by Mike Jung
“Kenny, what’s going on—ow!”
“Don’t touch me, you queer!”
We turned to go and immediately bumped into a cluster of four or five people who’d also been watching Kenny turn on Sean. They all kind of jumped, like we’d released them from a magic spell, then joined us in hustling toward the band room, where the sounds of tuning instruments were getting loud. I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but whatever it was, it felt really, really bad.
When the spring concert was over, we started marching band practice again. We do that every year, and it always feels like kind of a big deal because we know we’ll be performing at graduation, but practicing for the World of Amazement festival was on a whole other level. It was intense. It didn’t help that Kenny had kicked Sean out of their two-person clubhouse for real. Sean kept asking Kenny what was wrong until Kenny threatened to beat him up, right in front of the whole cafeteria. So yeah, marching band practice felt more like a pit of vipers than ever, and it didn’t take long for the vipers to start biting.
There are rules about playing instruments, and the big one is don’t mess with someone else’s instrument, even if it’s the easiest instrument on the face of the planet like bass drum. You just don’t do it; it’s like a respect thing. But Sean McKenna didn’t have any respect for anyone, especially since his friend breakup with Kenny, so it’s not like it was a giant shock when he decided to level up with the hostility at band practice, especially with Mr. D cracking the whip like he was.
I didn’t think he’d do it by breaking one of the cardinal marching band rules, though. I mean, seriously. You don’t mess with someone else’s instrument, ever!
BA-BUMP.
When Sean reached over and hit my bass drum twice, I was so surprised that I missed the start of the next measure, at which point Sean hit my drum again, BA-BUMP. He was completely off, of course. That part wasn’t surprising at all.
“Hey!” I said, my stomach suddenly churning. “What are you doing, Sean?”
“Play it right,” Sean said in a strict-sounding tone, like he’d been magically turned into the band director.
“I am playing it right. Why are you playing it wrong, and on my drum?”
“Because you obviously can’t get it right, loser.”
“You’re the one who never gets it right!”
“Dude, you’re so gay, I—”
“So gay?? What does that even mean?”
“Maybe if you opened your eyes wider you could—”
“Open my eyes wider??”
It was raining, which was super unusual for spring, so we were rehearsing in the band room. That was probably good, because getting into a stupid argument while marching probably would have ended in a fifteen-band-geek pileup. Sean and I were both hopelessly lost on the song, though—finding out someone’s a homophobic racist does that to me—and Mr. D was going to notice sooner or later.
“Whoa, stop, wait a minute.” Drabek dropped his baton hand to his side and slashed the air a couple of times with his other hand.
Okay then, sooner, not later.
“What’s going on, bass drummers?” Mr. D put his hands on his hips and glared at the back of the room.
“Nothing,” Sean said with a totally fake-casual expression on his face.
“Uh-huh, sure,” Mr. D said, not looking very convinced. “As long as nothing’s going on, how about playing your own drum, Sean?”
Busted! And Sean knew it—he kept up the fake “everything’s cool” expression, but I saw his Adam’s apple go up and down. Dude was swallowing hard.
“It’s not Sean’s fault, Mr. Drabek,” Eric said. “He can’t help it that he’s not that good.”
“Cut it out,” Drabek said, pointing a finger at Eric. Mr. D’s voice didn’t sound happy, and Eric shut up right away. That put the smirk back on Sean’s face, but Drabek wiped it right back off.
“Get it together, Sean,” he said, still using his “I’m not happy” voice. “The competition’s getting closer every day.”
“Come on, Mr. D, what about him?” Sean said, sticking his finger way too close to my ear, like a bony mosquito. I batted it away with my hand.
“See?” Sean said, throwing both hands in the air. “Matt’s the one who’s touching people, Mr. D!”
“Both of you knock it off, NOW,” Mr. Drabek said, which was super unfair to me, but unlike Sean, I knew when to not push it. Sean opened his mouth to say something else, but closed it when Mr. D stared him down.
“You don’t have the luxury of not needing to practice, Sean,” Mr. D said. He was obviously mad, so nobody said anything out loud, but we all looked around at each other with big, open-mouth expressions on our faces, and someone made a very quiet, cackling, oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-hooooooo sound.
“Okay, gang, from the top,” he said, raising his baton. Eric turned his head just far enough to make one-eyed eye contact with me, and we shook our heads just a tiny bit. I started to flip back through the ridiculously easy bass drum music, but Sean interrupted me by poking me in the shoulder with a drum mallet. I didn’t want to risk the Wrath of Drabek again, so I looked at Sean out of the corner of my eye.
“That was so uncool,” he said in a harsh whisper, also looking at me from the corner of his eye, and whispering out of the side of his mouth.
“Oh yeah, I was the one hitting your drum, huh?” I whispered back.
“You were playing it wrong.”
“It’s not my fault you’re such a terrible drummer.”
“Oh, you’re dead, queer boy,” he said. “You think you can blackmail me and get away with it, but you have no idea. You’re so dead.”
Welp. That sounded promising.
Spring was turning out to be kind of a dumpster fire, so it was a relief when Ms. Bruce came through with a cool new project for physics class.
“Good morning, class! Any Skykiller questions today? I’ll take three. Matt!”
Sixth grade was the first time I’d ever gotten a new teacher halfway through the school year, and at first I was sad because I’d always liked Mr. Philips, but Ms. Bruce turned out to be one of the best teachers ever. Mom and Dad said she must have just graduated from teacher college (or whatever you call it) because those are the only teachers who look for jobs that start right after New Year’s, and they said it like it was a bad thing, but I didn’t get it. She wasn’t incredibly stuck-up like Ms. Oates, she didn’t completely ignore everything anyone said like Mr. Castillo, and she was the only teacher I’ve ever had who knows as much about the Skykiller movies as I do. She even lets us try to stump her in class, if we want.
“What’s the name of Spark Dahlen’s astromech droid?” I said, hand still in the air.
“Minispark! Reggie!”
Reggie Halko sat next to Skye Oh, who was staring at the front of the room with her eyes half-closed and her head pulled into her neck like a turtle. Skye was not a Skykiller fan. Reggie, on the other hand, was a superfan.
“In Rise of the Insurgency, who’s the leader of the rebels stationed on Declan Five?”
Ooh, good one, Reggie.
“Captain Atteberry! Aaaaaand—” Ms. Bruce waved her finger in a circle, then brought it down super fast. “Eric!”
“What was the name of the city where the bounty hunters caught up with Barkley Baptiste in Fallen Rebel?”
Awesome question, as expected.
“Ha, that’s a hard one! Let’s see … right, it was Ferrante! And Barkley got away!”
Someone coughed, and the cough sounded suspiciously like it was actually the word “dorks,” but it bothered me less in Ms. Bruce’s class than it usually did.
“Okay, people, we’re going to start a new project today, and trust me, it’s a fun one.”
An excited murmur filled the room. The best thing about Ms. Bruce’s class was how she taught stuff like the laws of physics. She took these “gremlins,” which were actually super-weird stuffed animals she made herself,
and put them onto things like a bike wheel on a stand or a car on a track. Then she’d demonstrate things like centripetal force or momentum by spinning the wheel or crashing the car, sending the gremlin flying through the air. Hopefully “fun” meant “lots of gremlins.”
“It’s a group project—”
The whole class said some version of “noooooooooooo” at the same time.
“—Oh, come on, it’s not like this is the first group project we’ve done this year. Anyway, we’re going to make catapults!”
The group “nooooooooo” turned into more of an excited bable. Catapults are for throwing stuff! Please say we’ll get to throw gremlins!
Ms. Bruce passed around a handout with all the details as she explained. Working in teams of four people, we had to make catapults using Popsicle sticks (!?) from the design specs on the handout.
“The kind of catapult we’ll be making is called a mangonel. You can make yours as small or as big as you want to, but keep in mind that you’re using sticks to make it, so the longer the beam is, the more you’ll have to worry about its structural integrity!”
Eric turned around and silently mouthed the words “awesome project,” and I did a low-key double thumbs-up without lifting my hands off my desk.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what direction you all take with your projects, and here’s some extra incentive: We’re going to have a contest to see whose catapult throws a standard projectile the farthest!”
Ms. Bruce walked quickly back to her desk, opened a drawer, pulled out a brand-new gremlin, and raised it over her head with one hand while making little waving motions around it with her other hand.
The room broke out in clapping and cheers, and Ms. Bruce had to clap her hands a couple of times to get everyone to shut up.
“Okay then, let’s take a few minutes to form up into groups, and let me know if you need my help!”
I gave Eric a fist bump, since obviously we’d be on the same team. Filling out the rest of the team could be a problem—not being even a little bit popular caused a lot of problems like that—but this time, for a change, it wasn’t.
“Duuuuuudes!” Hector said, high-fiving me, Eric, and the air as he and Jack came over and slid their stuff onto our table. “Roomies working on a group project, this is gonna be epic!”
“Okay, Hector, calm down,” Jack said in his droopy-dog way. I cracked up.
“No one’s more calm than you, Jack,” Eric said, giving Jack a hand clasp on the shoulder.
“Good job organizing your groups, people!” Ms. Bruce said. “And now, a demonstration!”
She pulled out a box from the spot under her desk where her legs would go if she ever sat down, which she hardly ever did, and in just a couple of minutes she’d assembled a real catapult right there on the lab table at the front of the room. It was made of wood and was a couple of feet tall, with a flat base, two triangular sides, wooden rods connecting the sides at both the top points and bottom middles of the triangles, and a long vertical arm attached to the center of the base. The end of the arm had a wooden spoon attached to it.
“As you can see, I took a shortcut by building this catapult out of pine,” Ms. Bruce said. “So you shouldn’t necessarily rely on it as a model for yours, because you’re going to have some different structural concerns to think about. But you will test your catapults by doing the exact same thing I’m about to do right now, which is …”
She took the gremlin, which was basically just a furry lump the size of a lime with googly eyes, floppy hands and feet, and a pipe cleaner antenna on it, and put it into the bowl of the spoon. Then she held down the base of the catapult and pulled the top end of the wooden spoon lever back until it was almost flat on the tabletop.
Ms. Bruce looked at us with a big smile.
“Ready?”
“YES!” we all said at once.
She let go of the lever, which snapped back up like a clock hand going super fast. When it hit the crosspiece it stopped short, and the gremlin flew out of the wooden spoon like a furry little cannonball. It hit the wall with a thwump, then hit the floor with another thwump. I was really impressed that none of the gremlin’s body parts fell off.
There was more cheering and clapping as Ms. Bruce picked up the gremlin and walked back to her desk.
“One more thing,” she said, reaching into her catapult box with both hands. “You’ll need to test your catapult designs with a projectile that’s regulation size and weight, of course, so you can use these.”
She took out a pile of beanbags. They were the kind you get in a little mesh bag when you buy one of those “learn how to juggle” kits, and they were almost the exact same size as the catapult gremlin.
“Do not lose these!” Ms. Bruce warned as she put a beanbag on each group’s table. “I don’t have extras, so if you lose yours, you’ll have to replace them yourselves.”
We spent the rest of the class collecting supplies from the bins of stuff Ms. Bruce put out on the big lab table. There were actual Popsicle sticks, but there were also big tongue depressors, and we grabbed a bunch of each. Everybody already had their own rolls of tape and bottles of glue, but we also got some zip ties and rubber bands.
“Did you guys hear about Kenny?” Jack said in a low voice, looking from side to side like he was in a spy movie.
“You mean about him threatening to rip Sean’s head off?” I said as Eric, Hector, and I all leaned forward to listen.
“No, but it kind of relates to that—Emma told me that a friend of hers from theater camp knows someone who saw Kenny in the park by the lake, and he was kissing … another guy.”
“Whoa,” I said.
“Whoa is right,” Hector said. “How did Kenny find someone willing to actually kiss him?”
“Is your friend’s friend’s friend’s friend sure it was a human boy?” Eric said.
Hector and Jack both cracked up, but Eric and I exchanged a confused look. I was having a short-but-intense argument with myself about whether I should mention seeing Kenny stare at Graysin that one time, but I decided against it, partly to spare Graysin from any rumors, but mostly because telling people about that seemed like a decent way to get Kenny to tear my head off.
Kenny going off on Sean right after Nora suggested they were gay was already common knowledge, but that wasn’t my fault.
“But is Kenny, you know, gay?” Jack said.
“Jack, be serious.” I crossed my arms. “Your friend’s friend’s friend’s friend’s friend said they saw this? How do we know that person’s real?”
“I don’t know, but you know what happened before the spring concert,” Jack said. “Is it just a coincidence?”
“Gay or straight, it’d be good news either way,” Eric said. “Maybe having a boyfriend would make him less evil.”
“You know, that’s what happened with my cousin who used to be all mean to me and stuff,” Hector said. “He started seeing this girl, and they were, like, super into each other, and he stopped messing with me every time we went to his house!”
“That would be nice,” Jack said.
“My cuz isn’t all bad, though—he’s the one who got me into Galactic Herald.”
“Galactic Herald is awesome!” I said. “I just got their new album.”
“Aw man, I haven’t even heard any of—”
Eric elbowed Hector in the side as Ms. Bruce walked over to our table.
“How’s it going, guys? Have you assigned roles for your team yet?”
All four of us hunched our heads down into our necks, which is basically like saying “GUILTY, WE’RE GUILTY,” but I still managed to say “er, not yet, we’ve been focusing on materials.”
“Well, I’m not worried about you four, but make sure you discuss who’s doing what before the end of class, okay?”
“Okay!” we said in unison, which was weird, but … nice?
It was like we weren’t just field trip roommates, but also a real team.
I wasn�
��t all that used to people randomly coming over to my house, so whoever it was that rang the doorbell would have been a surprise as long as it wasn’t Eric. I had a sudden paranoid moment when I thought it might be Sean, ready to light our house on fire or something, but it wasn’t Eric or Sean, it was Hector. Hooray, a nonthreatening surprise. A pleasant surprise, even, which was also a surprise. It was like a wormhole of surprise.
“Dude, let’s hear it!” Hector, as usual, had the biggest, toothiest grin on his face and was bouncing slightly on his toes. He also had a rake and a box of trash bags in his hands, which was less usual.
“Uh … hi?”
“Hey! Can I come in?”
“Sure. What’s with the rake?” I said as I stepped aside and waved him in.
“Yard work,” he said, rubbing the fingertips on one hand together. “Money.”
“Oh. Right. I knew that.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen you mowing lawns and stuff,” Hector said cheerfully.
“I don’t bring my own lawn mower, though.”
“Well, yeah, who drags their own lawn mower around?”
Hector scuffed his feet twice on the doormat, leaned his rake against the porch railing, put the trash bags on the porch next to the rake, then stuck his hand in my direction, elbow bent at a right angle. I stuck my hand out too, and he shook it firmly, nodded, and finally came into the house. His hand was all sweaty, but whatever, you gotta respect the whole moneymaking thing, especially since I needed to do some moneymaking of my own if I was going to buy any souvenirs at DefenderCon.
“When are we gonna listen to it?” he said, looking eagerly at me.
“Listen to what? It’d probably help if, you know, I knew what you’re talking about.”
“The new Galactic Herald album! You have it, right?”
“Oh, that. Yeah, I do.”
“Is it on your phone? Do you have a Bluetooth speaker? I brought mine, just in case.” Hector pulled a barrel-shaped speaker with a blue rubber cover out of his jacket pocket.
