The three boys sat around the high-top in the library. It was a small round table that could fit two meals comfortably and three in a squeeze. The lunch today was meatball subs with a side of tater tots and either a milk or fruit punch. The tall chairs made it a more precarious seat, but the rungs on the chair for feet placement added a safety measure to the topple-able furniture.
But this is not about the furniture in a high school far away. This is the conversation that occupied and entertained the three boys as they sat around having their lunch in the silence of the library, always on the verge of being scolded by Ms. Storey - a librarian with a very fitting name.
“You would?” one boy said to another.
“I don’t know - I’m heavily considering to do it tomorrow.”
The third boy at the table said, through a mouth full of meatball, “you guys are fucking stupid. I’m going back to the cafeteria.”
The first boy rebutted with a short “ok, odds are?”
The third boy stopped. He had stepped down from the throne he had found himself in and quickly climbed back up after realizing the actuality of the stakes being placed on the conversation’s outcome.
“Odds are what?” said the boy in question. The third boy was staring with maniacal jitters waiting for what was coming up next. He was allowed the whole seat for his lunch but chewed from only the edge.
“Odds are? I’m asking you” stated boy one.
“I don’t know what ‘odds are?’ means here” responded the boy being prosecuted for his fate. His eyes darted to the third boy returning to his seat as if to say “can you explain this to me?” and a bead of sweat started to make its crest from gland to skin at the top of his forehead.
“What. Are. The. Odds. You. Do. It. Tomorrow? Is that fucking clear enough for you, retard?” is what the middle boy said - the one between the odds man and the onlooker.
“What do you mean ‘what are the odds?’ Like a gambling thing?”
“Yes, ‘like a gambling thing.’ For fuck’s sake - pick a number 1 to 100. You can’t pick a number higher than 100 because that is pussy shit. Honestly, I should be capping it at 50, but I’ll give you 100 if that seems more fair” explained the first boy to the second. The third tried to fit a fourth tater tot into his cheek as he watched what was sure to become an argument unfold. His eyes scanned the room and made contact with the librarian’s. She had become invested in the volume coming from their table, arming herself with the “shh” of all “shh”s, ready to fire at will at the students.
“Ok, ok, jeez. Alright, for this, I’ll say thirty. I ain’t a pussy” established the second boy who was in question.
“Thirty? Alright” and then to the third boy chewing, the first boy - the game master - asked “will you count us down?” and to the first boy he instructed “pick a number between 1 and 30 now when he counts down.”
After he pocketed the chewed tots into the other cheek, the third boy muffled out a blocked “three, two, one!”
Boy one: “sixteen!”
Boy two: “sixteen!”
“Ha! In unison even!” clamored boy number three. This was what released the wind of a shush from the librarian warning that these boys were on thin ice, liable to be banned from lunch in the library for a week. That was the punishment for causing a ruckus in the library - banishment.
Stifling their excited surprise, neither boy could believe they picked the same number.
“What does this mean?” asked the boy who set the odds. He stared into his plate, understanding that his fate had been set in stone by this game; this simple, simple game that’s so boring to win and so frightening to lose.
“It means you have to do it now. Tomorrow. No questions asked: you have to do it. The odds said so. Odds is an odds is an odds.”
The third boy, trying to help out, said “I’ll even do it with you if it will make you feel better.” He felt somewhat of a sense of guilt having been the boy counting down - the boy who timed the mind-reading that took place in front of his eyes. Maybe if he had said it slower it would have forced one boy to have a second thought. Maybe they did have a second thought and if he had said it faster, then they would have had to go with their for real first thought. Who knows?
“Thanks, Eric” said Dylan, the first boy. The second boy, Mark, simply leaned back in his chair, smug with his ability to read Dylan’s mind in such rapid succession. Int his very library, it would go down. Tomorrow.
This all took place at lunch on April 19, 1999. And we all know what happened the next day. A game of odds is all that stood between that very library being the scene of such cruelty that ‘evil’ isn’t a strong enough word. But, some people are evil.
I heard a story from CCD about a shooting - maybe it was this one. But, the shooter asked the girl if she believed in God. They framed it in CCD as “she knew she’d die if she said she believed in God, but said she did anyway because of her faith.” I more see it as though she didn’t know either way, so she told her truth - which effectively means the same thing, except the CCD version tried to say about how desirable heaven should be. Instead, what if she said “no” and lied? Would she still be alive or would the shooter have called her a ‘liar’ or would he have shot her no matter what? Like Jayson Tatum said, “I guess we’ll never know.”
If you would tell the truth to a gun, feel free to buy a coffee. I may or may not in actuality use the money for drugs.
If you’re like me and don’t stand firm on any of your beliefs, not firm enough to die for them in anyway at least, then you can click here to watch a video of a man eating dog food.
me reading, humming the song in my head: ☺️
me clicking the link: 😳