The doctors discovered that, yes, indeed, my leg was broken. To be exact, the femur was broken, which—I don’t mean to brag—is the largest bone in the human body. They put me in a body cast from the waist down, which meant I couldn’t leave my bed for two whole freaking months! I couldn’t even hobble around on crutches or anything. I just had to lie in my little yellow bedroom, looking for ways to kill time.
I watched TV and read books all day, straight through into the night. I didn’t just kill time; I murdered it. I talked to friends on the phone. I did crossword puzzles. I played video games. It was fun for the first couple of days, but after that I started to go a little crazy. It was rough. But then, suddenly, after three weeks of not leaving my room, something strange happened—I stopped being bored. It was like I had been addicted to stimulation, and, after a traumatic withdrawal process, I had come out the other side clean, no longer a slave to excitement. After all, what are drugs but an artificial form of stimulation? Now I was even free from the need for natural stimulation.
Time got slippery. I couldn’t tell the difference between two minutes and two hours. I could fill a whole day watching the square of sunlight from my window move around the room. I was an oak tree for whom the passage of decades felt like mere seconds.
My mind expanded to fill the void the world had left. No longer held in the grip of time, I traveled freely, visiting old memories and imagining new futures. I submerged myself in the water of time and felt my body dissolve. This lack of desire, was it happiness? Or was this what death felt like?
The whole thing was a weird experience, but the weirdest part of breaking my leg was that Melanie started actually being nice to me.
I hate to admit it, but Melanie didn’t like me. Mom always tried to make me feel better by reminding me that lots of older sisters don’t like their younger brothers, but still, I think Melanie disliked me more than average. One time Dad wanted to take a picture of the two of us, and he had to pay her a dollar to put her arm around me.
We were in my parents’ bedroom, and I must have been pretty young, because my eyes were level with the top of their bed. As Melanie haggled with Dad over the price, I tried to ignore the embarrassment by focusing on my parents’ bedspread, running my hand over the green quilted top and counting the stitches between the squares. Why are the worst memories the ones you remember best? I recall it all with crystal clarity: the silky slip of that bedspread under my hand, Dad announcing cheerily, “Okay, bud, put your arm around your sister!” Melanie looking at me like a bug she was being forced to eat.
But she was nice to me when I broke my leg. Maybe she felt bad for me, or maybe she could relate to not feeling well and having to spend lots of time in bed. She brought me books and would sit next to me and watch TV. Every day when she got home from school, she’d sit on the edge of the bed and tell me what had happened that day. It almost made breaking my leg worth it.
One day when Melanie came home from school, she said, “Hey, I brought someone who wants to see you.”
It was the redhead. He looked at my cast and whistled, shaking his head.
“I told you,” he said sadly. “You shouldn’t have said it was broken.”
That night while I was lying in bed, the house stone silent and the clock stopped dead on the wall, I wondered if maybe he was right. I mean, I knew he was wrong . . . but what if he was right?
Would my leg still have been broken if I said it wasn’t?
Of course I know the answer is yes, it would still have been broken, but I can’t stop myself from wondering sometimes. From wondering frequently, in fact. And I worry that’s proof that the psychologist was wrong and I am indeed crazy.
— — —
The scrape of Mrs. Zimmerman’s chair alerts me to the end of homeroom—she always gets up to open the door before the bell rings—and as she props the door open, I see Rob Klein standing in the hallway with a guy I vaguely recognize from the football team. I think his name’s Jono. He’s tall and slim, with feathery red hair and a patch of baby-thin whiskers on his upper lip that he’s trying to pass off as a mustache. He looks like the type of guy who is very good at giving wedgies and has gotten that way through diligent practice.
Rob leans against the curve of the hallway, a nasty little smirk on his face. He sees that I see him and smiles wider, exposing tiny teeth with a small gap between each of them, like he never lost his baby teeth and they’ve just spread out to fill his mouth.
Even though Rob is small, he’s dangerous—a Chihuahua with rabies. He’s the best insult craftsman in the whole school, and every student is terrified of him. You can feel the tension when he walks down the hallway, everyone he passes praying that he won’t notice some small flaw of theirs and magnify it for everyone to see.
Rob understands that what makes a great insult isn’t nastiness; it’s stickiness. The most effective insults linger. They’re words or names that are so specific and memorable that people will repeat them, and this is how they’ll spread. It’s not just an insult that you get once. It follows you.
On my first day of school at Upper Shuckburgh High, I wore a shirt with subtle—very subtle, I thought—dots on it. Yes, I guess you could call them polka dots. It was a rookie mistake: In high school, you never want to stand out, especially if you’re the new kid. You want to blend in with the pack, so the predators won’t notice you.
Rob noticed that shirt like a lion noticing a wounded wildebeest.
“Yo, look at this clown,” Rob said to his friends. They were big guys, wearing Shuckburgh football jerseys, and they all laughed.
Now, look at this clown isn’t much of an insult, and Rob seemed to know it, because then he made it more specific, more sticky, by saying, “Look at Chuckles the Clown here.”
I thought that was still a lame insult, but for the next week—a solid week—all the guys on the football team called me Chuckles. Even a couple days ago, months after I thought this had ended, some kid I barely know in my swim class was surprised to learn my name was Kirby. “I thought it was Chuck,” he said, confused.
The insult didn’t seem so weak then.
Rob didn’t just embarrass me; he took my name.
So even though Rob’s nasty smile is barely higher than Jono’s elbow, it makes me nervous.
PJ jerks his thumb at Rob and whispers, “He was one of the guys with Mark!”
I almost say, “I know,” but I stop myself just in time.
The bell rings, and everyone stands up and gathers their books to leave.
I moan with dread, and PJ smiles. “Don’t worry, buddy. I got this. Grab your stuff and get ready to run. Deception and evasion. Watch.”
As the class slowly files out the door, PJ puts on his Iron Pigs head and jumps on top of his desk. He squeals like a stuck pig, a terrifying sound he has put hours of practice into being able to achieve, and the classroom turns around to look at him, alarmed.
Standing atop the desk in his warthog head and tuxedo, PJ cuts a commanding figure, a jungle beast out for a night on the town. He does a funny dance and shouts, “Whose defense is tougher than a cement truck?”
Everyone stares at him, too shocked to respond, so he prompts them in a loud stage whisper, “The Iron Hogs!”
“You mean Iron Pigs?” someone corrects him.
PJ puts his hands on his hips. “Yes, okay, fine, pigs. Now, whose defense is tougher than a cement truck?”
Two of the guys in our homeroom are wearing football jerseys, and they yell back, “The Iron Pigs!”
Mrs. Zimmerman looks mildly alarmed, but she doesn’t tell us to quiet down. I guess she can’t be mad at us for having too much school spirit.
“Whose offensive line will leave you awestruck?” PJ asks.
Half the class answers now. “The Iron Pigs! The Iron Pigs!”
“And who will mess you up ’cause they don’t give a shuck?!”
The rhyme is so stupid, but PJ’s enthusiasm is contagious, and the whole homeroom shouts w
ith one voice, “THE IRON PIGS!”
PJ jumps off the desk, lets loose another bloodcurdling squeal, and leads the cheering crowd out the door in a stampede.
“Chaaaaaaaaarge!!!”
PJ and I duck down and run out of the classroom in the middle of the chaos, two rabbits in a herd of buffalo. Through the crowd I catch a glimpse of Rob and Jono pressed against the hallway wall, understandably confused, and then we’re around the curve of the circle and out of sight.
One period down, seven to go!
CHAPTER 11
* * *
PJ AND I HEAD AROUND the circle and then down the stairwell toward the Thunderdome. I’m going to German class in Circle A, and PJ has Spanish in Circle “That’s Not Fair; He Already Speaks Spanish.” It’s like letting me take third-grade English as my foreign language. But there are so few Latinos at old Upshuck High that the school hasn’t thought to close the loophole yet.
Along the way PJ tells me what happened in the bathroom with Mark, a story I, of course, already know, because I was two stalls away doing intense toilet-seat yoga while it happened.
However, I notice one interesting difference between PJ’s version of the story and what really happened. PJ doesn’t mention that Mark found PJ’s book bag with his name inside it or that Mark interrogated him to get Jake’s and my names. Instead, PJ says that Mark already knew it was Jake, PJ, and me at the farm because he saw us running past the house and recognized us.
I can tell PJ never lies, because this is such a bad one. If Mark recognized us last night, then why didn’t he react when he saw me on the bus this morning? Besides, Jake and PJ were already halfway up the driveway before Mark even ran out of the house; there’s no way he could have seen them.
I guess PJ feels guilty that it was his bag that got us in trouble and about giving up our names under questioning. Whatever his reasoning, I’m glad he lies, because it makes me feel less guilty about my own deception. We’re all down here in the shit together.
“So, are you okay?” I ask, lightly touching his arm where he got stapled.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. “They’re just tiny little holes.”
Sure, they’re just little tiny holes IN YOUR FLESH. No big deal.
“I’m more concerned,” PJ continues, “about where I can get a new shirt before lunch.”
“You’re more concerned about that?”
“Well, I still have to ask Vern to the dance, remember? I told you the whole plan on the bus. At lunch, the dance I’m gonna do with the music? You said you’d press play.”
I don’t even want to get into this right now. “Oh right, of course, yeah.”
“I think I can get a shirt from behind the stage,” PJ says as we cross the lobby and enter the bustling heart of the Thunderdome. It’s crowded, lines of fast-walking students crisscrossing one another with a natural choreography. “They’re doing Guys and Dolls this year, so I can probably get a white shirt from the wardrobe rack.”
I text Jake again, although you’re not supposed to text even in the halls. If Mr. Hartman sees me, I’ll be in trouble, but I figure he’s probably still wiping dead raccoon off the roof. Heads up, I type. Mark Kruger, Tommy Richter, and Rob Klein are after us. Watch your back!!!
I’m pretty sure he won’t respond—or he’ll just text back Whatever. Jake’s in my art class, so I’ll see him then. Besides, Jake can take care of himself. I’d rather grab an electric fence than fight Jake.
I grabbed all the books I need for my pre-lunch classes before homeroom, but PJ stops at his locker between every single class to load and unload weird stuff: Slinkies and cowboy hats and stuffed animals.
We stop at PJ’s locker, and I scan the crowd nervously, looking for Rob, Tommy, or Mark. Tommy will be the easiest to spot, since he’s a foot taller than any other student and always wears his orange-and-black Iron Pigs jersey. Rob, on the other hand, is so tiny, he could slither right up through the crowd and I wouldn’t see him until he was sinking his sharp little teeth into my ankle.
“Do you think I should still ask Vern out today?” PJ asks me as he rummages through his locker. “I don’t have my geraniums anymore. Mark threw them in a urinal.”
I don’t say I know. Instead I ask the very reasonable question, “How can you still be thinking about Vern? Aren’t you nervous?”
“Well, of course I’m a little nervous,” PJ says. “It’s a complicated dance. But if you’re willing to help out and press play when I give you the signal, then—”
“Not nervous about Vern!” I yell. “Mark! Rob! Tommy! Death! Aren’t you concerned about the situation we’re in here?”
PJ pulls a trumpet out of his bag and puts it in his locker while he considers the question, then shrugs. “Well, I already got stapled, so I think I’m in the clear.”
“Well, that’s great, PJ. I’m real happy for you. What about me? What am I gonna do?!”
PJ is getting frustrated. “I don’t know. What can you do? I mean, you could go to the office and tell the principal that Mark wants to beat you up, but then Mark will say that we vandalized his farm. Which, please don’t do that—my parents will be pissed if they find out. Also, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t let me hang out with you anymore.”
He plops a three-pound bag of Swedish Fish into his book bag and closes his locker, spinning the combination lock with a flourish.
“So that’s it,” I say. “You just want me to let them beat me up?”
PJ is never serious, so it surprises me when he loses his perma-smile and lowers his voice soberly. “Look, dude, we snuck over to Mark’s house and messed with his stuff. You punched him in the face.”
I try to protest, but he stops me. “I know we were just goofing around, and I know it was an accident. And I know that Mark and those guys are, uh . . .”
He struggles to find a diplomatic way to put it.
“Assholes?” I suggest.
“Yeah.” He giggles. “Super assholes. Super-duper raging assholes. But they’re also bigger than us. And they’re meaner than us.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “And they are going to beat you up. I’m sorry, but you can’t avoid it.”
I think you underestimate my ability to avoid stuff, friendo. I brush his hand off my shoulder as the bell rings.
PJ’s smile pops back onto his face. “And, actually, you do have one way to avoid getting beat up.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, if they fight Jake before they fight you, he’ll probably kill them.”
With this cheerful thought in mind, I hurry to German class, my ears cocked hopefully for the wail of approaching sirens.
CHAPTER 12
* * *
HERR BRONNER IS OUR GERMAN teacher, but he should be a geometry teacher, because his body is a perfect circle. It’s a shape that belts don’t work on, so Herr Bronner wears suspenders, always in a jaunty color like lime green or purple. Today they’re an autumn-appropriate pumpkiny orange. His curly black hair frizzes high above his friendly face.
Herr Bronner takes roll from his desk, calling out our German names cheerfully and patting his belly after each name.
“Hans?”
“Hier!”
“Dieter?”
“Hier!”
“Elsa?”
“Anwesend!” Elsa shouts.
Elsa’s real name is Myka. She’s the most motivated student in class—and probably the whole school—so of course she says the German word for “present” instead of the simpler hier (which is pronounced just like “here” but with a German accent). Elsa is aggressively smart and holds the rest of us slackers in cool contempt.
Myka is head of the cheerleading squad, and today she’s wearing a baggy pink sweatshirt over her cheerleading skirt. She’s dating Tommy—I see them holding hands in the halls and sitting together at lunch—but they seem like such an unlikely pair, the best and worst students in the school. It makes me wonder if there’s something about Tommy I can’t see. If he’s not a
s bad a guy as he seems.
I chose German instead of Spanish or French because I heard it was the easiest of the three languages, although I have since found out that is extremely incorrect. As evidence, I invite you to compare the German word for incorrect, unrichtig, against its Spanish counterpart, incorrecto. The only time German is useful to me is when I’m watching Die Hard (Schießen dem Fenster! Schießen dem Fenster!), which, come to think of it, is every day, so maybe I’m not so dumb after all.
Herr Bronner finishes roll call and folds his hands over his grand belly as he greets us.
“Guten Tag, meine Damen und Herren.”
“Guten Tag, Herr Bronner!” we reply in something resembling German.
Herr Bronner winces as we mangle his native tongue, then announces that we’re going to run some dialogues from the book. We pull out our German textbooks, massive tomes large enough to break a toe if dropped. The cover says Komm Mit! which means Come Along! and sports a photo of two strangely European teenagers from the 1980s laughing deliriously in front of a castle.
Herr Bronner gamely approaches Liam Spagnaletti’s desk. Spags is the worst student in class, seemingly incapable of absorbing even a single foreign word. I think it’s funny that Spags has the most Italian name I’ve ever heard—his name is practically spaghetti, for guten Tag’s sake—but he’s in German class. His German name is Johann, and Herr Bronner addresses him loudly and slowly, like he’s talking to a baby. “Johann, wo wohnst du?” Where do you live?
Spags is sweating like he’s just been picked out of a police lineup. His eyes dart over to Myka, who is examining her perfect blue-painted nails. I’m pretty sure Spags has a crush on her.
“Ah . . . ,” Spags begins. “Ich lebe—”
“Wohne! ” Herr Bronner interrupts. “Ich wohne.”
“Ja, ja, sorry. Uh, Ich wohne aus—”
“Ich wohne in,” Herr Bronner corrects him.
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