by Sandra Evans
He turns away first and I get a little surge of energy, like I won some secret game.
Then he pulls down the wrestling mats.
He calls me over. That good feeling goes away.
“Let’s see if you can take down an Olympian, Raul.” He’s circling me, his arms wide and curved like he’s holding a huge beach ball. “After my injury they told me I could stay on and coach the Olympic team. Did you know that? Big money, kids, that’s what I walked away from. I came here. And you know why? Because it’s my mission to teach you how to find your place in this big bad world—how to claim it and how to defend it.”
My nose twitches the way it does when I smell a lie.
Why would he leave everything for nowhere?
“Crouch, Raul, crouch and circle. I know you’ve got it in you. Every boy has a predator in him. How fierce is yours?”
Then he lunges at me. All six feet, three inches, two hundred fifty pounds of him. A big gulp of air comes out of my mouth. I think it’s my courage escaping.
It’s about the time when Tuffman is holding me up in the air to show everyone a wrestling hold called “the fireman’s carry” that I begin to wonder if this is how the kids at his old school disappeared.
“I’ve got my eye on you, Raul,” Tuffman breathes into my face as he puts me in a half nelson. “No sneaking around. Got it? You stay out of my territory. It stinks anyway, right?”
“What territory?” Apparently terror makes me talkative. “What sneaking?” I ask.
He twists my arm back. I hear the watching kids gasp. From the corner of my eye I see the new kid stand up and take a step toward me.
Behind me, Jason says in a very thoughtful voice, “I didn’t know your elbow could go that direction.”
The new kid cringes and sits down.
The pain is terrible. Like someone holding a hot iron to my bone.
“See?” Tuffman calls over his shoulder to the rest of the class. His voice is really upbeat. “Now he can’t move, not an inch, or he’ll break his own arm. Consequences, kiddos.” He tweaks my arm a tiny bit more, and I swear my bone bends.
He leans down over me so that only I can hear. “One wrong move, Raul, that’s all. Just remember your place. Be the boy you are. You’re not powerful enough to challenge me. So don’t go trying to change things,” he says. “Least of all yourself.”
He pushes my face into the mat as he gets up off of me.
“See?” he says to the boys.
I’m splayed out like roadkill. My body feels jumbled, like a box full of puzzle pieces. So does my brain. Everything he says has two meanings. The one he wants everyone to hear and the one just for me. There’s a picture here, but right now it’s just a pile of pieces.
“All I had to do was stake out my space, my territory,” he says to the class. “That’s all there is to wrestling, kids. That’s all there is to life. Mark what’s yours. Defend it to the death.”
Death? See, now that I get. That only means one thing.
I decide to lie on the mat until everyone has left. Especially the new kid. I can’t look him in the eye. I wanted to make an impression on him, but this wasn’t the one I had in mind.
Finally I hear them open the ball cage. Everyone heads out to the field. I look at the bleachers. I’m alone. I might have a cold. My head is stuffy and my nose feels runny and my eyes are all watery.
Am I about to cry?
I head to my room to change. Why did Tuffman have to do that in front of the new kid? Why didn’t he demonstrate that hold on Mean Jack? Mean Jack would find it useful for his future career as a crime boss.
It makes me feel sick. I shouldn’t have let Dean Swift and his dumb idea get me all excited. Some of us are born loners.
Tuffman’s voice rings in my head. What did he mean when he called me a sneak? That joke I made about his breath smelling like the Blackout Tunnel was disrespectful, not sneaky.
And what does he mean when he says not to change? Does he mean puberty? Do I have facial hair? I rub my chin, but it’s smooth.
I’m the same as I was when Tuffman got here. He showed up a year and a half ago, in the fall. It was just about the time my dad stopped coming to get me on the weekends and the woods magic started happening and I decided to stop talking. I was as much a weirdo then as I am now.
Then a scary idea pops up. For a second the puzzle pieces start to make a picture.
I blink at myself in the mirror above my dresser. Does he mean the other way I change?
There is a window next to my mirror. I look out of it. On the far side of the ravine a deer and her fawn nibble on the short grass at the edge of the cliff. The cliff is red and brown and black, and tree roots stick out of it here and there. Every time it rains, chunks of it fall to the beach below, and the colors of the cliff change. The cliff changes every day and nobody notices.
How could Tuffman know my secret? I’m like the cliff. Nobody notices me.
I take a big breath. This calls for the scientific method. I organize the facts in my scientific journal. I use my most scientific handwriting.
Phenomenon (that means unusual event): Tuffman is picking on me and it’s personal.
Duration (that means for how long): Targeting began during animal care and increased during PE.
Observations: How was today different than yesterday?
Item 1: Tuffman chased new kid, toupee mashed
Item 2: Tuffman made Sparrow hide in the Blackout Tunnel
Item 3: Tuffman overheard my joke during breakfast
It would make sense if he was trying to get back at me for the crack about his breath. But he didn’t mention that. All he talked about was territory and changing and sneaking. I stare at the page for a long time. Then I write down the most rational explanation.
Theory: Tuffman is a jerk.
It doesn’t make my arm throb any less or the embarrassed feeling go away, but it does make me smile. Maybe he’s just a jerk. Jerks don’t have to have good reasons for being jerks, that’s what my dad used to say.
Chapter 5
WHERE RAUL MAKES FRIENDS
I decide to wait until the free period after lunch to go up to the new kid’s room. After the Trauma With Tuffman I need a little sustenance.
“Pizza cut in triangles,” Cook Patsy says when I walk up with my tray.
My favorite. How did she know?
I take two slices.
Then she pulls my tray toward her and puts a little book on it. Crack Any Code! it says on the front.
“What are the odds?” she asks. “Two prizes in one day.”
“Thank you,” I say. I pick it up and flip through it. On every page it tells you how to decipher a different kind of code. This is very useful. I can already see myself showing it to the new kid. An icebreaker, that’s what you’d call it.
Cook Patsy holds on to the tray and looks at me for a second.
“I heard Tuffman was pretty harsh on you in gym this morning. I know you’re no snitch, Raul, but can I tell the dean about it? It seems like something he ought to know.”
I shake my head. It’s strange, but the whole “don’t be a rat” rule applies to teachers, too. If a teacher is too mean, then the kids find a way to settle the score without getting the authorities involved. “Poetic justice” is a term we just learned about from Ms. Tern, but we’ve been doing it here forever. It means the punishment fits the crime. Take the last reading teacher—the one Ms. Tern replaced. He made Mark, the kid who wears the weighted vest, bend over and stand on his fingers in the corner for a whole class period. Yeah. Think about that. Now try it. Really, try it. How do your fingers feel?
Next morning that teacher picked up his coffee mug and couldn’t let go of it again. Superglue. It was hard for him to pack up his desk with only one hand, but Mary Anne helped. She gave him lots of suggestions for ways he could make the most of a mug hand. It’ll be great when you stand on the street corner and ask for spare change. And, If anyone tries to break into your
car while you’re sleeping in it, you can just whack him in the side of the head.
But I’m not the kind of kid who needs a grown-up or anyone else to fix my problems. Grown-ups are the ones who cause all the problems anyway, so I don’t know why they think they’re so great at teaching kids how to solve them.
Cook Patsy is watching me. She’s still holding one side of my tray so I can’t leave. “Well,” she says, “if he bugs you again, you come to me. I can take care of Tuffman pretty quick for you.” She lets go of my tray and flexes her arms down low, like a wrestler on TV before a match.
I gulp. Cook Patsy is what Mean Jack calls “ripped.” She winks and picks up her spatula.
“I got your back,” she says as I head to the counter.
The last of the bad feeling starts to go away, but for some reason my eyes sting like I’m going to cry.
The view from the stool is gray. A seagull the color of rain and cloud flies by and looks in at me, its beak wide open like it thinks I’m gonna toss in my last piece of pepperoni. Dream on, bird.
I wonder if the new kid ate lunch alone in his room.
Birds of a feather flock together. That means when you have something in common with someone, it’s easier to make friends. We’ve got one thing in common, at least. We both got pummeled by Tuffman today.
And another thing—we’ve both got problems.
My problem is that my mom disappeared one day when I was five. My dad couldn’t take care of me. I think he was too sad. He forgot to take me to school sometimes. Some days he would get me in the car and get me buckled in and then he’d rest his head on the steering wheel. Someone came over to the apartment one day to see how we were getting by, a “social worker,” she was called. She saw that for breakfast he put my bowl of Cheerios on the kitchen floor. She said that was bad and that a kid should eat at a table. She said I needed a haircut and a bath and that my pants were two sizes too small. She gave him the name of this school and said it was the best solution until he started to feel better. She said I would be happy and he would visit me on the weekends.
So that’s my problem. What about the new kid?
Only runaways live on the top floor, so that’s one clue.
But running away is never the problem, is it? The problem is the thing that makes the boy run.
There are just a few rooms in the north wing of the fourth floor, and it’s easy to tell which is his because the door is half open.
“Help! Help!” I hear a voice inside the room. It’s kind of a whisper and kind of a scream.
I open the door, and the new boy is huddled on top of his desk, shaking. A long black line darts into the hall. I turn and see Gollum slip under another door.
“Should we call the dean?” the new kid asks, peeking around his door. “You know, to tell him which room it’s in now?”
I shake my head. Snakes like to be with their own kind, right? And that’s Mean Jack’s room, so I’m sure they’ll get along just fine.
“Man, it’s stuffy up here,” the new kid says. He walks to the window and yanks at it. He’s still trembling from Gollum’s welcome party.
The window sticks shut.
I tap him on the shoulder and tip my chin up so he knows I want to give it a try. He steps back and looks at me funny, and I see myself as he must see me: skinny, with my hair hanging in my eyes.
How is this kid gonna do it, when I can’t? That’s what he’s thinking.
The window makes a popping sound and slides up. Freaky strong, that’s what Mean Jack calls me.
The new kid nods like he just figured something out.
“So that’s why Tuffman was messing with you,” he says. “You must be the strongest kid here.”
All my embarrassment about Tuffman tossing me around like a ragdoll disappears.
“Yeah,” he says. “Jerk jocks always pick on the kids like us ’cause we’re the ones who threaten them the most.” He says it with a sneer, like he knows all about it and it’s happened to him a million times.
Did he say “like us”?
“You got the craziest teachers here I’ve ever seen,” he says. His eyes are shiny. I can tell he laughs a lot. “Do they wave knives around and punch each other every morning?”
I smile so big I cover my mouth with my hand. The older kids here used to call me Dog Boy, because my teeth are so pointed. Most of them have gone back to live with their moms and dads by now, but I still hide my teeth.
With a quick twitch of his shoulders, the new boy sticks his head and as much of his body as he can out the window.
He’s tall and thin, with glossy black hair and a sharp, long nose. At first he keeps his hands on the windowsill, but when a gust of wind comes up off the water, I see him lift his hands and flutter them gently, the way a bird ruffles its feather before it takes flight.
My stomach feels empty and my palms are damp. It would be good to have a friend my own age. I’m pretty popular with the Cubs, since I take them fishing every Friday. And maybe—my heart flops like a trout hooked on a line—maybe Mary Anne likes me. A little.
But I see the other Pack boys. They talk about video games and sports. They chase each other and laugh and play games and sometimes they even fight. Not me. As soon as I walk up—and I don’t, not anymore—but as soon as I’d walk up, they’d look away like they hadn’t seen me. Then they’d stop talking and slowly move away.
Nobody is mean to me. But nobody is nice, either.
“Do you like the woods?” I make the words come out.
The boy pulls himself back in the window.
“Are there trails back in there?” he asks. “I race dirt bikes. I’m a champion in my class. Did the dean tell you that already? My mom says she’ll bring me my bike if I’m good.”
His window is on the same side of the building as the dining hall and faces the water. He points to the ravine. “Is that where the school property ends?” he asks.
He must already be thinking about how to get away once that dirt bike comes. “Yeah,” I say, “that ravine cuts all the way back to the road that leads to the school. You can’t climb down it—it’s way too steep.” I decide to keep talking. I can tell he’s really listening. He’s worth the words. “There’s a way around it, though. I’ll show you one day, if you want. And you can pretty much walk out of this place any time. There’s no fence keeping you here. Just the Terror of Getting Lost in the Dark Woods.” I say the last sentence in a spooky voice.
He smiles at my little joke. “My name is Vincent. You’re Raul, right? That boy across the hall said you’re a weirdo. But you don’t look like one to me.”
I forget about my weird teeth. I smile again, really big.
“You have wicked cool teeth, man!”
My elbow hurts when I bend it, but I feel good inside as I head into science.
First off, because I think I might have a friend. And second, because Advanced Science is the one class I have with Mary Anne. So it’s safe to say that I’d feel happy right now even if I knew Tuffman would be waiting after class, ready to yank me into a Bavarian pretzel and sprinkle me with rock salt.
Some kids think science is boring, but that’s because they don’t have Dean Swift for a teacher. And they don’t have Dean Swift for a teacher because he won’t let any kid who thinks science is boring into his class.
This year he only let four of us into the class. He teaches it in his office. There aren’t any desks. We can sit on the soft carpet or lie on our stomachs or, if we get there early, flop in one of the big leather armchairs.
Lately Dean Swift’s been talking about the human body. We’re studying cells and how every part of your body is made of them. There are skin cells and heart cells and eyeball cells. Mean Jack must have gotten extra fist cells. Tuffman got extra rude cells. Mary Anne must have gotten extra pretty cells. I must have gotten some extra weirdo cells.
But then Dean Swift says something so interesting that I forget about Mary Anne and Tuffman. I don’t forget about th
e extra weirdo cells, though, because from what the dean says, I might be on to something.
“The center of each cell is called the nucleus. Now, in the nucleus of every cell, you will find your DNA. DNA is a code telling your body how you should look, and even how you should act. Have you ever seen a recipe in a cookbook? That is like your DNA,” he says. “And it is different for each human. Half of it comes from your mother and half of it comes from your father. It is the recipe for you.”
I like how he always gives us a picture idea. I think of the cards in my mom’s old recipe box. I haven’t opened the box since we all lived together. But I imagine a million copies of one of those recipes, written out in her handwriting, floating around everywhere in me. Kid-Kebab. Raul Stew.
“Scientists have begun to map the human genome. It will take many generations to fully understand. It’s a bit like cracking a secret code.”
Then he stops talking. He sits there with his mouth open and no words coming out.
When Dean Swift stops talking, it means that in a minute or two he is going to tell us something he didn’t mean to tell us. It’s something he doesn’t know yet but is trying to understand. It has nothing to do with the learning target. And it’s always the most interesting thing anyone will say to me all day long.
“I wonder. Do you know there is another kind of DNA?” he says slowly. “It’s a DNA we get only from our mothers. It’s in each cell but outside the nucleus. It’s a shorter code than the DNA inside the nucleus. It’s a special recipe that tells your cells how to turn the food you eat into energy.” He writes mtDNA on the board. “It’s called mitochondrial DNA, but we write it like that. And you only get it from your mother.”
He stands and walks to the window that looks out over the ravine. I get a shiver, the kind I usually get when I’m deep in White Deer Woods and I’m me but not myself. My spine sparks like it does when I change.
“This kind of DNA you get from your mother has to do with your body’s growth and development,” he says. “Sometimes there are mutations. That means changes.” He turns around and looks right at me—or right through me. “They only happen very rarely. That mutation will be handed down from mother to child. We know about the problems such mutations might cause. They affect vision and hearing, muscles, and the heart in particular.” He pauses and shakes his head. “But we don’t know if there are mutations that cause improvements in hearing and vision, greater muscle strength, or a heart that beats harder and stronger and longer. We don’t know about that because there are no documented studies on that. Not yet, anyhow.”
