught by Mr. Bell.
Jay and the other younger boys sometimes got in trouble with the high school seniors at times or would be forced to run their errands—like delivering love letters to girls. That is, until one day when Jay delivered a letter from a senior boy and got a peck on the cheek by the cute girl who had received the letter. Unfortunately, the senior saw it and went after Jay, but Jay ran for his dear life. He never helped another senior again with regard to love letter postings. He eventually learned to avoid trouble, but if he was cornered by anyone, he would have to fight back.
It was a great boon to Jay that he had a cousin at the school who was two years older than him named Smich Aziza. Their families were close, so Jay and Smich had become good friends. She looked at Jay as her little brother, and since she was a couple grades above him, she was very familiar with all that needed to be done and was extremely helpful to Jay. She often helped him fill out forms or get certain things done in school. She also defended him against the bullies. Once or twice, she even beat up a bully on his behalf. She was very busy, as she was a prefect, but whenever she could, she would stick up for him.
As the years passed, Jay's grades steadily declined because he performed poorly in the class tests. Every report card had bad news for Jay, which caused his father to be frustrated with him. His parents were called by the teachers to school to discuss Jay's grades about every two months.
As a result, things were not good for Jay at home either. His parents were very successful and felt it reflected badly on their family to have a son performing so poorly in school. At first, Don began to cut back on the parties and family picnics because of his son's bad grades and the societal embarrassment he was to the family. Then Don decided to take matters into his own hands. He employed discipline by the rod—at times, he would lose his temper, reach for the belt, and yell at Jay. Jay would leave for school in the morning with marks all over his legs.
Though his parents loved him, they didn't realize that Jay had ADHD or that he had developed dyslexia. The fear of learning started the moment Jay was struck by Mr. Zain while he was trying to solve the math problem, and it continued to grow worse because of the constant, performance-driven stress he was under.
Even with all his difficulties, Jay's spirit was not broken; he was still too young to feel like an underachiever, still too innocent to become rebellious, and still too naïve to understand that he was stuck in a rut because he had dyslexia and ADHD.
Jay did have one thing that still gave him confidence—music. Of all his classes, Jay loved music the most. His teacher, Mr. Sherwood, was quite an interesting man. He was a great singer and excelled at playing a variety of instruments—trumpet, clarinet, saxophone, trombone, drums, and even a bit of violin. He loved blues and jazz. The best thing about him was that he loved his students. He saw potential in each of them to be a great musician. Mr. Sherwood loved Jay because Jay had a great voice.
Jay aced the school music competitions; he won every one of them hands down, but at the end of every semester, Logwood High would never really give attention to music. The grading system was biased towards performance in the other subjects. All the other teachers loaded the students with excessive work to be completed because they were under pressure from the executive administration of Logwood High, who in turn was under pressure from other schools to compete and make sure they were the best.
The founders of the private schools exploited the students by stressing them out to be the best, not because they truly cared about them, but for the sake of the school rankings. They were greedy for money—the more students they could get into their schools, the more money they made and the more fame they received. Logwood High fell right into this grid. The children had to do extremely well or else warning letters were sent home, threatening to penalize them in some form, and in some cases, even dismiss them from the school altogether.
Jay's biggest nightmare at school was end-of-semester exams that would determine his promotion to the next grade. The students would study hard because the syllabus was so tough, but they had no other option.
* * *
By the end of seventh grade, when Jay was only a month away from his final exam, he was doing so poorly that he was in danger of failing for the year. His parents called several people for help in tutoring their son before they finally found someone. He would tutor Jay until his dad was back home. Then his dad took over the tutoring. When his dad got overly frustrated, he resorted to using belts, sticks, and canes that left large welts on Jay's legs and arms. It got to the point where even Shelly was beginning to fear for her son. There was no rest for him.
Finally, it was examinations time. Jay did badly, but after his parents had a long talk with Mr. Bell, he was promoted to the eighth grade.
As the years went by and Jay was growing into a teenager, he was still no good in his studies at all, but he started to employ new methods to survive. He was learning the art of handling himself by cheating on class tests because of his compelling stress. His attention span was limited, as his interest lay in other things, and all he got from school was bullying from the teachers and the awful grading system that was pulling his self-respect down the drain.
As Jay crawled up the grades, adventure, discovery, and curiosity when outside the classroom were much more interesting things to pursue for Jay and his friends. Among the boys, there was an unspoken hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy were the ones who were tall, strong, good-looking, popular in school, or from rich families—the ones who always had the best school bags, video games, records, and access to the best movies. What brought them all together was their unbridled love for adventure, and they became a gang.
They would run down the school's acres of unchartered terrain. The trees and bushes had grown out, as the gardeners never really kept them trimmed, and there was no plan to develop the land yet.
There was a time when the boys found holes between rocks where dogs had given birth to pups that were a few months old and running around. The pups became friendly when one of the boys offered them a chocolate bar. Then the entire brood of boys was after them. They considered the pups as their own pets, stealing food from others' tiffin boxes to give them and sometimes offering their own food. This went on for a few weeks, till one pup followed them back all the way into the school. The authorities called the dog catchers and had every pup removed from the vicinity. They did a thorough check and had the dogs thrown out of the campus, and the pups were either drowned or killed in a merciless way. These men were monsters according to Jay.
The gang of boys mourned for the dogs and swore to create nuisance in the school to make the authorities pay for their crime. They decided to make mud balls and fling them against the school wall. They almost painted it brown from mud.
Mr. Bell was furious when he caught a few boys, including Jay, doing the same the next day. They were rewarded with six stingers from his wooden stick against their buttocks, and Jay couldn't sit properly on his chair afterwards.
A few weeks later, they vandalized the school walls with paint, but no one found out who had done it. Mr. Bell tried every trick under the sun to threaten students into telling him the truth, but he never guessed it was Jay and his friends because he thought they would dare due to the punishment already awarded to them. In time, the incidents were forgotten, and the boys moved on to more adventure.
There were plenty of other creatures to keep them busy. That same year, the monsoons arrived early, so Jay and his friends made paper boats that they sailed down the little streams created by the rains. They put every bug they could find onto the paper boats and watched them go sailing and capsizing downstream. He and his friends then jumped into every puddle but washed themselves well before heading home.
Jay wasn't afraid of insects or reptiles. He picked most of them up bare-handed to scare away the girls, and then he would apologize to them later. Sometimes he would feed insects and little bugs to the skink he looked after as his pet, which he set free in a garden after a few weeks. He and his friends also loved busting beehives. One time, they did that and ended up sending the bees flying around everywhere. Thankfully, there were no other students there at that hour but they did hear some screams from people from a house next to their school.
There was a time when Jay climbed onto the wall surrounding the schoolyard and saw unattended sheep lying close to the wall. He would fall upon them and ride them for a bit before getting thrown off. Then he would leap back onto the wall and into the schoolyard. He did this for the next few days till he had ridden every sheep that came to lie there. Never in the next few weeks did the sheep ever lie close to the walls again.
BYE, BYE, BULLY
One day during gym class, as the students were playing football, Jay tackled an opponent and got the ball. As he was racing with it to the goal, he felt a leg entangling his, then went flying and hit the ground. He had been tripped, but the game continued as Jay lay there with his leg scraped. He knew it was a foul, but it was not called. He also lost a potential goal for his team.
As he got up and turned around, he saw Imed grinning. Imed was on the other team. Jay was angry. He was now fourteen years of age and sick and tired of being bullied or watching bullying in any form. He wanted to put an end to it.
When the game finished, Imed came to taunt Jay after he had just washed his wound. "Tripped you, squid! And I'll do it again!"
The girls who were playing dodge ball saw Imed and his taunting. They were used to seeing him pick on boys and beat them up, and they knew he meant trouble. All of these girls loved Jay, and they feared for him. They knew that Imed came from a rich family and was spoiled; his father always gave him what he wanted. He always got his way in class as well. No one dared to mess with him because of his size.
Jay saw Imed coming over to him. He could see an evil presence around Imed, but he stood his ground. He had had enough. Imed walked right up to him and towered over him. All of a sudden, Jay felt a leg sneak under him and pull him forward, and before he knew what was happening, he fell so fast that he hit his head on the hard ground. Jay saw stars, and his head hurt. He saw Imed standing with his fists out in a karate stance.
"Come get me, squid," he goaded, his eyes wide open in evil anticipation.
Jay had a temper that he had been keeping under control when he was in school up until this point. But now Jay felt a rage boiling inside of him, and all of a sudden, he was up on his feet. The pain left his head as he ran towards Imed and threw a punch at the bridge of his nose. It burst a few blood vessels in Imed's nose. Imed staggered several steps backwards and fell to the ground. Blood poured down his nose, blotting his shirt. There was a gasp from the girls.
Imed was shocked at the power of the punch. He got up on his feet, and cupping his nose, he turned around and ran to the restroom to wash away the blood.
Jay just stood there, struck with wonder, but behind him, the angel grinned. After a moment, Jay ran after Imed and begged him not to tell any of the teachers because he could get suspended for getting into a fight.
Imed had a new respect for Jay. "Hey, I won't, but don't tell anyone you beat me, okay? Deal?" He put his hand out to Jay.
Jay smiled and shook his hand. "Deal!"
They became friends, and from then on, there was absolutely no more bullying from Imed. Little Jay had knocked some sense into the big boy, and it was a life lesson not to ever underestimate the power of a smaller person.
Jay gradually became more and more tough. He was learning bad language and vulgar jokes from the gang of friends he was hanging out with. He was learning how to disrespectfully talk back to his teachers and sometimes got slapped for it. That made him angry, but he wouldn't strike back, as that would mean immediate dismissal, and he knew his father would wring his neck. He developed a fast tongue, like a greased conveyor belt. When he got teased, his snappy retorts left his opponents speechless, and when the talking came to push and shove, he wasn't used to walking away. Once every now and then, he would get into a no-rules bout and end up coming home with a torn shirt with buttons missing. Then he'd make up a cock-and-bull story about how it happened.
A STUDENT'S NIGHTMARE
Jay's grades continued to get worse, as he had many factors against him. His mind kept straying from studying to many other interests. The subjects that the school taught felt irrelevant to Jay. He was a different make than his classmates—he wondered how in the world he would remember the dates in a history book. He also didn't see the need to memorize formulas or figure out equations that he felt he would never need again in his life. All these exams and tests were supposed to rate how much knowledge he had, but what about all the other things he knew outside of school subjects, and what about the creative ideas that were flowing constantly in his mind? He wondered why those things were not important at Logwood High. The school ran the curriculum like an automated program on a computer, unmoved and unchanged by any child's feelings of stress or fear.
His teachers were constantly pressuring the students to obey by yelling and using foul language. They would slap, beat, or manhandle Jay and others when they didn't do their homework.
Even Jay's classmates mocked him because of his dyslexia. When he tried to defend himself, they would jeer at him, and he realized he was fighting a losing battle because there was nothing to show in his grades.
Jay's self-confidence plummeted. He felt depressed and like he had no purpose, and his way to relieve his pain was through his language. But the more foul Jay's mouth became, the less the angel would come into the class. However, the angel would still watch from a distance, unseen by Jay.
He felt an atmosphere of fear like iron curtains whenever he entered the school's corridors. He saw they were crowded with dark, shadowy figures with hoods and felt the vibes of shame, fear, and panic that stole his joy. When he told his friends what he saw, they laughed at him and told him he was crazy.
Over time, Jay saw how much hypocrisy there was across the school system. The schools only pretended that they cared about their students and wanted to bring out the best. They were actually driven by competitiveness. At Logwood, every other school was looked down upon, and they would boast that Logwood High students were better than all others, while the other schools would say the same thing about their students. They were individual kingdoms that spewed hatred on each other, yet they taught from the textbooks that discrimination was a crime.
Although racial discrimination was criminal in the world's eyes, the children in the classroom were discriminated against through the grading system. When a cycle of tests was done, they added up the marks of the students and assigned them class rankings. All the students who scored below first, second, and third rank were considered just average, and then those on the bottom of the list were the rejects. Jay was usually listed in the bottom three. The school came up with the idea of even placing the rank order of the class on the bulletin board for all to see.
The money-grubbing chief accountants would yell at the parents who had difficulty paying the school fees to make them cough it up. Parents not only had to pay the cost of school fees, textbooks, and notebooks, but also all other supplies, including chart paper, glue, globes, and expensive materials to make projects for the exhibitions, all from the school's own stationary shop. Hardworking parents were fleeced because they wanted their children to continue attending the school.
The teachers claimed they were there to teach and guide students, but Jay saw them like military commanders who shouted at the students and displayed no compassion or empathy. The students like him who staggered under the load of traditional academics and fell behind the onward marching crew were trampled underfoot and soon forgotten. They were jeered, booed, and snapped at until their spirits and dreams were crushed and they lacked the strength or desire to go on.
RACE OF REJECTS
Like an aborted and forgotten child or a race of rejects who ended up depressed, suicidal, and hurled into the blackest recesses of loneliness, which later contributed to broken families and an immoral society, there were some beautiful souls at the school who could not find their purpose. They gave in to the pressure and became traumatized. Some were asked to leave Logwood High, which the school covered up by getting promotions to the next class by way of parents paying bribes . Some of the minds most misunderstood were the ones who, at the end of their rope, took the extreme step. The school never took the blame for a loss of life, because the officials were only concerned that the business went on and grew. Every child was just a face in the crowd and a means to fill their greedy pockets, and if one left by any means, another would take their place.
As the students would get closer to tenth grade, the pressure was at a maximum. At the end of tenth grade were the Central Board Exams, the standardized final exams for tenth graders given by the Central Board of Education. They would determine if the ones who wanted to go on to university level education would be able to enter a pre-university program. During this time, many students discovered what they thought was freedom from boredom and loneliness—they would do anything to escape to a false reality or search for comfort and love in the wrong places.
As Jay was walking down the hallway at the end of a school day, he wondered, "Is there hope for this kind of stress and pain?" He saw a cigarette lying on the floor a few feet away. He wanted to pick it up, but as he tried, he felt a strong power pulling him back. He tried again, but again he felt like someone was pulling him back so that he couldn't even go near. The experience made him tuck tail and run away. He told no one.
Jay did not see that the angel was there, smiling, while the dark figures grumbled in the shadows.
Every day after school when Jay was back home, down the steps he came with the math textbook and geometry box, and his tutor would ask him to recite the formula.
"A plus b to the second power..." Jay would start and then forget the rest while holding his pen in hand, and the tutor had the rod in his. He didn't know whether to concentrate on the answer or the rod that would come crashing on his back.
There was one day, however, when his parents had switched his tutor with a younger one. The young tutor taught for an hour or two and then switched on his Sega Mega Drive gaming console, and they played Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Jay learned more cheat codes for beating opponents from a gaming magazine than his math that evening.
Jay's father was still trying to tutor Jay in whatever homework the hired tutors hadn't finished with him each day. He was at his wit's end with Jay. While his father was teaching him, Jay would say he needed to use the restroom and then go to his room and lie down with a pool of drool at his mouth until his father would yell him out of bed.
This was Jay's daily routine after school, until one day he had had enough. It had been one of those stressful days at school, and Jay was not in a good mood. One of the teachers had yelled at him in class. In fact, that day, every one of his teachers had yelled at him, and he came home very tired and traumatized. He had no rest—it was books, books, and books because that was the family's religion. Jay thought that the next time the tutor's rod landed, he was going to do something about it.
Don was so tired from work and the stress of dealing with Jay that he switched off the living room lights, lay down on the couch, and was soon snoring.
Shelly was worried about Jay. She wondered what would become of him and if he would ever graduate from Logwood High.
Two dark figures came into Jay's room and stared at him while he slept. They were the evil spirits called Violence and Depression. They looked at him and grinned. Suddenly, Jay's angel stepped in, and the evil spirits left the room, jeering.
ROUTE NUMBER SEVEN
Since first grade, Jay's bus route was called Route Number Seven. He loved travelling on the bus because he got to hear his favourite songs on the one-and-a-half hour journey home, even though it was a carriage full of troubles and troublemakers. Every character you could imagine in a school was represented on that bus. Not a day passed without fights and taunting, stealing candies from younger children's bags, and a course on how to make faces at people in other vehicles passing by. There were punches thrown for simply opening the window, sitting in the wrong place, spilling water, or just about any silly reason
Jay was now fourteen and a half and in ninth standard, and he could hold his own with most of them, except for the eleventh and twelfth graders. At Logwood High, eleventh and twelfth graders were all called "seniors"—they were the students who finished their final two years at Logwood High instead of going on to pre-university. Fortunately, the seniors wouldn't really pick a fight with underclassmen unless heavily provoked, and the younger kids were terrified of provoking them in any way.
The senior boys and other bad boys occupied the back rows of the bus. Any kid who ventured that far back would hear or see things that would scar them for life. Jay had seen evil spirits all over those back seats, and they were hanging on the heads and bodies of the seniors, but nobody else seemed to notice, and the seniors never did anything about it. They seemed to be comfortable in their evil, selfish lifestyles. They had everything from dirty books and tapes, cigarettes, horror movies to vulgar language—you name it, it was there. There was even a lot of contraband, including knuckle dusters and bike chains for fights outside the school.
When the bullies wanted to put their school bags in an overhead compartment space that was occupied by other bags, they would pull down the other bags, drop them on the heads of those who were directly below and put the bags on their laps, forcing them to hold their own bags throughout the ride. No one dared to complain because if they did, they would not be able to journey again on that bus after the bullying and atrocious things they would do to them. Once a seventh grader got stuck at the back and was too scared to bother the seniors sitting around him or to stop the bus for a restroom break. He peed in his pants because it was better than facing the rogues. Though many complaints were reported to the school, the school didn't follow through with discipline, as they really didn't care about the students' well-being.
Cassette tapes of some of the hot bands were passed through hands from the back to the driver, who winked and put them into the cassette player in the bus. The sound system was so good, and the music would vibrate in everyone's ears. Everything was played from Snow,Vanilla Ice to Europe, Def Leppard to Ace of Base. Because they played the same tapes over and over for weeks, everyone would be able to sing a line or two as each new song was played.
But when it came to rap music, no one got it like Jay. He swam in this genre like a salmon in fresh water. He had picked up rap from his friends at a party long ago. He observed and then rehearsed the art. During those long bus drives, he would pull out the tape cover with the lyrics, read them word for word from beginning to end and memorize them. Here he kicked dyslexia in the face.
When he began to entertain the kids on the bus, fingers would drum on the seats and the tiffin boxes. At first, he would just lip sync to the songs, but then he got the moves down with his hands and included them in his performances. Even the bad bullies loved it—they would ask him to perform for them when they saw his amazing talent. Even though back in class, he was dropping in all his grades like a flaming meteor, on Route Number Seven, he was the rap rocker who could boot any sleeping kids to get up and shake their bodies from side to side.
Jay would close his eyes and dream that someday he would be a popular singer when he was done with Logwood and its nightmares. Sometimes, he would hear beats and rhythms in his mind and try to form sentences and rap rhymes about situations that came up at school. It felt so easy for him. He was trying to rap freestyle, although he didn't really know what he was doing. He would sometimes pull out an Oxford Dictionary to learn a few words and then try to make them into sentences.
Jay felt he had found his slot, his destiny—he loved music and music loved him. He had found his passion, his lane, the area where he wanted to carve a niche. He was still young and very inexperienced, but he knew that this was what he really wanted to do in life.
One day when he reached home, his parents were not there. So he started playing a tape on a boom box so loudly that the whole house was shaking, and he could feel the bass vibrating. He took out the TV remote and began to imagine it was a microphone. He looked at the mirror and pretended it was a video camera. He swayed his hands, made facial expressions, rapped, and sang as he envisioned a crowd before him. He was suddenly a professional performer. He was becoming a larger-than-life character. He could almost hear the cheers of the audience and touch fans' hands. He kicked his shoes off and climbed onto the sofa, and as he stood there, he threw his head back and bumped it back and forth. He was blinking his eyes rapidly so he could feel like paparazzi cameras were flashing all over his face. As he screamed at the top of his lungs and rapped the words with his eyes shut, he got lost in the moment. It was the greatest adrenaline rush he had ever had.
When he opened his eyes and turned around, his parents were sitting in the dining room, watching him.
Jay jumped off the couch and paused the tape with his mouth open, unable to rescue himself.
They gave him five crisp, slow, thunderclaps.
Jay blushed as he dropped the remote on the sofa and sat down quietly with his head bowed in embarrassment.
After a few seconds, his dad said, "We have to get to the tutor's in fifteen minutes. Go get ready!"
Jay was sad as he ran in for his bath. There was no real appreciation for his talent, because all his parents wanted to see was him doing well in his studies.
Over the next few weeks, Jay continued to rehearse his rap lines. At home, he was spending more time on those than his books, and every day on the way home from school, Jay was rapping for everyone on the bus.It was all trial and error most times he got it sometimes his word flow flopped but he never gave up.
One day when Jay stepped off the bus at the school campus, with all the kids watching, he was on full flow: "I'm a bird with wings / I'm a fish with fins / I'm a lion of the chain / I'm a dance in the rain."
Some other guys tried to reply through their own rap lines but flopped so badly that they were booed by all and showered with crushed paper balls.
"This is my stage / Ain't nobody in Logwood gonna put me in place / 'Coz with lines like this, I'ma bust this cage. / You heard me right / and if you want this fight / if you got the guts, baby / then step in the limelight.'"
The small crowd roared with praise for Jay. Even the evil seniors loved it. They lifted him up in the air and jumped around. Though Jay was on the bad books of his teachers, he was sure winning some street credit with the kids in school.
Jay continued impressing his fans on Route Number Seven. Sometimes he fumbled and lost, but he kept doing his homework of learning to walk the tightrope of freestyle rapping. Most could not keep up with his pace in the way he flowed with the words. He was a natural, pure talent. He knew this was his game; now all he needed was to keep rehearsing and find some opponents for a battle. As he grew in the gift, he always knew he could either use it to build others up or break them down.
One day, a senior boy invited him to come and join them at the back seats. Jay saw dark figures beckoning him, but he also felt a pull from behind. As he looked back, he could see the angel pulling him gently with a sad look on his face. Jay looked around the bus, but the other children were oblivious to what was happening. He turned and walked right to the back where the seniors sat him down and began to talk to him. They came up with a game plan.
"Hey, fella, we're gonna give you some opponents, so you destroy them, okay?" they said to Jay.
Their school's bus service was being shared with another high school, so sometimes students from the other school would ride on the same bus as Logwood High students. During these shared rides, the students from the other school would pick up on the popularity of rap music with the Logwood students. When they would learn of Jay's notoriety because of his rap skills, some of the other school's seniors would want to compete with him just to test their own skills against his. So they would battle it out on the bus.
The two contenders would go to the back of the bus, where the senior boys would fold down the seats and get into a huddle around them. Then the two would start battling it out. They would look at each other and try to find attributes to make fun of, such as his body size, hairstyle, facial hair, a sticker on his schoolbag, something he was wearing, or his tone of voice (since some were hitting puberty). Taking turns, they would begin to throw insults at each other while rhyming their lines. If one person lost the flow of rhymes or couldn't think of a comeback, he would be the loser.
What Jay's opponents didn't know was that while they were getting onto the bus, the Logwood senior boys would give Jay some background information about them. Jay would keep those key points to dismantle his opponents later. Some of Jay's opponents were on top of their game, but Jay patiently waited for his turn to come around, and then he would win the comeback, using his words to handicap the other guy lyrically. Some of them wanted to beat Jay up, but his senior friends from Logwood High protected him.
"We will take care of you, little buddy," a senior boy said to Jay. "No one will dare to pick on you. You just dis them and leave the rest to us. Is that a deal?"
Jay was excited. "Yes, it's a deal!"
As they were talking, Jay saw dark, snake-like creatures crawling out of the senior's body. Jay could see one of them coming over to him and slowly slithering onto his own body. It clutched his head and covered his eyes. Jay felt weird and uncomfortable, but he just sat still. The senior boys got into a discussion group right then and told Jay about certain people they hated and that they wanted him to write negative rap lines about them.
He took a minute to think. He asked for a notepad and a pen. Jay started scribbling, and in a few minutes, he had written a page. "Here it is," Jay said.
As they read it, they laughed out loud and gave him hugs and high fives. With each hug, he could sense different spiritual beings entering him. Jay was becoming well aware of the fact that others could not see the spiritual beings that he saw.
For the rest of the bus ride, he sat around listening to evil conversations, and the seniors got him to read books he shouldn't be reading. Jay was getting corrupted. He was doing all this to curry favour and please people.
At one point, Jay turned to his right to look out the window, and he could see the reflection of the angel sitting in the seat in front of him. The angel's eyes were tearing up as he looked at Jay through the reflection.
"Who you looking at, Jay?" a senior asked.
"Nobody," he said and dozed off. It was a long day, the bus was getting hot, and Jay was tired.
When Jay reached home, he had a shower as was his habit and fell asleep on his bed. He had bad dreams later that night of black, hooded creatures chasing him. They were tormenting him, and Jay was crying out. There were snakes and different reptiles falling out of his mouth. He woke up in a cold sweat.
The next morning, the school bus was blaring the horn. He got on the bus and walked straight to the back seats—the abode of corruption. He heard more bad language and perversion and carried it out of the bus to the school.
The angel that used to walk with him just stood at a distance, watching him. He looked sad. Sometimes Jay would not see him around at all.
* * *
The time had come for the Logwood High Interschool Music Fest, the annual musical program where the local schools would compete with their school bands, choirs, and solo singers before three judges. Mr. Sherwood had hand-picked his choir and his jazz band.
The Logwood High band had to read musical notations of difficult classical pieces, so it wasn't at its best. There were loads of glitches, but they pulled it off. The choir did better, as the students could read words better than notes, and everyone loved Jay's singing.
Jay was the high-pitched singer and Mr. Sherwood's star performer. He always ended up singing special numbers and special parts in the musicals. Jay won accolades and awards for his singing. He didn't know music notations and chords, but music was in his blood, and he knew how to hold a tune and channel the emotions into the crowd. He loved to hear the crowd applaud and often heard the chanting of his name for an encore. He would smile shyly and repeat the magic again. Some met him backstage to show appreciation. Some girls just wanted to see his cute face. Their jealous boyfriends wanted to beat him up, but he had his seniors and friends supporting him, and any such plan would end up badly for his enemies.
He was always on the winning side, though he was not aware that there was someone far above him, beyond the clouds, orchestrating things for his good.
As fame came, Jay noticed that pretty girls in school would turn around and smile at him as he walked the lobby. He would see them wink at him. Jay liked what he saw, and he would sometimes dream of them in class. He would imagine himself asking one out, but he was always afraid to do so. And as for now, he was also distracted by too many things to concentrate on girls yet. At the time, he was more interested in spending his hours enjoying himself with other things, like learning how to roller skate inside the house while listening to the song "Rhinestone Cowboy" on repeat. Other days, he would watch the McGee and Me videocassette tapes his dad had hidden to keep him from being distracted from his studies.
Mr. Bell and the school faculty were not impressed with Jay's talent as a singer and the awards he brought in for the school. Every year, Jay's parents had to bribe the school to promote their son to the next grade, so even though the laurels he had brought in did put the school on the map, the faculty completely ignored them. They even commented that those achievements wouldn't get him anywhere in life. For the faculty, when it was all added up, the only important thing was academics—books and books alone.
* * *
As the school music festival season was ending, the time to prepare for final exams was beginning. Jay was almost at the end of ninth grade, and then the school would be closed for about two months.
All the students were suddenly getting serious about their studies. Even the ones who had been failing the whole year knew this was the one exam they had to pass in order to make it to the next grade. The students also knew that the school had to face the Central Board Exams soon, and if a student failed, it would reflect badly on their school. This meant that the teachers would be harsher on all their students because this exam was the standard that their school's performance was measured by.
For the next three months, the faculty would tell their students that whatever happened in the past would not merit them for the future. Jay and the other academic weaklings were targeted by the faculty. They drilled Jay with questions more than anyone else since he had the lowest grades. In every class, he was caught either for not doing his homework or not being able to answer a question. His teachers called him all kinds of names that demeaned his character.
"Oh Emperor, why me?" he often wondered.
Meanwhile, he was getting no better treatment from his classmates. He had been telling a few of them that he was able to see spirit beings in the classroom and angels on the road and in his house. Instead of winning their favour with his special ability as he had hoped, they thought he was crazy. They called him a loser and made fun of him so much that he had to tell them he was just making it up. It was then that he understood for a fact that no one would ever believe him about what he could see, and it was pointless telling them. He was hurt, broken, and shattered. He didn't feel love from anyone at all.
One day in physics class, Jay was asked for a formula, but he didn't know it. While he was still thinking about it, a piece of chalk flew at him, but he ducked, and it hit the student behind him. The class laughed, which made the teacher angry. He came over to Jay and slapped him.
Jay was angry, but he controlled himself. "It's not my fault—it was my reflex," he thought. He had to just stand there as the man screamed his lungs out at him.
Later that day, the new math teacher, Mr. Jaffar, asked him a trick question. "Jay, is this equation right?"
Jay had to correct a mathematical formula that Mr. Jaffar had deliberately written incorrectly on the board, but Jay couldn't recognize the formula at all. He walked towards the board, but he had no clue. The class laughed as he tried writing out different versions.
Mr. Jaffar just sat in his chair, watching him. He finally said, "Just say the formula out loud or get out of my class."
Jay tried once but fumbled. He tried again, but the numbers flew all over his mind like birds that could not be caught. No one understood or cared that he was suffering from a learning disability. The more they laughed and made fun of him, the more he panicked, and the more he panicked, the more he became unable to make sense of anything. He knew he couldn't say the right answer.
"Just get out," Mr. Jaffar said.
So Jay went out into the hallway. Although it wasn't summer yet, the temperatures in Oman were already hot enough that it felt oppressive to be indoors without air conditioning. The math class was two hours long, and he stood outside the whole time, sweating.
The next day it was the same; he was picked on by almost every teacher. It was like he was wearing a sign that read, "Hit me with your best shot." His English and geography classes were his breathers, but after them, the nightmare continued.
The music period was Jay's rehab. Mr. Sherwood was in full swing, teaching the band a beautiful piece, and Jay was playing his trumpet. Then all of a sudden, there was a knock on the door, but no one noticed. As the knocking got louder, a girl pointed at the door, and all of them turned to look with trumpets, clarinets, trombones, and other instruments in hand. Even Mr. Sherwood stopped conducting and turned. Through the door window, they saw Mr. Jaffar, the math teacher. Mr. Sherwood excused himself and went out. After a few minutes, he called Jay outside with a sad look on his face.
Jay figured something was wrong.
When Jay went out, Mr. Jaffar told him, "'From here on, until you do well in your math, you won't be having music class.'"
Jay felt a lump in his throat.
The math teacher went on to explain to Mr. Sherwood that Jay was the lowest-ranking student in his class and had flunked every term, every year.
"Mr. Sherwood, the boy won't even graduate from Logwood High if he doesn't improve. It's such a bad name for our school, you see? And Mr. Bell has been cracking down on these kinds of vermin who have been damaging our school name."
"He is one of my best students! One hour a week of music class is the reason he failed in math?" Mr. Sherwood asked.
"He's failing not just math but almost every other subject."
"I don't agree with pulling him out of what he loves, but since Mr. Bell has spoken, I don't have anything to say." Mr. Sherwood's face fell. "I am pretty well disappointed that this amazing student of mine is taken away, but I don't want to start an argument. You can have him."
Mr. Sherwood was angry as he held Jay's shoulder. "Prove them wrong, son, and be back on the horse. We're going to miss you here. You are the best. Crack the exams and then go for music full time."
Jay's eyes teared up as he looked at Mr. Sherwood. Music was his first love. The teachers were trying to come in their way, but Jay loved music more than anything else. As Jay followed Mr. Jaffar to his classroom for an extra session of math class, he swore to himself that he would pursue music as a full-time career someday.
Back in math class, when Mr. Jaffar saw that Jay had written the wrong answer on his paper, he slapped the back of Jay's head. He said, "Music won't get you anywhere. It is only for losers."
This made Jay hate math even more. He wanted to shove the book into his mouth, but he knew that would end his days in Logwood High.
A few classes later, another teacher came down on him for the lame reason that his hair was too long. She tied his hair into a ponytail at the front of his head. Most of the class laughed, yet not all, for some loved Jay.
"Don't take it off," she ordered.
When he tried to do it anyway, she grabbed his collar.
Jay's face tightened. He wanted to punch her out, but he knew she would have a broken, bloody nose, and he would be out of Logwood High for good, so he bridled his anger. He contemplated taking his revenge one day. "And God help her at that time," he thought. He was angry at the injustice and the bullying.
In the days that followed, whenever Jay passed by the staff room, the teachers would shake their heads, calling him "retard," "failure," "good-for-nothing," and other derogatory names. He couldn't say anything back, but rap lines formed in his mind. He knew he could destroy them in a rap battle on a stage; he would bind their tongues to the roofs of their mouths and make them swallow their words. But it was not his time and not yet his round.
He swore to himself that he would prove his mettle one day in the art of his interest. They could hit him, yell at him, or even throw him out, but they could not take music out of his veins, because it flowed in his blood.
Every day, when Jay would be back in his house, he would hide in his bathroom and listen to a rap music cassette in a Walkman to soothe his mind from the day's tension.
RANTINGS OF JAY
Time seems to evade me now
I don't know what to do
Jesus, step in and save my life
I, I do remember when we would be lost in worship, worship.
Compromise, I can feel I missed the day,
And what could I ever know
Compromise, I can feel I missed the day,
What would I ever know?
Lord, now that I feel so lost,
I'm longing to feel your presence
Take me back like you did before
I wanna follow you
Cleanse me from all my weakness, weakness
Now that I have been waiting here some time,
Reminiscing all the words that you say
Someday I'll be free of all the sin that holds me down
I have the faith
Fireflood, "7th Ballad"
Although Jay was going through such hard times, and his family had very little understanding about the Emperor, he was beginning to discover the paths that would lead him to a deeper relationship with God. Jay would go for long walks where he would try to have conversations with the Emperor as he called him, but Jay was doing all the talking. He just knew that the Emperor was listening to him, but he was not yet able to hear the Emperor. His one-way conversations would go like this:
"Oh mighty Emperor, sometimes I don't understand your ways. Sometimes I think you work on battery; some days you are fully charged, but other days, I never hear you. I know your favorite game is hide and seek in which you prefer hiding. Why do you not answer in an audible voice?
"How is it that you allow us to choose, but you make the final choice? Do you even know what I like? If my dad gives me a whole set of Ninja Turtles when what I had asked for is a skateboard, how does that make me happy? The only person happy is my dad, not me. Why? Because it's his own choice. Is that how you are? Why were we allowed to be free? Where is our free will from the pain we suffer? We don't want it, but we still have it. What sort of free will is that? Sometimes I wake up and wish it were my last day. Sometimes I ask for death, but you don't give it, and it is like living in hell.
"I have many more questions to ask. Why am I going to school and flunking and getting yelled at? Why is the math teacher never absent? The exams are endless. I wish I would be tested in something I really like. There ain't no award I am ever gonna receive here, and each of these tests from school and tests of my life is only breaking me.
"Some parents lost their children to drugs. I hear some were lost to suicide. I am losing myself to depression because I'm flunking in school. All I carry from school and back is fear. I am a vehicle transporting burdens upon myself. There are these nights I lie staring at the wall as I wonder what my purpose is. When I cry upon my bed, there is no one who hears me. No one understands the fear I have or the wounds I carry. I am so tired of all this.
"The days are monotonous; everything is the same. You know I love music, but they are always against me taking it up. Why didn't I just learn only music? I mean, I can communicate. I ain't using any of the things they teach me. Why am I wasting my time here? You are God. So how hard is it for you to change my parents' minds or change the minds of my teachers? How would it be if you ran Logwood High? Would you have these subjects for me? How would you handle bullying teachers and students? Do I have to wait all my life to get where I want to get? If you gave me a talent, would you ask me to let that talent go and do something I don't like? If that is how you are, then why did you give me the talent?
"Do you really love me? At Brown Chapel, I've heard someone's say you are love,' and I keep seeing stuff that a normal eye cannot. Why does that happen? Why do I sense you and why do I also sense the uncomfortable presence of the evil one? Why do these things happen to me?
"Would I be able to lose myself from you? Will I get tired of you? How fun are you? Are you like Mr. Bell, who wants to see me at my best performance, and if I fall short, I'm a reject and a good-for-nothing? Is that how you think about me? If I die, I hope I won't go to hell because my grades sucked. I hope I don't burn in hell because I couldn't solve the equation.
"I'm tired, and I don't know if I will ever get answers. I feel so far away from you and you are ignoring me". He sighed.
When Jay returned to his house, he went into his room and lay on his bed. As a gentle breeze came through the window, he closed his eyes, wishing this sleep would be his last and that he would never have to wake up again to another living nightmare of his life.
FINAL EXAMS
Jay had that horrid feeling like his days were numbered. It was the day before final exams.
When he got home, he opened his books, but everything looked strange to him. Whenever he tried to study, dyslexia was his greatest tormentor. It had grown worse over the years as more negative words were spewed into his young spirit. No matter how much he tried, he could not absorb the knowledge that seemed to stay in the books. He tried memorizing by rote and by writing out information, but something always seemed to block it from his mind, and then he would quickly lose interest.
He felt like he was placed in a slot where he was not meant to fit. It was like they were trying to screw a lid tight on him, but it was not the make for the bottle of his creativity. He knew the school was just a money-making industry under the pretext of "guiding the children to a better future," as they would tell parents. Of course, it benefited many, but then there were ones like him who were cheated on a daily basis. It was known as the Ministry of Education and was supposed to build rather than to tear down, but it was all smoke and mirrors. He could not be contained, and they seemed to have no wisdom on how to go about helping him.
Jay thought, "A dog cannot fly, nor can a sparrow sniff out a bomb. If God has given each its own strength, why are the teachers in Logwood High making them learn things that are not their forte?"
He opened his book and saw questions he never even knew existed. It was so boring to even read them. After a few minutes He lay on his books under the study lamp in a pool of drool, undisturbed—his parents had stopped talking to him because of his low grades. They had had enough of seeing them and meeting the teachers who had absolutely nothing good to speak about Jay.
The next morning, Jay sat in the large hall filled with the other students in his grade, waiting to take their exams.
Mr. Bell came into the hall. There was absolute silence as he looked at everyone through his golden rimmed glasses and said, "This exam will determine your promotion to the next class, and there will be no escape. Next year is your Central Board Exams, which will determine whether you can qualify for pre-university. No one will fail at Logwood High and bring a bad name to this school."
Mr. Bell looked at Jay and a few students—the rejects, the ones the teachers hated and preyed upon. Their eyes did not meet as they looked at the floor like prisoners standing in front of the gallows. "Pass this exam, all of you, or stay back and repeat the class. The choice is yours," Mr. Bell said and then motioned to the teachers to hand out the exam booklets.
Jay noticed that when the crisp papers were passed around, they sounded like the rustling of dry leaves. When they reached Jay, he saw his math teacher look at him the way a wolf looks at a cornered lamb.
"You may commence."
As soon as the words came out of Mr. Bell's mouth, the students began to write, spilling all their knowledge onto the paper.
Jay was blank for a few minutes as if he were in the aftermath of a nuclear blast. Then he opened his exam booklet. He glanced around and saw students writing like.
Some were revolving their pens in between their fingers with their eyes looking upwards, and then as if something dropped on them, they would scribble fast on the paper, smiling or with their tongue peeping from the corner of their mouths. One boy smiled at the questions and said, "Yes!" because they were what he had prepared for. For others, a look of disappointment came upon their countenances, but they would accept their fate anyway and write.
Twenty minutes passed, and Jay was still blank. He looked around the hall for a chance to look at someone else's paper, but he didn't dare as the invigilators patrolled each aisle like fierce guard dogs in army barracks.
"Eyes on your own paper," a strong voice called out once every twenty minutes as some dabbled with the same idea that Jay had. There were severe consequences for cheaters. They would be publicly disgraced, their parents would be called, and finally they would take a retest alone. If they didn't pass it, they would have to repeat the year and wear the title of a cheat for the rest of their days within the dark walls of Logwood High. Many in the past had been penalized and made an example of.
Jay took his pen out and began to write whatever he felt like writing.
When the week was over, Jay was done with all of his exams.
In a month's time, the results were out, and Jay and his parents were called to the school. He had done miserably, and the school wanted to fail him, but Jay's parents fought back. They argued that he had to take the Central Board Exams next year since they had already paid his fees on time for the coming school year. They even offered a bigger amount as a bribe than before. After what seemed to be a war between them and the school authorities, Jay was promoted conditionally, against the faculty's will. Because the ninth grade finals were seen as an indication of how students would do on the Central Board Exams, Jay would have to prove himself within the first four months of the next semester.
On the way home from the meeting, Jay was lectured for the entire drive by both of his parents. They questioned him about his circle of friends. They even banned him from watching television, listening to music, or even going out to play till he passed his boards next year.
"You hear me, Jay? The only place you will be going to is church, and after that you will come back and be at your books," his father said.
Jay sat in the back seat, irritated and fed up. He wanted to go to college as soon as possible. He was tired of the system. He needed a life.
Jay's parents became even more strict with him from that day on. Even though he was off from school for the summer, they had him sit under tutors for hours a day. There were no more phone calls entertained and no more leisure activity.
One night, he had a dream that Logwood High burned down, and he was so happy. But when he woke up, he smelled firewood being burned outside by his dad, and he was so disappointed. He did remember that someone once said, "Dreams do come true."
Jay kept his Walkman hidden from his parents—that was something he would not give up. He thought, "Music is God's gift to me, and my parents can't take it away. Not even the faculty of that rotten mental asylum, Logwood High!"
Whenever his parents had gone out for late night parties or other occasions, he would turn on the TV and watch the famous sitcoms of the time, like M*A*S*H, Growing Pains, and Doogie Howser, M.D. for three hours back to back and never tell his parents. At other times, he would watch Small Wonder, or the Australian show Neighbours because he had a crush on Kylie Minogue. They would think he was studying, but he wasn't at all.
Sometimes he would watch horror movies on videocassette tapes he found in the cabinet next to the TV. He had become interested in horror by listening to the horror stories the seniors told on the bus during the school year and by reading the horror novels he found in his dad's cupboard. He would put the books inside his study books and read them, which made his parents think he was studying hard.
As he read and watched more horror, he started to see evil spirits more often. After watching a horror movie, at night, he would encounter demon spirits like the ones he saw in the movies. Sometimes they would grab him and tie something on his head and tie it tightly. He writhed in pain—it was not a physical pain, but it felt like a spiritual sensation. He would fall down, his eyes would roll up into his head, and he would mumble for help. He didn't realize he was being tormented by the demons from the horror movies he watched and the books he read. He also didn't realize that the demons were attracted to the wounds of rejection in his heart that he had received at school. Like spiders are attracted to a fly caught in a web, the demons would approach their prey to suck the life out of it.
Then he would suddenly remember to read the Primus Script. Reading Psalm 91 would give him peace, and the dark figures would leave his room. He would be exhausted and go to bed with the night light on. When he heard his parents' car come into the garage, he would heave a sigh of relief and then sleep peacefully. This was his life for months on end.
One night, he felt his bed shake, and he felt paralyzed. He prayed the words of Psalm 23 from his Primus Script and felt a release. When he saw demons in his room, he jumped out of bed, ran through the hall, and knocked on his parents' door.
A sleepy face appeared. It was his dad. "What is it, son?"
"Dad, there is something in my room!"
"What?"
He went to Jay's room, turned on the light and looked around. "There is nothing. Just go to sleep!" he said as he went back to his room.
The next morning, he told his parents what he had experienced at night, but his parents just thought it was rubbish.
"You're making this up, Jay," his dad said. "There are no such things as ghosts. Back to your room, and back to your books now!"
Jay was frustrated, but there was nothing he could do. He would never turn off the light when he slept after that incident. Jay wanted to go to Brown Chapel. He needed the peace he could get only from that place. He longed for Saturdays.
Jay would pick up his old, colored Primus Script often. He would look at the pictures of a longhaired kind looking man, and he would think, "Someday, I hope to meet him. I'm sure he won't judge me, because I flunk in tests because he seem to love all the little children. That was what the red-haired, old pianist sang to us." Jay loved that song. The music was so simple, but the words were so gripping.