A Loner Mentalist Pt. 01

"It doesn't matter, Son. That was his dream, his life's goal when he sacrificed himself for me. That was the future he had given up when he gave me mine and that is the future I will make true for us both."

"But, Dad... what about me? You, you only married Mom and had me because he had saved you. You said so yourself! What about me, Dad?"

"You're a man grown, Jack. You don't need me."

"Don't say that, Dad! I need you. Of course I do."

After a long pause, his dad said, "Son, I've thought this through and this is the best for all of us."

The terrible guilt Jack had felt over not telling his father about Mark had been banished by the revelation that his dad didn't really didn't want him around. The emotional void was now filled up with anger. "Is that so, Bert? Is that the best for all of us?"

"Yes, Jack. One day, I think you'll look back on this day, without the emotional baggage of today, and you'll agree with me."

"No, Bert," Jack said. "I agree with you right now."

"You do?" his father asked, sounding surprised.

"Yes, Bert. Me going with Mom is the best for us all. You don't love her and she doesn't love you, so it makes sense to get a divorce."

"We'll always-"

"And you don't care about me, Bert," Jack said, interrupting him, "and I don't care about you, either, so it makes sense for you to dump me on her, I guess."

"Jack!"

"The only problem is that Mom and I don't care about each other either, so I guess that's going to be bad for the two of us. But hey! At least you get to pursue the dreams of a dead guy, right? That's gotta count for something!"

"You don't mean that," his dad softly said.

"And how would you know that, Bert? Goodbye!" Jack hung up and ran upstairs to cry.

The court awarded full custody of Jack to Janice. Knowing that neither parent really cared about him, Jack wasn't bothered by it.Well, Janice must care about me a little, he thought.Why else would she not tell Bert that I had known about Mark for years? He had humiliated her during the divorce proceedings, she would have fought back with everything she had. That thought made the whole thing much more bearable for him.

Once the divorce was final, Janice's beau, Mark, dropped her like a hot potato. She was left jobless and all alone, with no friends, or relatives to speak of. Just Jack. The alimony Bert was paying her for Jack was too small to do anything with it and it would stop on his eighteenth birthday, so she needed to get a full-time job.

She couldn't find a job in their town, mainly cause its existence revolved around the naval base and everyone hated her for betraying her husband. She moved them to a smaller town where she managed to get a job as a cashier at a supermarket. The only thing that Jack hated about the move was the fact that after six years in the same crowd, he had finally managed to shake off the results of his first day incident. He had qualified for his school's basketball team and was on the verge of getting with a girl.

In the new town and new school, he was the outsider and had to start from scratch. The school had a stellar reputation and the statistics to match it. It was amongst the leading in the state with regards to discipline and was reputed to have a harmonious student body. The school's reputation gave Jack hope that his social status could be radically improved.

Their varsity basketball team was a fixture of state playoffs, unlike his previous school, so he knew they were definitely too good for him to join. He hadn't been a starter on his old school's team and he didn't even bother trying out for this one.

He kept up with his dog training and studying and it took him a while to get his bearings and try to find his place in the new environment. Despite its reputation, it was quite hectic for a newcomer like Jack. He might have had a chance to reinvent himself and establish a new, more impressive social identity, but a gaggle of girls from school saw him walking around town with a blindfold, being led by a German shepherd he was training to be a guide dog.

Perhaps it had simply been a slow day for gossip and fun, or the sight of a kid their age doing something useful to others was offensive to the girls. Whatever the reason, they decided to mock him and his efforts. They snuck up behind him and made faces while one of them snapped photos from in front of him. Jack was training the dog to ignore such distractions and it did. The girls flashed their bra clad breasts and held up gang signs right behind an oblivious Jack.

The photos were online and seen by most of the school before he even came home that evening. He didn't know about it until the whole school was laughing at him the next day. He was labeled Dog Boy and the entire student body had fun at his expense for weeks. Every time he walked down the school corridors, they would mimic the funny poses and faces the girls had made behind his back. When he sought out help from the school counselor and the vice principal, he saw the lie the school's reputation was built on.

The school's administrators never acted on any kind of complaint from any of the students and never reported them to any authorities, either. Instead, they bullied the students who dared speak up and forced them to keep quiet and "not make trouble", insisting their chances of an academic future would be ruined. This resulted in an impeccable disciplinary record for the school and a complete nightmare for most of the students that attended it. For the bullies, however, the place was El Dorado.

The administration and the students exiled him to the fringes of the school's social structure. Finding a girlfriend was utterly impossible, which was doubly frustrating to him, since there were pretty girls everywhere. They habitually wore little, and what they wore was more revealing than not. Every day, hot chicks would walk right past him, like he wasn't even there. They were within arm's reach, but they may as well have been on another planet, for all the good that did him.

Even looking too hard could get him into trouble. He wasn't a pervert that ogled every girl in sight, but he could hardly stop himself from stealing a few longing glances, every now and then. Most of the girls had boyfriends, particularly the hot ones that showed skin even in winter. Most of those boyfriends were ok guys that didn't overreact to seeing another guy checking their girlfriends out, but the jocks were a whole different story. Checking out their girlfriends, which were hands down the hottest ones in the school, routinely got you jumped and beaten up after school.

Jack didn't want trouble. He kept his head down, studied as hard as he could with all that beauty around him, trained his dogs, and tried to work on his mental power.

His dog training hadn't been a paying gig, at first. The charity merely supplied the puppy and the cash for the necessary chow and veterinarian bills. However, his power allowed him to train dogs faster than any regular dog trainer could and he could also train a dozen dogs at the same time, while a regular trainer could only split their time between a few. His ability was soon noticed by a private security firm. After he showed them what he could do with a dog, they hired him to train guard dogs for their clients.

One day at school, the quarterback saw Jack gazing at his girlfriend's ass encased in skintight jeans. He promptly strode over to Jack and slammed him against his locker. A teacher heard the noise and walked towards them, making the six-and-a-half foot tall beefcake back off, but not before whispering, "Outside, loser," in Jack's ear. Jack skipped last period that day and ducked out of school early. He went home and trained two German shepherds to follow Spot. He trained Spot to lead them to his school, just in time to greet him at the front door when he got out of classes.

When Jack left school the next day, the quarterback and his posse were waiting for him. They were spread around, in case he tried to make a run for it. Instead, Jack walked right for the quarterback, whistling a happy tune. The rest of the mouthbreathers slowly converged on him, discreetly hemming him in towards their leader. Jack wondered if they trained the maneuver during football practice.

He soon found himself surrounded by a wall of plus-sized letterman jackets and facing the quarterback. "You're new, ain'tcha," the quarterback asked. "That's ok, loser. I'm gonna teach you how things go around here and you're gonna thank me when we're done."

"Nope," Jack calmly said and snapped his fingers. At the sound of the snap, the three dogs no one had noticed padding over began growling menacingly.

The jocks jumped in their skins and spun to face the dogs. The German shepherds had their giant fangs out on display as they snarled at them. Their growls were the low, dangerous rumbles that started in the back of the throat and threatened to end up in the back of someone else's throat. Spot, on the other hand, had his teeth hidden and displayed some of his pedigree as he kept his head low and shot them the intimidating look Border Collies were famous for. It was actually scarier than the shepherds' display, Jack had to concede, as it made Spot look positively deranged.

The jocks froze in place and slowly raised their hands in a gesture of peace and surrender. Jack shoved the quarterback to the side and strode past him before turning around and facing the jocks with his shepherds at his sides. Spot stood in front of Jack, still staring up at the quarterback's wide eyes with a glare that might as well be from the Grim Reaper itself. Jack had to bite his lip to keep from laughing at the looks on their faces.

Jack reminded himself he was there to intimidate, not humiliate. Training dogs had taught him that intimidating a pack leader amended the hierarchy of the pack, with the former alpha becoming number two. Humiliating a pack leader ran the risk of the former leader being turned out of the pack altogether and running rabid. Jack wanted the jocks to fear messing with him. Nothing more. He looked away from their silver dollar sized eyes and exorcised the smug sneer from his face before clearing his throat to catch their attentions. They weren't even looking at him, they were staring at the snarling dogs around him.

"Hey, hey," the quarterback whispered in a terrified tone of voice, "let's be cool, Dog Boy and..."

"Shut up," Jack commanded, "and hold still!"

"Whuh, wh-why," one of the scared jocks asked.

"So my dogs can sniff you," Jack said. He snapped his fingers again and the shepherds stopped growling. "They're gonna get your scent and memorize it." The shepherds stepped towards each jock before them and took a good sniff of their groins. "These are two of the attack dogs I train for Alpha Security Solutions. These two were actually rejected for excessive aggression. If anything should happen to me, they'll find you and bite your faces off. As well as a few other things." The dogs finished sniffing all the jocks and returned to flank Jack. "Are we clear here?" The jocks just stared at the menacing dogs before them. "I said, are we clear here?!"

The jocks squealed out a bunch of whiny affirmations. "Then we're done," Jack said. He snapped his fingers again and the three dogs barked and fainted a lunge towards the jocks. The jocks shrieked in terror, turned and ran. Jack smirked and petted Spot before turning around to go home.

His little escapade didn't result in any disciplinary action, nor was he sent to the Vice Principal's office. Either the teachers weren't told about it, or they chose to ignore it, like they ignored all the bullying the school was rife with. Jack didn't get away with his little stunt, however. There were repercussions. Everyone was talking about the crazy stunt Dog Boy pulled off. Jack hadn't known about this at first, since everyone just shut up around him, as they usually did.

The only people talking to him were his new friends John, Steve and Rob. Those three had sought Jack out as soon as they heard of the confrontation. The four of them bonded over their shared love of comics, but Jack didn't really go into any of the other things they were into, namely video games. He showed them his work with dogs, greatly impressing them. Though they weren't exactly Four Musketeer material, Jack was grateful for their friendship. The three of them explained to Jack that he was envied by the rest of the student body, because they all felt that he was better than them. They also hated him for that and they called him Dog Boy to make themselves feel better.

Even though Jack had been taught by his father that bullies always lashed out at those they felt were better than them, he could scarcely believe his situation. He doubted it, at first, but the boys pointed out proof after proof, convincing him that everyone else felt inferior next to him. They said they fully understood his situation since the student body had also felt inferior next to the boys' intellects. They, too, had been picked on.

"Wait," Jack said, "had been picked on? As in,you no longer are?"

The guys nodded and Steve said, "Yeah, dude. No one picks on us anymore."

"Wow," Jack said. "That's great! How, uh, how did that happen?"

"We did this... sort of grassroots campaign," John said. "It changed everyone's minds about us."

"Tell me more," Jack said.

"See, you can't go around arguing to defend yourself from bullies," Rob said. "That only makes you seem more confrontational and it makes the conflict between yourself and the bullies cement itself in everyone's minds."

"Yeah, you don't want that," John said, shaking his head.

"What you need to do is approach every single one of the people that are either bullying you, or indifferent to the whole thing," Rob said. "You have to get them when they're alone and amenable to having their minds changed, i.e., when they're not pissed off about anything. You engage them in polite conversation and get humanized in their eyes. You have to make them acknowledge to themselves that what's being done to you is wrong. After that, the situation pretty much fixes itself."

"That makes total sense," Jack said. "Who should I start with?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, man," John exclaimed. "You can't go around doing that!"

"What?! You just said that I-"

"Not you personally," Rob said. "If you go talk to a bully, they're not going to listen to you, are they? No, they'll just see it as the next round of your conflict. No resolution, no progress."

"And if you go talk to a neutral," John said, "then you'll come across as needy. Nothing turns people off you as quickly as desperation."

Jack folded his arms across his chest. "I'm hearing a catch-22. I don't like catch-22 situations. How did you guys do it, if you couldn't go talk to people?"

"We got others to talk for us," John said, smiling.

"Do you remember that movie 'American Pie', where the dorky guy pays a girl to talk him up with all the other girls, so he could get laid?" Steve asked Jack.

Jack nodded. As a big fan of Alyson Hannigan, he had seen all the American Pie movies, though he hadn't found them to be particularly funny, or good.

"Well, it was like that," Rob said. "We paid a bunch of people to go talk to others on our behalf and, after a lot of time and effort and money, it worked. No one is picking on us anymore."

"I got money," Jack said. "I can pay! Who are these people? Tell me their names! I'm hiring them right away!"

His friends looked at each other before Rob said, "Uh, they've graduated!" John and Steve nodded. "They graduated. They were seniors. We hired the seniors to talk on our behalf, cause everyone listens to what the seniors say."

"Yeah, man," John said, "the seniors rule the school."

Jack sighed. So close. "Do you know anyone in the current senior class who could do this kind of campaign for me?"

"No," John said. "But we can do you one better than that!"

"What do you have in mind?" Jack asked.

"Us, man," John said and spread his arms. "We can do the campaign for you!" Rob and Steve smiled and nodded.

"Seriously? You guys would do that for me?"

"Hell, yeah," Steve said. "You don't even have to ask. We're on it, dude!"

Jack smiled and then said, "Wait! Can you guys even do the campaign? No offense, but, uh..."

"Chillax," Rob said. "The three of us masterminded our own campaign. The seniors were only mouthpieces. They approached whom we said and spoke the words we came up with."

"And it totally worked, man," John said. "We're three of the guys now. We can do this thing for you. Trust us!"

Jack had spent years being on the bottom rung of his old school's social structure, so he didn't feel very confident with his interpersonal skills. He nodded. "Ok. You're hired! How much do I pay you?" His friends looked at one another again and seemed to hesitate. "And what will I be doing while you're talking me up?"

"Nothing," John said. "You'll do nothing."

"No, but, when I meet someone from school around town, or when I'm alone with them inside the school, what then?" Jack asked.

"Nothing," John said.

"I just ignore them?" Jack asked. "Doesn't that work against me? Don't they already think that I think I'm above them? Won't that just make me seem more haughty?"

Rob put a hand on Jack's shoulder and quietly said, "No, look! The kids at school envy you. Right?" Jack nodded. "They think you're better than them. That makes them defensive around you, right off the bat. Whatever you say to them, they'll judge it through the lens of your perceived superiority. Anything you say, any way you act, they'll misinterpret."

"Yeah," John said. "If you act nicely, they'll go, 'oh, look at that superior asshole, acting all nice, like the dog training and the money and the independence weren't enough to make me feel bad about myself, already'. And if you act like a jerk, they'll just say, 'well, he might be rich and important, but he's a total douchebag'."

"If I acted nice, they'd feel worse about themselves?" Jack asked. "What the hell?"

"Teenagers don't need an excuse to feel bad about themselves, but they'll take one in a heartbeat," Rob said. "And they'll cling to it."

"Whatever you say, you'll just be digging yourself deeper into the hole," John said.

"The only way you can act around others that will work to your benefit is to be aloof," Rob said. "It's the exact opposite of being desperate."

"Yeah," John said. "As soon as people realize you don't need them, they feel the need to be around you."

"It's crazy, but it's true," Rob said. "You can see it in the way chicks keep falling for assholes that don't appreciate them."

Jack nodded to himself. Everything they said made sense. "Ok, I guess I'm convinced. We'll do this your way. I'll hang back and wait for them to come to me." He frowned. "But, seriously? They think that I feel superior to them?"

"Yeah, dude," Steve said and gestured. "Lookit the dogs, dawg! Lookit-"

"No," John firmly said, holding up a finger at Steve. "No ghetto talk!" Steve shut up and gave a sheepish smile.

"So, I guess you'll really be doing this for me," Jack said. "I want you to know that I appreciate this, you guys. I really do. It means the world to me. Now, how much do I have to pay you for the campaign efforts?" The three guys looked at each other uncomfortably. "Seriously, just name your price!"

Rob wiped his chin and said, "Look, we're friends. We're doing this for you, not for money. Let's just leave it at that."

"No, I don't feel right about that," Jack said. "I mean, you guys are going to spend a lot of your free time doing this and you should be compensated for that."

"Tell you what," John said. "You buy us some new comics every month and we'll call it even!" Rob and Steve eagerly agreed.