Copyright © 2025 MBS Leadership. All rights Reserved. Adam Joseph Pilat.
Dedication. To the Unvaccinated, the only real Survivors.
Forward.
“Systems are Rigged”
Written by Lt. Colonel Matthew B. Smith (Ret.)
In the fall of 1989, I may have been a brash 13-year-old storming St. Brendan’s Grade School in Hilliard, Ohio, the Catholic citadel setting in X-Brats, where plaid uniforms and compliant adults smothered youthful spirits. The novel’s Maitiu Smitty, a fiery Irish rebel, loosely inspired by my own adolescent defiance, embodies the Generation X ethos we barely survived.
This novel’s group of immigrant outsiders are latchkey kids nursed on MTV’s hypnotic static, doused in MK Ultra programming and steeped in the world’s deceit. The complacent adults are pawns of a ruling class, epitomized by Fauci, whose lies about HIV in the ‘80s suppressed dissent and obscured the lethal toll of the trickle down lies.
Against a back drop of faltering Reaganomics, Savings and Loan scandals eviscerating families, and banks sneering as we scavenged; the crew’s rebellion is a stand against a system programming us through insidious channels. This story is fiction, but so was the system the adults tried to sell us.
Every bit of it was fraud, its corruption visceral to thinking pre-teens, though we perhaps lacked the vernacular and patience to articulate it. With Skid Row’s “Youth Gone Wild” thundering from a boom box, the kids shatter this facade, their defiance a testament to our own wandering youthful rage.
MK Ultra, the CIA’s real mind-control program exposed in the 1975 Church Committee hearings, with its experiments in LSD and psychological manipulation, cast a long shadow. This legacy persists through MTV’s relentless static—its music videos and subliminal messaging a cultural weapon shaping young minds.
This tale belongs not solely to Smitty or even the author’s character Adriano Macri, an Italian firebrand who transforms St. Brendan’s tribe into a crucible of rebellion, but to Shafool Amean, the wild-eyed Middle Eastern misfit whose chaos and pending demise compel the narrative.
In the novel, Shafool’s story is a Pharma-driven tragedy, his psyche fractured by Ritalin and the childhood vaccine schedule; DTP, MMR, a relentless barrage in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s—that left countless kids reeling. Was he broken by these drugs, or were they a desperate patch? The question haunts, as it does for Adriano, whose childhood haze stems from a pharma shot gone awry.
In ‘89, we lived through Big Pharma’s early assaults sparking Shafool’s unraveling and Adriano’s defiance. Kids diagnosed with ADHD and various degrees of autism as vaccine injuries mounted, were handed experimental drugs while red flags were dismissed by a system beholden to Fauci’s ruling-class lies, which Asshola and Palatapus parroted without question, their incompetence the crux of Shafool’s fall.
Smitty, my literary shadow, believes he can channel Shafool’s chaos—a delusion as futile as my real-world efforts to train Afghan fighters, chronicled in Modern War in an Ancient Land. That work offers an army forged in our image, crippled by reliance on unsustainable airpower, undone by tribal loyalties, jihadist fervor, and a colossal failed foreign policy from the start. As a scarred survivor in reality, one leg claimed by Afghanistan’s merciless dust, I see in Shafool’s inferno a haunting echo of my own. My doomed quest to train Afghan soldiers is a debacle Shafool’s untamed spirit vividly recalls upon me. This novel’s warning, resonant in today’s dystopian shadow, demands your attention.
In reality, Afghanistan taught me duty is not blind obedience; my failure to train fighters—marred by corruption and cultural rifts—echoes Smitty’s fictional misstep with Shafool.
Now, in 2025, reality’s dystopia surpasses fiction. Wall Street’s SPACs plunder our future, trillion-dollar bailouts prop up elites, and Big Pharma thrusts toxic jabs upon us. COVID’s lockdowns were their power grab, a yoke we permitted. Fauci’s HIV deceits—promoting AZT’s deadly promise while stifling dissent—set the stage; his COVID equivocations, echoed in Asshola’s gibberish, chained us while banks and Pharma profited.
This novel’s call to action, forged in Gen X’s scarred hands, is a clarion for every generation: to maximize civil disobedience, dismantle authority’s hollow decrees, and reject life’s prescribed scripts with unrelenting resolve. We’re Gen X, battered but defiant, and X-Brats is your proof: every generation must fight, and your hourglass is nearly spent. Here is your playbook, a simple blueprint to engineer your rebellion:
- Stay Natural: Safeguard your humanity—reject mRNA shots, demand COVID vaccines’ withdrawal, imprison the deceivers, and incinerate their falsehoods. Fauci’s HIV fraud, pushing AZT’s poison, was a rehearsal; his shadow looms over childhood vaccine schedules; now linked to autism and ADHD surges. Question every jab, default to none. Shafool’s Pharma-driven demise, Adriano’s vaccine-wrought scars—these are your warnings.
- Pool Resources: Harness Regulation Crowdfunding (REG-CF) to reclaim what’s yours, a beacon for like-minded communities to defy the strip-mining of resources and culture. Though banking reforms favor the elite, REG-CF offers a rare chance to resist. My initiative, MBS Leadership (www.mbsleadership.com), seeks to preserve Cross Timbers acres, a defiant stand against corporate suits paving over our heritage. Platforms like https://sphi.io/ illuminate the path—unite with your allies, pool funds, as X-Brats’ kids would have seized St. Brendan’s with lunch money, a middle finger to avarice.
X-Brats reveals what we grasped at age 12: the system is a fraud—banks, Pharma, war, Asshola’s drivel prefiguring Fauci’s COVID vacillations, lies from the ruling class that Palatapus echoed in her feeble dogma. The kids feel it, Metallica’s “One” roaring through Ohio’s twilight, the Gulf War looming as banks gloat. Engineer your defiance, or dissolve into their static. Dazzle me! Prove Gen X’s fire blazes fiercer in you, a pyre to honor Shafool’s extinguished spark.
Preface. “A love letter to Chaos”
Written by Author Adam Joseph Pilat
Let X-Brats light your fuse. The ruling class, from Fauci to the suits, wants you docile, but you’re smarter than that. Picture 1989, Hilliard, Ohio—a beige blur of cul-de-sacs and casseroles, where kids are raised in plaid-clad child farms. X-Brats is my love letter to that chained chaos; a fictional coming-of-age novel that captures the feral heart of Generation X.
Yes, it’s all fiction. Loosely spun from imagination and scars. It’s not a documentary of my St. Brendan’s days. No real people or real events are meant here, it’s just a story to make you laugh, think, and act.
Sure, I walked St. Brendan’s halls back then, as did my buddy Matt Smith—Lt. Colonel, retired, one leg short—but this ain’t a memoir. It’s a middle finger to authority, where immigrant misfits like Adriano Macri and Maitiu Smitty, a scrappy Irish stand-in for Matt’s younger self, turn our Catholic school upside-down. This novel’s for Gen Z and Millennials—a guide to Gen X’s distrust of power, and a Molotov cocktail urging you to engineer your own rebellion against today’s tyrannies.
Back in the late ‘80s, we slept three hours a night, give or take. Parents saw the daytime us—collars starched, shoes tied—but the real magic sparked from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., when they thought we were dreaming. We’d slip out basement windows, sprint the Hayden Run to Hayden Falls Park, our midnight sanctuary where waterfalls drowned out the world’s noise. There, under Ohio’s starlit dusk, we plotted against the system—and took action when necessary with pranks that made Principal Asshola an active B-movie dictator. X-Brats bottles that anarchy, with Shafool’s persona at the heart of this tale, a Middle Eastern enigma who’s unraveling—fueled by Big Pharma’s Ritalin and a brutal vaccine schedule—mirrors the system’s failure. It’s fiction, mind you—any resemblance to real folks at St. Brendan’s is pure coincidence, a yarn spun to entertain, not to swear as truth.
Our rebellion wasn’t just kid stuff; it was a premature spark of the culture wars, and systematic defiance toward adults with no standing because clearly they had already “fucked everything up.” Asshola, a nasal echo of Anthony Fauci’s false sanctimonious drones then and now, and Palatapus, a quivering mess, were pawns of a ruling class peddling lies. We broke the rules, not for kicks, but to expose authority’s absurdity. For Gen Z and Millennials, it’s a time capsule of acid-washed jeans, Walkman batteries dying mid-Metallica, and a skepticism that saw the system for what it was: a rigged game we refused to play.
Why should you care? Because the tyrannies we fought in X-Brats—clueless adults, corporate greed, Pharma’s lies—are your fight now.
This 2025 dystopia makes our ‘89 battles look quaint: COVID lockdowns chained you, banks crush you with debt and marginalize your dollars, Big Pharma jabs you with mRNA shots while autism and ADHD rates soar. In short, you are cooked unless you wake up.
In the novel, Shafool’s collapse under Ritalin and vaccines foreshadows today’s crisis, where kids are labeled and drugged, casualties of a system Fauci’s HIV lies helped build. His AZT push, a toxic “cure” that killed as much as it saved, was a ruling-class con that smells like Remdesivere. X-Brats shows us at 12, sniffing out the scam, and it’s your blueprint to do the same—reject the script, question power, and fight like hell.
Gen X grew up on Terminator’s warning of machines rising and pirated VHS tapes whispering MK Ultra’s mind-control experiments into our ears. We felt programmed, but X-Brats captures the liberation of those who broke free. For you, it’s a laugh-out-loud ride through neon scrunchies, 80’s school dances, kisses and chaos, but it’s also a challenge to embrace engineered civil disobedience.
The novel’s pranks are your call to defy today’s banks strip-mining your future with SPACs, or Pharma peddling shots that erode your humanity. We were foreigners—Italian, Irish, Cuban, Canadian—united against a rotten system, and you’re our heirs, on the clock to tear it down.
Dazzle us, damn it, prove Gen X’s skepticism burns in you, and make the adults who’ve fucked it all up wish they’d never underestimated you.
Prologue.
A crackle pierced the night. Twigs fracturing under step with a manic cackle threading through the pines. Shafool Amean slunk into view, his lanky frame a kinetic specter, wild eyes refracting lunar glints like a savage predator. He hefted a rusted gas can, its petrochemical reek seeping a volatile cocktail of benzene and heptane clawing at the damp moss and cedar air, and a burlap sack slung over his shoulder. Arriving at Hayden Falls Park, Dublin, Ohio’s primordial gash, seethed under a September sky lacerated with indigo, its waterfall a cataclysmic bellow, hurling shards of mist that shattered moonlight into a prismatic inferno.
My Walkman, securely stitched into my pant leg, soothed Skid Row’s “18 and Life”, a faltering bulwark against thimerosal’s neurotoxic chokehold, its residues strangling my occipital cortex, bleeding the world’s hues to cinder as my eyes, ears, and olfactory glands laser focused on that burlap sack and the psychotic hands gripping it.
The falls’ mist condensed loudly on my upper lip and mixed with sweat as the glacial scythe ignited glutamate in my auditory cortex. Perched on a boulder, I watched calculating. The evenings run scorched my lungs still, but dopamine blazed through my synapses, a rebel’s napalm.
Gianna Prestani lounged on the rugged cliff adjacent my boulder, her jet-black hair flowing like molten obsidian, shimmering with a volcanic intensity. Her leather jacket, steeped in the sharp scent of nicotine and defiance, clings to her frame. Her smirk radiates a thrilling, electric confidence, and her Canadian-accented voice, sharp and haunting whisper, cuts through the deafening roar of the nearby waterfall like a mournful blade.
“Shafool’s a wildfire,” she hissed, breathe coiling like wraiths in the dense air. Jobu Conseco, all 200-pounds of colossus Cuban wrath, stalked the rocky ledge, mullet thrashing like a storm-lashed frond, fists pulverizing air, endorphins flooding his motor cortex. “My cousin’s stash ain’t charity, that sack better be full” he snarled, exhalation a fetid stew of tater tots and primal fury. Maitiu Smitty, sheathed in a Metallica tee drenched with mist, propped against a granite fang, his grin anchoring his pulse. “He’s got it,” Smitty growled, eyes skewering the shadowed path from Shire Landing.
The air congealed as Shafool dropped the sack. Glass jars clattering like shattered skulls, their granular freight hissing of annihilation. “Gunpowder,” he crowed, grin a ghastly rictus. And then he began spilling black granules in a warped pentagram, their potassium nitrate stench—a charred crucible of brimstone and ash. He sloshed gasoline on top of the pattern, its oily sheen a kaleidoscope of moonlight’s death throes, fumes weaving a toxic shroud that throttled the cedar’s moist perfume.
“Mix!” Shafool sparked, sloshing the gas can, liquid glugging like a guillotine’s fall, its benzene reek an onslaught, searing my eyes like molten glass. The waterfall’s spray shrieked, a crystalline lash against the Zippo’s frenetic click-click, each spark a misfire louder than Sebastian’s rhythmic screams “Tequila in his heartbeat, his veins burned gasoline” in my ears.
Smitty edged closer, drawn to the flame, his Metallica tee clinging like a shroud, now crouching near the powder, too near, breath tangling with its apocalyptic veil. Shafool’s laugh was a scythe, hand trembling, flame grazing the air. Gianna’s nails gouged my arm, an acetylcholine jolt, her signal a ghost against the falls’ roar and Shafool’s craze. We both leaned back, way back. Only Smitty lingered, ensnared, the gunpowder’s edge a banshee’s scream.
The night convulsed with crickets’ piercing shrieks and wind flaying through waning oaks. My Walkman faltered, Sebastian’s wail splintering, ‘He kept his motor running, but it never kept him clean” mirroring the chaos. Shafool’s eyes were abyssal voids, as action proceeded without thought. Pharma’s poison corroded his GABA equilibrium if you ask me, a warning we saw but couldn’t voice. We were a tribe—Italian, Irish, Cuban, Canadian, Middle Eastern—forged against a festering system, but Shafool’s fire threatened to devour us. “Step back, Smitty,” I roared, slashing the mist, but he smirked, wide-eyed, leaning closer, gasoline’s reek a suffocating spectre.
The falls roared, Shafool’s Zippo quivered, and our rebellion teetered—our dazzle poised to blaze.
The explosion was louder than any of us expected.
SECTION ONE: (February 1989) – Adriano Macri enters the Dolphin Sea
“The light that you could never see, it shines inside, you can’t take that from me.”
– Madonna
March 1986
Chapter 1: The New Kid on the Block.
The Multipurpose room stank of wax, bleach, and guilt. How I got here was yesterday’s news. How to destroy the place was the sole frequency setting on my somatosensory cortex as Samba’s battled the sticky build up with squeaks and scuffs. At least it didn’t smell like a barn, yet, because apparently that was its first use of the day. One hundred and twenty sheeplets, offspring of Hilliard, Ohio’s glyphosate soaked bleating heartland, penned before the homeroom bell set for 8:25AM.
Now 8:23AM, I absorbed my first flickering transcription of these sad petting zoo inhabitants with a wide, tired, cold February blink. All static.
Folding picnic tables lined up at the East wall waiting for lunchtime. Basketball hoops rooked either side of an oddly shaped half court flooring pattern of a universal nature and loomed over their dead eyes. It was impossible to tell if these woolly lambkins surrendered consciousness willingly, never learned to resist, or if the polyethylene and paraffin mix was simply all it took to mitigate their spirits. Either way I sensed again a continuing singularity developing; does no one else see the real issue here?
As my compromised blood-brain barrier strained to cull the onslaught from 125 micro grams of ethyl mercury storming the system since that damn DTP injection and regulate an initial dose of fresh oxyhemoglobin manufactured from this mornings under heated air in my new environment, I noticed how the white oxford collars, plaid jumpers, khaki pants, and embroidered green polo’s speckled the atmosphere with conformity.
Some flocklings had arrived as early as 7AM to shuffle anxiety and shame amongst themselves in a transverse wave of compliance cresting over fourteen rows of tired plastic folding chairs left out from the prior evenings Bingo event. Parents neglecting kids to an indoor holding cell just after sunrise to ride off and pine away for their family income.
On the surface you might not notice that new kid was new, but the clues were there if you cared to investigate as I blended into the scene.
Skater bangs, mandatory in 1989, drifted well below the allowable threshold of the eyebrow challenging the upper lip when released from the ear’s grip. In the back my white standard issue oxford choker tattled on the fat brown curly tail dwelling well below the approved neckline. The real smoking gun was the Sony WM-10 custom sewn, shoddily but securely, using an extra pocket cut out of old jeans, into my left inner pant leg. I’d learned to use the controls blind once seated but changing the single AA battery after 2.75 hours of play time would always require a long stay in the boys room stall.
In a quiet room only the initial click of the play button if struck too hard or fast had the potential to out my medicine. Fast forward, reverse, and record were off limits; four layers of yellow electrical tape stretched over an engineered raft of six cut paperclip shafts to ensure they could never depress. Only play and stop remained accessible. The volume of the lone speaker was never a problem. These trained ears connected to an auditory cortex that felt whispers. The faint negative ten decibel rustle from wind blow branches now brushing outside in the grey morning sky across one of the Multipurpose room’s five vertical windows cascaded my cochlear mechanics while normal kids struggled with their standard 20Hz to 20 KHz range to seemingly process even a single piece of common sense.
That cassette player along with a single spliced headphone strung under my starch shirt through the long sleeve to my left cuff was never discovered by any adult throughout my entire child hood. It was not without an occasional close call, odd body contortion, jerky movement and other quirks the adult’s tended to associate with their preconditioned assumptions about my developing mental state. The sleek compact design and quiet operations of the WM-10 helped the concealment, but not so much as the elegant genius to also sow a similarly shaped section of layered fabric into my right inner pant leg to secure my adolescent frame a balanced look. Now rolling a custom mix tape designed to get me though the day, I pondered Madonna’s perspective ‘a man can tell a thousand lies, I’ve learned my lesson well’ as either prescient of Anthony Fauci’s HIV and AZT debacles or reminiscent of her terrible dating choices. Either way, it gave my overactive mind focus and helped me remember not to speak much.
Sadly my vision was destroyed overnight back in the 5th grade with the final DTP dose my father allowed. Truth plain as day. Twenty: Twenty and rich colors today. Injection. Twenty: One Hundred and red green color blind in the morning. Doctor’s wouldn’t draw the lines, these things happen they say, here are some glasses. Dad knew. Thank God I had his protection from that point forward, an invaluable asset against those plotting to kill me. I’d always had good hearing, but after that event, I practiced hard, paid attention, and developed the other sensory skills I’d learned from Stan Lee.
Given my Italian immigrant status, factions of the common Macri family retained detailed lineage as far back as the 1600’s nestled within the coastal beauty of Siderno, Calabria. Mine specifically ended abruptly at Grandma. Only 2 simple generations of known heritage. She was dropped on a doorstep, raised by Macri’s, and there was a bank heist involved. Arrests as well. At 48 days shy of my 13th birthday facing day one at a new school in the middle of the season this historical upbringing meant I knew two things for certain. First, I knew better than to ask any questions or willingly disclose my family’s past. And, I also certainly knew better than to arrive at the common yard of a new prison with too much free time left on the game clock. The commons could be deadly at any moment at the hands of either the inmates or the guards. Outsmarting the guards came easy most of the time, but the possibility of troubled inmates in a new environment was a huge unknown. Unpredictability is the hardest thing to fight.
At 90 pounds I could punch up for my weight and size for sure; boxing skills sharpening weekly and no shortage of energy to exhaust. But, 90 pounds is still only 90 pounds. The unforgiving nature of physics limits the amount of force coming off that mass no matter how you snap. So, I was not looking for any type of physical entrance on day one. Thank God for Dad, he understood. Dad agreed to drop me off just before the opening bell with zero inquiry.
Now only 120 seconds separating me from the structured safety of homeroom I catapulted myself into a nondescript North facing chair near the center of the mass resonance system reasonably undetected and hoped for the best. Behind me, now seated momentarily, loomed the call of the green room, a signal I immediately sensed only I received. Amplified likely by the positively charged ethyl mercury coagulating around my cortex making certain signals brighter. A quick glance back confirmed what was actually just a ¾ walled area off the side of the 18” stage these mammals called a theater, which connected the back of the mess hall’s kitchen to the South end of the Multipurpose room.
All mass resonates. With 100 plus people in a room, those vibrations overwhelm everything. Usually. When certain items combine in certain ways, certain people have strange and unexplainable ways to notice what needs to be noticed. I had more revelations to come, but that green room clearly held undiscovered treasures these children had never seen.
Now, up front, Mr. Asshola entered and stood like a frail dictator directly under the frayed basketball hoop net. Arms angled out; fists on hips. Not the respectable kind that built his own regime, but maybe the 2nd generation kind. Like some left over dictator lunch meat the CIA forgot about after dad was finally murdered by USAID employees and the CIA’s clandestine activities in the region had finally failed sparking some new lies in the geopolitical papers. Was operation AJAX how this clown got here, or just what he used to shine the floors?
Asshola had a pinched, smug, nasal as hell look and still dressed in mid 70’s attire. Clearly Italian and similar in age, mannerism, and look to that criminal currently soaking the world in an SV40 contaminated man made HIV bioweapon and pitching an equally deadly AZT cure. Fauci in bell bottoms. I had read the Chronicle. I knew of Terry Sutton. After living through 9 years of the 80’s and jamming with Mercury in more ways than one; I knew the lies of AIDS straighter than the lines on this asshole’s pant legs. His first words droned, “Good morning, again good morning.” I wanted to hurl, maybe lob a cherry bomb through the basket to see his comb-over flap. He hadn’t noticed me specifically yet, so I still had time.
Asshola’s comb-over quivered as he repeated, “Good morning, again good morning.” Spare me, chief. His bell bottoms, striped and snug like some aging runner’s, screamed 1970s Clockwork Orange Psycho. His pointy shoes mirrored his sharp nose, but his voice dissolved into static. As a Panther at St. Anthony’s, I’d already honed a radar for kids with the haunted eyes—scarred by priests Notre Dame’s elite tucked away like dirty secrets, hidden in plain sight in the South Bend feeder system. I’d learned to sidestep those predators early as the first third grader to successfully refuse altar service. It saved my life. And I could spot deceivers like Asshola from a mile away.
Madonna’s “Live to Tell” pulsed through the mix tape in my WM-10: “A man can tell a thousand lies, I’ve learned my lesson well.” That lyric cut deep as I trusted my natural assessment of his whiney resonance, exposing Asshola’s grim garlic grin as another layer of this Catholic cage’s deceit. My gaze swept the Multipurpose Room again—waxy floors, creaky chairs, students slumped. I craved something alive, opened my pupils and scanned.
Bingo. Two chairs up, two over, forty-five degrees northwest, jet-black hair cascaded over firm straight shoulders, catching the destructive fluorescent light like a dark flame. No static there, just a pulse back from a well-developed defense system; oversized gold hoop earrings and enough conditioner to forge each strand together into a blanket of obsidian silk. I fixed my stare, urging her ‘i capelli lunghi e neri’ to notice the change. Adults use alphabet soups like ADHD, but I knew it was all natural synapses firing, locking onto vitals.
Asshola shuffled over, his voice oily as a leaky Datsun. “Adriano, welcome to St. Brendan’s. You’re a Dolphin now. It’s your first day, so we expect obedience and attention.” I tore my gaze from the girl to meet his. Obedience? No chance. My eyes probing: You really think you’re in control, Asshola? His blank stare faltered, his comb-over twitching like a nervous tic. Clearly not inviting a response from me, he scratched on about the schedule, fading into the background.
She turned then, Gianna Prestani, dark eyes deep as the ocean, bangs teased skyward, sun soaked Calabrian skin glowing golden brown under the dull light. Her beauty struck second. First was a glistening defiance, a feral spark that sliced through the same deceit I saw. I wondered for a moment if her grandparents were transferred by basket to a stranger’s doorstep too. Her sharp welcoming gaze hooked me, but flashed a warning —I’d crash this hard at some point. I felt it, bones deep. But this was new physics and by far the stronghold of my senses. A new one way ride just started and there is no turning back now.
Gianna sensed what must have been a 440THz electromagnetic wave sparking under her hair along her neckline. She turned, locking eyes with the new kid—Adriano, Asshola had named him. Ruffled smartly, restless, with bangs flopping over a face radiating trouble. Since third grade, she’d ruled St. Brendan’s with a dash of her eyelashes, teased bangs, and leather boots, keeping simples like Slimmy and Audrey in line. Their robotic obedience and nervous giggles drained her, like herding sheep for four years.
Adriano’s glint hit like a rival’s challenge, maybe a spark to amplify her own. Her mother had fled Toronto’s brutal streets, surviving in shelters as an underage single parent; her step-father’s construction work pulled them to Ohio as the economic grounds shook under the heartland, but absent denial of the system’s screws left Gianna alone with mom to see the truth. This school was her day cage, and while she had already picked its locks, what lay after was the real worry. Adriano’s Walkman, she noticed concealed, screamed he could shatter it with her. But those hazel eyes—they sparkled a bit strange. Maybe not dangerous now, but something clearly hindered empathy in that one. She snapped a paper clip toward the floor, testing his edge. His gaze sharpened, catching it. She then turned back before Asshola’s yardstick could strike her calf a second time.
At the moment of impact, I resolved myself to go for it. This Catholic prison gets busted wide; today.
Gianna’s glance held until Asshola’s stick smacked her calf smartly, causing her to circle to the front. My pulse surged, Madonna’s voice resonating: “the secret I have learned, ‘til then, it will burn inside of me.” Asshola’s deceit, this school’s suffocating chains, that yardstick—ignited a fire in my core. I again leaned on the mini-speaker in my hand to hear Madonna fade into a gritty and restless E5 followed by G5, the quiet blaze of Skid Row’s “18 and Life,” dangling next on my mix offered soothing rebellion strait in my ears. Ready to shred. Just like Ricky.
I’d stormed into St. Brendan’s Grade School mid-year on Valentine’s Day, ’89, like Sebastian Bach crashing a sermon. The first new kid the school had in years. An elder Gen X Brat of 12 solar cycles, Italian-American, with a long and storied history of crime and revolution of an elementary nature. I had seen all this before. Hilliard, Ohio had employment for Dad, but St. Brendan’s wasn’t ready for me. And admittedly, I was perhaps not prepared for Gianna.
Chapter 2: Homeroom Rebellion.
The bell clangs (8:25 AM) like a prison gate, and I’m herded into Mrs. Palatapus’s homeroom. The room’s a beige purgatory: flickering fluorescents hum like trapped wasps, a sagging Jesus poster looms over a chalkboard scrawled with “Obedience = Virtue” in Palatapus’s shaky script. Eighteen Hilliard originals slumping toward their desks, plaid vests starched, souls flatlined; products of central Ohio’s cookie-cutter hell. Today, I’m the glitch. Taking too long to secure my bangs behind my ear I as I step over the threshold ‘your crime is time and it’s…” bleeds into my head. A fitting welcome to my new incarceration.
I accept the obvious desk that’s mine; the only one with a welcome name tag on it. Four large rafts of desks cluster the center of the room. One square raft of four desks and three rafts of five. Gianna’s about three desk distances left on another island—jet-black hair in perfect order every strand but eyes spilling dark and wild as a red metric welt swells loosely on her toned left calf, glinting like she’s plotting arson.
Mrs. Palatapus shuffles in, a mousy wreck in a hand sewn mothball sweater with a red V-day carved from a sappy husband’s barely heterosexual crafting hand, glasses fogging. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” she squeaks, voice wobbling like a warped tape. “Today let’s welcome Adriano. Everyone please take a moment to write a card about yourself, then we will read them aloud.” She passes out red, pink, and purple paper and fine tipped Crayola markers, her smile brittle as stale communion wafers. The originals crane a bit as they sniff and scratch at the new human. Get to know me? Screw that. I lean on my cupped palm to hear Ricky’s ‘got a heart of stone’ and see Gianna’s already doodling something swiftly, her smile sharp, thin red lips and straight teeth hinting she’s already scheming.
Pauletta Rose volunteers first, proper as her doctor dad’s golf-course lawn. “I’m Pauletta, I like math and Jesus,” she clips, her two foot ponytail a brunette flag of calculated conformity. “Lovely!” Palatapus chirps.
Angelica Red bounces up next, freckles dotting her soccer-girl cheeks. “I’m Angelica, I play soccer, I love my team,” she says, her voice perky as a Pepsi jingle. “Wonderful!” pipes Palatapus.
Carrie Dawn clutches her New Kids On The Block pencil case, an abomination of a band and a worse calligraphy carrier. “I’m Carrie, I love New Kids on the Block, Jordan’s my valentine,” she giggles, shrill and bubblegum-sweet. She’s oddly likable, but I miss it at first, blinded by her obsession with those boy-band retards.
“Sweetie, please” Click mumbles back at Carrie, “I’m Click, Clickenger really, but that’s not as cool.” He’s the first one to seemingly address me and not the room. Then at Carrie, “Axl and Slash would thrash those losers.” His Italian eyes are glazed from morning meds as I wonder how rough these priests made his first few years. Hilliard’s clearly got dirty secret’s like South Bend.
Carrie huffs rhythmically in disgust until Kelvin Hamlyn grunts, “I’m Kelvin, I milk cows every morning but I really want to work at Wendy’s like my brother,” his farm-boy drawl thick, aiming low. I double-take—serious? Where am I?
Next, Slimmy Dean wheezes in, “I’m Slimmy, comics are the best, just big boned by the way,” his BO a poisonous barrier, brainy but stifled.
Audrey Strudel whispers sweetly, “I’m Audrey, I love to bake and go for walks to the Hayden…,” her blonde pigtail braids bright enough to be headlights on my dad’s Ford Tempo and wrapped tight enough to tow it if needed, a budding farmer’s daughter lost in plaid, but not for long. For now they are all static—Hilliard’s lemmings, marching to Palatapus’s tune.
And then a sparkling silver 1989 Corvette screeches into the lot, interrupting the lackluster parade. Chrome glints through the smudged window like a Pink Floyd prism, idling bold in the fire lane, and what sounds like Casey and the Sunshine Band interrupts Audrey’s introduction.
Necks crane, chairs scrape—Click twitches (he knows), Kelvin squints, Slimmy wheezes. I listen hard before I even try to look further. As the car door crackles opens it cascades into the classroom clear as the homeroom bell “That’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, un-huh.”
I peer out: a goddess steps from the driver’s seat, not a day over 31, her ‘80s silicone curves firmly secured under a stretch V-neck, black miniskirt one piece hugging tight, black fishnet leggings sleek. The car door stays open as she grabs a brown bag from the passenger seat and the class is inundated with KC’s sunshine “When you give me all your love and do it, babe, the very best you can, Oh, that’s the way…”
Click stammers, “Your mom’s here, Gianna.” She flicks a Parliament menthol onto the blacktop, its ember glowing as she grinds it under a stiletto heel, smoke curling like a middle finger to St. Brendan’s sanctimony. She sashays with sinful swagger up the walkway, heels clicking sharp, a forgotten lunch bag in hand—pure fantasy fuel striding through Hilliard’s beige blur, a stark contrast to Palatapus, Asshola, and these normie toads.
The introductions obviously freeze. Even Palatapus knows to wait. The classroom door swings open, and she purrs, “Gianna, darling, you forgot this,” her voice slow, smoky, crisp as a jazz club. She tosses the bag; it lands with a thud. At least she does not eat the glyphosate around here. Point for Gianna as she blushes—faintly under her olive tan—and murmurs, “Thanks, Mom.”
Mom struts out as swiftly and sultry as she strode in. “When you whisper sweet in my ear, when you turn, turn me on, Oh, that’s the way, uh-huh…,” the car door closes, KC’s Sunshine poem softens and the engine purrs into gear.
Carrie, mistress of the obvious gasps, “Your mother is so stunningly gorgeous!” Pauletta frowns, Angelica stares out the window, Click tracks her every movement until the car is out of sight, Slimmy croaks, “Whoa,” Kelvin blinks, Audrey blushes. Gianna blushes deep but grins widely and uncontrollably ear to ears—her mom’s a legend, she embraces it, and I’m floored. Was her next stop the grocery store or a Victoria Secret photo shoot? Palatapus, gets this one right, or maybe she was just too frazzled to do anything else—she waits until the Corvette’s completely gone before restarting.
“Back to it—Adriano, please introduce yourself?” Palatapus stammers, glasses fogged, voice frail. I rise slow, purple paper crumpled, still stunned a bit, curios and distracted but sharp and sly, a new kid with a blade. Well, she asked.
Addressing the kids and not Palatupus “Adriano Macri, former Panther from Catholic command central for cover-ups and corruption. Discharged into this Dolphin sea world to spend the rest of seventh grade with you.” For any of my prior instructors that would have been enough to remove me from the floor. Palatupus was either slow, stupid, or curios and strangely took no action as I continued.
“Do you think adults have it under control? Do they deserve our compliance? Priests destroy our boys and the government cages our parents. $189 billion tax dollars bail out bankers while your parents scrape by. But in here? You’re fiddling with markers—they’ve got no grip on the world.”
Eyeing Gianna’s 60mm x 20mm welt I add, “And unlawful force is their only grip on us. Valentine’s?” Now squaring my shoulders to address Palatupus for the first time. “This panda bear eyed skull is your mess—deal with it.” I drop a black skull with brooding eyes on her desk, clean and cutting, then sit, owning the quiet.
Click mutters uncomfortably having clearly lived this truth, “Deep,” Slimmy nods though his BO fog, Pauletta snaps unknowingly, “That’s nuts!” Carrie whines out of turn, “Well, Jordan’s in charge!” Palatapus flutters within the pending chaos, “Oh goodness, that’s too much!”—her hands a frantic mess, outclassed by my lens. Gianna’s laugh rolls out—a match igniting—and flashes a wink.
Now, trying to shuffle things along “Gianna, your turn,” Palatapus squeaks, sweater clutched tight.
Gianna stands, cool and lethal, her thoughts toward opportunity. “Fine—Gianna Prestani, and you just met my mom.”
She pauses, pondering to sit or swing, eyes scanning the room’s dead souls, then dives in addressing the kids. “Four years fermenting in this formulaic furnace of feeble minded conformity, and I’m the only one not a corpse. Adriano’s spot-on—adults are clueless, fumbling our lives. But let’s get real specific here. Asshola’s ‘Good morning again’ lobotomizes us daily, Pureshoe’s gym whistle’s a worthless wet fart, Palatapus here bawls at shadows, Magazine fakes cool to hide he’s a closet case. These are our role models!? Hilliard’s a mill for puppets, and I’m over it. Send me back to Canada; my heart’s screaming past your choke-chain rules. Valentine’s? This X burns it all to ash.”
She flings a red scrawled heart with “X-Brats” riding on an arrow with a quick snap—destruction maxed out.
Angelica gasps, “Awful!” Audrey stammers, “Oh,” Carrie huffs, “Jordan! Jordan!” Palatapus wails, “This is dreadful!”—snatching our papers, tripping to the trash, tears flooding her glasses. Gianna’s eyes hit mine—sarcasm veiling a wild soul, her chaos topping my cut—we’re alive in this rigged dump.
“No more!” Palatapus sobs, fleeing. “Class over!” The bell’s late—chaos reigns. Gianna brushes past on her way back to her raft, scent sharp. “Skull’s got brains, new kid,” she says, low and quick.
“You’re a real Gen X-Brat” I shoot, pulse pounding. She turns her back, face vanishing to jet-black hair. The originals shuffle—Carrie humming NKOTB, and I’m wired, blood pumping, this cage splintering. Years later, tragedy waiting—but today, Valentine’s ’89, it’s us against Hilliard’s beige lies. We’re already winning and it’s not even 9AM.
