For Tim, the first day of school marked the beginning of nine months of perpetual misery due to relentless bullying.  He was a typical outcast; overweight, shy and friendless.  At the commencement of each school year he prayed the jerks would mature and leave him alone, but their routine of demoralization never changed, and sixth grade was going to be no different.  He sat in class as his teacher went over the conduct rules.  When the teacher’s attention was diverted to the blackboard, he took the opportunity to stand up and remove the wedgie that greeted him when he walked through the door that morning.  A burst of pain stabbed his buttocks when he sat.  Rookie mistake, every nerd knows to always check their seat before sitting.  He pulled out the thumbtack without making a sound and blood began to collect in his underpants.  Hemorrhoid jokes were over the horizon, as well as the discovery of piss in his backpack and his lunch sitting in the toilet.

He sat next to Benny, who was considered by many to be the stupidest kid in the grade.  Benny had been left back twice, his advanced age not translating into heightened academic performance.  “Tim, there’s a girl buried in the playground and they made it into a slide,” Benny whispered.  “You want to explore it with me at recess?”

Tim was confused to hear Benny speak to him since they’d never exchanged words before, didn’t even know that Benny knew his name, but the chance of companionship during recess removed any doubts he had.  “Yeah, that’d be okay,” he replied, masking excitement.  Both were too ignorant to realize it was not a grave, but a memorial erected by the girl’s parents.

***

The bell that signaled the end of lunch and the beginning of recess rang.  It was like the running of the bulls when the students exited the cafeteria, pushing and shoving to get dibs for their respective cliques on the basketball courts or to claim a territory to gossip without the ears of the uninvited.  Tim followed Benny to the playground.  Benny had a shaved head and a long connected brow stretching above his eyes, he wore a basketball jersey that hung past his short-shorts making it look like a dress and loafers five sizes too big that nearly made him trip. Tim wondered what he was thinking when he dressed that morning.

They approached what looked like an ordinary playground contraption.  It had a thick iron platform approximately a foot in width, a canopy propped by four poles and a low-incline slide opposite the stairs.  It was designed to look like a house, ideal for a base in tag.  “This is the grave,” Benny said and pointed to a silver patch bolted to the slide inscribed with, ‘In Memory of Anna Eland: 3/4/99-7/21/09.’  “I can’t believe her parents wanted her buried in the playground.”  For whatever reason they were both convinced.

“Only retarded kids play in playgrounds when they’re in sixth grade!” said Joe Palazzo, a bully who once stapled Tim’s back with a piece of paper that read “Kick Me I’m a Shithead.”  The words were eventually distorted by blood.

“I know why you’re here,” Benny said quickly, eyes focused on Joe.  “Because you’re alone and jealous of us!”  Tim couldn’t believe Benny just told off one of the most popular kids in the grade, a possibility that never had occurred to him.

Joe didn’t expect to be stood up to.  He fumbled for words, a side Tim never saw of him.  “Well, you’re hanging out with the biggest loser in school!”

“Who, you?” Benny slyly replied.

“At least I didn’t have to retake the third grade twice!” Joe said as he began to walk away, not giving Benny a chance to respond to his cheap shot.

“It’s not a slide, it’s a grave for a girl!” Tim yelled.

Joe turned around knowing it was nothing more than a memorial. He saw the moment as an opportunity to play on their gullibility.  “Yeah, and I heard there’s a bundle of gold buried with the body.  Didn’t you know her parents said the first person to unlock the compartment in the platform can have it,” Joe said.  He ran off to hide his laughter.

“We can drop out of school and live off it!” Tim said to Benny, his mouth running with possibilities.  His body shook with the thought of leaving school and not only that, he’d be with a friend.  His most optimistic fantasies didn’t come near to paralleling the opportunity.  He climbed onto the iron platform and pounded on it to convince himself something was inside, unable to consider the logic that a) nobody can be buried in an elementary school playground, b) even if she was, she wouldn’t be buried with gold, c) even if she was buried with gold, her parents wouldn’t want her grave vandalized, and finally d) why would he trust anything that comes out of Joe Palazzo’s mouth?  His desperate need for companionship erased these impossibilities from his mind, making him willing to take a chance to secure happiness.

“Tonight, at midnight, we’ll get the gold,” Benny said.

“I’ll be there.”

***

Tim illuminated the fluorescent light on his digital watch.  It was 2:30 A.M.  Benny wasn’t coming.  He was just another person who humiliated him; trusting him showed how naïve and desperate he truly was.  He rested his head against a tree and began to sob.  Life just never went right for him.  There was always something to bring him down whether it was being bullied, his father going out for groceries and never coming back, or the branding he endured of being a fat kid with no friends.

A toolbox crashed down next to him and Benny jumped down from the fence.  Tim pushed off the ground and hugged him.  “My mom was awake and I couldn’t escape,” Benny whispered.  “Let’s get to work.”

Benny walked to the slide and went under the platform like a mechanic fixing a car.  Tim followed, shining his flashlight at the dozen bolts drilled into the structure.  Benny took a hammer and a pry-bar from the toolbox and set a screwdriver in the centimeter of space between a bolt and the iron platform it held together.  He hammered the pry-bar trying to remove the bolt. It took approximately ten minutes of labor for Benny to create an adequate amount of space to wrap his pair of pliers around the bolt and turn it with all the strength in his arms until he stripped it.  Following Benny’s lead, Tim began working and eventually removed a bolt in double the time it took Benny.

And so it went with them switching after every removed bolt.  The morning sun eventually negated the use of the flashlight and the chirping of the birds covered much of the banging.  The risen people probably thought an overzealous construction crew was at work, if they heard it at all.  The heavy iron platform soon dangled on the last bolts as if it was supported by dental floss.

“This is the start of our new lives,” Benny said, realizing how close they were.

Tim thought about his Ma and how he would miss her when he moved away with Benny, but it was something he had to do, maybe he’d buy a car and learn to drive, or purchase a cow to slaughter, something crazy like that because he had money and would be a man.  And though he was young now, he would pay his bills on time as well as indulge in the finer things like drinking and gambling like his grandpa had done before he passed.  But he erased the thought because he had to get there first.

Benny slammed the pry-bar, getting the final bolt off.  Instead of showering them with gold, the platform collapsed on the boys, the extreme weight crashing upon their hands and shoulders as their reflexes protected their faces.  They were trapped in the blackness, their bodies bruised and lacerated, but they fought through the wreckage, their tormentor.  Benny rolled out of the rubble, facing the hot sun.  His skin dripped blood on the playground woodchips.  He wasted no time and tried to clear a path for Tim, who was immobilized with his leg pinned under the wreckage. Benny saw that a piece of metal had lodged itself in Tim’s left eye.  Panicking, Benny pulled Tim out by his shoulders further bruising his body.  Tim wailed as he stumbled to the grass.  He collapsed, overcome by the pain, too fearful to remove the metal, scared of ripping flesh out with it.  Tim’s eye was certainly lost for nothing.  Benny forced him to his feet again, but Tim struggled to walk, so Benny carried him and they fled the scene with nowhere to go.  Benny thought about Joe, who would probably get a good laugh out of what happened to them.  He began to wish an evil fate onto Joe, but lost the thought quickly. Getting Tim to the hospital was top priority.  Joe was nothing.