Free Bad Boy by Jim Thompson Page B

but I failed in English. Most thoroughly, I failed in algebra and geometry, two subjects which struck me as so wholly nonsensical that they were beneath , beneath contempt—if you follow my meaning.
    In one of my softer moments, I proposed a bargain to my math teacher: if she would prove to me that her chosen subjects were not as stupid as I claimed, then I would study them. She did not take me up on the offer, and she seemed very embittered by it. The good woman gave me what is doubtless the lowest grade ever meted out to a student—not just a zero, but zero-minus.
    I was a high-school freshman at twelve. Almost six years later I was still a high-school freshman. From being the youngest I became the oldest, from being a beardless stripling I grew into manhood (junior grade). Strangers to the school often mistook me for a member of the faculty.
    I was expelled and suspended so many times for disobedience, refusing to study, cutting classes, playing truant, et cetera, that I lost track of them. So also did the school. Suspensions were piled upon expulsions and expulsions upon suspensions, so that the harried records clerk never knew when I was legitimately present or illegally absent. Along toward the last, just before she gave up the unequal struggle with my status, I overheard the tag end of her plea to one of my teachers, “…please do not suspend him until he is reinstated from expulsion so I can suspend him as of last month so I can reinstate him to be expelled, so—s-so— I’M G-GOING C-CRAAA-ZY! ”
    Now and then, sometimes for the better part of a term, I escaped into the upper classes. But inevitably my scholastic record would catch up with me, and I would be returned to the freshman fold. One term, having received so many lectures that I had begun to fear for my hearing, I decided to try to reform. I promoted myself into the senior class. There, where I rightfully should have been had I behaved as I should have, I was polite to the teachers and I studied as I had never studied before. My grades soared higher and higher. As the end of the term neared, I was placed in that select group of students whose marks were so good that they were excused from final examinations.
    When finally they were apprised of my status, my teachers were incredulous. They had had no dealings with me before that term, and they could not believe that I was the James Thompson who had established an all-time record for boorishness and boobery. Unfortunately, there was indisputable proof that the onerous and ornery James was one and the same with theirs. So, since I lacked the prerequisite courses, my brilliant term’s work availed me nothing. I received no credit hours for it.
    I was right back where I had started, still a freshman.
    Despite my chagrin and disappointment, I did not feel that my work had been entirely wasted. For one thing, I had rid myself of a worrisome suspicion that I was as stupid as most people thought. For another, I had been made to see the inexorable crux of my problem.
    Obviously, mere study and better behavior were not going to get me out of high school. Not, that is, within a reasonable time. No matter how hard I studied nor how well I behaved, I would still have to spend four more years in school on top of the approximately six years I had already served. The records would force me to.
    So there was the problem, not in me, as I saw it, but in the records.
    Something would have to be done about them.
    At this time, and for some time prior to it, I was employed as a night bellboy in a large hotel. The list of my acquaintances extended into places which, in my present pious state, gives me shivers to think about. A Square Sam myself, I was known to be “strictly okay” and a “right kid.” In no time at all I was in touch with a burglar, explaining my problem and asking his help on a fee basis.
    “I dunno, kid,” he said, scratching his head doubtfully. “I’d like to help you out, but—well, I just