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  He fussed with the left wrist button some more before heading out the door.

  “Up and at ’em,” he said. “Breakfast is important, too.”

  It didn’t sound like he believed that either.

  After showering and getting dressed, I found Dad right where I expected him, standing in the living room entrance by the altar to Uncle Jack that was arranged above our electric fireplace. I call it an altar because I can’t think of a better word. Every inch of the shelf was filled with Jack memorabilia. There were school photos, of course, of kindergarten Jack beaming above a Lone Ranger shirt, second-grade Jack happily displaying his various missing baby teeth, fifth-grade Jack sporting a black eye and looking darn proud of it, and eighth-grade Jack—the final Jack—tan and healthy and looking like he was ready to conquer the world.

  Other objects on the altar were weirder. There was the thumb-operated bell from Jack’s Sportcrest, speckled with rust. There was the bike radio that played its last song in 1969, a weird-looking contraption sporting a crooked antenna. There were other things that had a brotherly significance only to Dad: a broken wristwatch, a wooden Indian figure, a little chunk of fool’s gold. Most unsettling, however, was the object right in the center of the altar: a framed milk carton picture of Jack, a black-and-white replica of his eighth-grade photo.

  Dad noticed me in the glass reflection.

  He forced a smile.

  “Hi, son.”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Just…tidying up.”

  He held no cleaning liquid, no towels.

  “Sure, Dad.”

  “You want to eat?”

  “Yeah, whatever. Okay.”

  “All right.” He pushed that fake smile to its breaking point. “Let’s do breakfast.”

  Doing breakfast meant cold cereal and milk. There was a time when we ate actual cooked food in the morning, back before Mom had her fill of Dad’s insecurities and walked out. Dad was doing the best he could, I told myself. We crunched and slurped across the table from each other, faces to our bowls. On occasion he threw glances about the room to ensure that the house’s steel shutters were locked tight. I sighed and poured myself some more milk. It came from a jug. Dad never bought cartons.

  He kept checking his watch until I was guilted into tossing the rest of my cereal down the garbage disposal. As he tapped his foot by the front door, I hurried into my room, threw on my jacket and backpack, and punched the key code into the shutters to lock them. Only when I was at his side did Dad begin to unlock the front door.

  It was a ritual I knew by heart. The door had ten locks, each one more impressive than the last. As he shifted bolts and turned keys and slid chains, I whispered along to the same lonely percussion solo I had been hearing for fifteen years: click, rattle, zing, rattle, clack-clack-clack, thunk, crunch, whisk, rattle-rattle, thud.

  “Jimmy. Jimmy!”

  I blinked and looked at him. He stood in the doorway, looking vulnerable in that ill-fitting shirt, a hand clutched to his stomach where his ulcer was acting up right on schedule. I wanted to feel bad for him, but he was motioning at me with impatient gestures.

  “Get off the porch or the pressure sensors will go off. Now, now, now.”

  I shrugged an apology and made my way past him onto the lawn. I heard the electronic noises of the alarm system being armed, followed by the computerized female voice: “Home zones all clear.” Dad exhaled, as if this outcome had been in doubt, and secured the external physical locks before leaping off the sensored porch. He landed beside me, the patches of hair above each ear damp with perspiration.

  The poor old guy was winded; he was in no shape to fight the personal demons that had grown to dragon size in his mind. His chest beat up and down, drawing my attention to the vinyl calculator sleeve inserted into his front pocket and stamped with the logo of San Bernardino Electronics. Legend had it that Dad invented the Excalibur Calculator Pocket worn by science nerds the world over, but Dad denied it. My theory is that his bosses screwed him out of the credit. That’s what happens to guys like Jim Sturges Sr. It made me feel like crap.

  He escorted me across the lawn. The front-door security camera whirred as it followed our progress. His feet tangled with my own and I noticed that his socks, as always, were stained green. To make up for the promotions and bonuses that he didn’t get at work, Dad mowed lawns on the weekends—town parks, cemeteries, even the football field at Saint B. High—and always dressed like a freak with goggles and gloves. It made me even more popular at school, believe me. He pushed me with a hand that smelled of grass.

  “You’ll miss the bus, Jimmy. And if you miss the bus, I’ll have to turn around and drive you to school, and then I’ll be late for work.”

  “Can’t I just walk?”

  “And you know how hard it was to arrange my schedule so we could both leave at the same time. The boss gave me heck, Jimmy, real heck.”

  “You didn’t have to do that. Only babies take the bus.”

  He gave me a stern look.

  “You can never be too careful. Look at my brother, Jack. How independent he was. How full of spirit. He used to tell me, ‘Jimbo, nothing can hurt me.’ But things did hurt him, despite the fact that he was—”

  I recited it with him: “The bravest kid you ever saw.”

  Dad turned around in front of his San Bernardino Electronics company van (a.k.a. “the safest vehicle in San Bernardino”), which doubled as transport for his mowing equipment, and sighed. I noticed his unbuttoned shirt cuff flopping outside of his jacket. He deserved to go to work like that if he wasn’t going to let me grow up and do simple things like walk to school on my own.

  “Well,” Dad said after a moment. “He was.”

  He walked over to the van and began to unlock it. I kicked the ground. He was right; the bus was coming. I could hear it over on Maple Street, and I was going to have to run if I wanted to catch it. But that wrist button stopped me. I kept imagining the younger guys at Dad’s office making fun of the disheveled, anxious man with the Band-Aid glasses who wore his Excalibur Calculator Pocket like a badge of honor. One victim in this family was enough.

  I stepped over to the side of the van, yanked the shirtsleeve free, and in a few swift moves buttoned it. I offered a weak smile. He blinked down at me through dirty lenses.

  “The bus, Jimmy.…”

  I sighed.

  “I’m on it, Dad.”

  The school was lined with pumpkins. I tallied them and was up to forty-one before the bus pulled to its usual stomach-lurching halt. Lunch boxes and books went spilling across the grimy floor and kids took to all fours to fetch the runaway thermoses and escaping pencils. I sat back and stared at the sign outside San Bernardino High.

  THE 102ND ANNUAL

  FESTIVAL OF THE FALLEN LEAVES

  ALL WEEK LONG

  SHOW YOUR SPIRIT!

  GO BATTLE BEASTS!

  You didn’t grow up in Saint B. without the Festival of the Fallen Leaves figuring into your memories in one way or another. Maybe you dressed up like a princess or a robot and marched in the Kids’ Jubilee. Or maybe you volunteered alongside your parents to help wipe down syrupy tables during the Kiwanis Pancake Blowout. The whole thing originated from a pretty cool story about some sort of legendary banishing, but I always forgot who was banishing whom and for what.

  It didn’t really matter, because the festival had evolved over time as a way for the town to sell itself to itself. For seven days, there were art walks with overpriced masterworks slopped together by local artisans; there were racks filled with unsellable clothing at bargain prices; there were free band concerts under public park gazebos; there were special deals at car dealerships, restaurants, and insurance offices. And it all ended right here at Saint B. High with a big football game followed by Shakespeare on the Fifty-Yard Line, an abridged production done right on the field. You got your sports and your culture in one place, without even having to set down your chili-cheese dog.

 
That year promised to bring them out in droves, and not just because the team was undefeated. Off the western end of the school was Harry G. Bleeker Memorial Field, your typical goalposts-and-floodlights deal with plenty of nooks for kids to smuggle in beer and make out. The next Friday, however, was to be the debut of our jumbotron, a freakishly large video screen that had been under wraps for weeks as workers completed the installation. Already that morning they were atop the high scaffold, adjusting their hard hats.

  The whole moronic festival, which I could not have cared less about, began on Saturday—the next day—which meant that these were the final precious hours before everyone went nuts decking the town in Saint B. red and white. It was the worst time of year for kids like me, who weren’t good at sports, or drama, or anything, really.

  I exited the bus last, and got no farther than the sidewalk before a kid I knew from the unpopular table at lunch came barreling out of the main entrance. He grabbed hold of me to stop his momentum. We both swung around like we were ballroom dancing. He jabbed a finger at the school.

  “Tub…” he panted. “Trophy Cave…”

  That was all he needed to say. If there was one spot in school reserved for the darkest acts of bullying, it was the Trophy Cave, a third-floor hallway that housed the school’s trophy collection. It had once been the location of the French and German classes, but those electives had been cut. The fluorescents had long before either burned out or been tampered with, and the hall existed as a dim channel of evil to be avoided at all costs, even if it meant being late for class or clenching your bladder for another period. On a regular basis you could hear the blubbers of underclassmen receiving their first (or fourteenth) wedgies.

  Some kids were cursed enough to have their lockers located in this torture chamber. Tobias “Tubby” D., my best friend, was one of them.

  Before I reached the Trophy Cave, I knew the identity of the assailant. A steady SMACK, SMACK was booming through the hall—the patented sound of Steve Jorgensen-Warner. Steve dribbled a basketball wherever he went. Classes, the cafeteria, the restrooms, the parking lot. Some teachers, coaches mostly, even let him bounce the ball in class to help him concentrate on schoolwork while other students ground their teeth in silent irritation.

  Steve, obviously, was not just another student. Yes, he was captain of the basketball squad. And yes, he was the star running back of the football team. That still doesn’t give you a complete picture. He was handsome in the oddest way. His eyes were too small and his nose piggish; he had a ridiculous amount of hair and a couple of teeth that looked like fangs. Yet somehow in combination these features were sort of mesmerizing. His unnatural muscular bulk and odd way of speaking—crisply, politely, as if he were a foreign student who had learned English in a class—completed the strange package. There was nobody else like Steve Jorgensen-Warner. What the teachers didn’t know is that there was also nobody crueler.

  A crowd had gathered. I hopped to my tiptoes and saw Tub on his knees, his freckled face beet red, gasping for air around a left-arm half nelson. With his right hand Steve continued with the basketball, simultaneously carrying on an easygoing conversation with one of his teammates. I pushed to the front of the crowd. A runner of spit was hanging from Tub’s bottom lip and he clawed at Steve’s bicep.

  “Air,” Tub gasped. “Need…air…for breathing.…”

  Steve apologized to his friend for having to pause their pleasant chat and turned his attention back to the overweight sophomore writhing in his grip. Warped fun house reflections of Tub’s face were caught in each burnished bronze plaque, championship cup, and framed photo of young adults lined up in identical jerseys, each of them happier and healthier than my wheezing best friend.

  SMACK, SMACK. SMACK, SMACK.

  Steve’s fanged smile never touched his eyes.

  “You know the deal, Tubby. Five bucks a day. I regret if this wasn’t clear.”

  “You were…unbelievably…clear.…”

  “Five bucks is a real bargain. I challenge you to find a better deal anywhere.”

  “Gave you…all I had…yesterday.…”

  “Well, if that’s true, then why aren’t you apologizing?”

  “Trachea…crushed…words…difficult…”

  “Sorry is such a little word. Why don’t you just say it?”

  “Sorry…”

  “That sounds halfway genuine, Tubby. Apology accepted. Just have that five bucks by the end of the day and we’ll forgo any further nastiness. Until next time, of course.”

  I would have given anything to be the kind of kid who barged from the crowd to push Steve away from my friend. But that fantasy would just get both of us killed. In fact, I began to go in the opposite direction, but it was against the tide of pressing kids and my feet got tangled. I sprawled backward, to my horror, and fell down inside the circle of torture.

  Steve blinked down at me with his beady eyes. He released Tub, who flopped to the floor in a puddle of his own saliva. Steve turned. The basketball smacking slowed to the pace of the whale heart we’d listened to once in a biology class video. Time stretched out. I felt like one of those athletes caught in the trophy case for all of eternity.

  “Ah, Sturges,” Steve said. “You want in on this, too? Great news.”

  Over the years I’d taken my share of abuse from Steve Jorgensen-Warner, beginning with a legendary Indian burn in third grade and leading up to a sprained wrist freshman year after I’d “tripped” down the school’s back steps. None of those beatings, though, had been my fault. Even Tub, locked in fetal position, looked aghast.

  “Oh, wow,” I said from the ground. “I should get to class. We should all get to class. Shouldn’t we? I mean, isn’t it time for class? I mean, wow.”

  The Trophy Cave amplified my blather.

  SMACK, SMACK! The ball sounded positively invigorated. It was a predictor of mood as reliable as a dog’s tail. A resplendent grin spread across Steve’s face as he came at me with the ball, dribbling behind his back and between his legs. The guy was in his element. Had there been a hoop, he would have dunked it.

  All in all we got away lucky. We both got the “trash compactor,” this nifty procedure in which you are shoved into a locker far too small to fit a teenage human, then smashed repeatedly with the door until you somehow fit anyway. It’s more painful than it sounds. The coat hooks gouge your scalp, the sharp corners bruise your shoulders, and if you’re stupid enough to try to stop the door from slamming, you can break a finger. I’ve seen it happen.

  Lucky for me, I’d been trash compacted enough to learn how to open lockers from the inside. I relaxed until I heard the smack of the basketball fade, and then let myself out. Tub was whimpering from the next locker, and I can’t say I blamed him. He was a big guy, and simple physics meant that his extraction wasn’t going to be an easy one. First I told him what he needed to do to jog the mechanism. That took a while because of the constant stream of swear words coming from the slots in the locker. The bell rang. I sighed. Now we’d be tardy.

  Ten minutes later we were recuperating in the boys’ room. Neither of us had any intention of walking into class late with bloodied lips and elbows. So we took our time, washing our wounds with cold water and blotting them with scratchy brown paper towels.

  “Those towels are for brutes,” Tub said. He ducked into a stall and came back with a fistful of toilet paper. He patted it against a scraped elbow. “Ah, now I’m being properly pampered. Is this a spa? Are we in a spa? When do we get the salt scrubs? The erotic hot-stone rubdowns? Jeeves, our itinerary, please!”

  I forced a grin, which segued into a wince. Already my cheekbone was bruising. I ran through my options of concealing it from Dad. Oversize sunglasses? A jaunty scarf? Fantasy face paint? He did not react rationally when my safety was threatened.

  Tub leaned in to the mirror and frowned. I’d like to tell you all about how real beauty is on the inside, because if that’s the case, Tub’s innards must make surgeons swoon. You could
call Tobias Dershowitz chubby, if you were being cute, or husky if you were being diplomatic. The fact is he was fat, and that was only the beginning of his problems. His hair was a thick, orange, out-of-control hedge. His face spilled over with the kind of freckles that make kids like Tub look like overgrown toddlers. Worst of all were his braces, marvels of modern torment: whips of stainless steel crisscrossing each tooth separately and lashed to a dozen silver fasteners. The braces clicked so much when he spoke, you expected sparks.

  He was, at least, tall, which is more than could be said for me. He stood before the mirror ramrod straight as if adjusting his military regalia, then looked around the bathroom to make sure we were alone.

  “Check this out.” He squirreled a hand up under his shirt and withdrew from his armpit the sweatiest five-dollar bill I’d ever seen. He held it out as if I might like to fondle it. “I had a fiver all along! The asshat didn’t know where to look!”

  “You really showed him, Tub.”

  “I know, right?”

  He chuckled, folded up the bill, and inserted it back into his pit.

  In the midst of pulling his shirt back over his gut, his smile faltered. Tub was a kung fu master when it came to covering up injuries with jokes. But there were moments when he ran out of steam and seemed to acknowledge, for just a moment, the bitter truth. And the truth was that the insertion of a clammy five-dollar bill into his armpit was the closest thing he had to a victory.

  I hit the button on the automatic hand dryer so it might drown out my next question.

  “Did you cry?”

  “Nah. Not this time.” He paused and shrugged. “Not a lot.”

  Our silence extended too long. Good old Tub knew how to remedy that. He hocked a loogie and spat it into the urinal. Then he slapped me on the back and started for the door. For a second I lingered, watching the bloody wad of snot dissolve into someone else’s piss. It said a lot about our lives, I thought. When I followed him out, I resisted turning back. I could have sworn there was a rumbling coming from inside the urinal drain, somewhere far beneath the tile floor.