The Innards of a Frog - a short story

Adam took his scalpel and dissected the frog exactly as he was told, and labeled its insides as he was suppose to.  He did this properly, with patience, with understanding.  He did this as he imagined he would, cool, calculated.  After the class was over he packed his things into his locker, and prepared for the ride home.  On the bus he thought about the dissection.  He began crying, and he did not know why.  The tears were suddenly bursting through him.  He wiped them quickly so he could hide them from the people behind, in front, and next to him, and to shield them from the bus drivers eyes in the rear view mirror as she inspected the obnoxious teenagers.  No sobs were coming from his lips, no lump formed in his throat, just those waterfall of tears streaming down his cheeks, bursting forth from his eye lids.  Why was this happening, he pondered.  Truth was he couldn't comprehend the cutting of the frog to be the source.  How could it be?  He didn't flinch as he thought about it, his thoughts were stable before hand, the animal was dead after all.  No, it couldn't be the frog. 
As he stepped off the bus Adam's tears had subsided but his thoughts on the matter had not.  They were still a flood of wonderment to him.  So random and bizzare were these tears that they surely, truly, could not have belong to his body.  They were a foreign substance inside of him that his body must have been rejecting, and needed to remove, like a splinter that his finger would push out.  These tears were not true tears he decided. 
This solution worked through dinner, that silent ritual his single mother put him through.  Now she was a crier after every meal the familiar click of the lock in her bedroom door singling her misery to young Adam. Tonight would be no different, he could feel it.  She slowly cut her steak, slowly chewed it, slowly swallowed it, slowly waited to continue the scene.  And then the tears returned.  Adam under no control of his own rattled the familiar scene. His mother became alive, concerned, she asked him what was wrong, wiped her mouth with her napkin and stood by his shoulder.  "Adam whats the matter?" she repeated.
"Nothing mom, it's silly."  He smiled wiping the tears from his eyes.  He looked strong and confident, just the way he felt, but the tears were a signal of weakness.  His eyes bursting with that familiar ritual that drop like rain down his face, to his chin, on his shirt, or on his plate.  A flood.  
He knew his mom didn't believe him, "You can tell me sweety.  You know that you can tell me anything.  I want you to tell me."  He looked into her eyes, she really did, she wanted to know.  He saw in her eyes she wanted an excuse to get rid of herself, to escape her memories.
Memories of fists, of screaming voices.  Memories of blood.  Memories of pain, lost love, lost hope.  A dream like nightmare, someone she loved with all her heart whom even after he made her lose his baby sister, she stayed with.  "We dissected a frog."
"Oh you poor child.  How could they make you do such a horrible thing?"  She was horrified, cutting into animals.
"I guess it just affected me.  The poor thing."  He said lying through his teeth.  The poor thing had been dead, was always dead, if it had a soul it was long lost, probably in distress that its body was being used for nothing more than a science experiment for people who would never use the information for anything.  That poor thing, Adam laughed in his head.  The tears were stopping again.
"Maybe you should go to bed early, sleep it off.  And remember, I know your older, but I can help Adam, I can help."  He knew she needed to feel useful, he knew she longed for conversation, he knew she needed it.
"I know mom."  He said, standing up to take her advice, he went to his room but did not sleep.
Most of the night he laid there, staring at the ceiling dreaming of ways he could see the future in it.  It was  blank slate, white, free.  An open canvas, and when he thought about escaping he wanted to cry.  He wanted to burst into sobs, and reflect on the misery he went through, and that his mother was punished with.  But now when he thought of the things that hurt the most, he could not cry.  He could not when he wanted it to happen, the tears were absent, they'd skipped school.  And this, this made him angry.
The next day at school he looked over his notes for the frog dissection, he studied, and he took the test.  On the bus he didn't cry.  At home, he did not cry, but his mother did.  Adam was irritated, after another week, he couldn't cry. A bitterness started to grow.
The weekend came, he found himself climbing out in the woods on the tallest trees he could find, like he was a young child again.  Alone, no one to dare him, to challenge him, no one to be a winner or a loser in a foot race, a climbing race, a race of wits.  He was by himself, with nature. 
The thought entered his mind gradually, like a worm emerging from the earth after a cold rainy day.  He jumped from the trees and made his way down to the creek.  As the night approached he could hear the croaking of toads, the chirp of frogs, echoing, deafening.  A horrid song, sung by horrid ugly, slimy disgusting little amphibians.  With a rush of naughtiness he searched for one of these chorus singers, he pushed away grass, pushed away slime.  Frantically he sought his victim.  And then there it was, a big one, a massive one, adult, warty.  It was a massive toad.  But it resembled the toad next to his petri dish almost exactly.  He lunged at it, and it hopped away, he lunged at it again with his open hand.  Again he hopped forward. 
He gave up, and slammed his booted foot down on its back.  It cracked.  When he raised his foot he stared at its smashed body, the guts oozing from its mouth, and he felt nothing.
When he made it back to the house eatin to death by mosquitoes, scratching and poking where they'd eatin his blood, he sat to dinner.  Like his mother he was silent, rigid, white, pale, uninterested, distracted by his plate.  He ate his ear of corn slowly, unlike the usual race to finish.  He dropped it from his mouth to the plate with a thud.
"Mom?"  He finally said cutting the solid air with his words.
She reacted as if prompted several times instead of the once, "Yes honey?"
"What's wrong with me?"
She shook her head, "Is that frog still bothering you?"
He shook his head.
"Oh."  She stood up and walked over to him, she grabbed his plate and put it in the sink.  "You need to be more specific Adam."  She came back to him and kneeled at his side.
"I think I'm broken."  He said.  Still a blank look of nothing on his face.
"Oh sweetheart, you are not broken."
"Why can't I feel?"
She poked him with her finger, "You feel that don't you?"  she tilted her head and smiled.
"I don't feel bad.  I don't feel sad.  I don't feel happy.  I don't feel good.  I feel angry.  But I cry.  Why do I cry if I feel nothing?"  He looked at her, with neither concern or worry on his face.  He asked the question, but didn't look like it.
She didn't say anything, her smile faded away.  "I don't know."
He stood up and walked to his room, leaving her in the kitchen just staring at him as he walked away.  On his ceiling he couldn't see shapes anymore, in fact he couldn't see anything but the gray shadow on his white canvas, the white invisible now in this light.  Where were they now?
The next morning he woke, cooked toast, ate it, went to school, studied, came home.  He looked for his mother.  His mother was nowhere.  She was gone.  Her suitcase was gone.  Her clothing almost all gone.  He opened the bathroom slowly and checked the tub, but she was gone.
That's when he saw him.  He saw him in the mirror, staring him down.  He saw his father teary eyed, as Adam stared back blank, emotionless. Then his father began laughing, and Adam stared back, blank, emotionless.
"Are you coming to eat Adam?" his mother said from the door way.