Phillip stood at the entrance to the stairwell, tauntingly waving Rory’s jacket at her. That’s when Rory asked me to help.
She seemed to be having fun with whatever was going on, so I figured it was some sort of game of keep away.
Sure, I thought. I’ll play.
I had writer’s block anyway, and here was a cute girl asking me for help. Phillip seemed to find the whole thing funny, too—maybe this would be a way for me to ingratiate myself to this “hooligan” everyone seemed so scared of.
Phillip bolted up the stairs, and I gave chase. He wasn’t running particularly quickly, so I was able to catch up with him by the time we reached the fourth floor. I didn’t know what I intended to do when I caught him. Maybe I’d ask him how long he’d had a crush on Rory and laugh with him about how I once did, too. Maybe I’d thank him for letting me play along. Maybe I’d make sure he didn’t stab me with the enormous knife he pulled out. Yeah, that last one. That seemed most important.
When we got to the fourth floor landing, Phillip turned and pulled out the biggest switchblade I’d even seen in person, partially because it was the only switchblade I’d ever seen in person. Even if I had seen others, Phillip’s blade still would have been bigger. There’s an iconic scene in Crocodile Dundee where a mugger demands Dundee’s wallet after pulling a knife. Dundee says, “That’s not a knife. That’s a knife,” pulling out an enormous bowie knife. Phillip’s switchblade was somewhere in between the two.
“Go back downstairs,” Phillip said with an icy stare. I have no idea if Rory got her jacket back that day. I just know that I went downstairs.
After that, Theo Webster didn’t seem like such a big deal anymore. I did what I could to avoid Phillip, although he didn’t seem to be concerned with me. I am guessing I was not the only one he had pulled that knife on. And with the pressures of AP tests and the demanding schedule of crime, he couldn’t be troubled to keep track of every single student whose life he’d threatened. Not without some sort of criminal administrative assistant.
A few weeks later, I was out in Hunter’s courtyard after school ended. It was common for a few of us to play basketball for an hour or so after classes, so the day seemed pretty normal. That changed quickly.
One of my teammates was my friend Ozzie Roberts, a fiercely intelligent and extremely athletic black student I’d met back in my Mirta short bus days. On the other team was a kid named Elba, a somewhat intelligent and somewhat athletic black student. After Ozzie spin-faked Elba and drove in for an easy layup, Elba threw the ball at Ozzie and called him an Oreo.
For the uninitiated, Oreo is a pretty demeaning thing to call a black person. It means black on the outside, white on the inside and is code for telling someone that they’re not black enough. As someone who grew up with a black sister in a white family, I had heard the word often, and it bothered me. But it bothered Ozzie more, because he knew why Elba was saying it.
It was not the first time Elba had called Ozzie an Oreo. Elba took exception to Ozzie’s choice of extracurricular activities, as Ozzie was the star of the school’s debate team. It was Ozzie receiving an award for debating that led Elba to first call Ozzie an Oreo. And, on this particular day on this particular basketball court, Ozzie had had enough.
Ozzie caught the ball with one hand and beaned Elba with it.
Ozzie wasn’t upset that he was being called white or that he was being called not black enough. He was upset that Elba, as a fellow black student, believed that academic success somehow made you white. Ozzie was proud of his accomplishments, as he should have been. And he didn’t want someone like Elba making him, or any other black student, feel less than for those accomplishments.
This was not my fight, but Ozzie was my teammate and friend, and I agreed with him. So I had his back (as much as someone unwilling to fight could have someone’s back). I’d been in one fight at Hunter before, when I was sucker punched in the stomach for not giving up control of a handball court. That was the day that I learned that getting punched isn’t nearly as bad as the fear of getting punched. Though not getting punched will always be way better than both of those options.
As far as Elba knew, I was willing to fight for Ozzie, and so was the rest of my team. So before a real fight could break out, Elba needed to take stock of exactly what he was getting himself into.
It was then that I saw Phillip coming toward me. Phillip hadn’t been playing or even near us when we were playing. But Phillip loved a fight, so when he saw one brewing, he ran over and did the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. Phillip, with a razor blade in his mouth, walked right at me and said (in the muffled way people speak when they have razor blades in their mouth), “Come here, Steve. Give me a kiss.”
Yes, Phillip had a razor blade between his teeth, pointing outward. Phillip wasn’t just an aspiring criminal—he was a super-villain. Suddenly I believed all the stories. Maybe Phillip had robbed a liquor store. Maybe Phillip had killed someone. Phillip definitely brought weapons to school.
In that moment, I thought of trying to trip Phillip. If he was dumb enough to put a razor blade in his mouth, he could swallow it, for all I cared. The reason I didn’t is best said by another iconic movie scene, this time from The Usual Suspects: “How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?”
Instead of tripping Phillip, I backed away.
“This isn’t my fight,” I said to Phillip, clearly cowering. “I’m just playing basketball.”
Phillip took the blade out of his mouth and laughed at my fear. Fear is what he got off on.
Unlike the first incident, this one had witnesses, and word got around about it quickly. I didn’t tell any teachers or administrators, because expelling someone isn’t the same as arresting them. Let’s say someone wants to stab you and you get them expelled. That doesn’t protect you; that provides the stabber more free time to stab you. I let the rumors swirl without confirming anything, and eventually it was chalked up as just another Phillip story.
As time passed, I got back to the grind of school and tried to forget about the razor blade incident, or at least as much as you can forget about someone threatening to cut your tongue out. Other people remembered it, too.
Later that year, a sophomore named Sasha brought a knife to school, too. He didn’t intend to use it; he just wanted to scare someone. Sasha found out that his girlfriend had cheated on him with his friend Jared, and he wanted revenge. And when Sasha confronted Jared in the hallway and pulled out that knife, it was obvious Sasha immediately knew he’d made a mistake. When Jared started walking toward him, Sasha threw down the knife and collapsed, crying. Sasha had never intended to hurt anyone, and he also didn’t actually hurt anyone. The poor kid had let emotion get the best of him, and an otherwise sweet kid did something extremely dumb.
Unfortunately for Sasha, everybody saw his fight. And more unfortunately, that everybody included a teacher, who reported it immediately. No adults had witnessed either time Phillip had pulled a blade on me, so he faced no repercussions. But Sasha was suspended immediately.
This was a big deal—yes, Sasha did something extremely reckless and dangerous. But it was clear to anyone who knew anything about the situation that his intent wasn’t to cause any harm. Sasha just wanted answers for why he was in so much pain. And now he was being punished for it—the type of punishment that could potentially cost him his choice of college. This suspension could have a ripple effect that would severely damage Sasha’s future. Meanwhile, Phillip got to walk around with a blade in his mouth like it was no big deal.
The injustice of that juxtaposition became the subject of several student inquiries as to why Sasha had to be suspended. Sasha’s classmates were rallying behind him—something I fully supported. The only problem was that in order to make their point, those students repeatedly told Hunter’s administration that Phillip had not been suspended for pulling a knife on me. Once the administration had been told that by enough people, they acted.
; When I say they acted, I do not mean they did anything to protect me, or even to attempt to protect me. I was called into the principal’s office, with Phillip, and was told to tell the story of when Phillip pulled a knife on me. How could the administration possibly think that was a good idea? Sasha was not the only dumb one at Hunter.
I said, “no, thank you.” I’d rather have been sucker punched in the stomach.
Dr. Haanraats, in the genius way that only he could, threatened to suspend me if I didn’t start talking. Somehow, I was in the wrong for having an instinct of self-preservation. I was caught between a rock and a sharp place.
Extremely reluctantly (and with Phillip sitting in the chair next to mine), I told Dr. Haanraats about the time Phillip tried to kiss me with a razor blade in his mouth and ended the story with, “Can I go now?” Dr. Haanraats demanded to know about the other time. Dumbfounded, I asked him what he meant. “In the stairwell,” Dr. Haanraats said. “There wasn’t a time in the stairwell?”
“Oh,” I said. “I think Phillip was just playing around then. I didn’t even remember that till you mentioned it just now.”
Like hell I didn’t remember it. I didn’t understand why I was being forced to talk about it or how anyone else knew about that incident. And I didn’t understand why, if the school knew about both incidents, they hadn’t done anything to protect me before now. Or during now.
“I hear this shark tried to eat you twice,” they may as well have said. “So we’ve decided to cover you in fish blood and sit you next to him. Now, taunt that shark or you’ll be suspended.”
The worst part was that Dr. Haanraats had no intention of exonerating Sasha. He just wanted to use the information he was getting to discipline Phillip as well. Sasha’s punishment was upheld.
And in the most insane turn of events, Sasha was suspended and Phillip wasn’t. The rumor was that Phillip’s father was a lawyer and threatened to sue the school if any action was taken against his son. Even if that was just another Phillip story, the school had the information they needed to do something about Phillip, and they did nothing. There was absolutely no reason to put me in harm’s way like that. Dr. Haanraats was a principal, yes. Principled? No.
I don’t know if Phillip respected that I obviously tried not to snitch, or whether he was too busy assaulting other students to assault me. Whatever the reason, Phillip thankfully didn’t seek retribution, and I never heard from him again.
Unless you count his music.
KING HOFSTETTER
Homecoming is a pretty big deal for a lot of high school students. But at Hunter, homecoming isn’t a deal at all. We have our traditions. Every spring, Carnival turns our schoolyard into a county fair, with booths and games and funnel cake. For two weeks in May, Killer turns our seniors and juniors into teams of assassins, shooting each other with toy guns for cash and bragging rights. And we used to have a fall trip to Bear Mountain State Park each year, until a ninth-grader snuck alcohol in and ended that tradition pretty quickly.
Homecoming is a football-based tradition, and there isn’t really any high school football in Manhattan. There certainly wasn’t at Hunter—even our baseball and softball teams played their games in the city-owned fields of Central Park (and only when permits and schedules allowed).
I can’t say for sure whether Hunter had a Homecoming Dance every year or my senior year was the only time we experienced it. It could have been a tradition we usually ignored. Or homecoming could have been a one-time gimmick, a renaming of the fall dance, to get people to think it was more important than it was.
By senior year, I hadn’t just found a few friends but a group of them. I was still friends with Jacob Corry and Rebecca Chaikin, but there was also Randy Grier-Holmes. Randy was a fellow card and pool player and one of the only people on the baseball team I truly liked. Randy was also childhood friends with my friend Mason from USY, which bonded us more. And I’d become closer with Ozzie Roberts. Perhaps something good came out of Mirta’s bus after all—fear really does bring people together.
There were lots of other people Randy and Ozzie were friends with, and I started hanging out with them, too. There was Roy Benton, the whip-smart political science junkie who was perpetually frustrated with his long-term, Mormon girlfriend, Cathy. And Nick Giannopoulos, the not-so-smart but sweet oaf who wasn’t very frustrated at all with his equally not-so-smart girlfriend. There was also Dan K. and Dan C. and Joe J., who was only called Joe J. because we enjoyed the alliteration. And of course there was Brent, whose parents were still never, ever home.
I was only close with Jacob, Randy, and Ozzie, and casual friends with the rest, mainly because I didn’t know how to hang out after school. I spent so much time at Hunter not having friends that now that I’d finally made them, I didn’t know how to initiate spending time around them. I just quietly waited to be invited to hang out with people.
From seeing me dance at junior prom and his friendship with Mason, Randy knew that dancing was something I enjoyed doing. When Randy asked whether I was going to go home between school and the homecoming dance or go straight there, I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“There’s a homecoming dance?” I asked. “Did we suddenly get a football team?”
When I saw that Randy was serious, I deflected as if I had known about the dance all along and asked what his plans were. He said he was just going to kill time between school and the dance as it wasn’t worth it to take the subway all the way home and back just to be home for an hour.
“Yeah, me too.” I said, fishing for more information. “It’s next week, right?”
Randy laughed. “It’s today, bright child. You really didn’t know about it?”
Homecoming wasn’t the first time that I had been out of Hunter’s social loop, so I accepted my ignorance and came clean. There are two groups of people who don’t know about school dances. Those too cool to be bothered with such things and those not cool enough to be bothered with such things. I was clearly in the latter camp.
Randy told me that there was no dress code and that what I was wearing would be fine. Which was good, because even if I had gone home, I didn’t have a nicer baseball T-shirt or a better pair of non–purposely faded jeans I could have changed into.
I spent the next few hours hanging on Hunter’s steps with the group, as we talked about which girls we thought were cute and teased Roy that maybe he and Cathy would hold hands for the first time. Well, I watched the other guys do all that stuff—I was quiet, just happy to be included. I’d grown bold in USY, but I was still pretty quiet at Hunter.
At six P.M. the dance started, but it wasn’t time to go to the dance. We had to wait until six-thirty. If you’ve never been to a school dance, you should know that you never, ever get there when it starts. You never want to be the first one there, standing by the drink table in a mostly empty gym, trying to not look like the loser who is by himself at the drink table in a mostly empty gym. I say this as someone who spent the first half hour of his first dance by himself at the drink table in a mostly empty gym.
Instead we went for pizza and strolled in at six-thirty like we had planned. That is what the phrase fashionably late means. Fashionably late does not mean you should be so late that you miss your Little League game.
The dance was uneventful but fun. I mainly outer-circle danced. I wasn’t about to grind with anyone I would see in class the next day, and one middle-of-the-circle dance at junior prom was enough for me. I didn’t need to replicate that at homecoming.
At the end of the dance, our class president (Cathy) got on the mic and told us it was the moment that we had all been waiting for. As someone who hadn’t even known the dance was happening until lunchtime that day, I was not really waiting for any moment. Still, I applauded along to fit in.
“It’s time to announce the homecoming court!” she said with a level of excitement matched by no one else in the room. Even Roy couldn’t pretend to be interested, and he was still trying to get Cat
hy to make out with him.
In other schools, homecoming court is as big a deal as the homecoming game. But since we still didn’t have a football team, this was probably just another gimmick to make the dance interesting.
There hadn’t been any elections, further convincing me that homecoming was a made-up thing. Allegedly, the names had just been pulled out of a hat. I began doubting this was true, as it was far-fetched that the organizers knew who was at the dance, let alone that they would go to the trouble of putting all their names in a hat. And if they were drawing out of a hat, wouldn’t they do that in front of us? Also, whose hat? I had so many questions.
Great, I thought. Something else rigged in favor of the popular kids.
When Cathy announced Roy as the court jester, everyone got a big kick out of it, and it further cemented my theory that there was no hat involved. I was all but certain that this thing was fixed when the homecoming princess and prince were one of Cathy’s friends and one of the Dans. But I started enjoying the fix.
Sure, it was fixed, but it was fixed in the right direction for once. So much of high school orbited around the popular kids. They seemed to get everything they wanted, and here was a time where they finally didn’t. Even though this was a made-up honor at a made-up dance that they probably didn’t want, it was nice to see the good guys win.
When Cathy called out the name of our homecoming queen, my theory vanished like it was Brent’s parents. The name she called out was a name I would have expected her to call out when I thought the system was rigged in favor of the popular kids. The name she called out was The Clique’s most revered member: Victoria Layton.
I haven’t yet mentioned Victoria because we may have been in the same high school, but we were never in the same stratosphere. There is a girl at every high school who is perfect, and ours was Victoria Layton. She was beautiful and rich and a straight-A student and funny and kind. I never heard anyone ever say a bad word about Victoria Layton, and in high school people say bad words about everybody. Victoria was like Scarlet Daly, if Scarlet wasn’t cartoonishly evil.
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