He slams the door violently,

the loud voice on the other side muffled by the thick wood. His face and fists clenched in frustration, his skin is flushed and his eyes dark.
       "I won't," he mutters darkly through clenched teeth, his voice low and half-choked by anger. "She can just fuck off, I'm sick of this." Pacing the room, his footfalls echo dully on the thick rugs covering aged wooden floor. Turning rapidly he throws his fist at the wall, the pain being let spread into the wall and out of himself for a moment before it wells up in him anew. His breathing deeper and heavier, he punches it again, but with less energy now, the pain seeping back through his knuckles, hand and arm, his nerves throbbing dully beneath the slight dusting of plaster which falls from the fresh dent in the wall. Staggering back, his eyes focus on nothing, his emotions rage and will not release control of him. Muscles aching from straining tensely so long without release, he struggles to move and not to move, everything within him blinded by emotion he cannot command. Grabbing the pillow off the bed he flings it across the room, not caring what it may collide with. Following through on the momentum of the throw, he lets his body fall onto the bed and lay inert. His eyes are turned blankly to the ceiling, he looks at but does not see the faded white paint, which peels slightly and is discolored from age, lighter in small places where once someone had placed small stars on the room's man-made sky.
       Sighing heavily, he turns on his side, closing his eyes. The voice outside the room has stopped, but he had no longer been listening to it. Slowly he opens his eyes again, letting them focus a moment on the bulky wardrobe opposite his bed, aged and obviously the purchase of some long-past owner of the house. The surface of the wood is pitted and scratched, scarred from the wear of years. On its often-stuck door, warped by time and moisture, are a few old star-shaped stickers he placed there one long afternoon, searching for anything at all to do other than schoolwork, or sitting still thinking.
       The anger in him has settled down to an uncomfortable simmer in the pit of his stomach, calm for the moment but capable of boiling over again without warning. His fist is closed around a bit of his sheets, clenching and unclenching the wad of thin fabric, refusing to let spill over the hot tears which he would rather die than let anyone see.
       "I hate it here, I hate everything. I can't do anything." His voice is constricted in his tightened throat, and muffled by the arm his face is hidden behind. he understands why they changed his school - the fights were starting to break out every day, and there were so many stories circulating around town about how many drugs were sold each day, but--- Knowing the reasons doesn't make change any easier.
       "I was doing just fine, now I don't know anyone and they all look at me like I'm too far beneath them to even acknowledge, which I am. Wish I could just take them all on and beat the living---"
       "Rich? Rich, will you unlock the door? I---"
       "No." His response is as sharp and abrupt as the rap on the door had been.
       A heavy sigh, and a gentle thud as she leans against the outside of the door. "Rich, I'm not trying to---"
       "Yes you are, you're never not stepping in and trying to control my life, just leave, alright?" The effort he puts in to keep his words civil is audible, his teeth set on edge and his muscles tightening. His chest and stomach ache from having been tensed so long, but he can't let go, there is no vent for it.
       Softer, almost chastened, sad but understanding: "Alright. ...but, Rich, just know... we don't try to make your life difficult. We care, we're only doing what we think is for the best... I know it sounds like a line but I mean it. I'm sorry if we make mistakes, we're not perfect..." It is safer to say "we", the blame becomes shared, and the guilt does not weigh as heavily on a mother's heart for having caused her son pain. She knows he is angry, but she does not know how to help him, with an overwhelming helplessness that seeps out in hot tears onto her pillow each night. She is afraid, and worried, and each time she sees another sullen glare, her heart breaks for the happy child he once was, and that she knows yet lies within him.
       If she could bear his anger for him, she would do so without hesitation. But such is not to be, he must learn his own means of living. She can not help him.
       "Yeah, yeah..." he mutters, but with less venom than before. He knows she tries - but he also knows how she fails. He listens vaguely as footsteps recede down the hallway. Slowly sitting up, he stretches, and finds the tenseness a slight portion lessened. Grabbing his book bag from where it lay on the floor, he hefts it into his lap and rummages inside. There are countless loose sheets of paper, unused looseleaf, torn notebook pages, Xerox copies and worksheets, a few carefully typed sheets with the administration's letterhead which his parents have never seen. A battered notebook, a few scattered pens and pencils, the ends chewed upon, caps and erasers long-gone. The remainders of a pack of pack, half a dozen empty rappers. Some folded notes, scraps with phone numbers and addresses scrawled on them, names of bands drawn out across ragged margins. A comb, a pocketknife, a small bag of cookie crumbs.
       He finds the scrap of paper he was searching for, and pins it to the wall beside his bed, between newspaper clippings and lewd drawings. Flopping back onto the bed, head falling back onto the pillow, he exhales deeply, trying to let go of the day's troubles - but they return as soon as he draws breath again, filling his tired mind as oxygen fills his tired blood.
       School. The drudgery, the endless routine, expecting of all students things only a few are capable of, the dull conformity of the minds around him. The students will talk only of their own petty social affairs, the teachers will talk only of what one textbook espouses, and no-one at all willing to consider what is outside of their pristine system of thought. The most "rebellious" thing any of the kids at this new school do is dip into their parents' alcohol cabinets every now and again, or smoke outside the school walls. Imitative little pushover pretenders, none of them truly wanted to be outside of their self-indulgent self-aggrandizing social ladder.
       He doesn't ever register on their ladder, he is a black cat which prowls beneath it.
       The art classes focus on still-lifes, the literature classes on the classics, the science classes on time-tested ideas, history on the successions of kings and presidents, everything in the whole of the old building reeking of established tradition and stagnant modes of thought, too bloated from feeding on the same notions for a hundred years to be able to move on to new things.
       Forced early mornings, endless grey hours pent up inside a stuffy old building, made to listen for an hour when he knows after five minutes he will need the information for an exam and then never again... Watching everyone form groups and alliances, friendships and romances, all to the mutual exclusion of himself. By the time he reaches home, his only desire is sleep and idle distraction, school and homework do not engage his mind, only numb it and leave it empty. Weekends are too short to be a true respite; by the time he is his own self again, it is Sunday evening and he must return to schoolwork again.
       Rolling onto his stomach, he fumbles beneath his mattress, pulling out a pack of cigarettes his parents would never guess that he has. He pushes up the window, then reaches over to the too-small desk near the head of his bed. Sharply twisting the stereo knob to turn up the radio, he then reaches behind it and a few old Coke bottles to grab a lighter.
       Leaning against the window, he lights the cigarette, re-hides the lighter and rests the cigarette between his lips. Inhaling slowly, he closes his eyes, letting the familiar heat and acrid smoke scald his mouth, throat and nose. He sighs with parted lips, the smoke warming his face and hand before being drawn out the window. The afternoon disk jockey at last finishes his weak attempts at humor and puts on another record.
       "Hell yeah..." he murmurs, the opening notes falling against his consciousness, soothing as warm summer rain. The bass comes in, a pause, and the full band rushes into the vacuum the moment's silence had created, raw emotion pouring into a void, pouring into the emptiness in his life as the nicotine into his veins. "God, I needed this..."
       He knows he will not be disturbed until dinnertime, once his door is locked and his music turned up. They no longer bother to try, knowing that only base physical needs will lure him from his room now.
       This is the one place that he lives, in the smoke and power chords, in the passionate cries, his own throat parched from the smoke, though he feels it is from screaming with the singer's voice, heart flying out past his lips into the open stratosphere of song.
       No longer do his many concerns haunt him, his world is only song, and here he feels at rest through the audible pulls and pushes of unleashed emotion. His anger is crowded out by the passions of sound, and floats away on the smoke, which creeps out the window and soaks into its wooden frame, leaving gradual stains on the wall and ceiling.
       And for once, the sense of prior lives, more attached to the room's walls than he, does not trouble him. his own emotions have blended into the layers of lives lived in this room, his is but one soul of many. And rather than feeling an unwanted outsider, for once he feels included, a part of some larger continuity. And perhaps it is only the song, but...
       He lets his eyes drift along the window frame for a long moment, gradually allowing them to follow the fading wisps of smoke which trace almost indiscernible paths out into the world... and it almost feels he might find a way to follow them.