Surely, this was something he was bound to get used to eventually, inevitably set to acquiesce to the ruthless torment of mindless jocks.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the bruises and blows hurt any less.

It was a given — a socially inept genius is the ideal target to any one of that sort of popular affiliation. Crude and derogatory comments had shredded his self-esteem to a pitiful sense of occasional validation from teachers, though he struggled to believe them when every other voice was historically louder.

But words, he could handle. It shattered his mind, correcting him into walking with his head ducked, arms tightly secured around his books and torso, shrinking and shriveling into himself until he was nothing but a crumpled form of what he once was. Wretched and miserable, but he was physically unscathed.

Such a sweet life he had before words were paired perpetually with punches, ego and skin now equal in battered blemishes. If he dare spoke a vehement word of protest, his back paid relentless consequence, slammed into the harsh metal of lockers until his head filled with cotton. God forbid he brushed shoulders with one of The Jocks™, which only ever led to a reluctantly defeated sigh slipping from his bitten-raw lips as he futilely tried to tape up his broken glasses, occasionally abandoning the task to put a frozen bag of peas to his jaw, a swelling bruise taunting his skin and bone.

A continuous and repeating notion, the prospect of sweet escape from the hell called High School, was all that occupied the expanse of his mind as he snuck away in his tucked corner of the Commons. The book in his lap was an absentminded thought, obstructed by the overwhelming desire to let his feet carry him away from where he was stuck.

Though the book became a brief topic of interest as it was torn from his lap, his eyes snapping up to find The Jocks™ surrounding his already inadvertently cowering form. Spencer simply resigned, accepting the dreadful fate. Unfortunately, a lack of response earns harsher punishment.

When it was over, he was staring at a mutilated scatter of white pages, drops of blood spattering on them, snapping him into the reality that he was, in fact, bleeding. He sent an invisible harsh scowl to the back of one of his abusers, cursing him for wearing a ring that now left a scathing cut slashed on his cheek, glasses hanging crookedly on the bridge of his nose.

He aimlessly piled the discarded and useless pages of his once desirable book. His eyes slowly flickered up, a panicked look setting in his watery eyes as one of the more popular and favourable girls approached him.

Was one torment not enough? he thought bitterly, blinking the tears from his eyes as he returned to his feeble attempt of gathering his book.