13

by Jason Robert Brown

  “Fine,” I said. “Just stay here and wait for my signal.”

  As I reentered the theater, the credits were rolling, so I hustled down the aisle. By the time I reached the front row, Kendra and Lucy had already come back from the ladies’ room, and Kendra was sitting next to Brett with an empty seat on her other side. Maybe the Higher Power wanted Archie to get his shot at Kendra after all.

  “Have a seat, Evan,” Kendra said.

  She patted the empty chair.

  “Righto,” Brett said. “The Brain’s gotta be in the front row.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. This could work out after all.

  Seated behind Brett was Fudge. Lucy was next to him. From the way she was pouting, you didn’t need to be a genius to see how badly she wanted to be next to Brett.

  And then there was Patrice, still a row back, now next to Fudge with an empty seat between them, which made the first two rows look like this:

  screen

  “Hey, Evan,” Patrice said.

  “What?”

  “Where’s your friend?”

  “What friend?” Brett asked.

  Thankfully, I was saved.

  “Yo, yo!” Eddie called. He pointed to the screen. “Check this out!”

  The screen filled with the image of a quaint Midwestern house, not unlike Pam’s. The Bloodmaster was the story of this girl named Jessica Jones. In the first sequence she has a fight with her mom and dad, then gets stood up at the junior prom. But worse is yet to come. About five minutes into the film, she’s walking down this deserted street and hears footsteps. She starts to run. The music gets loud. And you’ll never guess who’s behind her with a pickax. Next thing, the ax is implanted in her skull and the Bloodmaster, this tall guy with a hood over his head, is eating her arm. Fudge, Lucy, and Eddie screamed. Kendra called, “I can’t watch this!” On-screen the Bloodmaster finishes his meal and burps really loudly. That’s when Brett weighed in.

  “Oh, man! Gross!”

  “Hey, Ken,” Lucy called. “This movie’s going to be pretty intense from the very front row. I’d be happy to switch seats.”

  By that point, Brett had his arm around Kendra. She glanced back. “That’s okay, Lucy. I’m fine.”

  It was obvious to everyone that Lucy liked Brett, but that didn’t slow Fudge down. He put his arm around Lucy the minute Kendra turned back to the screen.

  “May I interest you in some Goobers, Lucy?” he asked.

  She scowled and pushed him away, then leaned forward to Eddie, sitting on the other side of Brett.

  “All right, barf bag. Give up your seat.”

  “Like hell,” Eddie said.

  Lucy’s response was simple. She took her soda and dumped it in Eddie’s lap.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she called, as Eddie jumped up. “You better get cleaned up in the bathroom. ’Bye!”

  “This sucks!” Eddie said, and hustled up the aisle, brushing off his pants.

  Lucy jumped right into his seat and leaned in to Brett. “The view is so much better from here.”

  Now the seating looked like this:

  screen

  So there we were. I was settling in, watching the Bloodmaster pick his teeth with his bloody pickax, when I heard the scariest noise in the world.

  DINK clump.

  DINK clump.

  “Oh, what a long walk! Down this long aisle! With these big crutches!”

  Had Archie waited for me? Of course not!

  “Oh, I’m so very tired,” he went on. “I wonder if anyone will give me their seat.”

  I had no choice.

  “Hey, man,” I said, getting up. “Why don’t you take mine? You must be exhausted.”

  I jumped into the second row next to Patrice and held my breath. Despite the gore on-screen, I was more scared of what was about to happen off it. No tongue, I thought, please please please no tongue.

  Thankfully, he didn’t. Even better, as Archie sat down, Kendra turned to him with a big smile and introduced herself.

  “Hi. I’m Kendra.”

  Here it was: Archie’s golden opportunity. Go on, I thought. Talk to her! Do it! Do it!

  But if Archie had any words, he was suddenly too wound up to say them. The swagger he had shown in the lobby was gone. The love guru was suddenly sweating and hyperventilating.

  “Are you all right?” Kendra asked.

  Archie couldn’t answer—just kept on breathing, louder and louder.

  “Okay,” she said. “Whatever.”

  “Great job,” Patrice whispered to me.

  “He just needs a second,” I said. “Back off.”

  That’s when he finally took my advice.

  “HI, KENDRA!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.

  Kendra looked at him like he was a mental patient.

  “Yo, dude!” Brett said. “Keep it down!”

  Brett might have done more—like picked him up and moved him to another part of the theater—but Archie was saved from complete and total humiliation by what was happening on-screen. Right then, Jessica’s brother Clyde was confiding in the school principal. Unfortunately, the principal was actually the Bloodmaster. Just as Clyde was beginning to weep over his chopped-up sister, out came the pickax. This time the Bloodmaster didn’t settle for chowing on an arm. Instead, he went straight for Clyde’s head. Everyone in the movie theater moaned—especially when the Bloodmaster spit a mouthful of brains directly at the screen.

  The drama in the audience was just as intense. After the Bloodmaster spit those brains, Eddie got back from the bathroom and sat next to Fudge in the second row. Now the seating was this:

  screen

  “Yo!” Eddie called. “Who’s the weirdo with the stupid suit?”

  Did Archie take it in stride? Not a chance. Suddenly he got into defending his crazy purple suit like it was a sacred artifact.

  “It’s not a STUPID SUIT!” he called, turning around in his seat. “It’s a lucky suit, it’s not STUPID!”

  While Brett, Lucy, Fudge, and Eddie were looking at Archie like he was something that had crawled from out of an Egyptian tomb, Kendra tried to make him feel better.

  “Hey, it’s not a stupid suit,” she said. “He didn’t mean it.”

  Well, that was all the encouragement Archie needed. Eyes wide, he leaned right in to her.

  “HI, KENDRA! HI! HI!”

  He was so loud, you could barely hear the Bloodmaster belching.

  It was bad enough that I couldn’t watch the movie; now I couldn’t even watch the audience.

  Fudge suddenly lost it. Maybe he was trying to impress Lucy with his bravado, but for whatever reason, he started smacking Archie on the back of the head.

  “Hey, cripple,” he said. “Why don’t you get out of here? Stop ruining the movie!”

  Brett looked over his shoulder and punched Fudge on the leg. “Yo, that’s pretty harsh, Fudgeman.”

  But Fudge was on a roll, and not even Brett could stop him. “No, I mean it!” he said, standing up. “Get lost, cripple! Get out of here!”

  Then Eddie got in the act.

  “He can’t,” he said, giggling. “He’s too busy putting the moves on Kendra!”

  Lucy laughed.

  “The cripple’s getting some action!” Eddie yelled.

  The totally confident Archie from the lobby had disappeared. Instead, he shook his head, pushed himself up on his feet, then flailed around in the dark for his crutches.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m going!”

  Seconds later he was clomping pathetically up the aisle. I was stunned. But the catastrophe wasn’t over.

  Patrice turned to me. “Are you just going to sit there?”

  She climbed out of her seat and ran after Archie.

  I remember that my third-grade teacher, Mr. Horowitz, once said that the secret of a life well lived is to take the right action at the right time. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But if it is, I failed. A side of me wanted to defend A
rchie. But the other side of me felt he deserved everything he got. Sure, Fudge shouldn’t have said what he said. On the other hand, what right did Archie have to crash the party and ruin the movie? What right did he have to coerce me into helping him in the first place?

  I watched Archie and Patrice disappear up the aisle while Fudge and Eddie snickered.

  “You didn’t have to be so mean, Fudge,” I said finally.

  I don’t know if he even heard me. Just then, Kendra pointed at the screen, and Archie was forgotten.

  “Brett! She’s got a knife!”

  “I’ve got you, Kendra,” Brett said, pulling her closer. “I’m here.”

  I turned to the screen. While I had been focused on Archie, things had been heating up in the movie. Like Kendra had said, Jessica’s mom had a knife. The Bloodmaster was begging for his life in his office. But then the Bloodmaster knocked the knife out of her hand and started munching her leg. Jessica’s mother screamed. We all screamed. But no one louder than Lucy, because that’s when Brett decided to make his move. He pulled Kendra’s face up to his and moved in for the kiss.

  Hands clasping hands. Eyes staring into eyes. One tongue reaching out to another….

  Just when their lips were about to touch—and as the Bloodmaster moved to Jessica’s mom’s second leg—the movie stopped.

  The lights went on.

  Next thing I knew, Patrice was running back down the aisle.

  “Guys!” she said. “You’d better go! The manager stopped the movie, and he’s about to call your parents!”

  Kendra was up on her feet. “Call our parents? Why?”

  “Well,” Patrice said, glancing vaguely up the aisle, “I guess that someone told the manager that there were some underage people in here.”

  Then I saw Archie moving slowly back down the aisle, a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

  “And maybe,” Patrice went on, “that person gave him all your names.”

  “Archie!” I said.

  Then Fudge climbed over the front-row seats and was in Archie’s face.

  “What’s up with that? Why’d you have to bust us?”

  Eddie joined him. “The cripple did it?”

  Archie met his eyes with a cold stare. “Yeah. The cripple did it.”

  “Why, dude?” Brett asked. “We were just watching a movie!”

  Archie shrugged. “Ask Evan. He’s the one who invited me.”

  I’ve never been in quicksand, but I suddenly had a good idea of how it felt. “What?” I shouted. “No, I didn’t!” I turned to Brett. “He invited himself!”

  Archie shook his head. “No, no! We worked it all out so I could take his seat.”

  “But I was just—”

  Brett didn’t let me finish. Suddenly everything was my fault.

  “The movie’s ruined!” he barked. “We’re all going to be friggin’ destroyed by our parents!” He stood an inch away. “And my tongue is still waiting.”

  I was sinking fast.

  “I didn’t know any of this was going to happen,” I said.

  Then Fudge piped up. “I know something that’ll cheer you up, Brett.”

  Brett smiled. “You don’t mean—?”

  Grinning, Fudge replied, “I do!”

  Then Brett, Eddie, and Fudge shouted in perfect unison: “The triple hammer crack-splitting wedgie!”

  Do I have to tell you what came next? I think I heard Kendra object, but Fudge and Eddie grabbed my arms anyway while Brett came around my back. He pulled so hard on my underwear, he practically lifted me off my feet. I could feel it ripping all the way up my butt crack, then shredding altogether.

  I fell to the ground, my eyes watering. My throat squeaked out the words “Does this mean you’re not coming to my bar mitzvah?”

  They didn’t answer—they just scrammed out the emergency exit before the manager could get them. By now the theater was completely empty. Except for Archie and Patrice. They moved in for the final kill.

  “You didn’t do anything!” Archie yelled. “They called me a cripple and you didn’t even help!”

  “How could you just sit there and watch that happen?” Patrice said. “Don’t you have a soul?”

  Pretty harsh words to a guy who just had his underwear taken off over his head.

  “Listen,” I said, rising to my knees. “He wanted a date. He got a date!” I turned to Archie. “If you had just talked to her!”

  But Archie wasn’t listening. “You wanted to get rid of me!” he said. “You wanted to humiliate me!”

  “What happened to thank you?” I said. “‘Thank you, Evan, for getting me a chance with Kendra. Thank you for getting your ass kicked for doing me a favor!’”

  Let’s just say Archie and Patrice didn’t see the situation my way. “Come on, Archie,” Patrice said. “My dad’ll give us a ride.”

  They turned toward the exit.

  “Hey, wait,” I called after them. “Are you just going to abandon me here?”

  Patrice looked back at me, the sadness in her eyes mingling with the anger. “Now you know how it feels.”

  11

  AFTER PATRICE and Archie left, I lurked around the theater lobby for a full hour before Pam came to get me. Meanwhile I pieced together what happened with the rest of the gang:

  1. Brett and Kendra had a huge fight in front of the theater where she blamed the whole disaster on him and called him a “dumb jock.”

  2. Lucy offered to give Brett a ride home and sidled next to him in the backseat of her mom’s car.

  3. Fudge and Eddie made a vow to punish me even more severely on Monday at school.

  Sunday morning I had another haftorah lesson. As you can imagine, I wasn’t in the holiest of moods. For starters, I still had a phantom pain where my underwear had cut up my butt. Second, how could I focus on Hebrew when all I could think about was what was going to happen to me at school on Monday?

  “Koh-amar ha’el Adoshem. Boray Hashamayim venoteyhem.”

  That was the rabbi, chanting the beginning of the lesson. I tried to repeat it.

  “Boray Hashammm…”

  “No, no, Evan,” he said. He pulled up a chair next to me. “Listen again. Koh-amar ha’el Adoshem. Boray Hashamayim venoteyhem.”

  The words stuck in my throat. When I finally said them, they came out more Swahili than Hebrew. The rabbi tapped my textbook with his index finger and smiled. “Your bar mitzvah is two weeks away. Try harder, Evan.”

  I’m not embarrassed to say that by that point, I was blinking back a tear or two. Call it genuine depression or pathetic self-pity, but I was feeling low big-time.

  “Try harder?” I managed. “I’ve tried as hard as I can.”

  The rabbi shrugged and picked a small piece of lint off of his pant leg. “You know, Evan, no one said becoming a man was easy.”

  “I didn’t ask for easy,” I said. “This just isn’t fair.”

  He sighed. “Growing up isn’t always fun, you know.”

  “All I want is to fit in with the people who fit in.” My eyes went back to the Hebrew, but he leaned over and closed the book.

  “Seriously, Evan,” he said. “Tell me. What’s so important about being popular?”

  I was floored. How could the only rabbi in Indiana not know what it felt like to be an outcast? The horrible feeling of eating your lunch all alone? Being the only kid not invited to a party? Didn’t he know what it meant to be cool? That you always had a crowd? That you were a somebody who was a part of something?

  “All right, listen,” he said, turning to face me. “One day, you’re going to be old. You don’t believe that right now, but it’s true. And when you’re old, all of this…mishegoss about being ‘cool’ and being ‘popular’ will be a million miles away.”

  So what? I thought. I’ve got to deal with it now! I opened my mouth to say something, but the rabbi put up his hand.

  “You’re going to have children, Evan, you’re going to have a job, you’re going to have lots of im
portant things to worry about. This is not one of them.”

  Conversation over, I thought. I reached for my books. But just like that the rabbi had a thick arm around my shoulder. He pulled me close and looked me straight in the eye.

  “Be a man, Evan.”

  And for the first time in my life, I wanted to.

  Be a man. How would a man handle this situation? I spent that afternoon spread-eagle on my bed in a stupor, thinking some more about what would happen at school at Monday.

  Suddenly it hit me. This is what my speech should be about! I grabbed the paper and pen and wrote:

  Manhood, by Evan David Goldman

  According to Hebrew law and tradition, today is the day I become a man.

  Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about what that means. I looked in the dictionary, and it talked about “courage,” and “determination,” and “vigor.”

  But what is the meaning of courage?

  After that, I got stuck. Which turned out to be excellent timing, because Mom was at the door.

  “Evan.”

  “Hold on, Mom,” I said. “I’m writing the speech!”

  Then I saw that she was holding the cordless.

  “Evan,” she said. “It’s your father.”

  The daily call. And even though I really needed someone to talk to, my first impulse was to keep up the silent treatment.

  “Tell him I’m busy.”

  Usually Mom was all too happy to pass along a message like that. But this day was different. She put her hand over the receiver.

  “Why not just say hi?”

  I blinked.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, Evan…” Her voice trailed off, then she went on, half to herself. “You can’t stay angry forever.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. But what could I do? Suddenly, the phone was in my hand. Dad was on the line. Mom was looking on. Forces larger than myself were conspiring to make me take the call. Besides, deep down I wanted to speak to him. I’d wanted to for weeks. Slowly I drew the receiver up to my ear, then I paused a minute, just sort of listening to Dad breathe, getting a sense of him.

  “Hello?” I said finally.