Hurt People part 3

Once, I was out walking with Jackson, the boy who used to do puzzles. His parents put him in a different school, not because he was gifted, which he was, but because he was bullied in our elementary school. Well we were walking down our street when we ran into Benny, whose parents always just let him wander the city unsupervised. Because he wasn’t from our school, Jackson never met Benny before. I tried to be friendly as he approached us, but before long Benny was messing with Jackson. Sometimes Jackson missed social cues and Benny got a kick out of it. Benny didn’t care much for rules but Jackson was pretty rigid and took things very seriously. I guess I should have known they wouldn’t have mixed well. Jackson didn’t really understand when Benny was being sarcastic, and he kind of poked fun at him for it. The thing is, Benny was never really malicious so much as he was apathetic. I was used to just saying something rude right back at him, which always made him laugh. But if your feelings were hurt, he’d laugh at you, because you weren’t as apathetic as he was. The more Benny laughed, the angrier Jackson became, and the angrier he got, the more Benny made fun of him. I felt so awkward, I was frozen in the face of the conflict. I hate that. I just kept saying lighthearted jokes trying to ease the tension. Eventually I said, “Look, I’ll have to see you guys another day. Right now, I’m with Jackson, so Benny, I’ll see you at school.” Then Jackson and I went back home to his house.