“You’re tremendous,” Tyson said. Another snicker from Madison. This one was louder and more pointed, as though he was finally treading the territory she hoped he would.
Something surged through Dill. Not courage exactly. More the realization that he had nothing to lose by getting kicked out of school. Maybe that was what God wanted for him anyway. He might be able to land a punch on Tyson before Tyson could react. He wouldn’t be expecting Dill to do anything. Even Christ had chased the moneylenders from the temple, and Lydia’s friendship was a temple to him.
Dill rose. He felt Lydia’s hand, warm on his arm. He sat, his head spinning with adrenaline, trying not to visibly shake.
“Yeah, Dildo. Do it. Bring it,” Tyson said.
Lydia crossed her legs, holding her knee and rocking back casually. “Tremendous, huh? Let’s go with that and say I could lose, oh, twenty pounds. I can easily do that by not eating chess pie or bacon or any of the other things that make life worth living. But you”—she pointed at Tyson with an elaborate flourish—“are dumb. And there’s nothing you can simply not eat that will make you any smarter. You’ll die an idiot.”
“You’ll die from too many french fries, fatass Lydia Chlamydia.”
“Do you really want to do this?” She wagged her finger between them. “A battle of wits? It’s not even fun to destroy you because you’re too dim to understand you’re getting destroyed.”
Madison lunged forward, her face resembling a spray-tanned fist. “You’re an ugly person. Inside and out. You think you’re better than everyone here because you’ve been interviewed in the New York Times and you’re famous on the Internet.”
Lydia studied Madison with the look she’d give a clogged toilet. “Since I know that you don’t equate ‘smarter’ with ‘better,’ I’m going to say that that’s not true.”
“This is why no one can stand you,” Madison said.
“Fabulous. I’d hate for it to be because of halitosis or something.”
“Nice witch tights, by the way,” Madison said, her voice dripping with scorn. “They come from the trash?”
“No, they were a gift from the Rodarte sisters. They’re last season, but I hoped no one at Forrestville High would notice.”
“All your fancy friends,” Tyson said. “You gonna go cry about us on your blog now?”
Lydia gave Tyson a condescending smile, furrowing her brow. “Oh. Bless your heart. You think you’re important enough to talk about on my blog. You are still very important, though, you special widdle guy.”
Travis walked up, looking exhausted. “Hey.”
“Tyson, do one of your name jokes for Travis,” Lydia said with a wicked grin. Travis’s fight with Alex may not have raised his social status, but people still feared him. Travis had at least eight inches and almost a hundred pounds on Tyson.
Tyson grabbed Madison’s hand. “Y’all can blow me. We’ve wasted enough time with your queer asses.” They stalked off. Madison flipped Lydia the bird over her shoulder. Lydia, Dill, and Travis flipped them the bird to their backs. Dill’s heart still thumped from the encounter, but he breathed again. Maybe God had a different message for him.
“They’re really not over that interview, are they?” Lydia said.
“You did call Forrestville High a ‘fashion wasteland,’?” Travis said.
“Full of outlet mall–clad drones who smell like survivors of an Axe body spray tanker truck crash with a school bus,” Dill said.
“Aw, you guys read it!”
“Why don’t you unleash all your blog fans on the people who give you trouble?” Travis asked.
“Well, first off, the people who like my blog aren’t very good at cyberbullying, which is fine. I would hate to be liked by people who are good at it.”
They got up and walked to the school, a large, nondescript, 1970s-era building. It had all the charm of a state-run asylum.
“I gotta head this way, y’all,” Travis said.
“Hey, why do you look like you got fifteen minutes of sleep last night? You okay?” Lydia asked.
“I was up late talking with friends from the Bloodfall forums. No big deal. Meet y’all after I get off work?”
“Yep,” Dill said. He and Lydia kept walking. Lydia said nothing. She had the air of a boxer who’d won a bout: triumphant but bruised. That’s how Dill felt.
“You’re not fat or ugly,” Dill said.
She laughed. “You’re sweet, but I’m completely fine. I love myself and nothing Tyson can say will ever change that. One more year with these bipedal turds. Then I’ll never see any of them again. I mean, unless one of them serves me french fries in ten years. Apparently I’m a big fan.”
Dill thought that he’d managed to hide it, but he must have appeared bruised himself.
“You’re not a dildo, you know,” Lydia said. “I don’t get why they haven’t figured out “Dullard” as a nickname. It’s funnier and more creative. But it also requires a larger vocabulary.”
“Nothing they said bothered me.”
“They? Did I say something?”
They got to the front doors and stopped as people hurried past them.
“It’s fine; I’m fine.” He started to walk inside. Lydia stopped him.
“Nuh nuh nuh, hold up. What?”
“When you talk about people still being here in ten years—”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “Oh man. Can we stipulate right now that I’m not referring to you when I say something like that?”
“It’s just—What if I’m the one serving you fries in ten years? Does that mean you think I’m dumb like Tyson?”
“Really, Dill?”
“You asked.”
“Fine, you’re right. I asked. No, I don’t think I’m better than you. No, I don’t think you’ll be serving me fries in ten years. Jeez, could you please not with the drama? After I stick up for you?”
“What if? What if I end up no better than Tyson?”
“I won’t let that happen, okay? I’ll hire you as my butler first.”
“That’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not, because you’d be the worst butler. You’d always be spacing out and playing the guitar while people knocked at the door, and then when you answered the door you’d be like ‘Hey, isn’t it weird how the Earth is flying through space all the time, and yet we can’t fly,’?” Lydia said, imitating Dill’s voice, “and you’d get your butler panties in a twist every time a guest hurt your feelings a little bit.”
“What about the thing you said to Tyson about how he’s not important enough to talk about on your blog? You’ve never talked about me on your blog.”
They stood and stared at each other.
“Do I honestly need to stand here in the entryway of Forrestville High School and tell you how important you are to me? What’s really going on here, Dill? Something else is bothering you.”
The five-minute bell rang.
Dill broke eye contact and turned. “We better get to class.”
Lydia grabbed his arm. “What?”
Dill looked from side to side. “Last night, my mom tried to get me to drop out of school and go to work full time.”
Lydia’s mouth fell open, as it had with Tyson and Madison, but this time her astonishment and outrage were genuine. “What? That’s so gross. Who does that?”
“My mom, apparently.”
Vice Principal Blackburn strolled up the hall. “Mr. Early, Ms. Blankenship, five-minute bell’s rung. You may be seniors, but you don’t get to be tardy. Move it.”
“Yessir,” Dill said, and watched until he rounded the corner. “My mom said something else.”
“What?”
“She said someday I’d learn that I’m no better than my name.”
“Well, she’s wrong. And we’ll talk about that and some other stuff when we get a chance.”
They went their separate ways. As Dill hurried to class, he caught a whiff of some astringent industrial cleaning chemical.
Suddenly he’s twelve years old, helping his father clean their church on Saturday morning so that it sparkles before Saturday evening worship. He’s finished feeding the snakes in their wooden crates, and now he’s scrubbing one of the pews when his father looks at him and smiles and tells him that God is happy with him and that by the sweat of his face shall he eat his bread. And Dill’s heart sings because he feels that he’s pleased his father and God.
Times are simpler when no one hates you because of your name and it doesn’t occur to you to be ashamed of it.