I had to leave home at the latest by ten to eight, to get to Tappan by second bell, which gave me five more minutes til third bell and the start of my first class. It took about twenty minutes to walk to school, though it seemed longer than that, maybe because I had to keep turning corners and going on different streets.

Today was a “T” day, so I had to remember to bring my saxophone, because I had Band fifth period. On “M” days, I had French instead, which meant I only had to carry my three-ring notebook, and whatever textbooks I brought home yesterday to do homework. When girls brought books to school, they would carry them against the front part of their body with one or both arms wrapped around them. But you never saw boys carrying them that way, though I think it was easier. We always carried them in one arm on the side of our body. I’m not sure why, except that boys never wanted to be seen doing anything “like a girl”.

The “M” and “T” days alternated, so I had to remember which one it was before I left the house and headed out. One day I had messed up, and thought it was an “M” day when it wasn’t, and didn’t bring my saxophone. The Band teacher, Mr Balfort, made me sit there in my regular spot, surrounded by all the other kids who HAD and were playing their instruments, and read my music sheets and PRETEND to play mine. I totally looked stupid and other kids laughed at me. I didn’t want to ever do THAT again.

If I got to school by second bell, that gave me about five minutes to get to my locker and get the books out I needed for my first class. All us kids had lockers that were out in the hallways. The hallways on all three floors were U-shaped, and went around the middle part of the building that was the auditorium. I think seventh graders all had theirs on the first floor. I had big textbooks for Unified Studies, Math, French and Science class, along with my big three-ring binder that I kept notes in for all my classes, well except for Phys Ed. It was hard enough carrying all those books and my binder under one arm to school and back home each day so I could carry my saxophone with the other hand. So it was nice to be able to go to my locker before each class and put all my other books away and only take the ones for that class.

Abby, who lived across the street from me, had her locker close to mine, so sometimes before first period or between periods, if we were there at the same time and there weren’t people opening their lockers in between us, we might nod or quietly say hi. But neither of us really talked to each other too much, probably because someone might see us and tease us that we were boyfriend and girlfriend or something.

I also kind of knew maybe five of the other girls from Burns Park going to Tappan – Beth, Myrna, Stella, Alice and Kate – but I had only really talked to Beth and Alice. Beth and I had sat next to each other in Fifth grade, and we both liked the SRA reading program and trying to do enough reading at each color level to go up to the next one. I never talked to Alice in class, but since she lived on Wells right across the street from Burns Park near my house, she would sometimes say hello to me when I walked by her house and she was doing gardening stuff in the front yard, like mom did. But just like with Abby and Beth, you didn’t want to talk to them very much, or other boys would see you and tease you about it. I knew some older boys had girlfriends, but no boys that I knew that were my age did, or even had girls who were friends, like Molly and I had been.

My first and second period were both the same class, Unified Studies. It was both English stuff, reading and writing, but also history stuff that they also called “Social Studies”. It was weird because, in all my other classes, in all the other rooms, when the bell rang for the end of the period, all us kids got up and went into the hallways to go to our lockers or our next class in a different room. But when the bell rang for the end of FIRST period in my Unified Studies class, we weren’t going to different class for SECOND period, but just staying in this same room. So the teacher said we could either go out in the hall to go to our locker, or go to the bathroom, or just stay in the classroom and talk to the other kids for a few minutes until the next bell rang for second period to start.

Our Unified Studies teacher, Mrs Woods, was okay I guess, because she didn’t do a lot of talking, and let us spend a lot of our time reading or writing stuff, except when she wanted to ask us questions to have a discussion about stuff we were reading. That was okay for me, because she would ask questions about U.S. history stuff we were reading, about the British, French and Spanish explorers coming to the Americas and setting up forts, bases, outposts and colonies, including the thirteen colonies that would later become the United States. I remembered a lot of that stuff from elementary school and liked reading more about it in our textbook, so I raised my hand a lot and was able to answer most of her questions to try and show her how much I knew and how smart I was so she would think I was a good student and wouldn’t worry about me very much.

But what was different from when I was in elementary school, was that there was a group of boys in my class, who had gone to other elementary schools last year so I didn’t know them, that didn’t seem to like it when I knew so many of the answers, like I was a showoff or teacher’s pet or something. They sat in the back of the room and would make little noises or roll their eyes or shake their heads after I answered one of the teacher’s questions. I didn’t know who any of them were because none of them were from Burns Park, but they sat in the back of the room and seemed to know each other and think they were the coolest kids and they had everything all figured out. At Burns Park, especially in sixth grade, I had felt like I was one of the cool kids too, but I didn’t feel that here at Tappan.

There were only three other kids in the class from Burns Park that I knew, Todd, Grant and Alice. Todd and Grant were in my sixth grade class and we’d played soccer together before school, and Little League baseball together this summer on the “Tube Benders” team. So I’d done sports with them, but I didn’t really hang out with them or go to their houses, like I had with a bunch of the other boys in my class. And Alice was a girl, and not one of the regular girls like Abby, Beth or Myrna, but a “hippy girl”, who had really long hair and wore long dresses and big floppy shirts with flowers or lots of colors. She never hung out with or even really talked much to the regular girls, and of course not the boys, because girls and boys didn’t talk to each other, though she did talk to Duncan sometimes, but he was strange too.

So since I had gotten used to being one of the cool sixth grade kids at Burns Park, I figured that I would try to be one of the cool kids in seventh grade, or at least have them think I was okay so they wouldn’t tease me like they were starting to do in my Unified Studies class. So I wasn’t sure how to do that, but I wasn’t raising my hand very much anymore to show the teacher that I knew most of the answers.

So when the bell rang for the end of SECOND period, finally we’d all go to the next class on our “Student Program and Grade Report” piece of paper, the one for THIRD period. And all us kids in the Unified Studies class didn’t have the same next class. MY next class was Math, which was out in one of the two “portable” classrooms, outside the entrance to the regular school building that I usually went into, when I first came to school in the morning. I mean they really weren’t portable, because they were hooked to the ground, but I guess when they first got them, because they didn’t have enough regular classrooms, they were moved there by giant trucks or something, so they were “portable” back then.

I didn’t like walking in the hallways with all the other kids there and grownups too. There were just too many of them and they were almost all people I didn’t know, and most of them looked older than me. I mean I liked talking to older kids in the park, if there was one or two of them. Some of them knew interesting stuff that me and the other kids in my class didn’t know yet. But here at Tappan there were hundreds of them all in the hallway looking at each other and having to walk around each other. Some would look at me and it seemed they were thinking “who is that little kid?”

And though some kids would laugh and look like they were having fun, like some of the older ones, most of the kids looked worried and unsure and like they just wanted to get to their class before something bad happened. And most of the grownups, the teachers, looked kind of worried and unsure too, not like the elementary school teachers I remembered who seemed pretty comfortable.

I headed down the stairs to the first floor, and when I got to my locker to stash the Unified Studies book and get the Math one, I saw Abby down at her locker. We both had Math next period in the portable classroom. If she’d been a boy, we would have just walked to class together. We saw each other and she nodded at me and waved her hand, but just a little bit so other people probably wouldn’t see.

So not walking up to me, but from ten feet away by her locker she actually asked me something, “Did you get your compass and protractor for Math class?” I nodded, but then thought I should, even wanted to say something, to just talk to another kid, another kid who was also a girl.

“I did”, I said, “My mom got it for me at the art store.”

“Does she go to Ulrich’s?” she asked, “That’s where I go!”

I saw that Lance guy, the main cool kid in my Homeroom class, walking down the hall towards us with the other cool kids in our class, Danny and Ben, also with a couple other kids I didn’t know around him. I wondered if they all knew each other from elementary school last year and how they could walk around like they were in charge of the place.

Lance saw me, pointed at me and said, “Coop… See ya in Homeroom!” I just nodded and tried to smile, then didn’t know what to do so I just looked at everything in my locker until Lance and the others walked past me. When they’d gone by, I glanced back at Abby and she rolled her eyes and just shook her head like she understood.

“Well”, she said, pointing at me too and grinning, like maybe she was making fun of Lance, “See you in Math class!” I just nodded instead of saying something back.

I watched her walk down the hall to the exit out to the portable classrooms. Once she was well ahead of me I walked that way too. A couple older kids walked by and looked at me and then at each other and laughed. I thought I heard one of them say, “Is that kid a SEVENTH grader?”

I headed out the exit doors and across to the portable classrooms. Mine was room 146 for Math 79, which I guess was for the seventh graders who were really good at math stuff. Abby and Beth were sitting at desks by the windows on the far side of the room from the door. They both noticed me but didn’t nod or wave or anything, just talked quietly to each other. There were empty desks in the row next to them, so I figured I’d sit there. Duncan from my sixth grade class was also in this class because he was also really good at math.

The teacher was Mr Ashley. I hadn’t had a man as a teacher before except our gym teacher at Burns Park, Coach Bing. Coach Bing had been kind of cool, like he cared about us kids enough to leave soccer balls outside the front of the school so we could play our big soccer game before class. This teacher was okay too I guess, because he seemed to really like math and we were learning interesting stuff about “sets”, which were different kinds of groups of things, or even groups of NOTHING, which were called “null sets”.

So when the bell rang, he told us and showed us, writing on the chalkboard, that kind of like numbers, you could do “operations” with sets too. Number operations were like add, subtract, multiply and divide. Set operations were kind of different. You could add them to each other by doing a “union”, or subtract one from the other by doing a “difference”. But then you could do other stuff with sets that you COULDN’T do with numbers, like doing an “intersection”, which gave you a new set that only had “elements” that were in both of the sets, or a “complement”, which gave you everything that WASN’T in the set but was in the bigger “universe” the set was part of.

It was kind of cool how you could apply this set stuff to real things. Like Unified Studies was the “union” of English and Social Studies. And given the “universe” of all the books I used for school, the “complement” within that universe of the set of all those books I had at school, were the school books that, for whatever reason, I had left at home. And the “intersection” of the kids I was still mad at and Stuart was still mad at was Billy Boyd.

When it was about time for the class to end, the teacher said we should all come to Math Club. It met every Tuesday after school in the cafeteria. He said the kids in the club played really neat math games. That sounded interesting.

The bell rang for third period to end and we all got up from our desks. Abby and Beth looked at me and nodded just a little bit like they noticed me and I did the same back, but nobody else would be able to tell we were girls and boys talking to each other, or at least nodding to each other. I wondered if that would even be a problem in this class, because it was just for the kids that were really good in math. The cool boys in my classes, like Lance and his friends in my Homeroom, didn’t seem to be interested in being good at school stuff like math.

I figured that maybe in this class I could actually talk to the girls I knew, Abby and Beth, well at least talk about math if not other stuff, and no one would tease me about it. So I walked up to Abby and Beth, still standing by their desks talking to each other, and they both looked at me kind of surprised.

“So you guys going to go to that math club thing on Tuesday after school?” I asked them. They weren’t really “guys”, but if I had said “you girls”, that would sound weird like I wanted one of them to be my girlfriend.

“Maybe”, said Beth, sounding like she wasn’t sure. I really hadn’t talked to her much since I sat next to her and Abby in our fifth grade class at Burns Park two years ago. I had spied on her, Abby and Myrna through the bushes along the alley when they sat on the back patio of Abby’s house last year when everybody in sixth grade was into Man from Uncle and James Bond, and we all had set up our secret organizations and were spying on everybody else’s secret organizations.

“Maybe”, said Abby, sounding more like maybe she and Beth should do it.

“I’M going to go”, said another voice that surprised us. It was Duncan. He was the nerdy kid that had been in my fifth and sixth grade classes at Burns Park that I never really talked to very much, because I was part of the cool kids and some of the other cool kids liked to tease him or just say stuff about him when he wasn’t around. Back in sixth grade, Duncan had said in class one day that he was into “horticulture and entomology”, and then Billy said later that he was into collecting dead bugs and “horts”, though I think there was no such thing as “horts” and the word was about doing stuff with plants.

We all looked at him. I don’t think Beth and Abby had ever talked to him either, though he lived just down Wells from Abby and me.

“I might too”, I said, trying to sound like I really was going to, figuring it would be neat if Abby and Beth did too. Maybe that would be a safe place where I could actually talk to them about stuff, and not just math stuff, because I figured the cool kids wouldn’t go to a nerdy club like Math Club.

Abby and Beth looked at me and I said, “You guys should too.”

“I’m going”, said Duncan again, like we weren’t really listening to him.

“Yeah that’s neat too”, I said, trying to be nice to him, but feeling uncomfortable that in the two years I had known him I’d never really talked to him, “I’ll see you there on Tuesday. Maybe we can play some of those special math games together.”

“Yeah”, he said nodding, “That would be really good.”

“Well”, said Abby, “We should probably get to our next class.”

I nodded, but asked, “What class?”.

“Homeroom”, she said, looking at Beth, “We both have Mrs Dumont.” They were SO lucky, to be good friends and have Homeroom together. If only I had Mike or even Stuart in MY homeroom.

“I’ve got lunch next”, I said, “Then Homeroom.”

“Myrna says you’re in her Homeroom”, Abby said, “She said you sit in back with the cool boys, that Lance guy.” I didn’t know what to say. Myrna was still mad at me because of those pencils I made last May to make her mad that said “Myrna loves Martin”, that Frankie, Stuart and I had secretly put in the mailboxes at Myrna’s and all her friends’ houses, including Abby’s and Beth’s. And Myrna and Lance didn’t like each other, and because Abby and Beth were friends with Myrna, so maybe they didn’t like Lance either, and they might not like me because I was hanging out with Lance, at least in Homeroom.

“That’s MY Homeroom too”, said Duncan. Abby looked at him and nodded. I was just glad we weren’t talking any more about me and Lance anymore.

“Beth and I gotta go”, Abby said, “Our Homeroom is way up on the third floor by the chorus room. The two of them headed out of the classroom.

“Are you going to the cafeteria?” Duncan asked, like we should walk there together. I was, but I wasn’t sure I should walk and talk to him in the halls, because Lance or one of his friends might see me and they thought Duncan was a “dork” and a “total nerd”, and I didn’t want them thinking that I might be one too. So I made something up that I had to do first.

“Uh”, I said, “I have to go up to the artroom first and get something from Mr Beenhower.”

“Okay”, he said, “Maybe I’ll see you at lunch.” I nodded and quickly headed to the door before he could walk with me. I ran through the double doors back into the main building and then right up the stairs there to the artroom. I waited in the hall by the artroom door for a minute so I wouldn’t run into Duncan walking to the cafeteria. The super loud bell ringing for the start of fourth period shocked me, because there was one of the actual bells on the wall right next to where I was standing.

Mr Beenhower came out of the artroom to look around before he closed his door for class and saw me.

“You’re late for class Mr Zale”, he said. He liked calling us mister or miss and then by our last names. He seemed pretty weird. I didn’t even have HIS class until eighth period.

“Yeah I know”, I said, not usually talking like that to a teacher, “But I have First Lunch.” He nodded but didn’t say anything and pulled his door shut.

I ran down the stairs and down the hallway and around the corner to the cafeteria. I stood in line and could see that Duncan was already getting his food from one of the women that worked there. They all wore white coats and pants and had their hair all bunched up in a net. I got my tray and put it on the long metal thing and pushed it along. The lunch choices today were “John Marzetti” and “Tuna Casserole”. I chose the first one, which was kind of like spaghetti, because the second one smelled too fishy. The woman also gave me cooked green beans, carrots and a roll with one of those neat tiny silver packages of butter. Then I took a container of milk to drink and a cookie for dessert. I gave the woman at the cash register two quarters and she gave me back a dime and a nickel. Mom gave me fifty cents every morning to buy lunch, or a dollar for two days if she didn’t have change.

Some kids said that the BAD part about lunch was the food, but I thought the REALLY bad part was trying to figure out where to sit after you got your food and paid for it and were standing there holding your tray in everybody’s way. And the more I moved around just looking for a spot to sit and eat the more I felt like a dork who didn’t know anybody. Lance was sitting at a table with all his friends at the far corner of the big eating room, but their table was full.

I only knew maybe eleven boys that were in my grade at Burns Park that were going to Tappan, and most of them didn’t have the first lunch like I did, only Gil, Duncan and Martin. But if I sat with one of them, then Lance and his friends might see me and think I was a dork too. So like I usually did, I sat at a table where no one else was sitting near me and ate by myself, which I figured was the safest. Sometimes some other kid like me who didn’t have any friends to sit with would sit near me and sometimes we might even talk some, but not today. That was fine with me.

We only had like twenty minutes to buy and eat lunch, then the usual seven minutes between classes to get to Homeroom, which was twenty minutes also. Add those three together and you got forty seven minutes, the length of each regular class period. So you didn’t have much time to eat, which was also fine with me, because I wasn’t having fun talking to people at lunch. The bell to end First Lunch rang before I could even eat my cookie, which I ate while I headed out of the lunchroom to my locker. I saw Abby again at her locker just down from mine, but I didn’t try to talk or even nod at her because she was talking to another girl that I didn’t know. I put my Math book away and got my Science book, so I wouldn’t have to go back to my locker until after my last class, my eighth period Art class, and headed up the stairs back to the second floor for Homeroom, which was in the same room with the same teacher, Mrs Woods, as my Unified Studies class.

Again, I didn’t like being out in the halls with all those other kids. They were almost all kids I didn’t know and all looked older than me and a lot of them did not look happy and looked worried like I was. I tried to remember if it was like this when I first went to first grade at Bach School, but in elementary school we didn’t spend much time in the halls with all the other kids. Here at Tappan we were out in the halls with everyone else like NINE TIMES every day, before first hour, after last hour, and seven times in between. That was like a WHOLE HOUR in the hallways.

When I first started playing in Allmendiger Park or later in Burns Park, there were a bunch of kids, including older kids, that I didn’t know. But that was different, because the kids were in charge, and we weren’t all packed in, and we went where we wanted to in the big park. Here all these grownups were in charge and you had to race around and get to your next class, based on what was on that class schedule piece of paper that the grownups had given you.

Homeroom was kind of different. We weren’t there to learn anything, we just had to listen to the teacher for a few minutes if there were announcements or things to hand out that either we were supposed to read or we were supposed to take home to our parents for them to read. After that we could just talk or do what we wanted as long as we weren’t too loud. You could sit where you wanted in most of my classes, and in Homeroom most of the girls sat in the front part of the room and most of the boys in the back.

The room had big windows that looked out onto the giant empty lawn that went down from the big square Tappan school building we were in to Washtenaw Boulevard. And then across Washtenaw I could just barely see that park where the Huron Valley Bank Little League team used to practice that one summer, two years ago, when I was on that team with Mike and Stuart, at least until I broke my collarbone in the first inning of the first game.

The first day here two weeks ago, the only kids I knew in Homeroom were the four other kids from my Burns Park class, Kate, Duncan, Martin and Myrna. It was strange and just seemed so unfair, that the one class where I could just talk to other kids, had four kids from my sixth grade at Burns Park that I almost never talked to. Kate lived on my street, down at the other end, and she always seemed mad and never talked to anyone, and me and my friends all stayed away from her, though when we were sure she wasn’t around we might talk about how strange she was. Duncan lived down Wells from my house, but since he was into collecting dead bugs and raising “exotic” plants, most of my friends thought he was strange. And Martin was the fat kid that a lot of the kids I knew at Burns Park would tease. I had only talked to each of them maybe a few times, when one of them was on my team in gym class or when we had to do a science experiment together. And Myrna hated me because of the pencils, so I NEVER talked to her anymore, I even tried to never LOOK at her either. And I was never sure if Martin had found out about the pencils too, because if we had, he probably hated me too. I just wanted to pretend that the whole pencil thing had never happened.

Just like in fifth grade and sixth grade at Burns Park, Myrna had a lot of girls in Homeroom that liked her and sat in the front part of the room by the door where she sat and they were always talking quietly about stuff. Kate didn’t like Myrna, she didn’t really like anybody, and usually just sat at a desk by the windows with her head on her folded arms on the desk, looking out the window, or drawing stuff in her little notebook. I guess Ramona didn’t like Myrna either, and she even sat in the back of the room, where the boys were.

Then at the opposite corner of the room from Myrna, in the back by the windows, was where Lance sat along with Danny and Ben. Lance was like the boy version of Myrna, most of the other boys in class wanted to be his friend and liked to listen to what he had to say. Well except for Martin and Duncan of course, because Lance and his main friends Danny and Ben teased both of them, calling Martin “fatso”, or Duncan “nerdenstein” or “dorkenstein”. They also teased Myrna, calling her “Myrnzilla” and “Queen Kong”, but of course, not loud enough so the teacher could hear them. And Myrna would tease them back, saying they were “idiots” or “dim bulbs”, again, not loud enough for the teacher to hear.

The first day of school a couple weeks ago, Lance had been nice to me, I think because he noticed that Myrna DIDN’T like me, and he found out we went to the same school. He asked me why she didn’t like me and I told him the pencils story and he thought that was pretty cool, but I didn’t tell him that in the end, I thought the pencils were pretty stupid. I also told him about those names that we used to call Myrna back in sixth grade. And since Lance seemed to like me, Danny and Ben decided they’d like me too, because they liked anything and anybody that Lance did.

So each day I would usually sit near Lance, Ben and Danny in that opposite corner of the room, in the back by the windows. Our teacher, Mrs Woods, had her desk at the front of the room, and as long as kids talked quietly, she didn’t hear what we said, or maybe heard but didn’t care. Once she had made any announcements that she wanted us to know about, and handed out any sheets of paper that we were supposed to read or take home to our parents, she just sat up at her desk at the front of the room and read from our Unified Studies textbook or some other book and took notes in a notebook she had. Lance said she was just “babysitting us little kids”, even though he really didn’t THINK we were little kids, but was mad that teachers maybe thought that we still were.

I mean I was really happy there was at least SOMEWHERE and SOMETIME at school, when I could talk to other kids that seemed to like me and were cool and not dorks. I could talk to kids at lunch too, but that usually didn’t work out. And I could talk to kids too in the halls, but just for a minute before we had to go to our next class.

Back at Burns Park, when I was in fifth and sixth grade, all us kids would play soccer before school started, at least the boys, and then talk to each other after school hanging out in the park before we walked home. Here at Tappan there was no park around the school to hang out in so kids would just start walking home.

So this girl Ramona also sat in the back of the room, where all the boys sat, and she never sat next to but usually close to Lance. She didn’t like Myrna, but I think she liked Lance, because they would sometimes quietly tease each other. But it was the friendly kind of teasing you might do with your friends, not the nasty kind you did with people you didn’t like. I’d seen some older boys and girls in the park who liked each other and teased each other in a more friendly, but in a girls versus boys way.

Danny had told Ben and me the other day, when Lance wasn’t around, that he had heard that Lance and Ramona had “made out” over the summer, even though they weren’t even boyfriend and girlfriend. I had thought that you only made out, like got to first AND second base, if you WERE boyfriend and girlfriend, so this was something new. Then yesterday, Ben asked Lance if it was true he’d made out with Ramona, and Lance said, “Make out? Hell, I even got to THIRD Base!”

And I wondered if he was telling the truth, or just making stuff up so his friends would think he was extra cool. I mean, I could imagine doing actual stuff like that with a girl, if you started kissing and feeling each other up. I had gotten naked with Molly when we were five but we didn’t kiss or touch each other. And then right before we moved to Burns Park I had gotten naked with other boys in the lilac bushes in Allmendinger Park and then also in the walk-in closet in the basement of our old house on Prescott, and we even laid on top of each other so our bodies touched all over. All that was really fun, so I could imagine making out and even third base with a girl would be fun too. But I don’t think I could ever TELL anybody else, let alone BRAG about it!

This morning, Lance looked at Ramona then quietly said to us boys, “Do you guys want to know what color underwear Ramona is wearing?” Ramona heard him too.

“Ha, ha”, she said quietly, smiling, “When did you see my underwear?” She didn’t seem mad at Lance for saying that.

“When I was walking up the stairs behind you”, he said.

“You lie like a rug, Lance!” she said, now pretending to be mad at him, “So tell me, what color is it then?”

“Pink”, he said, “With little red hearts on it.”

“Not EVEN close”, she said, shaking her head and pretending she was disgusted with him.

“Prove it!” he said.

“Oh right!”, she said, still quietly, grinning and rolling her eyes, “What do you think I am, stupid?”

“So what color IS it?” he asked, now grinning too. She made a kind of snorting laughing noise out of her nose.

“You’re a total idiot, Lance!” she said, closing her eyes and slowly shaking her head, “I don’t know why I even talk to you.” Lance grinned, like HE knew why she talked to him, because she liked him.

He stood up and went over and sat at the empty desk right next to Ramona. He folded his arms on the desk and put his head down on them turned towards her. We could tell he was saying something to her but so quietly that we couldn’t hear the words. She had a kind of strange look on her face like she was both happy he was talking to her AND worried at the same time. But then she was shaking her head, and looking like she didn’t like what he was saying.

“Who told you that?” she asked him, sounding worried and just loud enough so I could hear it too. I could tell that Lance was answering her question, but again I couldn’t hear his words.

“I am not!” she said, looking embarrassed, “You take that back Lance, I am not!” she said again, and she kind of slapped him with her fingers on his arm. I could tell she was mad at him, but also that she really liked him, or at least used to really like him.

Lance turned his head towards Danny, Ben and me, still resting on his folded arms on the desk, said “ow” quitely and rolled his eyes. Danny and Ben, who were watching all this too, laughed through their noses, and looked at me like it was really funny what was going on, though I didn’t know WHAT WAS going on. Even the boy in front of me, whose name I couldn’t remember yet, was watching and chuckling. I looked up at Mrs Woods and she looked like she was correcting quizzes or tests or something with her red pencil and wasn’t noticing us in the back of the room.

Lance stood up and Mrs Woods did look up from her work at him. He saw her do that and said to her, “Just helping her with her math homework”, and then turning towards Ramona said, “You’re welcome, Ramona, happy to be able to help out”, and he walked back over to where he was sitting before next to Danny and Ben and sat back down. Mrs Woods nodded and went back to doing her work with the red pencil.

Lance looked at Danny and Ben and whispered, but loud enough so I could hear, and Ramona too, “Give me an ‘S’.” They both whispered back, “S.” I still couldn’t figure out what he was doing.

Then he looked more toward me and said, “Give me an ‘L’”, like he wanted me to join in and say it too. At this point it was obviously some silly cheer he wanted us to do, maybe the first part of some joke, so I said, “L”, along with Danny and Ben. The kid who sat in front of me, still turned around like I was and watching all this, did too.

“Give me a ‘U’”, whispered Lance, and Ramona gave him a “you better not” look, but I still couldn’t figure out what he was trying to spell, but now at least I knew this whole thing was about teasing Ramona. Danny, Ben, the kid in front of me and I all whispered “U.”

Lance grinned and whispered, “Give me a ‘T’.” I realized he was spelling the word “slut”. I’d never heard anyone for real using that word before, but I’d heard it in that “Smut” song on that Tom Lehrer satire record at home that David and I had listened to many times…

I thrill
To any book like Fanny Hill
And I suppose I always will
If it is swill
And really fil-
Thy

Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?
I’ve got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley
But now they’re trying to take it all away from us unless
We take a stand, and hand in hand
We fight for freedom of the press
In other words

Smut! (I love it)
Ah, the adventures of a slut
Oh, I’m a market they can’t glut
I don’t know what
Compares with smut

Hip hip hooray!
Let’s hear it for the Supreme Court!
Don’t let them take it away!

I remembered having a whole discussion over the summer in Burns Park with some of my school friends about what “smut” was, because grownups were talking about it on TV on the news. Frankie said that it was like really dirty pictures of naked people that even showed what they had between their legs, not just bare bottoms and breasts. Plus also stories or even movies that were “X Rated”, showing people having sex, not just making out. But we hadn’t talked about what a “slut” was, but I figured it was somebody that did that smut type stuff.

I wondered if Ramona was one of those girls that really liked making out and sex stuff like that girl in that Tommy James song that was on the radio all the time since July…

My baby does the hanky panky
My baby does the hanky panky

I’d heard grownups talk about “hanky panky” like it was something that happened that maybe had to do with sex stuff and wasn’t really good but maybe not too bad either. My school friend Stuart had said that his older brother had said that his older brother’s friend had said that the “Hanky Panky” was a dance an older girl does for her boyfriend when she’s naked. I wondered if older boys got naked with their girlfriends and did dances too, but there was no way I was going to ask that.

I think people, older kids and even grownups, thought about sex and even wanted to know more about it, except you weren’t supposed to talk about it, so that made it really complicated. I mean, there were all those Playboy and other magazines in that one part of the Blue Front that had all those pictures of naked women in them. Kids weren’t supposed to look at them, but grownups could, and could BUY them, or why else would they sell them there.

And people used kind of secret words to talk about sex that weren’t actual sex words. Like older kids would say stuff like, “they were doing it”, and “it” would mean sex, even though “it” could mean a bunch of other stuff too. And I remember hearing mom’s friends telling mom that two people were “doing the dirty deed” or “sleeping together”. I mean, Molly and I could sleep in the same bed when we were younger and not do sex because we didn’t even know how to do it or want to. But grownups would say we couldn’t sleep in the same bed because then we’d be “sleeping together”, and that meant sex.

Anyway, my mind finally came back to Homeroom, where Lance had just asked us to say “T”. Danny and Ben said “T” in a loud whisper, and I kind of did too.

Then Lance whispered, “What’s that spell?”, loud enough for us and Ramona to hear it, but not loud enough for most of the other kids in the class, who were all talking to each other in other parts of the room, or our teacher, to hear. I figured he wanted us to whisper “slut”, but instead he whispered “Ramona”.

“Ha, ha”, she said, sounding disgusted, “SO funny! You’re an idiot, Lance!”

“What’s that spell?” Lance asked again. This time Danny and Ben said, “Ramona”.

“What’s that spell?” he asked again, this time looking straight at me. I knew if I didn’t say “Ramona” he might think that I thought that what he was doing was bad, and he might want to know why I felt that way and expect me to actually tell him. That was all way too dangerous!

And as Danny and Ben said “Ramona”, again, I did too. I immediately felt like I had done something bad, joined the boys team in some sort of war against the girls, or at least against Ramona. It felt like the whole “Myrna loves Martin” pencil thing from the end of sixth grade all over again. Ramona would probably hate me forever, like Myrna did, but at least Lance, Danny and Ben wouldn’t kick me off THEIR team, though I hoped I wouldn’t have to do anything like this again to stay on it.

I just wanted a few people in Homeroom, one of the only times in school where I could really TALK to other kids who thought I was cool enough to talk to and not make fun of. I hadn’t felt this before in elementary school, but now I was feeling like I was YOUNGER than everybody else, and that a lot of my classmates knew more about stuff than I did. Not SCHOOL stuff like math or science, but regular life stuff, like girlfriends, boyfriends, and sex, and being cool and other stuff like that.

Finally the bell rang for the end of fourth period, which was the end of Homeroom. The room was noisy with people talking, not quietly anymore, and Ramona grunted and grabbed her books and binder from her desk, clutched them to her chest and moved quickly to the door and out of the room. I stood up and watched her leave. With her body having a figure, with breasts, and that worried look in her eyes, she seemed way more like an older kid than I was. Lance saw me looking at her and then looked at me.

“She’s so much fun to tease”, he said, “She gets so riled up.” It certainly didn’t seem like it was fun for HER.

“But Ya can’t beat those tits!” he said, shaking his head, “Have you seen any other seventh grade chick with a better pair than hers?” I figured I could say no and be safe from him asking me to say more.

“Nope!” I said, using “nope” instead of just “no” to sound cooler, “Can’t say that I have.” I didn’t usually say that last thing, but I’d heard older kids and even grownups say it and I figured it would make me seem less like the little kid I was feeling that I still was right now, and maybe he would stop talking about it. We walked together out the classroom door into the big hallway filling up with kids. Just like other times, it felt strange and uncomfortable in the hallway with so many other kids that I didn’t know, talking loud or laughing like they had everything figured out. They all seemed way older than I was, especially the girls with their long legs and breasts and figures. But at least I was walking with and talking with Lance, who I figured most other kids thought was pretty cool, so they might think I was kind of cool too.

“They feel even better than they look, my man”, Lance whispered to me as we walked down the hall together. Ben was walking on the other side of Lance and heard the whisper.

“Geez Lance”, he said, “How many girls have you made out with and felt up?”

“A gentleman never tells”, Lance said, “But way more than you, I’m sure.” Ben wrinkled his nose and looked up at the ceiling. We had seven minutes to get to our next class before the bell rang again. Today was a “T” day, so for me it was Band instead of French.

“What’s your next class, Mr Coop?” Lance asked me.

“Today it’s Band”, I told him.

“What instrument do you play?” he asked.

“Alto saxophone”, I said.

“Ah”, he said, with a big grin on his face as he looked up to the ceiling, “The SEX-o-phone!” I thought that was pretty stupid, but I wasn’t going to tell HIM that.

“Right”, I said, and luckily this was where I went up the stairs to the third floor and they stayed on the second, “Headed upstairs, see ya later”, as I broke off from them and quickly started to climb the steps.

I was happy to go to Band class, where we were all actually doing something interesting TOGETHER, playing music together. And Stuart was in the class too since he also played saxophone like I did. And Duncan, who played oboe, but was way back on the other side. Also Beth and Abby, who played clarinet, sat across from Stuart and me in the second row of chairs on the other side of the half circle around the little platform that the teacher, Mr Balfort, stood on to conduct. I didn’t really talk to them, though sometimes I would look at them and they’d look back at me and maybe smile. I felt more like a big kid in Band, opening my saxophone case and putting it together, around all the other kids in the band doing the same thing with THEIR instruments.

It was “CADET Band”, so we were all in seventh grade and we weren’t very good, but it did sound KINDA cool every once in a while, when nobody squeaked their instrument for a few minutes. We could at least pretend, until the end of class, that we were musicians, and not just lowly seventh-graders. And if we took Band again next year, we’d be in the regular “CONCERT” Band class.

Though he wasn’t in any of my other classes, Stuart sat next to me because he played the alto saxophone too. That was neat, because when we took a break from all playing together so Mr Balfort could work with just the kids in another section of the band, Stuart and I could talk a little bit with each other.

I wasn’t really mad at Stuart anymore about the whole “Myrna loves Martin” pencil thing last May at the end of sixth grade, because it was mostly MY fault for getting those special embossed pencils made. Though I was still kind of mad at Frankie for saying it was a good idea, and Billy for telling on me. And Stuart had been mad at me and everyone else on the “Tube Benders” Little League team when we played his “Huron Valley” team, because Billy, who was our catcher, had said something really bad to Stuart when he was batting in the last inning causing him to mess up and lose the game for his team. I never found out what Billy said to Stuart, though I think it had to do with saying Stuart was a sissy, but it was so bad that the umpire almost kicked Billy out of the game, and instead of Stuart hitting the ball hard like he usually did and probably driving in the winning runs for his team, he popped up and was out and my team won instead. Stuart still HATED Billy, but he wasn’t mad anymore at me or his other friends on the Tube Benders.

But that whole thing with Billy had really changed Stuart. He was more worried now and didn’t think he was as good at stuff as he used to think. It was kind of like how I was feeling since mom and dad got divorced, and especially since I started going to this new school. Though we weren’t in any other classes together, we were happy that we were both in Cadet Band, that we played the same instrument so we could sit next to each other and talk some when our teacher took a break from everyone playing together.

Today Stuart still had Billy on his mind. During a break he whispered to me, “You know, Coop, we should figure out something to get Billy in trouble… big trouble. You in?”

“Sure”, I whispered back, though that wasn’t how I really felt. When I got really mad at someone I usually just wanted to ignore them, so I said instead, “But I don’t know what we can do without getting in trouble ourselves.”

Even though ol’ Billy Boyd had ratted me out to our teacher, it was actually Stuart and Frankie that had helped me get in trouble with the “Myrna loves Martin” pencils. I mean yeah, I was the one that bought them and I was also the one that came up with the idea to put them in the mailboxes at the girls’ houses. But Stuart and Frankie were the ones that kept saying I was “brilliant” and a “genius” and convinced me, and them, to be stupid enough to actually DO it.

“Yeah”, he kind of groaned in a whisper, “You may be right, but I’m still trying to think of something. Maybe we should find out about Voodoo dolls.” I did NOT want to find out about Voodoo dolls. I just wanted to pretend like Billy Boyd never existed, and maybe he would get all worried about why I was STILL ignoring him, and it would make him a “nervous wreck”, which was what mom was always saying SHE was.

“I don’t know”, I whispered to Stuart, “I spend all this time here at school having to learn about English, history, math, science, French, music and art. I don’t know if I want to have to learn about Voodoo too!”

“Yeah”, he whispered back, sounding sad, “Maybe you’re right.”

We were both surprised by a grownup voice above us. It was Mr Balfort. “So gentlemen… remind me again what your fifth period T-day class is?” he asked, sounding mad, like we were bad kids.

“Sorry”, Stuart and I said almost at the same time.

He puffed his cheeks and breathed out air loud and looked at all the other kids in Band class, who were all looking at Stuart and me now.

“Listen everyone”, he said, twirling his baton in the air, “Just because I am working with one section for the moment doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be paying attention as well. If you want to be part of the CONCERT BAND, next year, you need to be aware of how EVERY section of a band contributes to a well performed piece!” He pointed his baton at the girl at the end of the flute section and said, “Even our one mighty piccolo player, Miss Wilkins.”

That girl looked surprised, a little embarrassed even, but then held her tiny silver piccolo in the air with one hand and waved at everyone with the other.

“Okay ladies and gentlemen”, he said loudly, climbing up on his platform that we were all in a half-circle around, “Let’s take it from the coda. And in case you haven’t been paying attention, that’s the beginning of the end section of our piece, marked by…”, and he looked around the room and asked, “Anyone?”

One of the kids playing drums called out “crosshairs”.

“That’s right”, said Mr Balfort, now with a big smile on his face like he was proud of himself, and then looking around at the rest of us, “If you don’t remember what ‘crosshairs’ are its like the letter ‘O’ with a big plus sign over it. ‘Coda’, by the way, is ITALIAN, for tail.”

He put his hand with the baton and his other hand up in front of him. “Everyone!” he said, and he raised his hands even higher and we all began to play, or at least TRY to play, because we weren’t very good yet.

As usual, the bell rang in the middle of the period for those other kids who had Third Lunch to go to Homeroom and who had Homeroom to go to Fourth Lunch. And then it rang again seven minutes later. Today it rang in the middle of us playing the piece we were working on, and Mr Balfort stopped us so we could start again.

“I HATE having those bells ring in the middle of the period!” he said, closing his eyes and rapidly shaking his head as air hissed out of his mouth, “I’ve got to talk to Mr Dodson about some other way to do those Homeroom Lunch bells fourth and fifth periods.” Then he looked at all of us with kind of an angry look and said, “Again from the top!” and we started playing the piece again.

At the end of class Stuart and I put our instruments away in their cases and left the cases against the wall in the band room where everyone else did who had intruments too big to fit in their lockers. Stuart’s next class was Science and mine was “Phys Ed”. That’s what we all called it instead of what we called “Gym” at Burns Park, because that’s what was written on our little “Student Program and Grade Report” piece of paper that we carried around to remember when and where all our different classes and lunch were.

From Band class it was all the way down the stairs to the first floor and the door to the boys locker room for Phys Ed. But I had to go back to my locker first to get my gym clothes, which were blue gym shorts and a “reversible” gym shirt that was blue on one side and yellow on the other, so if we were playing a game with teams, one side could where the blue side out and the other the yellow. I usually wore sneakers to school and white socks under my bluejeans that I wore all the time these days, so I’d use those for Phys Ed too. We were supposed to take our Phys Ed clothes home at least once a week to get them washed so they didn’t get too stinky, but some kids, including me, forgot sometimes.

Phys Ed was okay because the weather was still warm enough to be outside and we were playing team sports like football or soccer. Though we still had to do those “calisthentics” exercises first, like jumping jacks, pushups, and situps, plus do some running around the field. I used to hate the running part, particularly when we had to run the 600, but I didn’t mind it anymore, since I’d done all that running down Longnook Road, one mile each way, from our cottage to the beach and back, last month when we were in Cape Cod.

And Phys Ed was my one class that Mike was also in. Of all the other sixth graders last year at Burns Park, he’s the one I liked the best. He was the only kid among all the other sixth graders that I let come to my house, because he had figured out that my mom and dad were divorced but he promised not to tell anybody and didn’t think I was strange because I didn’t have a regular family. All my other school friends I never let come over to my house, because they didn’t know my mom and dad were divorced, and I didn’t want them to figure that out, because I didn’t trust them not to tell everybody else and also think I was strange and not want to be friends with me anymore. I didn’t even have an eleventh birthday party, because I didn’t want to have to invite them all over to my house.

Gill was the other kid from Burns Park in the class. He had always been Billy Boyd’s “sidekick”, like Robin was to Batman, or Cato was to Green Hornet on that new TV show. All the cool kids in class thought Gill was a dork, except Mike of course who liked everybody.

Those cool kids were Ronnie, Stefan, and Max, who all were super into sports and joined the JV, which meant “junior varsity”, football team. The regular Tappan football team was called the “varsity”, but you couldn’t play on that until you’d played on the JV team in seventh grade. And they had recruited Mike to play on the team too, because he was so big and tall and really good at football, so the four of them were always hanging out together, in Phys Ed class or even just walking around in the halls between classes, which meant I didn’t get to talk to Mike very much.

After calisthenics today the teacher, Coach Wash, had us all play soccer, which I liked better than playing touch football in class.

For touch football he had picked four team captains who took turns picking the rest of the kids on their teams. That was weird because unlike in our elementary school gym class, where we all kind of already knew each other, the team captains DIDN’T know most of the other kids in class, so instead of saying the name of the person you picked, they would just point at someone and say “you”. And some of the kids on your team weren’t very good so they would mostly just be told by the kid on your team playing quarterback to just block, which was pretty boring for them so they weren’t having much fun.

But when we played soccer, our teacher would combine the four teams into two, I think to try to make it more even, the blue team and the yellow team. So in math set theory, the universe of kids in our Phys Ed class divided itself into four sets, then our teacher did a union of two of the sets and then the other two sets to make two larger sets. I think most of the kids had more fun playing soccer instead of football, because it was all running around and kicking the ball and everybody got lots of exercise.

And since Mike and Gill and I had played soccer pretty much twice a day for every school day at Burns Park for the last two years, we were pretty good compared to the other kids in the class, though we weren’t always on the same team. But if Gill and I were on the same team, we would work together, so we could be more like friends that way. And getting to play soccer reminded me of the best part of my last two years of elementary school, when us kids organized and played our soccer games twice a day, with no grownups in charge of us.

I didn’t like the last part of gym class, because you were supposed to all take a shower in this big shower room where everybody could see everybody else naked. The coach said that unless we wanted to stink for the rest of the day we had better take one. I had gotten naked with other boys before back at Allmendinger Park during the summer after fourth grade, right before we moved to Burns Park. And then one other time down in the walk-in closet down in the basement of our old house. But those times were different than this, because back then it was just a few boys, and even though I didn’t really know them, none of them were ones I was worried about, and we all decided to do it together rather than having grownups tell us that we were supposed to.

But here at Tappan there were cool kids that liked to tease other kids that weren’t so cool. It was bad enough in halls when we had our clothes ON. It was worse when we had our clothes OFF and we were naked.

So the cool kids in class, Ronnie, Stefan and Max laughed at and teased Martin the first couple of days when he took his clothes off to take a shower, because he was fat. And then when our teacher heard them doing it, and yelled at them, though I don’t think that made Martin feel any better.

I thought it was interesting that Mike had made friends with Ronnie, Stefan and Max, because they all like playing football, and of course Mike was always cool and everybody liked him. Mike didn’t tease Martin, he never teased ANYBODY. But he ALSO didn’t say anything to those other three cool guys, to not tease Martin either. I figured he liked that the three of them thought he was cool, and so even though he didn’t join them in teasing Martin, he was still KIND of bad, though not as bad as I had been in Homeroom, helping tease Ramona about being a “slut”.

After a couple days I noticed Martin stopped taking a shower at all and just put his regular clothes back on. I think the coach saw that he didn’t but didn’t say anything, because if he told Martin to take a shower, then the other kids would probably tease him even more and I could tell the coach didn’t want to have to yell at them again. And I also didn’t think it would do Martin any good.

So when I’d first seen kids naked in the shower, it was the boys with the bigger penises and hair around them that were the first ones to shower because they looked more like older kids. I was a year younger than all of them and my penis looked smaller and didn’t have ANY hair on it. I didn’t see anybody else that looked quite as small and hairless as I was.

So today, like yesterday and the day before, I would leave my gym clothes on for a little longer, and then when most of the other kids, especially the cool kids, had come out of the shower, I’d sneak into the corner of the shower room so people could only see my bottom while I quickly took a shower. Then I’d quickly grab my towel and wrap it around my waist and tuck it in and go back out. So far, I couldn’t see anyone trying to watch me when I was naked, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Yesterday, after waiting so long to take one, I was late to my science class, because I had to go back to my locker to get my science book and notebook before I went to class. So today, I brought my Science book and notebook to Phys Ed, so I could just run up the stairs all the way to the third floor for my class, so I just barely got there on time.

The bell rang just as I was opening the door to my Science class, and the teacher, Mrs Dumont, looked at me standing in the door, out of breath from running up the stairs.

“Please take a seat”, she said, “We’d like to get started”, like they were waiting for me and it was my fault they were late. All the kids at their tables looked at me including Cal, Andy, Kate and Billy, who were all in the class.

My eyes met Billy’s for a second but then I looked away. He was sitting at one of the tables with Cal. It seemed stupid to still be mad at him for something he did last May, telling the teacher that I had made the “Myrna loves Martin” pencils that he had put in Myrna’s desk. I really WASN’T mad at him anymore, I was more embarrassed that I hadn’t talked to him and if I did, he’d want to know WHY I hadn’t talked to him, and I’d have to tell him that I had been really mad at him. I NEVER told anybody that I was mad at them or somebody else.

Even though I did get mad at people, I never told anyone I was mad at them, because it reminded me too much of mom and dad, and how much I hated how she’d get mad at him all the time and yell at him. I guess when she found out he’d had sex with another woman, it made sense that she would be mad at him, but not the way she did, hitting him with that aluminum foil box, which cut her hand and got her blood all over the walls. I still remembered coming down the stairs with David after hearing that argument when mom said she knew he was having sex with that other woman and had lied to her all summer, and then dad calling to us upstairs that he was taking mom to the hospital because she cut her hand.

Each table had two chairs for two kids to sit at. There were two tables in the back of the room, one had Kate sitting by herself with an empty chair next to her, and the other with two empty chairs. There was no way I was going to sit next to Kate, because she was very strange and I never talked to her and was even scared of her. So I quickly sat in one of the chairs at the empty table next to her table and opened my science notebook. I could tell she was looking at me and she was mad. Other kids in the class looked back at me, probably wondering why I didn’t sit next to her.

Science class was really interesting, because we were talking about the solar system and where all the planets were, and how they circled around the sun, and how most of the planets had moons circling around them. In space, it was like everything happened because of gravity, which caused smaller things to circle around bigger things. I wrote down lots of notes in my notebook, because I really wanted to make sure I did really good on our first test about all the planets.

When the bell finally rang, which I figured was the 17th bell since the first bell I’d heard this morning, which was five minutes before the bell at the start of first hour, I figured I’d try talking to Andy, since Cal was walking out with Billy. But Andy was talking to these two boys from class I didn’t know, who seemed like cool kids, and I figured that Andy was trying to be a cool kid too, so I didn’t go over to him and walked out of class by myself. I mean if I had to walk through the halls and stairways of Tappan, I felt a lot better if I was walking and talking with one of my friends, so at least the other kids that saw me wouldn’t think I was some dorky little kid with no friends. I headed back up the stairs and through the Band room to my Art room.

I was the first kid there, and the teacher, Mr Beenhower, saw me and smiled. I always felt like his smile was kind of creepy, like he was thinking about something bad but liked it anyway.

“Cooper Zale… right?” he asked, and I nodded, “Your mother called me.” Now THAT really scared me. Why was mom calling one of my teachers?

“She said not to ‘mess with you’… her words”, he said, chuckling through his nose, “Show you skills and techniques but not try to direct your ‘artistic decisions’.” He chuckled some more and shook his head. “She sounds like quite the character. She said she paints.” I nodded, feeling embarrassed. I figured I had to actually say something so he wouldn’t think I was a totally stupid little kid, and maybe even sound like I knew about art.

“She paints mostly oil on canvas”, I said, remembering her saying that when she was trying to impress somebody at one of her parties, “Abstract stuff.”

“Abstract, eh?” he said, wrinkling his nose, “Not a fan. You can keep your Pollacks and Picassos.” Pollack was that artist guy who dripped paint on the canvas of his paintings. Mom didn’t like him much either, but she LOVED Picasso, and thought he was just about the greatest painter ever. I wondered if my teacher was going to not like me now or think my mom was in charge of me or something. He seemed kind of full of himself.

The classroom had tables like my Science class, each with two chairs for two kids to sit at. I sat at the table in front closest to the door so when the last bell rang and our day was over I could be the first one out to go get my saxaphone case next door in the Band room and then down to my locker to get out of this place as quickly as possible. Other kids were coming in, including Teddy, talking to this kid Craig who he had become friends with and sat at another table with. The room filled up with kids, though no one sat next to me at my table. The bell to start class rang, and it was maybe a minute later when Alice came in the door. The closest seat was next to me so she sat there.

“Young lady, you’re late”, the teacher said.

“Sorry”, she said, brushing her really long black hair from her face.

“Right”, he said, like he didn’t believe her, and up at the front of the room he turned his back on all of us and looked up at the ceiling like he was thinking. Sitting right next to me now, she turned and looked at me, made a funny face and rolled her eyes. She seemed pretty friendly, though I never really talked to her very much, but in the moment it felt like we were buddies, though no one would think she was my girlfriend or something, because being late, she pretty much had to sit next to me since it was the closest chair to the door. So I shook my head back at her and rolled my eyes too, which none of the other kids could see.

That felt good, better than anything else all day. I mean I LIKED girls, they were usually nicer than boys when you talked to them, when it was just you and them and neither of you were worried about other kids also watching or listening. And since we weren’t talking with words, just our eyes and faces, it was kind of like just us. After being part of that whole “slut” cheer thing with Ramona in Homeroom, this felt like a much better thing with a girl.

So finally the teacher, Mr Beenhower, who had turned his back to us while he was thinking, raised his finger in the air and said, “Textures… how do you draw them with just a pen or a pencil so they look smooth or rough, shiny or dull.” He turned his head and looked back at all of us sitting at our tables looking at him.

So we all spent the rest of the period trying to draw different textures. I liked Alice’s flower blossom with a brick wall behind it and she at least SAID she liked my screen door, with the metal mesh screen part and the shiny metal door part, though I didn’t think it was very good.

Finally the last bell of the day rang, the 22nd bell of the day, that meant we could finally go home, and I was so relieved. I couldn’t say I was HAPPY, just relieved. Alice was still at her seat drawing something, like she didn’t care it was time to get out of here. But I had already grabbed my books and was headed to the door. As all the kids bunched up around the door to leave, Cal and that Craig guy were right next to me. Cal looked back at Alice still sitting at the table where I had been, working on whatever it was that she was still drawing.

“I saw Alice talking to you”, Cal said, “I think she likes you. Billy says that her parents are beatniks and she’s a hippy girl.” He actually seemed kind of jealous that a girl liked me, though I couldn’t have that getting around to the few other kids I knew at school. Certainly not a girl like Alice who most kids I knew thought was pretty weird.

“Nah”, I said right away, “She just kinda likes everything, you know hippy stuff.” I really had no idea what I was talking about or what “hippies” actually were like, other than they had long hair, even if they were boys, and they liked to wear clothes that were big and loose with lots of bright colors and they were for “peace” and “love” and “joy”.

“You want to walk home with us?” Teddy asked. He lived on Granger just past where I turned on Baldwin on my way home.

“Okay”, I said, happy to have someone to walk home with, “But I gotta get my saxophone from the Band room and then go to my locker.”

“That’s fine”, he said, “Craig and I gotta go to our lockers. We’ll meet you out by the portable classrooms, okay?” I think their lockers were on the other side of the first floor from mine.

“Yeah, okay”, I said, and headed across the hall up there back to the Band room which was right next to our Art room. They went the other way down the stairs back to the first floor.

When I went back in the Band room, the place by the wall where people kept their instruments before and after Band and Orchestra classes was empty. All the instruments were gone including mine. I got scared that someone had stolen my saxophone. It had felt like a bad day since that slut thing with Lance and Ramona earlier in Homeroom. But losing my saxophone would be way worse, and mom would kill me because she’d say we couldn’t afford to buy another one. It just felt like it wasn’t fair, that all this bad stuff happening to me even though I didn’t want to even be here.

I saw Mr Balfort in his office talking to the Orchestra teacher, Mr Denisov. I avoided talking to teachers as much as possible here at school, except when I had to. I went over and stood at his open office door as the two of them continued to talk to each other. Mr Denisov finally stopped talking, turned his head and looked at me like, “what are you doing here, kid?” Mr Balfort breathed air out of his mouth loudly and turned to look at me as well.

“Your…”, he said, not remembering my name.

“Cooper”, I said, “Cooper Zale.”

“Right, right”, he said, nodding his head, “I’m still learning all your names, forgive me. In class I know who you are based on my chart of where you sit. You’re alto sax, correct?” I nodded.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“I went to get my saxophone to take it home”, I said, sounding a little panicked, “And it’s not there along the wall. Nothing’s there!”

“We moved the instrument storage to the closet in the far corner”, he said, “Somebody had their instrument stolen where they were by the wall. Didn’t you see the notice I posted on the wall?” I shook my head. His eyes looked up at the ceiling and he just shook his head just a little, slowly from side to side like I was a stupid kid. Mr Denisov laughed just a little bit through his nose. I really did not want to talk with them anymore than I had to, so I headed back into the main Band room, but I could hear Mr Denisov saying something quietly that I couldn’t quite make out and then Mr Balfort replying, “I know, I know.”

I went over to that closet in the corner and my saxophone was there and there were other kids picking up their instruments. Finally grabbing my sax, I headed across the big room to the exit by the Art room where I’d come in, and NOW saw the piece of paper on the wall that said that instrument storage had been moved to the closet, and felt like I was a TOTALLY stupid kid as I left the room to finally get out of this crazy place.

So I went down the stairs to the first floor and then down the hall to my locker to get my notebook and my books I needed to bring home to do homework. When I finally went out the exit doors by the portable classrooms I looked for Teddy and Craig, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. I waited like TEN MINUTES as kids kept coming out and looking at me sitting on my saxophone case with my pile of books on my lap. Again, seeing all the older kids looking way older than me and I figured they were thinking, “who is that little kid?” Finally most kids had come out and gone and still I didn’t see them, so I decided I had to walk home by myself. I gathered up all my books in my left arm and picked up my sax with the other hand and headed out up Copley Ave on my own, at least glad I was finally out of that crazy place and headed home.

When I got home mom was sitting in the grass of the side yard pruning the hedge along that side of the driveway. When she saw me she stopped pruning and asked, “How was your day at Tappan?”

I really didn’t want to tell her about any of the bad stuff that happened or how much I didn’t like things. She was always telling me these days about all the bad stuff that was happening to HER; about dad, about money, about old friends who didn’t invite her to parties anymore because she was divorced. I didn’t want to be like her and do the same thing. And I was also mad at her for calling my Art teacher, so I didn’t want to tell her other stuff that might make her call someone else at school.

“It was okay I guess,” I said, and quickly went up the steps of the front stoop and into the house.