by Eric Bell
When I catch up with Zack later, he practically runs me over with a bear hug steamroller. I give him back his rock. “Thanks,” I say. “I think it helped.”
Zack shakes his head. “That was all you.”
And in the end, as word spreads throughout Evergreen one more time about Mr. Where-Do-Babies-Come-From, I didn’t do it for CvC. I didn’t do it to impress Nathan or to make Madison happy. I did it because I wanted to do it. Because, after twelve years of looking down, I wanted to look up at the world for once, to see the world head-on, to not be afraid. That’s the real test I took today, and I passed it with flying colors.
TWENTY
It’s right before lunch, right after art, and I’m at my locker getting my books ready for the second half of the day, when my open locker door slams shut, nearly crushing my fingers.
“What,” Nathan says, speaking very precisely, “do you think you’re doing?”
I look up. “I’m stopping you. Once and for all. If I need to win CvC to do it, then that’s what I’ll do.”
“You?” Nathan spits, taking his hand from my locker. “You can’t stop me. You think you’re so smart—you think you’re so tough—I’ll destroy you, goldfish.”
“Nathan,” a voice behind my brother says.
Marcellus places a hand on Nathan’s shoulder, but Nathan shrugs him off. “Don’t you start,” Nathan growls. “You had one job, Marcellus! You needed to make sure Boy Blunder here didn’t learn to swim! And he did! He learned! He—”
“Leave the kid alone,” Marcellus says evenly. “He worked hard. Let him have it.”
“Let him—are you out of your mind?” Nathan whirls around, facing his only friend. “Whose side are you on? You probably helped him learn behind my back, just—just because!”
Marcellus’s stoic face shifts. Kids in the hall slow down and stop as Nathan gets louder and more agitated.
“Alan, what’s going on?” Madison asks, coming up the hall with Zack. Madison stops when he sees Nathan.
“Hi,” Zack says. “You must be Alan’s brother. It’s nice to meet you. From the front, I guess.”
Nathan growls again. “You’re stupid. You’re all stupid. Stupid Al with his stupid friends and his stupid swimming and his stupid everything. I won’t lose to you, you little—” Nathan suddenly stops, seemingly aware of all the people watching him.
Madison draws himself up to his full height. “Nathan Cole, I don’t care what petty, jealous thugs like you think of me. Do your worst.” He crosses his arms and stares right into my brother’s eyes.
“Petty,” Nathan whispers. “Jealous?” He looks around the hall, calculating, number crunching.
“If I were you, Nathan,” Miss Richter says, coming out of her room, holding her tote bag, extendable pointer poking out of the top, “I’d walk away. Fast.”
The crowd whispers, the crowd points, the crowd watches. I take a step toward my brother. “It’s over,” I say.
Nathan’s voice trembles a little. “Not yet. Good luck reaching into that stupid vending machine to get your stupid paper, or getting a stupid kiss, you stupid—”
“What did I just say?” Miss Richter says, setting down her bag. “Move it along, and leave my students alone.”
Good luck reaching into that stupid vending machine.
It can’t be. It can’t . . . is it . . . really that easy?
No, of course not. He had to put something on the tip to make it stick, and that’s why the paper is so dirty, to hide the actual stain. He planned it all out to confuse me. Well, I’m not confused anymore.
Miss Richter tells Nathan to get lost or he’s getting a detention, and Nathan stammers something about me, and Marcellus keeps putting his hand on Nathan’s shoulder, and most of the crowd still hovers around because they smell blood in the air, and Madison and Zack flank me like they’re bodyguards, and Mrs. Ront tries to take all these kids clogging up the hall and scatter them to the winds, and as for me? I dash over to Miss Richter’s bag and grab her extendable pointer stick while she’s busy with Nathan. Then I look into the crowd and sure enough, there’s Connor, poking his head up behind a Shrub’s shoulders to watch whatever’s going to happen.
I run up to him. “Need your gum.”
“Huh?” he asks.
“No time to explain. Just—can you spit out your gum? And give it to me?”
Connor gives me a weird look, and Ron yells, “Come on, fight that other kid already! I got five bucks on you going down in ten seconds,” and next thing I know Connor’s handing me a used gum wrapper.
“Whatever you’re doing,” Connor says over the noise, “you better hurry. Your brother looks mad.”
Sure enough, Nathan is still being chewed out by Miss Richter, but he looks like he’s ready to bark back at her any second. He’s still not paying attention to me—matter of fact, everyone’s focused on watching my brother get lectured by a teacher, everyone except Zack and Madison. “What are you doing?” Madison asks me as I walk a few feet down the hall. “Are you running aw—”
Zack watches me stick Connor’s chewed-up gum to the tip of the pointer stick, and grins. Madison, too, figures it out as I approach the vending machine. “Wow,” he murmurs.
After a good bit of maneuvering, I wiggle the pointer stick inside the machine. I hit the button to make it extend—come on—almost there—
“Hey, everybody,” Ron yells. “Cole’s trying to break into that vending machine.”
Now the crowd’s attention snaps back to me. “Stop!” Nathan cries. “Stop it! Don’t do that!”
My arm starts to cramp up from the angle—almost got it that time—come on—come on come on come on—
“Stop!” Nathan yells, dashing down the hall, darting through other kids. “Stop stop stop stop stoooooop!”
Then, with a faint crinkling noise, the gum latches onto the paper. I pull everything out of the machine, a great smile across my face.
“Yeah!” Zack pumps his fist, and Madison gasps, and someone yells, “Whoa!” and someone else yells, “Ew!” and there’s clapping and cheering. Nathan’s now three feet from me. His knees get weak; his shoulders sag. He looks down. I peel the paper off the gum and hand it to him.
The crowd is mostly silent, but there’s a low hum in the air, a crackle, like when lightning’s about to strike in a still lake.
Stuck behind two Shrubs, Talia attempts to step forward. “I hope you’re all happy now. That paper is gone, so now there’s no reason to keep the machine around. As Sapling class president, it will be—”
Low chuckling cuts Talia off. “Is that it?” my brother growl-whispers, standing up straight again. “Is that all you’ve got?”
Against the wall, Miss Richter nods to a third teacher, who takes off down the hall, toward Principal Dorset’s office.
“That’s it,” Nathan says. He looks up, and in his eyes there’s rage and flame like I’ve never seen before. “I’m telling.”
My stomach flips over. “What?”
“I’m telling,” Nathan says. “I’m tired of keeping my promises. What good’s it ever done me? I just want to destroy you, you stupid goldfish. It’s all your fault. So I’ll do it. I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them all. Then won’t you be sorry you thought you were smarter than me?” He holds the last word out, screeches it, lets it linger.
“You can’t—you’ve never—you said—you can’t—”
“Oh yeah?” my brother says. “Watch me.”
I freeze.
He grins a devil’s grin, licking his lips. “May the best Cole win.”
Sometimes, some things need to be done. Sometimes they’re not obvious, sometimes they’re not pleasant. Right now, in the hallway of Evergreen Middle School, with an entire army of kids watching, it’s not the most obvious thing to do. It’s one of the most terrifying things to do.
It needs to be done. I guess usually what you need to do isn’t always the same as what you want to do. But now I know what I need to do.
Maybe, deep down, I want to do it too.
I look back at Zack, clearly on the same wavelength, and he gives me a thumbs-up.
So I take a step away from Nathan, into the crowd, toward one kid standing against the wall.
“What’s going on?” Connor asks.
In . . . out . . . in . . . out . . . in . . . ignore everyone watching me . . . ignore my gut tumbling around . . . in . . . out . . . in . . . “I have to tell you something.”
“Uh, okay,” Connor says. “Can it wait until lunch? I mean, it’s cool you got that thing out of the machine and all, but you can keep the gum—”
“Itsgottobenow,” I say as one big word. In . . . out . . . in—out—in—out—“Connor—I—”
“Okay,” Miss Richter calls over the crowd. “Anyone still here in fifteen seconds is getting a detenti—”
“I like you.”
A hush falls over the crowd.
Connor blinks. “Huh?”
I don’t look down. “I’ve . . . always liked you. You don’t have to like me back or—or anything, but I—I just wanted you to know.”
Connor’s mouth drops.
Slowly, I turn around. Nathan looks like a car that’s slammed into a telephone pole, but worse. All the fire’s gone from his eyes, from his heart. Now it’s empty. He’s empty. He watches me, then eventually pushes past the crowd and walks away. Marcellus hesitates, then follows him.
I feel all tingly. I’m trembling. I have tears in my eyes. And I’m smiling. Smiling the biggest smile I’ve ever smiled, like that little boy in Nathan’s photo. Like a dam bursting open, I realize then and there who my cretpoj—the real one—is going to be. And I can’t wait to start it.
First things first, of course. The ripple spreads almost immediately, and soon everyone in the crowd knows. Several kids laugh, chief among them Ron, who blurts out, “You’re kidding me, right? What a little—”
“What did I say about getting to class?” Miss Richter says, and like her words are a knife through a thick cake, the crowd finally parts. Connor watches me, mouth still open. Once all the kids scatter, he wanders off with Ron like he’s in a daze.
Zack throws an arm around my shoulder as we walk toward the cafeteria. “You did it!” he cries. “How do you feel?”
“Nervous,” I say. “Scared. But . . . I think I’m happy too.” I look at Madison. “Sorry for not telling you.”
Madison’s arms are folded over his chest. “I understand why you didn’t. Of course, if Connor doesn’t make a good boyfriend, I can put my matchmaking skills to the test.”
“You?” I ask.
“Of course!” Madison puffs out his chest as we navigate the crowd. “I’m a master of the human psyche.”
“Okay,” Zack says. “What am I thinking right now?”
Madison shakes his head and smiles. “Normal human psyche. Not Zack human psyche.”
“Wrong!” Zack says. “I was thinking how much fun it’d be to be a ballpoint pen.”
I laugh. “I’ve got to hear this.”
“Well,” Zack says, “pens are full of ink, like octopuses, and everyone loves octopuses, so can you imagine carrying around a little mini octopus in your pocket . . .”
TWENTY-ONE
A wide gap follows us, like the parting of the Red Sea, as we walk through the cafeteria to get in line. Nobody wants to get close to me. They might catch “the gay disease,” or maybe something even worse. Contamination. It’s a fog I have to cut through as we get our food.
But I cut through it.
The Unstable Table shimmies as we sit down. I eat my salty Tater Tots, ignoring all the stares. “Hey,” Zack says, “what’s the difference between an ostrich and a sanding belt?”
“What?” I ask.
“An ostrich has an o in its name,” Zack says. “Boy, English is confusing. F w ddn’t hv vwls t wld b vn wrs. That’s No-Vowel for—”
Something thwacks me on the back of my ear. I cup a hand to my head to stop the stinging and look behind me to see Ron, laughing at the Stable Table, readying another perfect shot with another pencil.
“Ignore them,” Madison says. “They’re not worth it.”
I don’t look at Ron, or at almost all the other people at his table. I look at the one kid there who isn’t laughing. Connor sits quietly, gazing at the wall.
“What do you think he’s thinking about?” Zack asks.
“I don’t know.”
Another pencil. This one hits my shoulder.
A teacher comes over and tells Ron to knock it off, which makes the pencils stop, but it doesn’t stop him from sticking that finger in the air (you know the one) and dangling it around, low enough so the teachers won’t see but high enough for me to notice.
Connor still doesn’t move.
Why do we get crushes on people? It’s so random. Zack had it bad for Penny even though she was kind of a psychopath, and I’ve got it bad for Connor even though he’s kind of a homophobe. What’s even the deal?
“Alan Cole,” a bossy voice says. “You’ve really gotten yourself into a mess of trouble this time, haven’t you?”
Madison wrinkles his nose. “If you’ve come to make fun of Alan, you can take it up with me first.”
Talia pushes up her glasses. “I’m Sapling class president. I represent all students equally, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. This is why I’m class president and you’re not.”
Madison opens his mouth again, but I cut him off and ask, “What is it, Talia?”
“I came by to tell you the student council supports you and all your life choices. That’s all. It’s obvious I’m not wanted here, so I’ll go now.” She pauses. “Good luck.”
“Wait,” I say before she walks away. I look back at Ron and his friends, currently going “Aaaaaalaaaan, Aaaaaalaaaan” over and over again under their breath. “Are you still looking for an idea to make a difference in school?”
Talia perks up. “Of course I am.”
“And you still want to pay me back for the election?”
She nods. “Use my favor or lose it.”
I motion for Madison, Zack, and Talia to huddle around me, and I smile. “Let me tell you about my cretpoj.”
When I get home, Mom is doing dishes in the kitchen. She looks at the clock on the wall, the clock that’s absorbed years, maybe generations of memories. It ticks, tocks, ticks, tocks. In, out, in, out.
I walk up to Mom and give her a hug.
At first she doesn’t react. Then, slowly but surely, her arms wrap around my back, and we embrace. When I break free, her face looks different, like she almost remembers what muscles you need to work to make you hug a person. The last time we hugged, she was taller than me.
Then I see someone sitting at the kitchen table. Nathan is spacing out, playing with one of his toys, a little top he whittled when he was five with his name painted on every inch. He keeps spinning it, watching it fall over, spinning it, watching it fall over, spinning it.
I watch my brother. Mom watches him too. He doesn’t even acknowledge we’re there. His eyes are glazed over, foggy. He’s checked out.
My focus snaps away from Nathan as the front door slams shut.
Mom’s whole body tightens.
Dad walks in and smashes his briefcase onto the kitchen table, knocking Nathan’s top over. He massages his temples and looks around the kitchen, taking in Mom, then me, then finally Nathan. With one swift movement he extends his talons and snatches up Nathan’s top. Nathan, still in a daze, barely reacts. Dad hands it to me. The message is clear: get rid of this.
I take the top, admiring the little, shaky Nathans across it. I wonder what five-year-old Nathan felt when he wrote this. Pride at being able to spell his name when he was so young? Desire to put his name out there, wherever he could, however he could?
Dad is watching me, fiery eyes shooting heat vision. Mom is watching me too, hands over her mouth. I look up at Dad, walk to the kitchen table, and give the top
back to Nathan.
My brother finally blinks, finally notices I’m there. He looks at me, then Dad. Me, Dad. Me, Dad.
My father grabs the top from the table again. This time he doesn’t give it to me. Instead, he walks over to the garbage can and drops the top inside.
Nathan watches, dull eyes taking in the scene. He looks down.
I walk over to the trash can and pick up the top. I brush off the little bit of lettuce on the tip, then I hand it back to Nathan, laying it right next to his hand. His eyes bug out. He looks at me, then Dad. Me, Dad.
Dad lets out a low, guttural growl. I raise my eyes to him, unblinking. We stare at each other, father and son, mirror images separated by age.
He raises a fist and winds it up behind him.
“Jimmy!”
He stops in midpunch.
Mom calls out again, “Jimmy!”
Dad looks at her, at Cindy Cole, his wife, the mother of his two children. He looks at me as I shake but still stand, like he hasn’t looked at me in forever. He looks at Nathan the same way. He looks at his fist, now also shaking.
He lowers his fist.
His breathing comes loud and hard, his shoulders heaving with an irregular beat. His eyes aren’t the eyes of a hawk. They’re the eyes of a man. A very, very scared man.
He takes a very sharp breath. Then another. Like the oceans are opening under him. Like he’s fighting a rising flood. Like he’s out to sea as a great tidal wave strikes.
Like he’s drowning.
Moving one foot in front of the other, Dad leaves the kitchen and walks upstairs.
Mom puts her hands over her heart. After looking at me and Nathan, she follows her husband upstairs.
Then it’s just Nathan and me in the kitchen.
I walk over to the table and pick up the top. Gently I push the toy into Nathan’s hands. I close his fingers around it.
We watch each other. Cole and Cole.
I head upstairs.
It’s a quiet night at 16 Werther Street. Only Mom and I sit at the table for dinner. She takes a plate up to Dad and Nathan, but otherwise the table is missing half the family. Mom and I talk a little, mostly about the food. At the end of the meal, she smiles at me. An honest, genuine smile.