away to that job and stay at that job as long as I could, just stay there until it was dark and then it would be safe to come home because looking out of the window into the night could not possibly bring any remote satisfaction. I knew myself too well, but I also knew there were no jobs to be had for a skinny little fourteen year old boy who had no knowledge or skills of any practical kind.
I looked, though, and actually did find a few little jobs that I could do. These were pointless, stupid jobs. One consisted merely of standing on a street corner trying to pass out little leaflets for a movie theater. Nobody wanted those scraps of paper, but I couldn't return with the pile, so I would usually slip around the block and dump them in a trash can before my shift was up. I got another job bagging up mowed grass, and another one sweeping driveways. These were the days when a boy could walk around the neighborhood, knocking on doors, asking about odd jobs. I spent far more time walking around begging this way than actually doing anything for anyone. As a result, I wore out my shoes and had to spend much of the money I earned to buy new ones. What bothered me more than anything, though, was the loneliness.
I had no friends. Usually in my life I had had at least one at all times but for some reason, that year had brought no one into my life. It seemed like weeks would go by without an actual conversation. The silence inside my head was matched by the silence reaching my ears from the words I didn't hear. Of course this was entirely my own fault. I had nothing to say to anyone, so no one had anything to say to me. I didn't try to make friends and didn't really know how. I didn't sit with people at lunch in the cafeteria at school; instead, I took my tray outside to the sidewalk and literally sat on the curb and ate out there with the buses and the cars. I didn't raise my hand in class. It was as if I had made a vow of silence. At home there was no one to talk to, with my sister gone and my parents otherwise engaged. When I did speak, such as asking people if they needed their lawns mowed, my voice cracked and I often had to repeat myself because I was apparently inaudible as well as practically invisible.
My wanderings in search of labor were mainly excuses to get away from the street where I lived, where I knew Annie Barkowicki was located as well. It was almost comical the way I would deliberately retreat from the block, attempting to escape while straining to catch any glimpse of her if possible. Sometimes I just gave up and sat on the front steps, staring at the front steps of her house, daring myself to look away if she appeared. At those times she never did. The only times I saw her were when I was already exhausted, or hot and sweaty, or dirty, or angry, or in any other way completely unprepared and unfit for any encounter. I started to hate her almost as much as I loved her, and I would curse at myself and curse at her and the whole danged world at the unfairness of everything and everyone.
It wasn't easy being such a loser. It took a lot of practice and I spent the summer perfecting the art. It would almost be a relief to go back to school in the fall, were it not for the fact that school was the one place I would be guaranteed to see Annie Barkowicki every day, if not on the bus then in class or in the halls. I thought about asking my parents if we could possible move away again but I knew it was impossible. I was trapped and there was nothing I could do about it. I had to endure another two or three years until, until what? Life after high school seemed to me as barren a wilderness as high school itself seemed at the time. I had no idea what I would do, or whatever would become of my life. To tell the truth, I was pretty sure I would end it by then, in some suitably dramatic fashion. I had a lot of schemes and plans to off myself, beginning and usually ending with the train tracks down the street. It was just so obvious, but I was also a coward, and had a feeling that life might just get better some bright shiny day. I had the feeling, but I didn't really believe it. Every day seemed exactly the same as the one before - endless, hopeless, and grim.
And then one day my life did change. It happened just like that, and it was easy, too easy almost. It was the first day back at school. I had waited for Annie Barkowicki to leave her house and followed her to the school bus stop. I had waited there, watching her chat with her friends. I had sat many rows behind her, still watching her and listening to her. I didn't sit next to anyone. I was the only one who had a seat to himself. Funny how I remember that now. I followed her, and hundreds of other kids, it seemed, into the school and found my home room assignment. I was not surprised, because I was definitely cursed, to find that she was also in my home room again. I took my seat, muttering to myself about my lousy luck, when somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to my left and saw it was my old protector, Dennis Hobbs. We hadn't spoken to each other at all the previous year, and hadn't even seen each other during the summer, so I was surprised to see him smiling at me and saying how great it was to see me, and how he'd been meaning to call me up, and had something he'd been wanting to ask me.
I just said okay and waited for him to tell me what it was. I couldn't really believe it at first. He said he was tired of being a stupid jock and wanted to get smart. He was hoping I could help. He had started reading books over the summer and was liking it. He listed some of the books he had read, mostly adventure books like 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'The African Queen', and 'The Sea Wolf'. Those were all books that I really liked as well and I told him that. Then he started telling me that what he really wanted was to get smart all over. He wanted to get Science smart. He wanted to get Math smart. He wanted to get History smart. No more cheating and copying. No more paying kids to do his homework. No more football. That one really shocked me. No more football? Was he sure? Because you could do school work and also sports if you wanted. Plenty of people did that. But no, he was sure. He had already resigned from the team to the dismay of his coach and fellow students.
Football is bad for your head, he told me. People get clobbered and then they get dumb. He had already had enough of being stupid. Why get worse? As it turned out, we both had a study hall period together on three days out of the week, so we spent that time doing tutoring. I would help him with all of his subjects and it turned out to be a really good thing for me too. Dennis was real friendly, and he had a lot of friends, too, so pretty soon I found myself becoming accepted and acknowledged by other actual people, and I even started talking, out loud, and sort of even making friends. Dennis was actually a pretty quick learner, and by winter he had already pretty much caught up with the grade, was getting all B's and really didn't require any more assistance from me, but we kept on with it, now doing our homework together pretty much, and aside from that, I was gradually becoming "one of the guys".
Okay, the truth is that by "gradually" I mean incredibly slowly, almost imperceptibly, as if it wasn't even happening at all, and by "becoming one of the guys" I mean I was totally and completely deluding myself. I wasn't going to ever be one of those guys. The people Dennis knew - those who surrounded him, clung to him, and looked to him at every turn - were a strange and rowdy bunch. I was in awe of some, kind of shocked by others, but mainly afraid of them all. This group included boys who ranged in age from twelve to eighteen, from pipsqueaks to practically grown men, who in a sense had formed almost a nation around the figure of Dennis Hobbs.
Hobbs by this time had developed a deep, rich baritone voice, so deep in fact it was often difficult to decipher what he was saying. The words started from somewhere down in the belly and sounded like they emerged from there as well. Though he was only five foot four, he weighed more than two hundred pounds and, at sixteen, was not nearly fully grown yet. He was massive in every respect, from his size fifteen shoes to his overgrown skull. While he was intent on becoming a scholar (as he put it) he was at the same time the leader in a sort of half-real half-pretend game known as Pumpkin. I don't know why they called it that. Hobbs might have been the inventor, or he might have borrowed it from someone else, I never knew, but the gist of the game was following obscure orders to the letter and reporting on their achievement in detail and in secret. Dennis did not directly invite me into the group, but I sort of became d
e facto involved merely because I was spending so much time in his company. Our study halls were continually interrupted by the comings and goings of this group.
There was "Tadpole" Jenkins, the youngest of them all, a seventh grader who knew absolutely no fear. He would literally commit felonies for Hobbs. I saw it. Breaking and entering. Grand theft. Grand theft auto even - this tiny little guy jimmied into a Mustang, cracked the key case, hotwired the thing and drove off, while barely able to glimpse over the dashboard. He was a jittery little guy too, always shimmying and shaking, never still for a moment. He had these weird green eyes that bugged out of his head like a frog, hence the nickname. His best friend was Candy Coolidge, a fourteen year old butch girl with a spiky blue Mohawk and pink heart-shaped glasses. Candy was a thief as well who specialized in shoplifting. It was said that Candy had robbed every major store in town. She was also renowned for her imitation fart sounds.
'Jazzy' Roberts was the high