by Peter Hannan
“What’s the bad news?” I asked.
“You’ll be there,” said Edwin, heading in the opposite direction. “Maybe leave some breadcrumbs for the return trip.”
“Thanks, Mr. Hansel-and-Gretel,” I said.
The locker room was totally empty when I got there, except for a heavy dose of body odor hanging in a cloud of steam. I unrolled my gym clothes. Where the heck were my jockstrap and white socks? I’d just had them in my hand! But there was no time to go back and get them. I couldn’t find an empty gym locker, so I threw on my shorts and T-shirt, stuffed my regular shirt into my pants, balled them up, and ditched them in a corner that was obviously teeming with fungus. Then I realized that my socks were an unmatching set. One black, one bright blue. Great.
I ran into the gym — and into the gym teacher. Literally. It was like running into a building. I fell flat on my back. He looked around, pretending not to notice me lying at his feet.
“What hit me? A gnat? A newt?” This got a laugh. Then he looked down. “Nice socks, new kid. Bet you have a pair just like ’em at home.”
Good one. Clever.
“Yes,” I said, handing him my hall pass. “I’m Davis Delaware.”
“Yes, sir or Yes, Mr. Shettle,” he said, crumpling the paper and throwing it in the general direction of his office. Mr. Shettle? I wondered what kids called him behind his back. “And next time, wear white socks, or you’ll run laps forever.” This whole white-sock obsession was the telltale sign of a hard-nosed, old-school, super-jock gym teacher. In other words, a muscle-headed bureaucrat, concerned more with arbitrary rules and regulations than actual, you know, life.
He stuck a whistle in his mouth and blew hard. That’s when I realized that I was standing in the middle of the court. Two dodgeball teams were lined up on opposite sides of me. I covered my face, and about a hundred balls came flying from all directions. At least half of them hit me.
I thought it was over, but when I lowered my hands, there was the Butcher. He was barreling toward me, arm cocked, ready to fire. He roared like the half man, half beast he was, and heaved the ball at approximately the speed of light.
I put my arms up again, but he’d aimed lower. Kablam-o, in the you-know-whats.
I doubled over and fell sideways, crashing down hard on my elbow.
“AAHHH!” I gasped. “Funny bone!” Amazingly, this kablam-o almost made me forget about the original kablam-o.
“Nice one, Delaware,” said Shettle with a smile. He seemed to enjoy my pain. I crawled to the sidelines.
Edwin wandered in and sat down next to me. Through my misery, I couldn’t help thinking it was weird that he didn’t mention he was in this gym class when I saw him in the hall. He seemed to roam freely about the school. He hadn’t even used one of those hall passes.
“You did not land on the funny bone,” he said, “because it’s not even a bone. It’s not really that funny, either, but that’s beside the point. It’s actually the ulnar nerve, which passes down the arm, behind the elbow. And since there’s zero fat there, it’s extremely vulnerable. Bad design, really. Mother Nature probably should have gone back to the drawing board on that one. Do you feel a tingling all the way down to your pinkie?”
I flexed my hand. “How’d you know?”
“See, that’s because it’s a nerve, not a bone,” Edwin said, nodding matter-of-factly. “There are a lot of misnomers out there. A peanut is not a nut, a silverfish is not a fish …”
“Talking a lot is not necessarily saying anything,” I said pointedly.
“Headcheese is not cheese,” he said, not taking the hint.
“Edwin?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Shut up.”
I wasn’t in the habit of telling someone I’d just met to shut up, but Edwin didn’t even seem to notice. Like it happened so often, it didn’t faze him.
“And how about the sea cow?” he asked. “First of all, they’ve been extinct for two hundred and fifty years, but even if you could time travel, you’d find the sea cow to be nothing like a cow. More like a ten-ton mountain of floating blubber.”
“Thanks for the lecture,” I said.
“I’ve barely scratched the surface.”
Edwin was not only a motormouth — he was a last-word freak.
Meanwhile, the Butcher was working the dodgeball court like an assassin. He caught five balls straight and then held them in a row against the side of his body with his left arm, like bullets in an ammo belt. There were five kids left on the other team, and he quickly picked off two. He was like a superstar athlete competing against babies.
One of the remaining targets tried to sneak off the court nonchalantly. The Butcher spotted him and spun around, dropping one of the balls in the process. The sneaking kid laughed, but the Butcher kicked the ball hard on the bounce, thwacking him in the back of the neck and knocking him down.
“He’s outta there!” the Butcher roared.
“What?” I muttered. “Kicking is totally illegal in dodgeball.”
“Maybe in Delaware,” snarled Shettle, who was standing right behind me. “Boggs developed the foot technique last year. We call it extreme dodgeball.”
Are you kidding me? Developed the technique? You mean, cheated?
Shettle was apparently a rules-and-regulations guy who changed the rules and regulations to suit his purposes.
The final two kids on the opposite team scuttled around like panicked cockroaches. The Butcher gripped a ball in each hand and moved to the center line. Suddenly, both insect-boys zigged when they should have zagged, crashed into each other, and collapsed right in front of him.
A normal, non-psycho jock might have tapped them out gently. But not the Butcher. He lifted both balls above his head and spiked them downward at point-blank range with a gesture that looked like Zeus hurling twin lightning bolts from Mount Olympus. Both hit their targets: the insect-boys’ heads.
They survived, but just barely.
Extreme dodgeball. Yippee.
Shettle smiled and blew his whistle. “Okay, people,” he said. “Back onto the court for round two. As soon as you’re out, you can hit the showers.”
Shettle pointed at me, directing me to the side opposite Gerald. Edwin didn’t budge. He just sat and watched. Actually, he wasn’t even watching. He was reading. That kid seemed to live by different rules.
I decided to at least try this time. I grabbed a ball and positioned myself way in the back, out of the line of fire. I figured I’d throw a kid or two out, then take a soft one and get the heck off the court.
Shettle blew the whistle and balls started flying. I picked out a kid to aim for. Not too small (I wouldn’t hurt him) and not too big (he wouldn’t hurt me) … just right. I took two steps toward him and let it fly. He ducked, and the ball skimmed the top of his head and kept going.
It smacked the Butcher right between the eyes, making a loud ping.
“OWWW!” His roar echoed through the gym.
Okay, that was unfortunate. Causing the Butcher to yell owww had to be one of the stupider accomplishments of my life. His nose got red instantly — I immediately thought of Rudolph but decided not to mention it — but he wasn’t “out” since the ball had hit him on the ricochet. He spun around, looking for a loose ball to grab. But I didn’t wait. I saw a ball coming and dived into its path, intentionally getting myself knocked out. Success — for now, anyway.
I turned to leave and heard a loud ping-PING! A ball whizzed by my head, just grazing a hair or two, bounced off the wall, and careened across the gym. It had obviously been dropkicked by the Butcher. In extreme dodgeball, even players who are already out are fair game.
I ducked into the locker room, got dressed, and walked quickly to my next class: math.
Mr. Kirbin, the math teacher, was math-ish, therefore snooze-ish. Another forty minutes I’d never get back.
The rest of the day was more of the same. Lunch: blah. History: ancient blah. Spanish: el blah, la blah, los bl
ahs. No Molly. No meaningful contact with intelligent life. Day two would be in the can after one last stop at my locker.
But on my way there, I noticed a commotion up ahead. People were totally cracking up. I got some funny looks, and at first I thought they were just trying to include me in the hilarity — you know, a let’s-make-the-new-kid-feel-at-home kind of thing.
But then one of my missing white socks came flying from the crowd and hit me on the side of the head. The other one got me in the face.
Then I saw what everyone was really laughing about. I had been in such a hurry to get to gym class, not only had I dropped my socks, I’d slammed my jockstrap in my locker door. I thought about just walking by, pretending it wasn’t mine, but then I saw the handwritten letters on the elastic waistband: “DELAWARE.” Mom had labeled all my gym clothes.
It was hanging there at eye level like a sad, embarrassing, personalized white flag. Surrender.
I walked up to the locker and tried to yank it out, but it was really stuck. It just stretched way out like a slingshot. This was apparently really hilarious, too, because a few assorted guffaws erupted in the hallway. But then it got quiet. Really quiet.
The crowd parted — and there stood the Butcher.
“I like what you’ve done with the place, dweeb,” he said.
“Yeah, well, it’s the attention to detail that makes all the difference,” I said, trying to hide my nervousness.
It felt like the entire student population had stopped to watch. I stood in front of the locker to try to keep everyone from seeing my combination, quickly turning the dial and yanking up on the latch. It didn’t budge.
Okay, this was uncomfortable.
“Nice toss in gym, too,” the Butcher snarled. He moved closer, really in my face now.
“What can I tell you?” I said. “It’s all in the wrist.”
“Oh, Davis!” chirped Mrs. Toople, waddling out of the office like a happy duck. “I see you’ve met Gerald! That’s neat. You two probably have a lot in common.”
A lot in common? I had nothing in common with that lobotomized gorilla.
“Yes, Mrs. Toople,” said Gerald in his talking-to-an-adult voice. “The new kid and I have really hit it off, haven’t we, new kid?” With that, he casually walked away with a few of his goons.
I nodded as I worked through the combination again, slower this time. Success, thank god. I pulled really hard on the door to make sure it would unstick, and it flew open and banged loudly against the adjoining locker. In one quick motion, I threw the jockstrap, socks, and shorts inside, and slammed it shut again.
“Okay,” I said to anybody who might still be watching. “Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.”
I followed my own good advice and moved along down the hall, out the door, and headed home.
The next day, I was sitting alone in the cafeteria, doodling in my notebook. Ever since I can remember, I’ve used notebooks to draw and write in. I pretty much empty my brain into them. And ever since I started playing the guitar a couple years ago, the words have taken the form of songs. Not for anyone else, just songs I sing for myself in my room. Secret drawings, secret songs.
I wrote the first one when I was little. Actually, it was a rewrite:
Happy Burpday, you poo,
Happy Burpday, you poo,
Happy Burpday, dear (fill in the blank. The next-door-neighbor kid’s name worked nicely),
Happy Burpday, you poo!
Mom loved it until she realized it wasn’t about Winnie-the-Pooh. My dad and grandmother weren’t too thrilled, either. I spent the rest of the weekend in my room. Years later, I still remembered how Mom had liked that idiotic song at first. Even though she got mad, she kind of appreciated it.
I’ve done my share of scribbling all over the inside of schoolbooks, too — you know, the typical zombification of presidents and other historical figures by erasing their eyeballs, blackening their teeth, adding stitches and fangs, blood and boogers.
I’ve made flip-book movies in the margins of those really fat paperback textbooks, fat enough to really get an epic going — worms crawling over razor blades and getting sliced into segments, babies projectile-vomiting, certain people’s heads popping off and bouncing along the page. Harmless fun, but fun that can get you into trouble. The teachers freak out and they freak the parents out — the freak-out domino theory. I’ve had actual sketchbooks, too, but the beauty of a notebook is you can pretend to be doing schoolwork while you’re actually drawing pictures of your teachers as disgusting monsters or trolls or aliens or worse.
Anyway, I was scribbling away in the cafeteria while poking at a UFO (Uneatable Food-ish Object) with my fork. Just then, another UFO splatted me in the back of the neck.
What the what?
No big surprise — new kids might as well have huge targets painted on them.
You might think that I wondered who threw it, but I didn’t. I knew. I squeegeed off the UFO with my hand as I turned and looked across the room.
Yup, there they were: the Goons of the Round Table.
Nothing King Arthur-ish about them, just a bunch of goons sitting together at a table that happened to be round. Every school has one spot where all the biggest, meanest idiots gather. They do everything in a pack, including throwing disgusting food-ish substances at people. And as always, in the middle of this pack sits the alpha goon, the biggest, meanest moron of the bunch, the perfect blend of creepiness and charisma.
You guessed it: Gerald “the Butcher” Boggs.
It was obvious what Gerald’s game was. Simple, really: making kids feel bad, freak out, and cry … and then laughing at them. Fun. He could make some kids bawl just by evil-eyeing them from across the room.
I’d already witnessed him doing the hair-smooth move, where you jerk your hand up in a threatening way to get someone to flinch — thinking they’re about to get pounded — and then just gently smooth your hair instead. It’s a classic, and the Butcher was the master, like a gunslinger. He had even perfected the two-handed hair-smooth move, making kids on both sides of him fall to pieces simultaneously.
The Butcher caused tears to fall like rain. Apparently, Stephen Jablowski (the poor kid who’d gotten slammed into the locker on my first day) would blubber at the mention of the word “Gerald.” (Or “hair,” or “smooth,” or “move.”) Jablowski cried almost constantly. You’d hear his eerie wail off in the distance … like a sickly coyote.
But the Butcher would never make me come unglued, and he wouldn’t make me cry. Ever. If my mom couldn’t do it by dying, how could some blowhard bully do it?
At Mom’s funeral, everybody cried but me. I was just mad. Mad at the jerks on the street that I could see through the tinted window of the limo. How could they not know that the whole world had changed? How could they ride bikes and eat ice cream and laugh their stupid laughs? I hated the way people treated me, too. Always making sad faces, like I was so pathetic. For a while I was sick of everyone, even the people who were just trying to be nice.
But creeps like the Butcher were in a whole different category. I was really, really, super sick of his particular brand of nincompoop.
I went back to minding my own scribbling at the cafeteria table. Actually, I was inspired to draw a lovely portrait of the Butcher. And by lovely, I mean lovely flaming insects flying out of his lovely piggish nose. I heard him and his goons snickering about me, but I didn’t even react. That was what the Butcher wanted, and I refused to give him the satisfaction. It didn’t matter, anyway. My drawings would give me the secret last laugh.
A few minutes later, Molly walked into the cafeteria, picked up a tray, and got in line. She disappeared through a door with all the other suckers eagerly awaiting generous portions of Wilson’s finest slop to shovel down their gullets. After approximately forever, she emerged … and walked toward me. It was one of those slow-motion things. I was trying to hide the fact that I was watching her, but I probably didn’t hide it very well.
> Molly’s hair bounced perfectly as she passed right by and sat down at the table behind me … with Edwin. They chatted like old friends, catching up on what had happened so far that day. I couldn’t hear much, despite the fact that I was eavesdropping with all my might, but one thing that Molly said stuck out: “It would be cool to start a band, which is why we definitely won’t do it.”
Okay, so like I said, Mom always told me to look for openings exactly like this to strike up conversations with people, but I hardly ever do. In fact, I never do. But I knew this could be my ticket to talk to Molly, and those kinds of tickets were hard to come by.
I grabbed my tray and notebook and stood up. It was like my body took over. My brain was screaming, “Stop, loser! Go back!” but my legs somehow delivered me to Molly and Edwin’s table. I felt a hunk of UFO drip inside my collar, down my back, and onto the floor. I prayed that nobody had noticed that bit of weirdness.
“Excuse me,” I mumbled, not looking at them, “did someone say something about starting a band? Because I was in one back at my old school. I play guitar a little. Not that well, but, you know … okay. So anyway, I’m interested. In starting a band, I mean.” It sounded unbelievably lame coming out of my mouth. I was absolutely positive that this was another thing I had screwed up before it even got started.
“Sounds good to me,” said Molly simply.
Wait, what?
“Sounds good to her, new kid,” said Edwin.
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Okay, well … by the way, I’m Davis Delaware,” I said, pulling up a chair.
“We already know that,” said Edwin. “So, what’s Delaware like?”
Here we go again. “I’ve never even been to Delaware. I’m from Newark, just an hour and a half away.”