The telephone’s ring startled me out of my trance. Was it Dad?
No. I hadn’t left a message.
Still, I answered on the second ring.
“Faggot.” A voice, a mean voice, invaded my ears.
“Go back where you belong.” Another voice.
“Who is this?” I asked stupidly.
The line went dead.
I stood there, looking at the receiver, then at my own hands.
“Who was that, sweetheart?” A voice from the hall.
My mother. She’d been listening, of course. Did she know?
No, of course not.
“Just … just a wrong number.” Don’t come in here. “I’ll be out in a sec.”
“Salad’s almost ready.”
“Fine.”
I stood and started putting away my books.
The last place we’d lived was North Carolina. I was home with Mom. Dad worked late every night, coming home long after I’d gone to bed, if he came home at all. Until, one night, he got home early. He announced he was moving out.
I gaped. Mom said nothing. Dad looked at me for once. “This isn’t your fault, Paul.”
Then why say it?
“No one’s fault, really. Who understands the reason for something like this?”
But the following week, we found out the reason. Her name was Stephanie—Hurricane Stephanie, Mom called her. She worked with Dad. She was pregnant.
The divorce was quick and painful, a Band-Aid ripped from a festering wound. We moved again, to Florida. But now, it was just Mom and me, and Mom had to work. She hadn’t done well in the divorce. She explained that everything they owned was part of Dad’s job, protected somehow. The only things Mom got were their collection of Royal Doulton figurines and me—the junk Dad hadn’t wanted.
“Paul!” Mom’s voice from the kitchen was trembly. For God’s sake.
I shoved the last book into the milk crate. The telephone rang again.
I shouldn’t answer. Probably another crank call.
Still, what if it was an obscene phone call and my mother picked it up?
Or maybe it was Dad.
“Hello?”
“That you, Richmond?”
I recognized the voice. Binky, from the registration line. “Yeah. How’d you get my number?”
“School directory.”
“What’s up?” Why are you calling me?
“Just wanted to find out your schedule. We moved here three years ago, so I know it’s weird your first day.”
“Is it like that for everyone?”
“Sure. Why would you be different?”
“No reason.”
We talked longer, me reading her my schedule, her assuring me I’d drawn all the teachers who’d come to Gate because Principal Meeks allowed them to practice electroshock therapy or use their cat-o’-nine-tails on unruly students. But I was blown away, thinking, I made a friend. Maybe she was another loser like me, but she was still a friend. And that was one more than I’d ever had before.
CHAPTER THREE
“Anyone else?” Mrs. Ivins, my Algebra II teacher, looked hopefully around the room. No other hands.
I tried to sneak mine down. Too late. I was nabbed.
“Mr. Richmond.” It came out a sigh.
Mrs. Ivins had begun class each day by putting a word problem on the board. They were pretty easy quadratic equations. Yet, for the third straight day, I was the only one to volunteer.
Everyone stared as I walked to the board. But a senior jock in the front row slapped my back as I passed. “Go, Richmond!”
So, I was grinning when I started.
A man can build a brick wall in 2 hours less than his coworker. Working together, they can finish in 2 hours, 24 minutes. How fast can each man do it alone?
I wrote:
Behind me, a snicker. Someone shushed the snickerer. Why had I volunteered? Why? I turned. Mrs. Ivins twisted to see the board. She nodded.
I wrote:
Another snicker. Ignore it.
The room erupted in laughter. I looked at Mrs. Ivins again. She checked my work.
“Fine. Now, clear the fractions.”
By the time I finished multiplying everything by the LCD, the room had calmed. I wrote the answer, x = 4, x + 2 = 6, in tiny print, then walked, head down, to my seat. I didn’t look up the rest of the period. I swore never to volunteer again.
In the hallway, people still laughed when they saw me—even people who hadn’t been in my class. Binky materialized through the crowd. She patted my back.
“Rough morning?” she guessed.
“You can tell that by looking?”
She held up a sheet of paper, really three big yellow Post-it notes stuck together. I read:
“The jock.”
“Which jock?” Binky crumpled the paper.
“When I went up to the board, some guy put it on my back.” It struck me that the jock had understood the math problem, too. But he’d preferred to humiliate me.
Binky aimed and made a basket into the garbage pail. She looked at me. “Lesson one, Richmond. It might be a good idea not to let everyone know you’re smarter than them. They hate that.”
“I’m not smarter than anyone.”
“Yeah. Trust me. You are.”
Down the hall, I saw Charlie Good, the guy from the registration line. He was talking to the jock who’d humiliated me. Charlie looked up, met my eyes. He waved.
The rest of the week, I watched my back. Problem was, I’d learned about school from television. On television, when a new guy shows up, everyone wants to know him. Within an episode, he has a place in the action, some friends, a girl. Gate was nothing like that.
Wednesday, there was a foot, tangling through my ankles in social studies, tripping me. Could have been an accident. The next time, I thought maybe it wasn’t. The third time, I was sure.
My locker got trashed Thursday. Someone managed to spray Coke up through the air vents. My fresh-from-the-bookstore texts were annihilated. I watched the brown liquid seep across the white pages, and I remembered being dragged to the shooting range with Dad and getting him mad by asking why they’d invented guns. Now, I understood.
Friday, whoever it was did one better, switching the combination locks so I couldn’t get into my locker at all. I found the janitor scrubbing the toilets in the upstairs boys’ room. Everyone called him “Old Carlos” though he wasn’t much older than Mom.
“What your combination is?” Through an accent I could barely understand.
“I told you. I don’t know.”
Old Carlos pulled back his Florida Marlins cap, revealing his baldness. First period had started, but I needed my books. “You no got your combination?”
“Someone switched the locks.”
“We give it a try. What your combination?”
No point explaining. I told him the old combination and watched him dial it. He pulled down the mechanism. The lock opened.
“It work now.” Old Carlos smiled. He was missing two teeth. “You forget, maybe.”
I nodded. But I hadn’t forgotten.
I was by my locker after school that same day. I’d come from the computer lab, where I killed time in chat rooms until Mom got off work. It was almost four. The breezeway was quiet. The only students left were athletes, who had practice, and me. The air was hazy, silent yellow.
Then, a voice. “Hey, faggot!”
Why did I turn? I saw a pair of white moons topping muscled legs. Then, another. And another. I looked away.
“Like that, faggot?”
I stared at my locker. The leftover drips of Coke had attracted an ant parade, swarming across the gray metal in a sugar frenzy. The three jocks left, guffawing.
“Why can’t I go to public school?”
Mom was sitting in the living room, watching TV. She’d brightened when I entered, but at my question, she yanked a hair and sighed, making me sorry I’d asked.
“Lots of peopl
e go to public school,” I said.
“Public schools aren’t safe. I wouldn’t feel right, letting you go.”
“They can’t be worse than Gate.”
“You think that because I’ve protected you.”
She pulled another hair.
“You don’t know what’s out there,” she said. “Crack cocaine … shootings … gangs—”
“Those things could happen here, too.”
“Please, Paul.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I’d die if anything happened to you. You’re all I have. Your father left us with nothing.”
It wasn’t her fault, I realized. I hadn’t told her about the stuff that was happening. Now I tried.
“But the problem is, people are all so mean there. At least, if I went to public school, I wouldn’t be the poorest kid there. The kids at Gate, they…”
She sighed, looked away.
I stopped. I’d been about to tell her everything, about the Coke in my locker and the locks being changed, the jock in algebra class, and getting tripped practically every time I walked into the cafeteria. But I realized she didn’t want to hear about my problems. She only wanted to dissect her own.
“Never mind,” I said. “It’s okay.”
She looked back at me and patted my arm. “Of course it is. All we need is each other.” She reached to the coffee table and flicked the pulled-out hairs off her hands. She turned her back to me. “Can you rub my back, please? I’m so tired.”
I didn’t want to, but I reached over and did it, like always.
But inside, I was mad. Mad at her for ignoring my problems, but more than that. Mad at her for being tired. She was always tired. Tired of life, tired of work. Tired of me.
Well, I was tired too. Tired of trying to make everything okay for her. For once, I wanted to think of myself.
Later, I did the only thing I could. I called Dad again.
I got his answering machine. “Dad, it’s me. I was wondering … if maybe I could live with you. Just during the school year or something....” I sounded like a dork. “Anyway, call me back.” I left the number and hung up.
That night, I waited. He had to call back. He was my father, for Christ’s sake. But when the telephone rang, it was only Binky.
What kind of father would just leave me here, with Mom and this school? Could he really be that selfish?
At twelve thirty, I went to bed.
I asked Binky, “Why are people such assholes to me?”
We were eating in the shade of the oak canopy that stretched across campus. It did nothing for the heat. The suffocating feeling had settled in permanently. I’d filled my tray with food Mom would have called nonnutritive: two burgers and an oatmeal cookie sandwich. Binky had a burger too, which marked her as strange for a girl. I watched girls a lot. Most got the salad bar, which skinny Binky described as “anorexic.” In the first weeks, she was still my only friend.
“Probably they figured out you’re a subsidy student,” she said. “That your mother works here.”
“I guess so.”
“This is the most expensive school in Miami, Richmond, and everyone knows it. Others have academics, sports. We have snob appeal.” She extracted a pickle from her burger bun, ripped it in two, and replaced the halves on the burger. “People get emotional over who pays full price.”
“That’s messed up.” I watched a squirrel, leaping tree to tree.
Binky shrugged. “Could be worse. At least your mom works in the office. Have you seen what they do to David Blanco? His mom’s a lunch lady, and his father’s the janitor.” She pretended to shudder.
I downed the second burger in four bites. Across the way, two guys in blue caps, the kind worn by Gate’s student ambassadors, looked at us, laughing. I didn’t want to know what they did to David Blanco, who must have been the weird-looking guy I’d seen talking to his fat mother in the cafeteria. Or what they’d do to me. I didn’t even know why I wanted to fit in with these people, but I did.
From a distance, I saw Charlie Good crossing the field. The two blue caps yelled to him, and Amanda Colbert, the mere sight of whom made my stomach flip, tried to start a conversation. But Charlie walked alone. I’d seen him often. We had no classes together, but I passed him in the halls. And I heard about him. Not by accident, but more like Charlie was a research project. What I found contradicted Binky’s statement about Charlie being trouble. He seemed like the most normal person there. True, he was never fully in uniform, always wearing either contraband shorts or sneakers, always dressed in white. But his name was on last year’s low honor roll, posted in a case in the breezeway, and that first Friday’s newspaper carried his picture, acing his serve for match point. Charlie had made the front page.
I didn’t speak to Charlie again until Thursday, second week. I was at my worst—P.E.
Soccer was invented by masochists.
I lunged, feetfirst, toward the black-and-white ball that burned on my brain like a tattoo. Up was blue, framed by a stand of oaks. Down, there were only feet. Feet, somehow making contact with that black-and-white missile as mine couldn’t. Across was the goal, near but unattainable; still, yet elusive. I was inches away, running in circles. Finally, I saw an opening. The ball hit the canvas side of my Kmart sneaker and soared heavenward, carried more by wind than by my kick, crooked but straight enough. Seconds later, it hit ground, bouncing clear, no defense in sight. No one but me as it leaped toward the goal. All around, people screamed my name.
Richmond! Richmond!
I turned, faced them.
“Richmond, pay attention!” Coach Kjelson’s voice rose above them. “Your side called time-out!”
But time-out was never long enough.
It started again. And again, I was in a time warp, where nothing changes, the ball never moves, and I was always inches from glory. And as the ball slipped away, my eyes filled with watery sun, and I saw Charlie. He wore tennis whites, oblivious to the ninety-degree heat. His smile was so loud, I knew he was laughing at me. Then I heard it, ringing above the buildings. Someone slammed me into the dirt again, and when I looked up, he was gone.
I ran for the rest of the period, not even trying for the ball. That’s the only good thing about soccer: You don’t actually have to do anything. It was maybe five minutes, but it seemed an hour. Finally, Coach let us go, and I drifted to the locker room.
I’d stripped to my jock, inhaling the sour smell of sweat and frustration. I saw Charlie. His hair was damp from the shower. His white polo had Gate’s logo; his white chinos, Ralph Lauren’s. He wore his forbidden white tennis shoes. He smiled.
“You must be one hell of a student.”
I stared, dumb in both senses of the word. A witty reply leaped to mind.
“Huh?”
He tilted his head back to the ceiling, not looking at me. He had no reason to remember me, yet somehow, I knew, he remembered everyone. “I said, anyone that uncoordinated must be a real brainiac.”
It wasn’t news, but it hurt anyway. “Whatever.” I pushed past him, not difficult. I was a giant, after all. I headed for the showers, lifted the grimy, plastic curtain, stuck my toe under the spray. His voice again.
“You always shower in your jock, Einstein?”
I jumped back, saving myself from all but a few drops, and turned to avoid his gaze. But he was gone. Still, his laughter hung in the sweaty air. The door slammed.
The next morning, I walked up the center stairway before third period. A crowd clogged the way, all staring at something hanging from the second-floor landing. People laughed and talked and didn’t move an inch. I tried to shove through. Finally, when the bell rang and everyone ran for class, I saw what they’d been looking at.
The picture, taken from a calendar or something, was an obese woman, naked except for a garter belt, spread-eagle. Gross. I stared, revolted, yet unable to turn away. Across the enormous, rumpled stomach, in red marker, someone had written Blanco’s Mom.
I remembered what Binky had s
aid about David Blanco, David Blanco and me. God, what would I do if anyone did that to my mother?
For one moment, I stood there, imagining it. I wanted to hurt them.
Then, a guy’s hand reached down for the picture. I heard it rip. I looked up. He was gone.
Dad hadn’t returned my calls. I’d left four, maybe five, messages, and it bugged me. I mean, even if he was away, he’d have called for messages. He couldn’t be this big an asshole. Then, I remembered Hurricane Stephanie. Of course. She wouldn’t want me living with them. Why should she? They had a new baby. Everything was perfect. She was probably erasing the messages before Dad even got them. That night, I left another.
“Dad and Stephanie?” I paused, stupidly, like they might answer. “It’s me again. Paul.” One ear tuned to the hallway, to make sure Mom wasn’t listening. I knew I was betraying her. “Your son, Paul. Look, if you let me live there, I won’t get in the way or anything. I’ll take the bus to school—whatever school’s most convenient. Or walk. You wouldn’t see me hardly at all. And if you need a baby-sitter for…” I stopped, realizing I didn’t know my half brother or sister’s name. “… for the baby, I’ll do that too.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The bell tower stood on the far end of campus, behind the chapel and near the athletic field. A three- or four-story structure, it stared over Gate’s grounds, meant to symbolize tradition or excellence or something. Not to me. Every hour, when its bells rang, another hour of my life was gone.
Near the end of September, I walked in its shadow. Four o’clock. I kicked a rock, killing time until Mom was ready to leave. Usually, I went to the computer lab after school. I fooled around on the Internet away from Mom’s eyes and ears. Sometimes, I even helped the sixth-graders with their homework because, I guess, it made me feel important that they thought I was some kind of computer genius.
But I wasn’t in the mood today. Someone had made cookies in my locker. At least, it was filled with eggs and flour. I’d considered changing the lock. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction—whoever “them” was. Word of my untouchable status had traveled across campus, and now the spitballs flew so thick I sometimes ducked into the boys’ room to rinse my hair between classes.