Raisinheart
by Tom Lichtenberg
Copyright 2010 by Tom Lichtenberg
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be resold. Thanks and enjoy!
Magic
Around the time I turned twelve, my best friend and my worst enemy were one and the same. He was my best friend because he was my only friend, even though I didn't even like him. I had a lot of enemies, but he was the worst, or at least tied for the title. His name was Alan Belew. Mine is Jimmy Kruzel. The other important person in this story is a girl named Dana Sanderson. She wasn't a friend or an enemy. I don't even know what she was. We were temporary partners, Dana and me, in a plot to get, and get rid of, Alan Belew. She wanted to get him. I wanted to get rid of him. We thought maybe we could help each other out. It was a dumb idea, but far from the dumbest we came up with that fall.
I had just come back from a year somewhere else. Let me tell you, going away for a year as a kid, and then coming back, is a great way to lose all your friends. They all moved on and left me out. I could hardly believe it. These were kids I had known pretty much all my life, kids I had played with, gone to school with, had sleepovers with, gone camping with, hung out with, kicked the can with, you name it. But now we were all turning twelve, and I'd missed out on one crucial ceremony - the spinning the bottle with. How did my childhood buddies all pair up into romantic couples in the space of a prepubescent year? Yet they did. All of them, it seemed, except the girl with the cooties, the Nazi boy, and the two brand new kids: Alan Belew, and Dana Sanderson.
I found out all about it on the first day of sixth grade. Brandon was with Sarah. Tucker was with Jenny. Carl with Candy. Gregory with Terry. Erica and Charlie. Even Annie, whose family had just changed their last name from Barkowicki to Barnes, was hooked up with Scooter McDaniel. The twins, Marcie and Margie, had boyfriends in Ricky and Rajel. That left Ariel (cootie girl) and Duncan (Nazi boy), and Dana and Alan, and yours truly, myself, on the outside of the glorious circle of light. You'd think that soon there would be only one - the extra boy would be totally alone, and I was certain that that would be me. It seemed inevitable that the other two pairs would form as I have just named them.
It was all new to me and I wasn't ready. I wanted my friends back, and I didn't like girls, not for holding hands, kissing and going steady at least. Or maybe I did but didn't want to admit it. The thing was, I was small, I was weak, I was shy and I was convinced I was ugly as well. It was not going to be a good year. That first day at school, I stood there at recess with nobody talking to me, nobody bothering with me, too nervous and scared to do anything myself, just watching my former friends gather together and command secret audiences with coded messages, gestures and expressions. I was like a rabbit exposed in a field, and it didn't take long for Alan Belew, raptor that he was, to swoop down.
I don't think we'd ever spoken to each other before that moment, when he came up beside me and slugged me right in the shoulder. It hurt so bad I cried out and tears came before I could stop them.
"Look at those jackholes!", he scoffed, not even noticing my pain. "Do you even like any of these kids?"
"I guess so", I muttered, even though I wasn't sure about that anymore. Charlie Evans had been my best friend from kindergarten until then. I lived next door to Rajel Patel and two doors down from Ricky Ventura. I had known them all my life. I'd been in love with Annie Barkowicki when I was only seven. Yeah, I liked those kids. Too bad they didn't like me anymore. I could hardly believe the way they'd shut me out, like they'd forgotten my entire existence. The first thing I did when we moved back there was to go knock on Charlie's door, and he just shrugged on the porch and told me he was busy. Went right back inside, and I had been missing him so much. I had even written him a letter from Virginia where we'd been. It was just like that with all the others. Too busy. Sorry. Can't. Maybe some other time or maybe not. We'd come home in the middle of the summer and I don't think I played with any of my former friends even once till school began, and now that school had begun it was more of the same. Just this moron towering over me and leaning his bad breath into my face.
"Bunch of losers if I ever saw one", he said, and spat on the dirt. He really did. He spat. I was totally grossed out. This Alan kid was big, and mean. He was taller than any of the other kids and maybe even a year older. He'd probably been held back 'cause he was stupid too. Couldn't even tell you ten times ten, which I knew because Miss Hacksaw'd asked him that very question just before break. He hadn't even bothered to answer, just kind of snorted and folded his arms across his chest. Light brown hair, cut short in bangs. Tortoise shell glasses. Freckles. Light brown eyes as well. Wore these horizontal striped shirts with collars always, short sleeves and wore short pants all the time as well. Knobby knees and beat up old white sneakers. I think it was the same two or three shirts, now that I think about it. His family didn't have any money.
They'd just moved in to that little apartment building around the corner from my house - four small apartments sharing a weird little concrete patio that wrapped around the rear of the place and came abruptly to a halt along either side like a really bad haircut. He was the only kid in that place I'm pretty sure. The only kid then, and before, and since. I swear I never saw another one. Later on he told me that his dad was in the military which is why they moved around so much. He knew about Virginia too. Newport News. Arlington. Lorton and Langley. He figured that our dads probably knew each other, but my dad was some kind of bureaucrat, and his was some kind of sergeant so I doubted it, and I was right.
"Come on", he pushed me that first minute. "I'll race you to the hole in the fence and back".
"I don't want to race", I started to say, but it was no use. He shoved me forward, then pushed me again, then kept pushing and shoving until I gave up and finally started to run. I was no match for the guy. He was at least a foot taller and weighed maybe fifty pounds more than me, which was no feat. I think I still weighed around sixty when I was twelve years old. I was basically a runt. Still am. So Alan Belew kept jogging right beside me while I got madder and madder and ran faster and faster, as fast as I could because I wanted to beat him, wanted to do something I could be happy about at least, but he was barely even breathing as he kept right up with me. We got to the hole in the fence at about the same time, but then, turning around, he shouted out something and took off like a cheetah. He was back where we started before I was even halfway there.
Some of the other kids had turned to watch and he knew it, and he turned toward them as he finished, and took a deep bow. Every single one of those kids looked away without a word and he was left to kick a rock, which naturally hit me in the shin as I approached and knocked me right down, ripping my pants at the knee as I fell. Recess was over right then, so there I was, dirty and sweaty and torn pants and all, I had to go right back to class, no time to clean up. Then when he got there, Alan somehow sat next to me - I was certain he hadn't been sitting there earlier - and whenever Miss Hacksaw wasn't looking, he reached over and poked me in the side with a pencil.
I guess he was in love with me or something. I couldn't get away from him. As soon as school ended I made a dash for the door, but there he was catching up to me, insisting on walking back home with me. After all, we went the same way and lived only houses apart. He told me some stories concerning himself. He didn't like animals. He made paper airplanes. He liked football and wrestling and guns. He knew a big secret he couldn't tell anyone. His father would kill him if he did. Did I want to come over and see his collection of arrows? He made them himself. He wouldn't take no for an answe
r. There was ice cream and his mother was working. She'd never know and what did he care if she did? He hated his mother. His dad was all right.
Their apartment was shabbier than I had imagined. They had a worn out green couch and a battered old table, and that was pretty much all that there was in the main room, aside from the beat up old rug and a TV which sat unplugged on the floor. Alan told me it was broken. His room consisted of a piece of foam rubber which lay on the ground, some pretty impressive paper airplanes and a small pile of clothes, all equally dirty or equally clean, depending on how you decided to judge it. There was also a collection of sticks on the windowsill which he'd turned into arrows just like he'd said. I'd say there were maybe twenty of them, all the same length more or less, with very sharp points and at the other end, feathers, gray and purple. He told me he'd plucked them from pigeons himself. He'd sneak up on the birds, grab them, pull out a feather or two and then let them go. I didn't believe him, but somehow those actually were pigeon feathers.
His parents' bedroom door was closed, and in all the times I visited