a'mongering
Day One
The amount of force required to flick the well-oiled kickstand into parallel with the body of the scooter was sufficient to send a wave of needles up his foot. He didn't roll his ankle in an attempt to restore circulation. He didn't loosen the laces on his tight, well-shined dress shoes. He didn't consider going back inside, putting on a t-shirt and taking the bus.
Mark stooped to pick up his helmet. Cream-colored, like his Vespa. Seventeen hundred dollars well spent, he decided. Plus repairs, plus paint, he didn't remind himself.
He saw himself in one of the side mirrors. Grinning, a line rose to his mind. "You look like a gangster!" Bingo. He settled into the seat and started it up. It purred. One more year, one more chance at a fresh start. This one would be for the books.
Yellow buses stood practically still, revolving, as did the rest of the road, around one boy on what state law reminded him was a motorcycle. People might have been looking at the pinstriped suit, or the Vespa, or the rider. Mark didn't know, and tried not to care. Only once did he get caught be a light, the red glare off his well-shined everything illuminating his absurdity. He didn't try to interpret the looks of the girls crossing the road in front of him.
A deft couple of pulls on the handlebars, and he was parked. This was when practice payed. It took point six seconds for his helmet to be off, and shades to be on when in front of a mirror. The glasses disturbed the stripes of his breast pocket as the surface of a glass of water refracted the image of a straw. It slipped back into a seamless fold almost instantly. Mark had no stopwatch, but the one-handed application of glasses went smoothly. He started posing.
It takes a certain kind of person to stand completely still for any length of time. Human mannequins have pulled it off for hours; days. Through practice, Mark did five minutes, impeccably cool the whole time. Not a flinch when the bell rang. No movement when the last of the students filtered through the doors, done with last cigarettes and dreams of freedom.
The Piaggio logo flashed at Mark was he spun on his heel to walk into the school, an acceptable five minutes late on the first day. He had a sudden, giddy vision of firing a polygonal submachine gun off the front of a Faggio, racking up numbers. Twelve thousand people wasted, ninety six percent completion, Bach on the custom radio station. Mark shuddered. That was twenty pounds and a thousand dollars in fashion behind him.
Hard, uncomfortable dress shoes echo dramatically in empty halls. Period A English, junior year, day one. He grinned as he opened the door.