He giggled, his eyes magnified through his glasses.
“Are you into sports?” Jere spoke up.
Martin blinked at him. “We’re too skinny for sports. Danny and me are competing on the school’s Mathletics team.”
“AndI,” I corrected. “Not, and me.”
My fellow nerd rolled his eyes. “Everyone can’t be good at everything like you, Danny.”
“I can’t help that I was created perfectly,” I shot back, tipping my chin up in pride. I liked being smart and helping my peers with schoolwork, especially math. Martin was pretty good with numbers, but there was a reason I was team captain of theHoward Klein Pi-rates.
Lunch went by faster than I had hoped as we talked about superheroes and supervillains and the mathematical odds of being bitten by a radioactive spider. And when the bell rang, we went back to class. It took a little negotiating with the other students, but us three ended up sitting together.
Jere had gotten in trouble several times for talking, and more often than not I was admonished for passing notes with him. At least I’d have someone to do detention with, not that I’d ever had to do detention before meeting Jere. But it was nice having another friend. One I quickly learned was a guardian angel, because the bullies never bothered Martin and I again after Jere stood up to them.
A few weeks after first meeting Jere,ithappened, the single incident that changed the lives of Howard Klein nerds for the better. The bullies, mainly Ricky Nelson, spotted fresh meat in the form of Jere. He’d call him all kinds of names, like tubby, and fat-face, and singno one likes youuuuuuu. Jere never responded, just ignored him, even when one of the bullies threw an empty juice box at him, that bounced off his back as easily as the cruel words seemed to do.
“He’s so mean,” I whispered to Jere during lunch. “And he’s wrong, because we like you.”
“Yeah,” Martin chimed in. “You’re pretty cool, new kid.”
Jere shrugged. “He can blow hot air out his hole all he wants. I’m used to being called names. It doesn’t bother me.”
And when Ricky Nelson failed to get a reaction from Jere, he targeted me for some fun and games in front of everyone. “We heard your stupidPi-rateslost. Ha, ha. The only thing you were ever good at, and you crashed n’ burned. Why don’t you go kill yourself, loser?”
Jere shot up, his chair sliding across the floor. Ricky was not a small kid, but Jere chest-butted him against the wall, Ricky’s breath punching out of him as he hit the drywall. “What did you say? I didn’t hear you, so say it again. Go on, talklouder.”
Martin and I exchanged gapes as the lunchroom quieted and watched the exchange unfold with sick amusement. Someone whispered,fight, fight, fight.
Jere towered over Ricky, the rounded features of his chubby face setting into hard lines as he got up in the boy’s puss. “Did you say something, Ricky?”
I wanted to laugh at the sheer expression of terror on Ricky’s face as he stammered, “I-I was just joking, sheesh. I didn’t m-mean anything by it.”
“It’s like Thumper always says, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all,” Jere said, crushing Ricky against his body and the wall.
Someone snickered off to the side and Jere snapped his attention to them, the kid wilting behind a girl. Everyone had learned that day not to bully his friends or else Jere would come for you and you’d be sorry. He’d never really said why he hated the bullies so much, until I learned his father was one.
***
High School
“I can’t take it,” Jere whimpered. “It’s too hot. I’m going to melt and it’s not even summer yet. Oh, God, save me, Danny!”
“You’re such a drama queen,” I said with a little laugh as my best friend made an impression of melting goo on the high school’s lunchroom table.
The late-March Illinoisian spring had kicked off in the last few days. A dry, unseasonably warm current of air had blown in, with little relief in sight. Even Mr. Eisner, who taught AP physics, had switched the day’s curriculum to talk about the effects of global warming.
“Hey, you should try this. The table is really cold. It feels almost as nice as putting my pillow in the freezer.”
I chuckled uneasily. Jere was weird sometimes but that was one of the things I loved about him. “No thanks. All I can think about is all the germs on that surface. Who knows where these kids’ hands have been? And it’s only seventy degrees out, it's notthatbad.”
Jere propped himself up on his elbows and snickered. “No worse than where your hands have been lately.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I looked around to see if anyone had overheard that juicy tidbit. “Geez, Jere, don’t broadcast my personal business to half the school.”
He sat next to me, the chair squeaking under his weight. He was no longer the chubby boy I remembered back in elementary school. When we’d started high school, he’d discovered the weight-lifting club. The chub had turned into muscle, and he’d sprouted, easily towering a foot over me at six-foot-six. Just as he had been the tallest kid in elementary and middle school, he was the tallest in high school too. I didn’t think he had much more growing to do besides adding to the girth of his biceps and calves.
“Oh, come on. Every boy in this school—gay or straight—beats the meat and has been doing so since like eleven.”
