“Sweet,” Wendell said. “I love Sudoku.”
“Only the coolest do,” she said with a wink. “No one even knew about Sudoku when I was your age. Kids like us had to get by with a Rubik’s Cube.”
“And an abacus?” Wendell joked cautiously.
“And an abacus,” Nurse Bloom echoed with an airy laugh. “Wendell Scoop! If I didn’t know you were such an awesome guy, I’d think you were calling me old.”
Wendell shrugged and pursed his lips, trying not to smile.
“But of course you wouldn’t do that,” Nurse Bloom said, standing up. “Which leaves the question. What can I help you with, my friend? Stomach again?”
He nodded with a twinge of guilt.
“Well, mister,” she said. “You know the drill. Have a rest over there. Do those breathing exercises I taught you. It’ll go away before you know it.”
Wendell made his way over to a small cot in the corner and eased himself down onto it, curling his large body up as the springs groaned under his weight.
“Thanks, Nurse Bloom. As always.”
“No problem, Wen,” she said. “Someday you’ll have this stomach thing beat. Then I won’t have the pleasure of your visits. Good for you. Bad for me.”
“I’ll still visit,” Wendell said from the cot. “I’m sure some other illness will get me.”
“I don’t hear those breathing exercises,” she gently scolded.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
Wendell began taking deep breaths. There was nothing in the world he wouldn’t do for Nurse Bloom. She was the kindest, most beautiful woman he had ever met. Forget movie stars. They had nothing on Nurse Bloom. She was tall, with dark eyes and dark hair that spilled over her white coat like hot fudge over ice cream. She seemed younger than most teachers in the school, but at the same time, she seemed wiser. When she walked, it was with pure confidence. Her arms and legs were hypnotically fluid. In math terms, she was a fractal—the closer you looked at her, the more perfect she appeared. Even her smallest gestures communicated a giant beauty.
There were rumors that she had actually studied to be a chemist but had decided nursing was a more noble profession. She was certainly smart. Not only did she know how to treat any ailment, she knew the answer to every trivia question Wendell could throw at her.
“Nurse Bloom?” Wendell asked between deep breaths.
“Yes?”
“Bet you don’t know who invented Pong. You know, the first video game.”
No more than two seconds passed and she had an answer. “Nolan Bushnell,” she called out.
“You’re incredible!”
“No, Wen, you’re the incredible one. You ready for the Idaho Tests? I bet you rock the math one.”
“I can only hope,” he called back. Wendell closed his eyes, continued his breathing, and tried not to think about the Idaho Tests at all. The Idaho Tests were the definition of boredom. The math questions were easy and uninspired. Necessary or not, the tests didn’t teach him a single thing.
So instead, he thought only of Nurse Bloom. He imagined what it might be like to be married to her. It was about the most exciting thing he could imagine. Pure heaven.
The ring of a phone broke Wendell out of his daze.
“Nurse’s office,” he heard Nurse Bloom answer. “Yes … yes. He’s right here. No … no, just a stomachache … I don’t think that should be a problem. I’ll send him right over.”
Wendell sat up.
“Wen?” Nurse Bloom called out. “How you doin’?”
“Better.”
“That was just Vice Principal Snodgrass,” she said. “If you’re feeling up to it, he’d like to see you.”
“Really? Why would he want to see me?”
“Beats me,” she said. “But you should probably get over there soon. I think it might be important.”
Wendell stood, almost banging his head on the low ceiling. “Okay,” he said. “I guess … I guess I should go.”
“You’ll do fine,” Nurse Bloom said, shooting him a thumbs-up as he walked past.
Loping down the hall, away from the safety of Nurse Bloom’s office, Wendell wasn’t so sure. He knew that kids were only called to Vice Principal Snodgrass’s office if they were in trouble. Tyler Kelly, the toughest kid in school, was there constantly, and he always ended up in detention. He had even been suspended a few times.
The thing was, Tyler Kelly had a girlfriend. Actually, he had dated a lot of girls. Darla Barnes, Mary Dobski, Emma Radson—the list went on and on. Was there a correlation? None of them seemed to mind that Tyler called Wendell hurtful things like “Queen Kong” or that he was constantly pretending to faint whenever Wendell lifted his arm. No, they usually just laughed. Because good girls liked bad boys. The way of the world, as far as Wendell knew. Which made him think his brother, Trent, was probably no exception to this rule. Why else would Keisha stick around?
Wendell quickened his pace down the hall. It didn’t really matter why he had been called to Snodgrass’s office. If he could leave there saddled with a bad rep, then maybe it would be worth suffering a little detention. When he finally reached Snodgrass’s office, he found the door open a crack. He pushed it and peered inside. Denton Kensington, the kid from England, was sitting in a chair. Four empty chairs were lined up next to him.
“Hello,” Denton said with surprise. “Have a seat, I suppose.”
Wendell shrugged his shoulders and then lowered himself carefully onto a chair. Luckily, it didn’t break.
Chapter 3
EDDIE
Eddie Green woke at 6:00 a.m. on Friday, April 12. He inhaled two bowls of Frosted Flakes, chomped on two apples, and sucked down a chocolate milk shake, which constituted a relatively small breakfast for him. Then he decided to cut the grass. His parents paid him thirty dollars a week to cut it, and now was as good a time as any.
When he finished the grass, it was 6:50, and to make it to school by 7:30, he needed to leave soon. It was more than six miles from his house to Ho-Ho-Kus Junior High, and he wasn’t going to bother with the bus—he was going to run the entire way. It usually took him thirty minutes.
As he packed up his backpack with last night’s unfinished homework, his father grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around.
“Hey, Chief,” his father said, slapping fifty dollars into Eddie’s hand. “Be good now. Mom and I are going to miss you.”
It was an odd comment. Miss him? He went to school every day. He’d be home in the afternoon.
“Sure thing, Old Boy,” Eddie said. “And thanks for the extra twenty.”
Within ten seconds, Eddie was out the door, hoofing it south on Rivington. His father stood by the front window, sipping his coffee and waving.
Only thirteen years old and Eddie was already the best runner on the Ho-Ho-Kus High School cross-country team. Never mind the fact that he wasn’t even in high school yet. A mere technicality. When word reached the coach that there was an eighth grader who could run a four-and-a-half-minute mile, he bent every rule to have Eddie run varsity. Eddie didn’t disappoint him, either. At the end of the season, he qualified for the state meet. He placed ninth.
As Eddie zipped his way along the suburban streets, he fueled himself with visions of next year’s meet. Six of the top ten finishers were graduating. His times were improving every day. With the morning sun warming his scalp through his blond buzz cut, Eddie had warm thoughts. Destiny was lining up for him.
When he arrived at school, he had hardly broken a sweat. Kids were congregated on the front steps, waiting for the first bell to call them to homeroom. Tyler Kelly was holding court.
“I’m gonna eat fifty Mackers Chicken Wingdings in one sitting,” Tyler announced. “You can bet on that!”
Tyler shifted his gaze to watch Eddie hop up the steps. “Hey, Speedy Gonzales,” he said.
Eddie stopped. “Hey there, Tyler.”
“You are outta your friggin’ mind, aren’t you?” Tyler laughed. “Did
you run all the way to school?”
“Most of the way,” Eddie shot back. His mouth kept going before his brain could calculate the consequences. “I had to stop to give your mom a good-morning smooch.”
“Oooooooh,” howled a chorus of onlookers.
Tyler didn’t do anything at first. He just nodded, taking the comment in stride. After a few seconds, he finally spoke.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were looking for a beat-down. I’d give you one too, but I’d have to catch your twitchy butt first.”
“That’s true,” Eddie agreed, jogging in place to release his excess energy. “Maybe I’ll run backwards to give you a little help.”
“You’re a spaz, Green,” Tyler said. “You’ll always be a spaz. And running backwards, forwards, or sideways, I ain’t gonna chase you. I’m liable to catch a deadly dose of your twitch-and-fidgets.”
“Point taken,” Eddie responded. Then he turned away and bounced up the stairs, relieved to have dodged a bullet. Eddie was always dodging bullets.
As he entered the school, he could hear Tyler behind him saying, “See, ladies, I can show mercy. Even to a spaz.”
To his classmates, it seemed a minor taunt, something to call a guy with too much energy. Eddie knew better. His mind was as fast as his feet. It could process and contain information at a frantic pace. His head was crammed full of trivia, with vocabulary and word origins. He knew what the insults really meant. His classmates were saying there was something wrong with him, that he was broken.
Teachers told him the same thing, only they used different words. They called him a distraction and scolded him for talking before thinking, accepting wild dares, and doing stupid things just for the sake of doing them.
But no matter what classmates, teachers, or even doctors said, Eddie simply was who he was: a boy who could not be slowed down.
Second period for Eddie meant health class. Health class meant having to dam off all the lewd comments that were threatening to flow forth from his mouth. It was always a monumental task.
He tapped his foot nervously on the floor as Mrs. Larson conducted her lesson. He knew that an off-color remark would land him in the vice principal’s office, so he had to make sure to deploy only grade-A material. Given just one chance, he’d have to make the best of it.
When the classroom phone rang, he took a deep breath. It was a well-needed intermission. He could whisper a joke to a classmate to blow off a little steam. Then he would recollect himself and prepare for his grand finale.
He turned to Hal Melman, who was sitting one desk over.
“Hey, Hal,” he whispered. “What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs whose—”
Before he could finish his joke, Mrs. Larson cut him off.
“Mr. Green,” she said, clearing her throat with an air of authority.
“Yes?”
“Snodgrass.”
It was a call Eddie had grown accustomed to, but he wasn’t sure why he was receiving it now. Surely it couldn’t have been due to the morning incident with Tyler Kelly.
“Really?” Eddie responded. “I haven’t even had a chance to say anything yet.”
The class erupted in laughter. They, too, knew it was only a matter of time. Mrs. Larson simply shrugged and pointed to the door. “But no running,” she said.
Eddie played it off as if it were nothing. As he leapt from his chair and did a little shuffle to the front of class, he raised his hands like a prizefighter and announced his exit.
“My work here is done,” he said. “Pray for me, people. Pray for me.” Applause followed him as he exited the room.
Eddie knew he was on shaky ground. His grades were great. He was dedicated to his running. He just couldn’t stay out of detention.
It hadn’t been a big deal when he was younger. But ever since Snodgrass had entered the picture, punishment had become more and more frequent.
Snodgrass had arrived at school last year. Eddie remembered the vice principal’s first day well. It had started with an assembly, where Snodgrass stood in front of the entire school and announced, “I’ll turn you all into Renaissance children.”
“What’s a rent-a-cop child?” someone yelled out from the dark auditorium.
“A Renaissance child … well, it’s only just a perfect kid … in every way,” Snodgrass said smoothly.
“Does that require a lot of studying?” someone else shouted.
Snodgrass chuckled. He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say: “What do you think, buddy?”
Had Snodgrass been granted absolute power, he would have suspended Eddie by now. Suspension from school equaled suspension from the cross-country team. Eddie’s one saving grace was Principal Phipps.
Whenever Eddie got in trouble, Phipps saw to it that the punishment was light. Though he had spoken to Eddie’s father the last time he’d come to pick Eddie up from detention.
Pressing his ear against the door to Phipps’s office, Eddie heard his father ask, “Do you think he needs more discipline?”
“Discipline is great,” Phipps had said, “but school should be about forming unique and vibrant individuals. Your son’s an individual, Mr. Green. He’s never hurt anybody or caused mischief out of malice. He’s just a boy with too much boy in him.”
As Eddie’s father drove him home that afternoon, he said, “Every school could use a Principal Phipps.”
“Got that right, Old Boy,” Eddie responded, grateful that the principal had let him off easy—and appreciated his sense of humor.
The year before, Eddie had accepted a dare to run around the school in the dead of winter wearing nothing but his underwear. He was eventually apprehended by a dumbfounded janitor, who tossed a blanket around him and shepherded him to Phipps’s office. When Phipps asked him how his feet didn’t freeze in the four inches of snow, Eddie poked his toes out from beneath the blanket and revealed the frayed remains of his underwear.
“If you tear them in half, they make darn good moccasins,” Eddie stated.
Phipps couldn’t help smiling. “Do us all a favor,” he said. “Sign up for home ec classes next year—your fashion instincts need some refinement. And thinking things over, taking things slow … it’s not as boring as you might think.”
They want me to go slower, Eddie thought. I’ll give them slow. As he made his way to Snodgrass’s office Friday morning, he dragged his feet, ran his hand across lockers, and zagged like a stunt plane through the halls.
Slow for Eddie was still quick for most. Before long, he was at Snodgrass’s office.
He let himself in, as he often did. But instead of Snodgrass, there were two other students sitting there: Wendell Scoop, a computer nerd, and Denton Kensington, a British lord or something ridiculous like that.
“Top of the morning,” Eddie said with a wink. “This is where you try out for American Idol, right?”
Chapter 4
ELIJAH
Behind the backstop, in a dark corner of the playground, there was a small patch of concrete, an inconsequential spill left over from the construction of the foursquare court. Checking over both shoulders, Elijah Rosen removed a can of black spray paint from his tattered backpack, uncapped it, and carefully unleashed the dark pigment on the sad little patch. He wrote two letters: e.r. Not quite satisfied, he finished off his graffiti with a capital A in a haphazard circle, the international sign for anarchy.
Elijah was pretty sure he was an anarchist. As far as he knew, anarchists were people who didn’t follow rules, who marched, as they said, to the beat of their own drummer. Ever since a short story he had written titled “The Stairway to Despair” had won a prize from the Northern New Jersey Council for the Arts, Elijah fit that bill. He had decided he wasn’t like the other kids at Ho-Ho-Kus Junior High. He was an artist.
When he was younger, people called him Eli. Elijah declared an end to those days; he was now Elijah and Elijah only. The khaki pants and polo shirts his parents had picked out for him over the
years were sent directly to Goodwill. In their place, he wore thrift-store clothes more befitting a great writer. This included a bomber jacket and dark blue, strategically torn jeans. His eyes worked well enough, but he bought a pair of black-framed glasses, popped clear lenses in them, and wore them constantly. His hair was no longer combed and parted. It was a carefully maintained rat’s nest—dark, tangled, and droopy.
That was exactly how his sister, Tara, described his writing—dark, tangled, and droopy.
“Well, that’s how the world is,” Elijah told her. “Dark, tangled, and … well, it’s dark and tangled, at least.”
On the first day of eighth grade, Tyler Kelly commented on Elijah’s new look.
“Hey, Eli! You trying out for High School Musical?” he asked. “I heard they were looking for new chicks.”
“Hilarious, Tyler,” Elijah said with a roll of the eyes. “I’d expect such infantile insults from such a bourgeois ignoramus.”
“And I’d expect such a …” Tyler seemed to struggle for a good retort as Tammy Skiles walked past. A twinkle came to his eye. He pointed a finger in the air. And before Tammy could suspect a thing, Tyler was grabbing at the back of her shirt, finding the strap of her bra, and pulling it back like a slingshot.
Snap!
“Tyler!” She giggled.
Elijah simply shook his head in disgust. “Children,” he muttered under his breath.
Washing his hands in the bathroom sink and watching bits of black paint escape down the drain, Elijah realized he was late for homeroom. Good, he thought. The more times he was late, the more the teachers would have to accept his tardiness. Before he knew it, he would be able to ditch classes and they wouldn’t blink an eye.
It was a slow process, though, and he knew he had to ease into this rebellion. So he turned off the tap and hurried to Mr. Felton’s room.
“Master Rosen,” Mr. Felton bellowed as Elijah entered the room.
“Yes?”
“Is April twelfth your birthday?” Mr. Felton asked.
“You mean today?” Elijah said. “Not last time I checked.”
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