Chester Junior Cunningham

Gotham Elementary

Gotham Elementary

Fifth grade was a strange and turbulent time at Gotham Elementary.  We were about to enter the world of junior high school, where we would practically be adults.  The boys were starting to notice the girls and the girls had long since noticed the boys.  The city was in the grip of a crime wave and stories made their way to our ears of the violence at Gotham Junior High.  As the end of the school year approached, we were all on edge.

Nowhere was the dark pall that hung over Ms. Cunningham’s class more apparent than in the seething animosity between two of its most peculiar students, Bruce and Chester.  Bruce was a dark, brooding boy who usually sat by himself at lunch and often spent recess punching and kicking trees while the other kids played on the jungle gym.  He had gone to a private academy in fourth grade but was kicked out for behavioral problems.  The rumor was that he had broken the arm of a bully who had been picking on him.  Before Bruce arrived in Mrs. Everly’s fourth-grade class the year before, Chester had been its undisputed king, reigning over the rest of us with his charisma as class clown.  Within a week of Bruce’s first day of class, though, there was an incident.  Chester walked over to him during recess and said something.  None of us ever found out what it was, but Bruce responded by punching him square in the jaw.  He fell to the ground and howled.  This howl of his, it sounded inhuman, like he was a feral child who had been raised by wolves.

None of us quite looked at Chester the same after that.  Instead of being admired for his cleverness, he was teased as a crybaby.  Some of the other boys, smelling blood, began picking on him ferociously.  It became more and more common for him to show up to class with a bloody lip or a black eye.  Even the class egghead, Edward, made up riddles taunting him.

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