King Dork

by Frank Portman

  Published by Delacorte Press an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc. New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2006 by Frank Portman

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2006 by Daniel Chang

  All rights reserved.

  Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:

  Portman, Frank.

  King Dork / Frank Portman.

  p. cm.

  Summary: High school loser Tom Henderson discovers that “The Catcher in the Rye” may hold the clues to the many mysteries in his life.

  [1. Identity—Fiction. 2. Fathers—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.P8373Ki 2006

  [Fic]—dc22

  2005012556

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89070-3

  v3.0_r2

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Intro

  August

  September

  October

  November

  December

  Epilogue

  Outro

  Bandography

  Glossary

  King Dork, Approximately

  THANKS TO:

  My editor, Krista Marino, and everyone at Delacorte Press;

  my agent, Steven Malk;

  plus Belle, Matil, Chris Appelgren, Paul Caringella, Shauna

  Cross, Joanna Hatzopoulos, Marion Henderson, Amanda

  Jenkins, Bobby Jordan, Tristin Laughter, Rebekah Leslie,

  Beth Lisick, Paige O’Donoghue, Christine Portman,

  and Ethan Stoller.

  And afterwards, in radiant garments dressed

  With sound of flutes and laughing of glad lips,

  A pomp of all the passions passed along

  All the night through; till the white phantom ships

  Of dawn sailed in. Whereat I said this song,

  “Of all sweet passions Shame is loveliest.”

  —Lord Alfred Douglas

  It started with a book. If I hadn’t discovered it when and how I did, everything would have turned out differently. But because of it the first semester of sophomore year at Hillmont High School ended up way more interesting and eventful and weird than it was ever supposed to be.

  It’s actually kind of a complicated story, involving at least half a dozen mysteries, plus dead people, naked people, fake people, teen sex, weird sex, drugs, ESP, Satanism, books, blood, Bubblegum, guitars, monks, faith, love, witchcraft, the Bible, girls, a war, a secret code, a head injury, the Crusades, some crimes, mispronunciation skills, a mystery woman, a devil-head, a blow job, and rock and roll. It pretty much destroyed the world as I had known it up to that point. And I’m not even exaggerating all that much. I swear to God.

  I found the book by accident, in a sense. It was in one of the many boxes of books in the basement, in storage in case we ever got more shelves, or perhaps to be sold or given away at some point. The reason I say by accident “in a sense” is because the book I found was exactly the book I had been looking for. But I had been looking for just any old copy of it, rather than the specific copy I ended up finding, which I hadn’t even known existed. And which was something else, and which ended up opening the craziest can of worms…

  KING DORK

  They call me King Dork.

  Well, let me put it another way: no one ever actually calls me King Dork. It’s how I refer to myself in my head, a silent protest and an acknowledgment of reality at the same time. I don’t command a nerd army, or preside over a realm of the socially ill-equipped. I’m small for my age, young for my grade, uncomfortable in most situations, nearsighted, skinny, awkward, and nervous. And no good at sports. So Dork is accurate. The King part is pure sarcasm, though: there’s nothing special or ultimate about me. I’m generic. It’s more like I’m one of the kings in a pack of crazy, backward playing cards, designed for a game where anyone who gets me automatically loses the hand. I mean, everything beats me, even twos and threes.

  I suppose I fit the traditional mold of the brainy, freaky, oddball kid who reads too much, so bright that his genius is sometimes mistaken for just being retarded. I know a lot of trivia, and I often use words that sound made-up but that actually turn out to be in the dictionary, to everyone’s surprise—but I can never quite manage to keep my shoes tied or figure out anything to say if someone addresses me directly. I play it up. It’s all I’ve got going for me, and if a guy can manage to leave the impression that his awkwardness arises from some kind of deep or complicated soul, why not go for it? But, I admit, most of the time, I walk around here feeling like a total idiot.

  Most people in the world outside my head know me as Moe, even though my real name is Tom. Moe isn’t a normal nickname. It’s more like an abbreviation, short for Chi-Mo. And even that’s an abbreviation for something else.

  Often, when people hear “Chi-Mo” they’ll smile and say, “Hippie parents?” I never know what to say to that because yes, my folks are more hippie than not, but no, that’s not where the name comes from.

  Chi-Mo is derogatory, though you wouldn’t necessarily know that unless you heard the story behind it. Yet even those who don’t know the specific story can sense its dark origins, which is why it has held on for so long. They get a kick out of it without really knowing why. Maybe they notice me wincing when I hear them say it, but I don’t know: there are all sorts of reasons I could be wincing. Life is a wince-a-thon.

  There’s a list of around thirty or forty supposedly insulting things that people have called me that I know about, past and present, and a lot of them are way worse than Moe. Some are classic and logical, like Hender-pig, Hender-fag, or Hender-fuck. Some are based on jokes or convoluted theories of offensiveness that are so retarded no one could ever hope to understand them. Like Sheepie. Figure that one out and you win a prize. As for Chi-Mo, it goes all the way back to the seventh grade, and it wouldn’t even be worth mentioning except for the fact that this particular nickname ended up playing an unexpectedly prominent role in the weird stuff that happened toward the end of this school term. So, you know, I thought I’d mention it.

  Mr. Teone, the associate principal for the ninth and tenth grades, always refers to Sam Hellerman as Peggy. I guess he’s trying to imply that Sam Hellerman looks like a girl. Well, okay, so maybe Sam Hellerman does look a little like a girl in a certain way, but that’s not the point.

  In fact, Mr. Teone happens to have a huge rear end and pretty prominent man boobs, and looks way more like a lady than Sam Hellerman ever could unless he were to gain around two hundred pounds and start a course of hormone therapy. Clearly, he’s trying to draw attention away from his own nontraditionally gendered form factor by focusing on the alleged femininity of another. Though why he decided to pick on Sam Hellerman as part of his personal battle against his own body image remains a mystery.

  I’m just glad it’s not me who gets called Peggy, because who needs it?

  There’s always a bit of suspense about the particular way in which a given school year will get off to a bad start.

  This year, it was an evil omen, like when druids observe an owl against the moon in the first hour of S
amhain and conclude that a grim doom awaits the harvest. That kind of thing can set the tone for the rest of the year. What I’m getting at is, the first living creature Sam Hellerman and I encountered when we penetrated the school grounds on the first day of school was none other than Mr. Teone.

  The sky seemed suddenly to darken.

  We were walking past the faculty parking, and he was seated in his beat-up ’93 Geo Prizm, struggling to force his supersized body through the open car door. We hurried past, but he noticed us just as he finally squeezed through. He stood by the car, panting heavily from the effort and trying to tuck his shirt into his pants so that it would stay in for longer than a few seconds.

  “Good morning, Peggy,” he said to Sam Hellerman. “So you decided to risk another year.” He turned to me and bellowed: “Henderson!” Then he did this big theatrical salute and waddled away, laughing to himself.

  He always calls me by my last name and he always salutes. Clearly, mocking me and Sam Hellerman is more important than the preservation of his own dignity. He seems to consider it to be part of his job. Which tells you just about everything you need to know about Hillmont High School society.

  It could be worse. Mr. Donnelly, PE teacher and sadist supreme, along with his jabbering horde of young sports troglodytes-in-training, never bother with Moe or Peggy, and they don’t salute. They prefer to say “pussy” and hit you on the ear with a cupped palm. According to an article called “Physical Interrogation Techniques” in one of my magazines (Today’s Mercenary), this can cause damage to the eardrum and even death when applied accurately. But Mr. Donnelly and his minions are not in it for the accuracy. They operate on pure, mean-spirited, status-conscious instinct, which usually isn’t very well thought out. Lucky for me they’re so poorly trained, or I’d be in big trouble.

  But there’s no point fretting about what people call you. Enough ill will can turn anything into an attack. Even your own actual name.

  “I think he’s making fun of your army coat,” said Sam Hellerman as we headed inside. Maybe that was it. I admit, I did look a little silly in the coat, especially since I hardly ever took it off, even in the hottest weather. I couldn’t take it off, for reasons I’ll get to in a bit.

  I know Sam Hellerman because he was the guy right before me in alphabetical order from the fourth through eighth grades. You spend that much time standing next to somebody, you start to get used to each other.

  He’s the closest thing I have to a friend, and he’s an all-right guy. I don’t know if he realizes that I don’t bring much to the table, friendship-wise. I let him do most of the talking. I usually don’t have a comment.

  “There’s no possibility of life on other planets in this solar system,” he’ll say.

  Silence.

  “Well, let me rephrase that. There’s no possibility of carbon-based life on other planets in this solar system.”

  “Really?” I’ll say, after a few beats.

  “Oh, yeah,” he’ll say. “No chance.”

  He always has lots to say. He can manage for both of us. We spend a lot of time over each other’s houses watching TV and playing games. There’s a running argument about whose house is harder to take. Mine is goofy and resembles an insane asylum; his is silent and grim and forbidding, and bears every indication of having been built on an ancient Indian burial ground. We both have a point, but he usually wins and comes to my house because I’ve got a TV in my room and he doesn’t. TV can really take the edge off. Plus, he has a taste for prescription tranquilizers, and my mom is his main unwitting supplier.

  Sam Hellerman and I are in a band. I mean, we have a name and a logo, and the basic design for the first three or four album covers. We change the name a lot, though. A typical band lasts around two weeks, and some don’t even last long enough for us to finish designing the logo, let alone the album covers.

  When we arrived at school that first day, right at the end of August, the name was Easter Monday. But Easter Monday only lasted from first period through lunch, when Sam Hellerman took out his notebook in the cafeteria and said, “Easter Monday is kind of gay. How about Baby Batter?”

  I nodded. I was never that wild about Easter Monday, to tell you the truth. Baby Batter was way better. By the end of lunch, Sam Hellerman had already made a rough sketch of the logo, which was Gothic lettering inside the loops of an infinity symbol. That’s the great thing about being in a band: you always have a new logo to work on.

  “When I get my bass,” Sam Hellerman said, pointing to another sketch he had been working on, “I’m going to spray-paint ‘baby’ on it. Then you can spray-paint ‘batter’ on your guitar, and as long as we stay on our sides of the stage, we won’t need a banner when we play on TV.”

  I didn’t even bother to point out that by the time we got instruments and were in a position to worry about what to paint on them for TV appearances, the name Baby Batter would be long gone. This was for notebook purposes only. I decided my Baby Batter stage name would be Guitar Guy, which Sam Hellerman carefully wrote down for the first album credits. He said he hadn’t decided on a stage name yet, but he wanted to be credited as playing “base and Scientology.” That Sam Hellerman. He’s kind of brilliant in his way.

  “Know any drummers?” he asked as the bell rang, as he always does. Of course, I didn’t. I don’t know anyone apart from Sam Hellerman.

  THE CATCHER CULT

  So that’s how the school year began, with Easter Monday fading into Baby Batter. I like to think of those first few weeks as the Baby Batter Weeks. Nothing much happened—or rather, quite a lot of stuff was happening, as it turns out, but I wouldn’t find out about any of it till later. So for me, the Baby Batter Weeks were characterized by a false sense of—well, not security. More like familiarity or monotony. The familiar monotony of standard, generic High School Hell, which somehow manages to be horrifying and tedious at the same time. We attended our inane, pointless classes, in between which we did our best to dodge random attempts on our lives and dignity by our psychopathic social superiors. After school, we worked on our band, played games, and watched TV. Just like the previous year. There was no indication that anything would be any different.

  Now, when I say our classes were inane and pointless, I really mean i. and p., and in the fullest sense. Actually, you know what? Before I continue, I should probably explain a few things about Hillmont High School, because your school might be different.

  Hillmont is hard socially, but the “education” part is shockingly easy. That goes by the official name of Academics. It is mystifying how they manage to say that with a straight face, because as a school, HHS is more or less a joke. Which can’t be entirely accidental. I guess they want to tone down the content so that no one gets too good at any particular thing, so as not to make anyone else look bad.

  Assignments typically involve copying a page or two from some book or other. Sometimes you have a “research paper,” which means that the book you copy out of is the Encyclopaedia Britannica. You’re graded on punctuality, being able to sit still, and sucking up. In class you have group discussions about whatever it is you’re alleged to be studying, where you try to share with the class your answer to the question: how does it make you feel?

  Okay, so that part isn’t easy for me. I don’t like to talk much. But you do get some credit for being quiet and nondisruptive, and my papers are usually neat enough that the teacher will write something like “Good format!” on them.

  It is possible, however, to avoid this sort of class altogether by getting into Advanced Placement classes. (Technically, “Advanced Placement” refers to classes for which it is claimed you can receive “college credit”—which is beyond hilarious—but in practice all the nonbonehead classes end up getting called AP.) AP is like a different world. You don’t have to do anything at all, not a single blessed thing but show up, and you always get an A no matter what. Well, you end up making a lot of collages, and dressing in costumes and putting on irritating little
skits, but that’s about it. Plus, they invented a whole new imaginary grade, which they still call an A, but which counts as more than an A from a regular class. What a racket.

  This is the one place in the high school multi-verse where eccentricity can be an asset. The AP teachers survey the class through their Catcher in the Rye glasses and…

  Oh, wait: I should mention that The Catcher in the Rye is this book from the fifties. It is every teacher’s favorite book. The main guy is a kind of misfit kid superhero named Holden Caulfield. For teachers, he is the ultimate guy, a real dreamboat. They love him to pieces. They all want to have sex with him, and with the book’s author, too, and they’d probably even try to do it with the book itself if they could figure out a way to go about it. It changed their lives when they were young. As kids, they carried it with them everywhere they went. They solemnly resolved that, when they grew up, they would dedicate their lives to spreading The Word.

  It’s kind of like a cult.

  They live for making you read it. When you do read it you can feel them all standing behind you in a semicircle wearing black robes with hoods, holding candles. They’re chanting “Holden, Holden, Holden…” And they’re looking over your shoulder with these expectant smiles, wishing they were the ones discovering the earth-shattering joys of The Catcher in the Rye for the very first time.

  Too late, man. I mean, I’ve been around the Catcher in the Rye block. I’ve been forced to read it like three hundred times, and don’t tell anyone but I think it sucks.

  Good luck avoiding it, though. If you can make it to puberty without already having become a Catcher in the Rye casualty you’re a better man than I, and I’d love to know your secret. It’s too late for me, but the Future Children of America will thank you.

  So the AP teachers examine the class through their Catcher glasses. The most Holden-y kid wins. Dispute the premise of every assignment and try to look troubled and intense, yet with a certain quiet dignity. You’ll be a shoo-in.