Alan Cole Is Not a Coward

by Eric Bell

  Marcellus nods. “Good job, kid. Show everyone how hard you’re working.”

  I lift one leg, and it hits me: he didn’t mention my crush. He definitely would’ve made fun of me (or probably worse) if Nathan told him.

  I won’t tell yours as long as you cooperate, so you need to do the same. You keep me in line, I keep you in line. No loopholes. Understand?

  Whatever Marcellus does or doesn’t do to me, at least he’s got no idea about “Vic Valentino.” At least Nathan’s keeping the really important end of the bargain. At least that part doesn’t have any loopholes. At least the world hasn’t ended yet.

  The noises of the pool echo all around me: other kids doing exercises, Coach Streit blowing her whistle, splash after splash after splash. I slowly rotate one leg in the water, and Marcellus watches me work hard.

  In the lunch line, I’m thinking about the colors on the cafeteria wall, ugly tans and greens that don’t go together at all, and I make a mental note to never combine that particular combination of forest pastels in anything I paint, ever. I’d thought being able to see over most of the other kids would be a good thing, but if the only new thing I get to look at is vomit-colored paint, I could’ve done without the growth spurt. Then I hear a weird cawing noise, like a pterodactyl with bronchitis, in my ear. I jerk forward and smash into a girl who looks at me like I’m oozing toxic waste onto her expensive sneakers.

  “Did you like my turtle call?” Zack asks from behind me. “I’m practicing for Oprah, my turtle. I’m trying to teach her to come on command. But you’re not a turtle, so it probably scared you, huh?” He laughs so hard spit flies out of his mouth and onto my shirt.

  “I was terrified,” I say in a flat voice.

  “Hey,” Zack says as we move up in line, “I wanted you to have something. Well, I still do, so I guess I should say ‘I want you to have something,’ not ‘I wanted you to have something.’ Or maybe it’s ‘I am wanting you to have something.’ I don’t know. Verbs are confusing. I wish we didn’t have verbs in English, and we could be like, ‘I you to something.’ I think that’d get the point across.” He takes a breath. “So, I you to something, Alan.” He giggles. Again.

  We move up farther in line. “What is it?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I want to know.

  “You me something, I you something too. That’s No-Verb for ‘you gave me something, I’ll give you something too.’” He fishes around in his pocket and pulls out a big clump of tiny, rubber-banded—

  “Are those fortunes from fortune cookies?” I ask.

  Zack nods. “I collect them and bring them to school sometimes. Me and my mom get Chinese food from this takeout place up the road a lot, and they always have the best fortunes. Go on. Pick one.”

  “Pick a fortune?”

  “You need some luck, right? Go ahead. Close your eyes and pick one.”

  Sighing, I close my eyes and grab the first one. It says, in text clearly written on a typewriter older than me:

  Where do babies come from?

  I turn the paper over. “Where’s the fortune?”

  Zack looks at what I picked and starts cracking up with loud snorts. “Oh, you got the best one! That’s actually a fortune I got last week. Can you believe it?”

  “This isn’t a fortune,” I say. “It’s a question.”

  “Questions can be fortunes.”

  Whether he’s right or not—he’s not—something tells me “Where do babies come from?” should only go on a fortune cookie in very specific situations, and I don’t think I fit any of them.

  Zack keeps going on about some of the other fortunes he’s gotten at this place, like, “Buy off-brand tissues,” “It was very loud in here, wasn’t it?” and one that was just the number nineteen, which I’m pretty sure is potassium on the periodic table. Who knew fortune cookies could help you learn science?

  When we get to the Unstable Table, Madison is sipping his bottled water with a straw and picking at a Tupperware container of leafy greens. “Salad,” he says with his face scrunched up. “Mom isn’t being very subtle.”

  “Maybe she wants you to have a balanced meal,” Zack says, burying his face in his meatball sandwich.

  Madison continues, “She also wants me to go to the private health club she and Dad belong to, so I can get in shape. It’s ridiculous.”

  “You don’t think you’ll lose weight?” Zack spits bits of meat as he talks.

  Madison shakes his head. “Of course I will. I’m Madison Wilson Truman. I’m going to lose so much weight, I’ll be a stick. The happiest stick boy in Petal Fields.” He pokes a bit of kale with his fork.

  I swallow a big bite of last night’s leftover pasta and try not to look at Connor slugging the guy beside him on the arm at the next table, try not to wonder what he’d think if he found out how I really feel. All this worrying can’t be good for me. If Nathan’s goal was to make me turn gray and wrinkled by the end of the week, so far he’s doing a pretty good job of it.

  Of course, right now is when Connor notices me staring. He nods at me and smiles. I hold my lunch tray over my eyes in a panic. Then I realize, oh my God, I’m holding a lunch tray over my face, but by that point he’s stopped looking. Another potentially embarrassing encounter upgraded to definitely embarrassing, courtesy of Alan Cole.

  “Hmph,” Madison huffs, swallowing a soggy piece of kale like it’s trying to claw its way out of his throat. “I need someone to tutor. Nobody wants to learn physics from a twelve-year-old. That’s their loss.”

  “Do you know a lot about physics?” Zack asks.

  Madison clears his throat. “This and that. I know a good bit about the coefficient of fiction.”

  Zack nods. “Wow. That’s really zen.”

  (My eye twitches so rapidly the friction would be enough to start a fire. But I keep my mouth shut.)

  As if reading my thoughts, Madison turns to me and says, “Alan, give me a list of all the classes you take and rank them in order from ‘most likely to need Madison’s help with’ to ‘I’m fine, thank you much.’”

  “I’m fine, thank you much,” I say.

  “I could use some help with science,” Zack says. “I don’t get the time travel stuff.”

  Madison narrows his eyes. “There is no time travel in science class.”

  Zack exhales. “Well, that explains that then.”

  “Honestly,” Madison says, shaking his head. Then he sighs. “Sometimes I wish I had a brother or sister. Someone to take the pressure off. It must be nice.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Zack says. “Alan’s got an older brother though, right?”

  I look up. How did he—

  “I saw him hide in an empty room waiting for you the other day,” Zack says with a shrug. “It doesn’t look like you like him very much.”

  Now I look back down at my food, even though my appetite’s starting to fade. “I’d rather not talk about him.”

  “I’ve certainly never heard of him,” Madison says. “He must be quiet. Runs in the family, I suppose.” He chuckles.

  “He’s not quiet to me,” I grumble before I can stop myself.

  “He seems like a fun enough guy,” Zack says.

  I open my mouth, but then I can’t close the stupid thing. “He’s fun, sure. He has plenty of fun making my life miserable any way he can, like those stupid CvC games, where he had me doing all kinds of humiliating things, and now he’s making me play a new game with even worse things to do and there’s stakes and I had to give you my lucky underwear and if I don’t play along—”

  I take a deep breath and slide back on my seat. I actually put my hand over my mouth to keep it shut.

  “Wow,” Madison says, eyes wide.

  “S-Sorry,” I stammer, looking for a black hole to crawl into.

  “Games?” Zack asks. “What kind of games?”

  “Forget I said anything.” I duck my head.

  Zack moves in closer. “I want to play a game. Can I play?”

 
“No,” I say, as loud as I think I’ve ever said anything. “No way. If Nathan knew I had help, he’d go after you. I’m not letting that happen—” I almost say “again,” but I stop myself.

  “Does your brother have help?” Zack asks.

  Spin one leg in a circle until you get tired, then do the other one, then keep going back and forth. “Maybe.”

  “Alan, come on,” Zack says. “You gave me your lucky underwear and I gave you a fortune. That makes us best friends now.”

  “You took his underwear?” Madison asks. “Why does that not surprise me?”

  “What sort of stuff do you have to do?” Zack asks. “I want to help you win the game. Come on, Alan.”

  I sigh. “No. Forget I said anything.”

  “Hang on.” Madison dramatically pushes away his salad. “I could help you with this. Do any of these challenges involve the coefficient of fiction?”

  “Yeah!” Zack says. “We can do it together. We’ll team up, combine our powers, and be unstoppable! Like hurricanes, or angry moms!”

  The tide is turning. The waves are crashing down, whirlpools swirling, storms beating against the rocks. “Why are you doing this?” I ask.

  “I already told you,” Zack says. “We’re best friends.”

  “We’re not—”

  “All right,” Madison says. “I’ll help.”

  Zack starts hollering and spinning in his seat.

  I know I’ve lost this fight. When you lose as often as I do, you know when it’s coming, and you know when you have to accept a big, fat L in your record books.

  Zack reaches out a hand to stop his spinning, but he overcompensates and almost falls off the seat. Madison whispers to me, “Don’t worry. I’ll lead you to victory. I’ll show the world what I can do. You’ll be in good hands.” He rubs his hands together and chuckles under his breath.

  Once Zack recovers, he leans into the table, a big grin plastered on his face. “Okay, Game Master Alan. Deputy Zack and Officer Orville reporting for duty. What’s the first thing we need to do?”

  I look at Zack Kimble, hedgehog hair zigzagging from his eager, bright-eyed face, and I look at Madison Truman, closely cropped buzz cut highlighting his determined, ready gaze, and I imagine myself, Alan Cole, parted black hair swooshing down over my forehead. Three faces, dying to be captured in a cretpoj, a cretpoj that won’t be put on hold by any brothers or their games. The Unstable Table lurches a little as I rest my elbows on the edge.

  I blow a bit of hair out of my eyes, and I say, “Help me become the most well-known kid in school.”

  FIVE

  “No.”

  “Come on. It wouldn’t be that embarrassing.”

  “Um, yeah, it would.”

  “Well, okay, maybe it would be at first, but I’m sure you’d get used to being naked in school. It’s like wearing a bathing suit, except without the suit, and with more goose bumps.”

  It’s been like this ever since I told them about the game: Zack ping-ponging suggestions for how to become well-known, and me serving them back with flat-out nos. The naked idea isn’t even the worst thing he’s come up with. Madison had to convince him spray-painting a big mural of myself on the door would get me expelled (“I thought you liked art!”), which would technically make me the most well-known kid in school, but might lead to a few other problems.

  This was a mistake. I should’ve gone with my original idea of “hang a brilliant cretpoj in the middle of the hall and get a million admirers,” or maybe repaint the cafeteria walls with colors that don’t make kids feel like they’re in a prison. Instead I’m stuck listening to Zack, who has the attention span of a gnat with a sugar rush and who burns through ideas like charcoal on Memorial Day. Madison hasn’t been much better: his focus has been squarely on “issues” I can “tackle” that are “hot-button and relevant to today’s youth.” Thus far he’s suggested special interest lobbyists, HMOs, and insider trading. I don’t even know what any of that stuff is.

  After he wouldn’t answer my question about what a lobbyist actually does apart from “sit in a lobby,” I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know what any of it is either.

  I’d be better off tackling this like I decided to tackle swimming: blunder around and eventually, hopefully, stumble into the answer.

  At least then nobody would get hurt.

  After lunch is social studies. As we walk into Miss Richter’s room, Madison claps me on the back and says, “You should feel honored. You have a great opportunity to say something important, something so—”

  “Madison,” Jenny Cowper says as she walks by, “you wouldn’t know the first thing about being important.”

  Madison puffs out his cheeks. “I know plenty of things, and I can give a report on all of them.”

  Jenny smirks. “Whatever.”

  I escape Madison’s clutches and sit at my desk. Right when I think I’m safe for now, Zack sits next to me and blurts out, “Hey, I thought of something: you already gave me your underwear, so it’s like you’re halfway to naked already!” He grins and gives me a thumbs-up.

  I huddle into my desk and pray everyone stops looking at me soon.

  “All right there, Alan?” somebody asks. I look up and a little catch forms at the base of my throat, because my other desk neighbor is asking, and that neighbor happens to be Connor.

  “Uh, y-yeah, hi,” I stumble.

  Connor smiles his big smile, chews his spearmint-scented gum, and flips through his notebook, leaving me with more butterflies than a cavern of cocoons. I try to ignore the heat huffing through my face and bury my nose in whatever random stack of papers I yank out of my backpack.

  It’s not like this is the first time Connor’s said anything to me. We went to Pine Garden Elementary together, after all, and since we were both in the advanced classes, we got paired together a lot. But it wasn’t until last year that I started getting really nervous around him—more nervous than I usually got with people. Connor started getting taller and he sprouted muscles all over the place and his voice got a little deeper, and his smile . . . I never noticed before then how big his smile was.

  I didn’t start putting the pieces together until recently, hence the search history Nathan found. I’ve heard that a lot of kids my age start questioning things and don’t really figure stuff out until they get older, so this could all still be up in the air for me. But I’ll tell you something: Between you and me, I like Connor more than I’ve ever liked any girl. And there’s definitely been other guys, and no girls, I’ve looked at and thought . . . okay, you get the point.

  When we’re all seated, Miss Richter takes a gulp from her silo-sized coffee thermos. “Okay,” she says. “Today I’ve got a handout—yes, Madison?”

  Madison’s hand had rocketed up into the air the millisecond after Miss Richter had set down her thermos. “Miss Richter, I found an error in our textbook.” He holds up the gargantuan tome—Discovering America, eighth edition—then smashes it down on his desk. The loud crashing noise makes me, along with everybody else in the room, jump. “Page fifty-six,” Madison continues. “It says President James Madison’s ‘accomplishments were not as grand in scope as those of the prior president, Thomas Jefferson.’ When I read that, you can understand, I was simply outraged. I’ve prepared a report on the accomplishments of President Madison for the class’s benefit.”

  Groans fill the room.

  “James Madison was a boring president,” Talia says, a few seats down. “Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.”

  “Which James Madison also signed,” Madison says.

  Talia leans toward Madison. “Signed and wrote are two different things, Madison Truman. It’s a little disappointing you don’t know that.”

  I’m busy looking down at my desk, almost putting my fingers in my ears, when Madison says, “Alan, back me up.”

  Everyone in the room looks at me.

  “Uh, what?”

  “Back me up,” Madison repeats. “Camp
Madison. We’ll defend our fort against Camp Jefferson any day. Isn’t that right?”

  I slide down my desk. Talia glares daggers through my face. Connor watches me, chewing his gum slowly. “Uh . . . um . . .”

  “Unbelievable,” Talia says, punching each syllable in the stomach. “Boys against girls? Fine. I’ll take Miss Richter. Our teacher, in case you’ve forgotten. And she says Camp Madison is flimsy at best.”

  “You’re flimsy at best,” Madison grumbles. “Alan? Back me up.”

  I wish with all my might to evaporate into water vapor and float out the window. Zack, next to me, is zoned out, mouth open as he gazes outside, probably watching something amazing, like a bird fly, or a tree sway. Connor’s still looking at me.

  “That’s enough,” Miss Richter finally says. “Debates are fine, but no name-calling. I expect better of you. You especially, Talia, since you’re running for class president.”

  Talia sticks her nose into the air.

  “But Miss Richter,” Madison whines. “People need to know the truth. Once I give the report, everyone will see.”

  “There’s no need for a report,” Miss Richter says. “Sometimes—and this goes for all of you—you have to accept that people are going to disagree with you. I’m not letting you make a speech right now, Madison, but when the next project comes around, you can. How does that sound?”

  Madison looks at Talia, who smirks. “Peachy,” he says. Then he looks at me and scowls. Like I did something wrong. Like I somehow betrayed Camp Madison, which I’m pretty sure isn’t a thing that exists, and I’m also pretty sure there are about three or four presidents with grander accomplishments than Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison isn’t one of them.

  But telling that to Madison Wilson Truman is like telling a kid named Bruce Wayne he’s doomed to a life of happiness and crime-free, non-bat-related things. Madison shoots me one last glance and runs a hand over his hair.

  When the papers Miss Richter passes out get to Zack’s desk, Zack spins around and faces me. “Hey,” he whispers to me. “What did I miss?”

  “Pair up with your study partners,” Miss Richter says, returning to her desk. “Go over the worksheet and help each other out. This class needs to get more comfortable with the idea of teamwork.”