Futile Efforts by Tom Piccirilli

forehead to the steering wheel and hug your arms over your ears.   So much talking, the blaring of ghastly music, and boys skateboarding in the lot, grinding down the curbs and sidewalks.   Sparks splash and skitter.   One bad oil leak under any of the cars and the whole lot will go up in an inferno. The skaters fall and tumble with a stuntman's coordination, boards scudding wildly and spinning on until they weakly bump into a tire.
    Girls are screaming, yelling about homework, make-up, cheerleading.   The guys answer with their own love calls, screeches and caterwauls.   It gets your pulse ticking harshly in your neck, all this action.   You've lived in a lonely room for too long, reading books you can't remember.
    Kids are smoking, necking, eating the last remnants of their breakfasts, and piercing each other with freshly sharpened pencils.   You didn't think things would change so much, but maybe it's just you who's forgotten.   You aren't old but you feel old.   No, you are old.   A glance in the rearview mirror confirms your fears.   Look at all that pink scalp showing through.   The crow’s feet wrinkles and channels writhing across your face.
    So, it's like that.   You used to keep count of your dead former classmates until the number broke fifty, then you quit. Drug deals gone bad, a murdered gas station attendant, two drownings, with so many others going to AIDS and cancer.   Don't people live to the average age of 72 anymore?   You look down at your wrist and see your blood still hammering, and you wonder when it's going to quit and whether you'll have any warning at all.   What do you do with the last fifteen seconds of your life?
    Whenever you missed the bus your mother would drop you off right out front, give you a kiss that got the tough kids rolling.   You'd walk away in shame with the fuckers shoving at your back, knocking your books away.   Kid games that skewered.   And you'd turn to watch your mother's car drive off, abandoning you to the nexus of dismay and insanity.   The snotty laughter.
    Even your hatred is cliché.   You, like everybody, can blame the smallest drama for your inability to cope.   A failed math test and you can't form a solid relationship with a woman.   A missed foul shot and you've never earned over twenty-one grand a year.   A redhead turns you down for a prom date and for the rest of your life you whine about your incapacity to look a luscious lady in the eye without blushing.
    No strangers are allowed on school property, but you're no stranger.   You ease up to the security booth–they've actually got the black and white semaphore arm now that comes down in front of the hood of your car.   The symbolism can't be overlooked.   This is a toll booth, you've got to pay just as heavy a price to get back as you paid to get out in the first place.
    The security guard is short and hairy, with the lines of a perpetual scowl seared into his features.   It takes a few seconds but you finally recognize him: Vinny D'Angelis .   A year or two older than you, he used to steal your lunch box and liked to smear your glasses with his plump, greasy thumbs.   You heard he got one of his professors pregnant while he was failing at the community college.   The kind of thing that should've been a disgrace but must've just made him feel proud when he had a beer with the boys.   The professor left in the midst of a media blitz, had the kid, and moved back in with her parents.   Sometimes your life moved backwards like you were on a conveyor belt.
    The dead are always nearby, ready to dive.   Teachers move toward the front doors like a SWAT team: edgy, wary, and checking every angle for danger, but still somehow in control.   They look up to see what might be falling down on them from the sky.   Somebody's throwing red viscera against the clouds.
    You recognize at least three gray countenances.   Without quite realizing it, you begin to tug at the front of your receding