Free The Bubble Wrap Boy by Phil Earle Page B

worse.
    “There are going to be some changes going forward,” she announced late one afternoon. “Until you can be trusted, you’ll be chaperoned to and from school.”
    My stomach flipped. “What? You’re kidding.”
    “Do you see me smiling?”
    I didn’t. Obviously.
    “But what about Sinus?” I asked, even though we hadn’t walked together in weeks. “We always wait for each other.”
    “Seeing as you got that death trap of a board from his family, I can only presume they were happy to deceive me too. You won’t be spending time with him. Not if I can help it.”
    “So Dad’ll be dropping me off, then?”
    She wagged her finger knowingly. “No. Your father will be too busy here to do that, and anyway, you know what a pushover he is. I’ll be picking you up and dropping you off every day. I’ll be waiting at three-forty p.m. in the teachers’ parking lot.”
    “But that’s inside the gates,” I protested. “Everyone will see you. I’ll be a laughingstock.”
    “Then you’ll understand how
I
feel, won’t you? You’ll understand the humiliation.” She fixed me with an icy glare. “In time I might trust you again, Charlie, but you will have to earn it.”
    “So if I keep my nose clean I can go back to the ramp eventually?”
    She slammed the counter sharply, and the whole house seemed to tremble.
    “NO! You won’t set foot in that skate park again. Not if you want to keep me happy. Do you understand me?”
    I nodded, the pain of her punishment bruising me more deeply than any fall ever could.

    If Mom was one thing, she was true to her word, and so the next two weeks at school were hell on earth. She insisted on the ridiculous chaperoning, parking closer to the school doors with every passing day, just in case I tried to slip past her in a bid for freedom. It didn’t go unnoticed by the other kids—they laughed, pointed, and banged on the car roof as I climbed in. I feared them surrounding us, rocking the car until they turned it upside down.
    All right, I was feeling paranoid.
You
go through that level of indignity and not feel the same way.
    But it wasn’t unwarranted, the feeling of persecution. News of the argument at the ramp had gotten around. Some kids mocked me as I passed; others hunched over their cell phones, shoulders shaking with mirth. At first I didn’t realize what was going on, until one particularly huge older kid let me in on the magic.
    “Dude, your mom is FIERCE!” He laughed. “Someone filmed her chewing you out at the ramp. She’s a monster!” I grabbed his phone as politely as I could, not wanting to look, but knowing that I had to.
    And there we were, Mom going at me with even greater ferocity than I remembered. The sound quality wasn’t great, but you could still hear her ripping shreds off me above the distorted howls of the others. What scared me most, though, was the intensity in Mom’s face. She had no idea that the skaters were laughing as much at her as they were at me. She was being eaten alive by her own anger, totally oblivious that dozens of phones were filming her every word.
    I wanted the earth to swallow me whole.
    How many others had seen the video, or recorded their own version from a different angle?
    How long till they had me doing a constant walk of shame as punishment? I felt my shins begin to throb nervously in anticipation.
    Why was it that when the skating was going well, no one at school had a clue about me? I was still pretty much anonymous. But as soon as things went belly-up, everyone was in on the gag. The injustice felt overwhelming.
    I was back where I’d started; in fact, it was worse, because now I didn’t even have Sinus on my side. I’d noticed him as the laughter followed me down the hallway, standing on the outside, watching the other kids take me apart, and he hadn’t been laughing. But at the same time, he hadn’t come over either, to tell me it would be all right, or even to take the heat himself. At least if he’d