by Peter Hannan
Molly thought for a minute. “Well, he is handsome.”
“Are you serious?” Give me a break.
“Okay, you’re not a girl. Plus, I’ve known him for a long time. He used to be nicer. He kind of reminds me of my brother. And he’s not a moron, you know. He’s actually pretty smart.” She sounded a little defensive about that part. She paused to think for a moment, like she was working it out for herself. “I don’t know, it took him a while to become what he is today. His parents are completely nuts. His dad is a jerk, never around. And his mom is some sort of zombie society lady, who cares more about her clothes and furniture than Gerald.”
I guess it sort of made sense, but Molly sounded a little like a lawyer making excuses for an obviously guilty client.
“It still doesn’t explain why you hang around with him,” I pointed out.
“Well, some things are hard to explain,” she said. “Anyway, do you want this?”
She threw the rolled-up Mad Manny T-shirt at me.
“Why? You look great in it. You had it on the first time I saw you.” Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Was that creepy?
“I know,” she said. “It was my brother’s, but he outgrew it. I was only wearing it because I miss him now that he’s away at college.” She looked a little sad. “But you should wear it when the Dweebs play.”
“Swing on down to Guitar Jungle,” I called — in a very good Mad Manny voice, if I do say so myself.
“It’ll be nice and tight on you. Rock-band tight,” Molly said. “I can’t think of a better shirt for the leader of a band called the Amazing Dweebs.”
She had a point. The shirt was amazing, and very dweeby. Of course, there’d be a dangerous downside if the Butcher saw me in it.
“And I’ll keep your sweatshirt,” she added, smiling.
“Really?” What was Molly doing? What was she trying to say? “Okay,” I continued, tucking the Mad Manny shirt under my arm. “But I really gotta go now.”
I turned … and tripped over a rose bush. I pulled a ridiculous ballet move, trying to avoid falling. But I landed flat on my face in the grass, anyway.
Talk about a dweeb. I had to cover for it, somehow.
“Ta-da!” I said, leaping back up.
Molly laughed, and I got the impression it was mostly with me, not at me. “See you later, Lord of the Dance,” she said, closing the door.
On the way home, I wrote a song in my head.
Three things stand out from this particular school day:
1.) I got to my locker in the morning and there, written on a yellow Post-it, were the words “DEAD DWEEB.” The fact that it was scrawled in bloodred marker made the message even clearer. I grabbed it, crumpled it up, and stuck it in my pocket.
2.) At the end of the day, I stopped at my locker again. The same words — but much bigger letters — were scratched into the paint of the locker door.
3.) Hoo boy.
I had originally planned a battle royal with Dad after school over the whole karate thing. I was sure I could talk him out of it. But the more I imagined that maniac Gerald lurking around and threatening me, the more I thought that maybe learning a little self-defense wasn’t such a bad idea.
Dad was sitting on the couch after dinner, reading the newspaper.
“You know,” I said, “I think I might be up for that karate business.”
He looked surprised. “Well … I’m glad you’re finally being a little sensible about this. It certainly couldn’t hurt to meet a few more kids.”
“Right,” I said.
“Good,” Dad said, getting up. “Because I went and got you a gi today.” He opened his briefcase and pulled out a tightly shrink-wrapped karate outfit.
I opened it, and a starched and folded white belt fell on the floor. I shook out the gi, but its large square-ish top and bottom still had a grid of fold lines across it. “I’m gonna look like a waffle in this.”
“Hang it up,” he said. “It’ll be fine for your first class tomorrow. Three o’clock — don’t be late. And please don’t quit.” Dad turned back to his newspaper.
What did he mean, “don’t quit”? The only thing I could remember ever quitting was Boy Scouts after two weeks when I was eleven. Was it my fault that the Scout leader was a psycho drill sergeant who should have traded in his uniform for a straightjacket?
Sure, I quit right before Christmas, and Santa had apparently been all set to bring me every piece of new Scout paraphernalia his little elves could whip up. So the fat man was none too jolly about having to return everything and shop for all new crap late Christmas Eve. And I mean crap. The only place open was the 24-hour pharmacy. Merry Christmas to me.
“No, Dad … I won’t quit.”
I couldn’t. Martial arts were going to save my life.
It was Saint Patrick’s Day and I didn’t wear anything green. So what, right? Okay, I had never heard of this quaint tradition, but apparently in this insane school, people pinch you for that. With my newfound poetry celebrity, even people I didn’t know were pinching me, or at least trying to. Mrs. Toople got me three times. Molly got me once — the highlight of the festivities. I was afraid the Butcher would try to pinch my ear off again, but I successfully avoided close proximity. Luckily, we didn’t have gym that day.
Mostly, I was thinking about karate. I’d pretty much decided that it was my ticket to a fear-free life. I knew I’d never be able to beat up the Butcher, but if I learned the basics, maybe I could at least keep him from annihilating me.
The dojo wasn’t too far away, but in order to make it on time, I would really have to race from my last class to my locker, and out the door. As the last bell rang and I bolted from my seat, Mr. Waverton, my history teacher, appeared in front of me, blocking my way.
“What’s this I hear about someone being the new poet laureate of Woodrow Wilson?”
“Who, me? No, no, I don’t know anything about poetry,” I said, moving from side to side, trying to make my way past him.
“That’s not what I hear, Delaware,” he said, moving with me, like he was covering me in a full-court press.
“Well, I’m afraid it’s true, Mr. Waverton,” I said, finally elbowing my way past him and through the crowd of students. “Sorry, I’ve gotta get going.”
Not a chance. There were the six or seven kids swarming near my locker, just wanting to talk. Suddenly, I was someone people wanted to talk to.
Ivan Brink, the chubby little fainting vampire kid, came up to me. He seemed to have actual fangs. His hair was jet-black. His face was chalk white. He had painted one red teardrop dripping from his eye. He wore black high-water pants that exposed more than two inches of pale, hairless ankle above his black socks and shoes. I guess he wasn’t a fan of the logo on his black polo shirt, because there was a gaping hole where the cute little crocodile or penguin or whatever used to be.
“Hey, Dela-who, why no green?” he whispered in his high-pitched vampire voice. I guess he thought “Dela-who” was hilarious. I thought it was hilarious that a guy who, as always, was all in black, was suddenly concerned about me not wearing green. He smiled and continued, “I loved that stuff in your poem about lying in a pool of blood. What was that again?”
“I can’t really remember,” I said.
“That’s cool, Dela-who. Hey, I hear you’re playing Rock Around the Dock? And you’re in some band called the Dweebs with Molly?”
“Yeah,” said another kid I’d never seen before. “Are you going out with her or something?”
“What? No!” I said, looking around to make sure the Butcher wasn’t nearby. “Definitely not.”
“Well, the blood thing was cool, anyway,” said Ivan. He paused for a minute, like he was thinking of something else to say. I was never going to get to karate on time. “Hey, wanna see me pass out?” Ivan was known for holding his breath until he fainted.
“You know,” I said, “I’m no doctor, but that might not be good for you.” This procedure required an a
ssistant to give him a barrel hug at just the right moment. Some kids were willing to do it because it was dramatic. I was horrified. And in a hurry.
I turned away and walked straight into three cute cheerleader types, one of whom immediately pinched me.
“Ha, forgot to wear green! Hey, I heard you wrote some bizarre poem about kids melting or something?” said the pincher, clearly the leader of the trio. A few days ago she wouldn’t have looked at me twice. Or even once.
That felt good. And weird.
“No … well, sort of …”
“So, you’re playing down at the dock with Molly? Are you two an item now?” She said it like Molly was a celebrity, which she kind of was at Wilson.
“No! Jeez! Why does everyone keep asking me that? Never mind … I gotta go.” I turned and headed for the door.
Then — I couldn’t believe it — the principal called out to me.
“Mr. Delaware!” said Mr. Rigo. “Hold on there a second!”
Good lord, what now?
“I just want to say how pleased I am to hear that you’re acclimating to Woodrow Wilson so well. I was a little worried about a student coming in so late in the year, but you seem to be doing just swimmingly.” He patted me on the shoulder. He was big on shoulder patting.
“Yes, Mr. Rigo,” I said, slowly walking away from him backward, trying to get the heck out of there.
“I see that you hit it off with Gerald Boggs. It was nice that he was making you feel welcome in the cafeteria the other day. You’d be surprised — he doesn’t get along with every student. I’ve known him for a long time. I play golf with his dad.”
“Huh,” I said, desperately trying not to roll my eyes. “Isn’t that interesting?”
“Yes, well, I met him years ago at an Elks Club function….”
Was he kidding? Now I had to hear the entire history of his deep bond with Gerald “the Butcher” Boggs’s father? Didn’t he realize that Gerald was a horrible human being and that, according to Molly, his father was even worse? This nonsense was coming from the principal of the school? The man who the parents of the community trusted to watch over and guide their beloved kiddies along the highways and byways of adolescence?
Rigo kept talking. He seemed to be suffering from Edwin-itis all of a sudden.
But if he was Edwin, I could have just told him to shut up. Instead, I had to stand around and listen.
By the time I finally got out of there, I was already twenty minutes late for karate. I ran all ten blocks to Jo-Jo’s Dojo. (This was harder than it sounds, because my backpack was overstuffed with my gi and about fifty pounds of books.)
When I walked through the door, I was amazed. Tons of kids were screaming and chopping the air. I didn’t know anything about it, other than the fact that it looked cool and maybe it was my salvation.
I could see Sensei Jo-Jo demonstrating some moves to a bunch of serious-looking gi-wearing guys and girls, from kindergarteners through twelfth graders or higher. He was a very skinny white guy with a wispy beard — nothing like what I’d expected. He looked like a hippie version of Uncle Sam.
And that’s when it hit me. And I don’t mean hit me, like I realized something. No, something actually hit me. Something huge. It felt like a couch or maybe a house had landed on me. This was turning into the unluckiest St. Patrick’s Day ever.
I slammed onto the hardwood floor. Man, did that hurt. My head was spinning. As I struggled to get out from under whatever had landed on me, I realized it was a human. A very large human.
“Sorry, dweeb,” said a familiar voice. “Didn’t see you there.”
Seriously? Was the Butcher everywhere?
I had no idea he did karate. Football, wrestling, karate … I guess he naturally gravitated to any activity that gave him the opportunity to pound on people. My entire self-preservation plan swirled down the drain.
I looked up at the big hulk and all the other gi-wearers gathered around.
The Butcher turned to the sensei. “Very sorry, Sensei Jo-Jo. I just didn’t expect this new, inexperienced student to be loitering right in the way there. He was late, and wearing shoes on the dojo floor. Everyone knows he should have been kneeling in the back, awaiting your permission to join the group.”
Gerald had amazingly good manners all of a sudden.
Sensei Jo-Jo spoke to me: “Name?”
“Delaware.”
“No, I asked your name. But I’m from Delaware, too. What part?”
“No … not … I’m … ouch …” Shoulder throbbing, head pounding, having trouble talking.
“Never mind,” said the sensei. “Since you are so late, you cannot participate. Please watch from the gallery above. Next time, you must arrive fifteen minutes early for warm-up.”
How was I supposed to know that?
The Butcher leaned close and smiled like a spider to a fly. “The dweeb will cry … and the dweeb will die,” he whispered.
The joke was on him. He might kill me, but he’d never make me cry.
The other students loaded me up with what now seemed like my two-hundred-pound backpack, and I climbed the wobbly stairs to the gallery — a long, thin balcony where parents and little siblings sat to watch the practice. It was hot and crowded. I squeezed in between a couple of snot-nosed brothers who, inspired by what was going on below, beat on each other the entire time. When I call them “snot-nosed,” it’s not just an insult, it’s an accurate description. And believe me, when two rug rats wrestle, they don’t keep their noses to themselves. Plus, they noticed I wasn’t wearing green, and the pinching started again.
It was immediately obvious that Gerald “the Butcher” Boggs was king of Karate Town. He could have taken on all the other kids at once. He made eye contact with me before pummeling his sparring partner with a quick flurry of kicks and chops, and then flashed me a freaky evil smile. The partner looked terrified, but he had no idea how good he had it. He was just a temporary stand-in for the Butcher’s real punching bag.
So much for karate. In retrospect, I was lucky to be late. Maybe I could just be late every Friday. But I knew my dad would find out, and he was so excited about the whole martial-arts-friend-finding scheme. “It certainly couldn’t hurt,” he’d said.
Little did he know that he had enrolled me in the house of hurt, the parlor of pain — the dojo of death.
Dad was still at work when I went to sleep that night, and he left early the next morning. I think he was working so much to make a good impression at his new job. So he wasn’t around even if I’d wanted to talk about what had happened that day, but I decided that the whole karate nightmare was one more thing I wouldn’t be filling him in on. He was on a need-to-know basis, and, as far I was concerned, he didn’t need to know.
I definitely didn’t want to tell him the truth about the Butcher. Parents always get all worked up about “getting to the bottom” of stuff like that. Phone calls, interrogations, powwows, and punishments never solve anything. They just make bad situations worse. Different, but worse.
So, now I was keeping good and bad news from my dad. If anything totally neutral ever happened, he would be the first to hear about it.
I was on my own for lunch. I looked in the fridge and found a small, foil-wrapped something that turned out to be the final remains of the spaghetti brains. I rewrapped it and stuck it way in the back of the fridge, behind the baking soda and the maraschino cherries. No-man’s land, where maybe Dad would forget about it.
Instead of subjecting myself to that, I decided to make what I usually make when I’m alone — PBJB&A, the food of the gods: peanut butter, jam, banana, and apple on toast. Jam, not jelly. And it has to be toast. Hot peanut-butter-jam-banana-apple pie. Load it up and it runs like sweet lava.
I’ve experimented with tons of variations on peanut butter sandwiches. I picked up where George Washington Carver left off. PBJB&A is by far the best. You have to gulp lots of milk straight from the carton, too. Open it on the open-other-side side and re-clos
e carefully, so that lip prints go undetected. Eat leaning over the sink. Hold the concoction in one hand, catch drips with the other.
When the feast is over — in, say, fifteen seconds — just lick your fingers and arms, rinse the rest down the drain, and go. No fuss, no muss, no more hunger.
I went to my room and got back to work.
I drew a truly horrifying portrait of Gerald, melting like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man on a huge s’more while the rest of the school sang around a roaring campfire. Sure, it was creepy and mean. But it wasn’t for anyone to see but me. And it felt so good. I really got into the details: flaming sores, oozing infections, weird growths, bubbling blisters and bulges. Worms and insects crawled out of his eyes and ears. Smoke and pus erupted from his pores like teeny volcanoes. I drew more realistically than ever before, using the side of the pencil to shade every disgusting detail. I’d never had any actual drawing lessons, but I was figuring out how to use shadows to make something look 3-D. Maybe if I made it look real, it would be real.
There was something satisfying about being in complete control of this version of Gerald — how many pimples, how few teeth, how tiny a brain. In my notebooks, all those decisions were up to me. It gave me a strange sense of power.
That’s when I got the idea for the Glossary of Goons, a dictionary for defining and categorizing some of the “favorite” characters in my life, on my own terms, for me — a committee of one. The first entry was, of course:
Gerald Boggs, n.
1. an idiot turd-faced jerk.
2. a scum-sucking pea-brain jerk.
3. a numbskull-loser pimple-eyed jerk.
4. get it? He’s more than one kind of jerk.
5. jerkity-jerk-jerk-jerk.
I started thinking about all those other goons, creeps, cretins, and ninnies that hung around with Gerald. Actually, I didn’t know much about them. They weren’t in any of my classes or anything. So, I just made stuff up based on how they looked. You’re not supposed to judge books by their covers, but it was obvious — these books were bad. It was even possible that their covers covered up some of their badness.