“Stop it,” Miney and my mom say at the exact same time, so I have no choice but to say, “Jinx, a Coke,” though I don’t drink caffeine.
“Maybe we should talk about this later,” my mom says, and Miney nods. I wonder what my dad will say when he finds out that Miney needed a physics tutor. Since last summer, he has been putting a lot of pressure on her about college. He’s adamant that she major in something useful, like math or biology. Before she left that’s all he could talk about: how Miney needed to understand how much school was going to cost my parents, that she better finally figure out what she was good at, that she should stop wasting time putting on makeup and instead apply herself in the sciences, like I did.
“Anyone can be prom queen, but not everyone has the opportunity or the capability to learn from Nobel Prize–winning geophysicists,” he would say, and Miney would look him straight in the eye and say: “I was homecoming queen, actually, and some parents would be proud of that.” I stayed out of it, though it’s not quite true that anyone can be homecoming queen or king. I certainly can’t. Miney might not be the best person to talk to about quantum theory, but she’s a genius in her own way.
“I just want to say I love you guys and I’m so lucky to have the two bravest kids in the world, and sure you both make mistakes, but please don’t let anyone or anything ever make you feel small, okay? Either one of you,” my mom says, and stands up and kisses both me and Miney on the tops of our heads as she makes her way to the sink. My mom likes pep talks. It’s kind of her thing.
“Statistically speaking, it’s unlikely we are the two bravest kids in the whole world,” I say.
“Just say I love you too, Mom,” my mom calls over her shoulder.
“And I have no idea how one can feel small. I assume I feel exactly proportional to my size.” Miney kicks me under the breakfast table. I look up and she’s glaring at me.
“I love you too, Mom,” I say.
—
I pull my car into my parking space at exactly 7:57 a.m., which gives me one minute to gather my backpack and head toward the school entrance. I’m back on schedule, which I realize in the aftermath of slipping over the edge last week is even more important than usual. I need to stay focused, follow my routine, find my peace in its rhythms and repetition. My playlist is ready to go and so I slip on my headphones, as I always do when I exit the car. Which is why I don’t see them at first. The football team lined up in the parking lot. A wall of solid meat.
Could be a coincidence, I tell myself. They might not be waiting for me. But I free-ear it just in case I need all my sensory abilities.
“Drucker!” Joe Mangino says. Or is it Sammy Metz? I can’t tell them apart without my notebook. To me they both look like the hanging slabs of an unidentifiable animal you’d find in an old-school butcher shop. Cold and pasty white where the fat is. This guy is more rodentlike than porcine. “We wanted to chat with you. Say hi.”
“Hi,” I say, and then instantly regret it. A stupid reflex.
“So it’s no secret that we want to beat the shit out of you,” Meat Boy—that’s the perfect name for him, Meat Boy—says, and I find myself nodding along, because he’s right, it is no secret. Though I thought they wanted to do worse. I thought they wanted to kill me. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to do it here or right now. Just wanted to remind you. In case you had forgotten. Keep you on your toes.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I say, and look up and spy Kit coming out of her car one row over. I wish she had been a few minutes early or late, which is something I’ve never before wished, since I like watching her walk into school each morning. Not strictly a necessity for my routine, because she’s only on time about three out of five days, but like the lunch lady remembering to wear her hairnet or when my phone switches to track two when I round the corner to my locker, it means good things.
I keep walking, but Meat Boy stops me with a bump to my shoulder. There’s a crowd now. Justin and Gabriel are here too, just behind the throng of football players, all in the middle of the parking lot.
“Hold on a second,” Meat Boy says, and the crowd moves around him to form a semicircle. I don’t know how they do it. No one says, Gather round or You stand here. It just happens organically. Like they can smell something is about to happen and want front-row seats. “You haven’t been excused.”
“Do we really have to do this?” I ask, annoyed, because it is 7:59 and I haven’t allotted for this pit stop. I will be late. I don’t like being late. I will also have to find a way to walk through this crowd, and I hate crowds. They feel like putting on a turtleneck or a shirt with a collar, both of which are barbaric inventions.
“Say it. Say: ‘May I be excused?’?” I look up at him, confused. Why should I ask to be excused? I don’t need a hall pass to go inside the school. He is not a teacher. We are of equal authority here.
Oh. The feeling comes before the understanding. Something sneaks its way into my body, weaves its way around my intestines. I recognize this cold ache. This is what all of middle school felt like.
I want nothing more than to put on my headphones, walk inside, and get back on track. Forget this delay. Wipe this encounter away with an eraser.
And then I see Kit and her two friends, whose names I always forget and who I think of as Cinched and Hippie. They join the crowd, curious to see what’s going on.
“Hey, ’tard. Say, ‘May I be excused?’ Come on, now. You can do it.”
“Leave him alone,” Kit says, and my stomach clenches. A sharp cramp that feels like someone kicked me in the gut.
“Sweet. Sticking up for your boyfriend,” Meat Boy says, which gives me a quick frisson of pleasure. He referred to me as Kit’s boyfriend. Her boyfriend! But then I see Kit’s face, which has closed, like that day I told her she was a good driver, and now I want to kill Meat Boy. Kit looks happier with her face open.
“Get out of my way,” I say.
“Your girlfriend is a fine piece of ass, huh?” I know from Miney that calling a girl a fine piece of ass is not respectful, maybe because it falls under the subcategory of the no-talking-about-a-girl’s-weight rule? I look over to Kit, but of course I can’t read her expression. Is she telling me to fight for her? To run?
“Stop it now. This is your first warning,” I say, just like I learned from the kung fu video. I am giving my opponent a fair chance to walk away. Peaceful resolution is always preferable to fighting.
My body is humming. I could hurt them if I wanted to.
And then, suddenly, I want to.
Meat Boy is laughing. The whole line of them are laughing. At me. I flash back to seventh grade, being stuck in a locker with my hair full of toilet water and feeling the cold drops slip down my back in slimy chunks. That smell. I think about all those texts. How I’ve been treated as less than for as long as I can remember. Why is being like them the baseline?