13

by Jason Robert Brown

  I laughed. “It is weird, but it’s true. He just wants to know that for one day in his life, you paid attention to him.”

  “Evan…”

  “Would you do that for me? Please? It’s half an hour, and then it’s all over.”

  She looked at her nails. She looked at the stars, then back at Brett. “You did a really great thing for us, Evan…. Okay, I’ll go on a ‘date’ with Arnold.”

  “Archie,” I corrected her.

  “Ha, okay; Archie. I’ll do it.”

  “Thank you, Kendra! You’re the best!”

  “But don’t tell anyone about it, okay?” she said as she walked back to her bike.

  I walked with her. “I’ll talk to you later this week and we’ll figure out the details.”

  Brett closed his phone. “All set?”

  “All set,” Kendra said, smiling.

  “See you tomorrow!” Brett yelled as they drove off.

  I would like to tell you that I was dignified and calm, but at that moment I jumped up in the air and punched the sky and danced all around the front lawn in the glare of the one streetlight on our block. I wrestled Simon, kicked my feet up in the air, and sang a silent celebratory march.

  I had done it! All the cool kids were coming to my bar mitzvah, AND I had fulfilled my promise to Archie, AND Patrice and I were friends again. I envisioned what my bar mitzvah was going to look like:

  Kendra dancing.

  Patrice hanging out with everyone and enjoying it.

  Brett and the Goons lifting me up in a chair.

  Bill and Steve calling from New York and not being able to get through because I’m having too much fun to pick up the phone.

  Mom and Dad sitting together, laughing as they watch everyone having such a great time. Maybe he tentatively puts his hand on hers. Maybe she takes it. Maybe they kiss.

  Angelina deciding that Pam is more her type and leaving my dad.

  Rabbi Weiner shaking his booty to some Eminem.

  Indiana may not be the best place in the world, but at that moment I knew I could survive it; no, I could transcend it. In Indiana maybe I could be a man after all.

  I wanted to run over to Archie and tell him what was going on, but just as I turned toward his house, I saw the light in his room go off.

  Oh well, I thought. I’ll tell him tomorrow.

  “Come on, Simon,” I yelled.

  I picked up a stick and threw it as far as I could. He went tearing after it, and we played fetch all the way over to Main Street and back.

  16

  AND THEN I got punched in the face.

  Not right away, of course. It took a whole day to happen, but looking back, by the time I went to bed Sunday night, my face was already on a collision course with a very large fist.

  I suppose if Mom hadn’t let me sleep in on Monday morning, I might have dodged it. I guess she thought something like “He’s had a rough weekend with the trip back to New York and he’s got a big week coming up with his bar mitzvah on Saturday, so what could be the harm in letting him sleep a little later?” So I didn’t get to school until the middle of lunch, and by the time I gave my note to the guidance counselor, it was too late to go out to the parking lot to meet the gang, so I wandered over to the cafeteria. It was great, for once, knowing that I could talk to anybody I wanted. After all, I had saved the day! Brought Brett and Kendra together! Nobody could say I wasn’t cool now.

  Standing in the cafeteria, holding my tray of pasta, oatmeal cookies, and milk, I looked around for Patrice and Archie. But it was later than I had thought. They had already left. I glanced at the clock—only five minutes left to find a place to sit and wolf my food. That’s when I realized that something weird was going on. At first I thought I was just being paranoid. But then I’d walk past a table and everyone would suddenly become intensely interested in their spaghetti. And when I finally sat down, all the kids at the table got very quiet, then got up one by one and wandered away.

  It got even weirder. After lunch three kids flattened themselves against the lockers when I walked past them. When I rounded the corner by the music lab, a group of girls stopped talking altogether and ran, giggling like crazy, into the girls’ room. In chorus I whispered “What’s going on?” to this fat kid with a squeaky high voice named Alex Crayton, but he just raised his eyebrows and slid farther down the bench.

  It was like I had been transported into one of those old Twilight Zone episodes where everything was upside down. And where were Archie and Patrice?

  I was really relieved when Kendra and Lucy ran over to me before math. Kendra smiled like only she could. “Hey, Ev!”

  “Kendra! Lucy!”

  Both girls seemed downright overjoyed to be in my presence. Of course, I could understand it about Kendra. After all, I had gotten her back together with Brett. But Lucy was a different story.

  “This is so cool,” she said, stopping by my side. “I’m glad we’re all friends again.”

  It seemed she was taking the news about Kendra and Brett surprisingly well. Maybe Lucy was a better person than I had given her credit for? Maybe Kendra’s friendship meant more to her than dating Brett?

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

  Kendra nodded. “For what it’s worth, Brett’s glad we’re friends, too.”

  Lucy smiled. “You know, he really looks up to you, Evan.”

  It was cool to hear that the school hero looked up to me.

  “I don’t know about that,” I said, shrugging. “I’m just glad everything worked out.”

  “Oh, wait!” Kendra shouted. Suddenly she was tugging on my shirtsleeve. “We have to do that thing!”

  Lucy’s ears perked up. “What thing?”

  “No, me and Evan! Look,” she said to me, “I owe you that favor. What do I have to do?”

  I knew she was talking about the date she’d agreed to go on with Archie. Meanwhile, I noticed that everyone in the hall was edging away from us. I was so distracted that I didn’t really concentrate on what Lucy said next.

  “Hey, if you two want to talk about something privately, why don’t you meet after school?”

  I didn’t think we needed a private meeting to arrange a time for Kendra and Archie to hook up. But Kendra seemed to think it was a good idea. And Lucy pushed it.

  “Lunchroom after school?” she said to me and Kendra. “Brett’ll be at practice.”

  If I had been paying attention, I might have heard the warning signs. But I was so happy to be back in the winner’s circle that I didn’t really notice anything else.

  “Okay,” I said. “The lunchroom after school. Cool.”

  Kendra agreed. Moments later, she and Lucy trotted off, leaving me alone. I looked around. Owen Partington, this kid I knew vaguely from English, was the only other person left in the hallway. He was staring at me, pale as a sheet.

  “What’s up with you?”

  His lower lip was shaking. “You’re a brave man, Evan Goldman. A brave man and a fool.”

  And he grabbed his backpack and ran off down the hall as fast as he could.

  My cell phone was on vibrate during math. As Ms. Fitzgerald droned on about quadratic equations, I felt it buzz to tell me there was a text waiting. Then, no more than thirty seconds later, it buzzed again. Remembering the rules about cell phones in school, I tried to ignore it. But five minutes later it buzzed again. When another text came in three minutes later, I pulled the phone out of my back pocket to see who it was. Before I could even read the display, Ms. Fitzgerald’s hand was in my face.

  “You know the rules, Mr. Goldman.”

  Reluctantly I handed it over, expecting to hear everyone in class laughing. Instead, dead silence. Sensing something behind me, I whirled around in my seat. There were Fudge and Eddie, staring me down. Then Eddie drew his finger across his throat. I gasped. What had gotten into everyone? Was he saying I was a dead man? Hadn’t they all said they were coming to my bar mitzvah?

  The minute the bell rang, I tur
ned to ask Eddie and Fudge what was going on, but they bolted like a couple of racehorses out of the starting gate, and I got cut off by the swarm of kids pushing for the door. Why was everyone acting like I had leprosy all of a sudden? This place was so weird.

  “Uh, Mr. Goldman?”

  I turned. There was Ms. Fitzgerald holding out my phone. But it wasn’t so easy to get it back. I had to promise up, down, and sideways that I’d never bring it into class again. Which was seriously irritating. For starters, I was dying to see who was sending me those texts. It was also time to meet Kendra. Anyway, by the time I finally got it back, I was practically shaking. I scrolled to the message icon and pressed Texts and then inbox. Patrice!

  I knew I had to get to the lunchroom fast, so while I ran down the stairs, I clicked on the last text and started to scroll back through her messages in reverse order.

  I’m serious Evan don’t do it!

  Don’t do what? I bolted out of the stairwell and raced down the hallway. The text before that read:

  Please! Call me! Why aren’t you calling me?

  Rounding the corner to the cafeteria, I tripped and sprawled flat on my face. My phone flew out my hands and skittered across the linoleum tiles, shedding pieces of plastic until it crashed into the concrete wall. Disaster! Even if I could have turned it on, the screen was cracked beyond the point of visibility.

  Why was my day going so wrong? I was supposed to be the hero of the school!

  The only person in the lunchroom was Kendra, sitting and listening to her iPod, drumming her fingers on the table. I slipped my ruined phone into my pocket and hurried in.

  “Hey, Ken!”

  She took the earphones out and smiled. A smile like that, I’ll tell you, makes up for a lot of bad days.

  “Hey, Evan.”

  I sat across from her. “Do you know why is everyone acting so weird?”

  Kendra looked confused. “What do you mean? I haven’t noticed anything.”

  How could she not have noticed? But then I remembered. Kendra could be sitting in the middle of a hurricane and not feel the breeze.

  “So,” Kendra said. She took out her BlackBerry. “When should we do this meeting with Arnold?”

  “Archie,” I corrected her gently. “I think it should be before my bar mitzvah. Like, maybe, Friday after school?”

  She looked at her BlackBerry and twirled her hair. “I’ve got cheerleading practice…and then Brett and I are supposed to hang out…. I don’t know.”

  In the distance, I heard a bunch of kids yelling. I decided to ignore it. “Okay, what about Thursday?”

  “Hmmmmm.” Apparently Thursday wasn’t going to work either. “I’ve got cheerleading practice, and then I’m supposed to hang out with Brett…but maybe…”

  The kids yelling were getting closer. And they were chanting something. At first I thought it was “Strike! Strike!”

  “Okay, Wednesday after school I’ve got cheerleading practice, but after that…oh, no, wait, Brett and I were going to hang out.”

  It wasn’t “Strike!”

  It was “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

  The door burst open, and I heard the sound of what seemed like over two hundred kids yelling their heads off. And what I saw was Brett, in his football uniform, coming right at me.

  “Get away from her!”

  Kendra looked up cheerfully.

  “Hey, Brett!”

  Before I even could make sense of what was going on, Brett’s right hand was around my throat and I felt myself being lifted into the air.

  “What are you doing with him?” Brett shouted at Kendra.

  Her expression changed abruptly.

  “Brett, put him down!”

  “I said what are you doing with him?”

  By that point I could barely breathe. I started flailing, and Brett threw me to the ground.

  “Brett,” I gasped. “We were just talking—”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “I’m not gonna fight you, Brett.” I slid backward away from him. “I don’t know what’s going on!”

  Brett kicked a chair out of the way.

  “Get up, Brain. No more games.”

  “Brett! We were just talking.”

  He pulled me up by my shirt. “I said GET UP!”

  The crowd cheered, then even louder when Brett slammed me into a cart, sending napkins and straws flying.

  “You steal my girl, Brain? Some friend! Let’s go, let’s do it!”

  “Brett, please!”

  Now I understood why everyone had been avoiding me. Somehow the word had got around that even though I had gotten Brett and Kendra back together, I had been secretly hooking up with Kendra, and everyone knew that Brett would kill me if he heard about it. Which he obviously had. But how?

  I looked at everyone staring at me.

  Then I noticed who was missing.

  Lucy.

  Of course. She’d started the rumor that morning. This was her revenge.

  “Please, Brett, stop!” Kendra shouted, standing on top of the table.

  “Oh, yeah? Is that how it is?” Brett’s nostrils were flaring, and his eyes were blazing. “You want me to take it easy on your boyfriend?”

  “Oh my god, we were just talking! Brett!”

  That’s when I got punched. Hard, too. I crumpled to the floor, and Kendra screamed. And Brett? I guess he felt bad. Or realized that he might get in trouble, because he pushed through the crowd and ran. And everyone followed. Not a single person came over to see if I was okay. Before long, the only person left with me was Kendra, who was hugging herself, stunned and in tears. My nose was bleeding, and I could feel the whole right side of my face swelling up like a balloon. I curled up into a ball and closed my eyes.

  DINK clump.

  DINK clump.

  DINK clump.

  DINK clump.

  “I heard someone say you guys were here!”

  I would’ve thought that even Archie would notice that the room had been torn apart and that I was in a fetal position on the floor.

  “It’s perfect!” he went on.

  I looked up. To my surprise, he was taking his computer out of his book bag and putting it on a table.

  “Kendra, I wrote something for you!”

  She hadn’t even registered his presence. In fact, she hadn’t registered much of anything. But as Archie pulled a bulky pair of headphones out of his bag and plugged them into his laptop, she slowly began to emerge from her stupor.

  “You’re gonna love it!” he crowed.

  I barely managed to croak, “Archie, what are you doing?” but I knew before I said it that he wasn’t listening.

  Kendra looked down and took in the scene. She looked completely mystified to see Archie standing before her. At that moment he held the headphones out to her.

  “Listen! Listen to it! You’ll really like it!”

  Kendra slowly put her BlackBerry in her book bag, slung her bag over her shoulder, and stood there uncertainly. Then she looked at me. I caught her eye. I wished I could explain to her about Lucy, about what had happened, but I knew she wouldn’t get it. It would never have occurred to her that her best friend could have set her up like that. Looking into her face, I realized that I had never seen anyone look that sad in my entire life.

  “Kendra?” Archie was balancing on his crutches and holding out the headphones.

  She never even looked at him—just turned and walked out of the lunchroom.

  “Kendra!”

  He yelled it after her, at first still sounding happy, excited; then another time, but more upset. Then scared.

  “Kendra!”

  And then devastated.

  “Kendra!”

  She wasn’t coming back.

  Archie looked at me for the first time. I couldn’t believe what he said next.

  “What did you do to her?”

  I rolled onto my back. “Oh, Archie, please, I didn’t do anything.”

  Didn
’t he notice the blood dripping down my chin and onto my shirt?

  “She’s gone,” he said. “I wrote her a song and she’s gone.”

  I propped myself up on my elbows. “You wrote her a song?”

  He stared off in the direction Kendra had gone.

  “Do you even sing?” I asked, but as I said it, I knew it was a mistake.

  Archie turned on me. “You were supposed to help me out! You know I couldn’t meet her any other way. And now you’re letting her walk away!”

  I slumped back to the floor and closed my eyes.

  “I did help you,” I muttered. “That’s what Kendra and I were talking about before all this…”

  I don’t even know if he heard me. By that point, he was looking down the hallway to where she had left.

  “She was supposed to listen to my song! What am I going to do now?”

  You could help me get up, I thought, but that seemed unlikely. Then he started clomping after her.

  “Archie, come back,” I said weakly.

  I watched him walk out the door. When I noticed that he had left his computer and book bag behind, I almost called after him. But then I got curious. I crawled across the floor, pulled the headphones down, and put them on. Then I felt around for the keyboard. I touched the space bar, and the headphones filled with the sound of an orchestra.

  I recognized it immediately; it was a section from Anne Murray’s Christmas record! But Archie had played with it somehow, stretched it out and repeated it and added in a drumbeat, turning it from “Good King Wenceslas” into something entirely new.

  And then there was Archie’s voice. Singing. Well, I wouldn’t call it singing, exactly, but it had notes and rhythms. And more importantly, it had words. I had never heard Archie sound so gentle or so…sincere.

  This is what he sang:

  I think you saw me at the back of the lunch line.

  Someone tripped me when you walked by.

  I think you saw me Tuesday morning in English,

  ’Cause you smiled when I mumbled “Hi.”

  I guess you saw me at the movie last weekend,

  And it all turned out wrong.

  But I know you won’t change who you are;