I sat alone at my double desk as the teacher handed back the English tests that we had taken the previous day. I listened to the cacophony of moans and groans as the other kids looked at their papers, most of them awash in marks of red ink. I thought that it was a fairly easy test. All right, it was a very easy test as far as I was concerned. It was on antonyms. Opposites. Who would know better about opposites than the only black kid in the class?
The teacher smiled as she dropped a test on my side ofthe double desk. There was some red ink, but not much. The test consisted of a list of twenty words and we were to write the antonyms for them. I had missed two, the opposites of “play” and “walk,” for a final grade of 90 percent. It was an A-minus. I knew that the correct answers were “work” and “run” respectively. I had missed them on purpose. In the beginning, I got all 100 percent grades on tests. Usually I was the only one in the class to do so. The other kids would tease me and make fun of me for it. This I didn’t need. I stood out enough already. Why give them yet another reason to torment me?
I read in one of my Superboy comics where young Clark Kent had a superintellect. He could ace any exam in a breeze. He could even do it at superspeed, finishing it in seconds, if he really wanted to. The problem was that perfect scores would make him stand out, and somebody might figure out his secret identity. They might discover that he really wasn’t one of the “normal” kids at Smallville High. They’d learn that, in fact, he wasn’t anything like them at all. For this reason, he would always deliberately miss a few answers on each test in order to avoid arousing suspicion. I began to do the same thing.
After the tests were handed back, I looked up to see a young woman from the principal’s office standing at the classroom door. I think she was the school secretary. That was my assumption, at least. She was always in there typing. I spent enough time in the principal’s office that I should have known. The one constant in most of the fights at school was me; ergo, it was assumed that I was the problem.
The secretary was accompanied by a skinny, blond-haired kid. Although he was not really moving, he looked awkward and gawky as he stood there surveying the room. “Awkward” and “gawky” are two adjectives that I could relate to well. The woman whispered something to the teacher and then left the boy standing there.
“May I have everybody’s attention,” the teacher said.
The class was so unruly she had to repeat herselftwice, each time louder than the time before. Finally, there was silence as all eyes directed their gaze at the boy.
“This is Jon Regan,” she said. “He’ll be joining our class starting today. Everyone say ‘hi.’”
“Hi,” we said in a robotic unison.
“I’m sure that everyone will do his or her best to make Jon feel welcome, right?”
“Yes,” the class said, politely, mechanically.
“Let’s find you a desk,” she said as she looked around the room.
I don’t know why she made such a production out of it. There was only one empty seat among the sea of double desks—the one next to me.
“Jon, you sit over there next to Brian.”
He ambled over toward my desk. As awkward as he was standing in the doorway, he was even more so as he walked. It was almost like his brain hadn’t caught up with the growth of his body, yet. I could relate. Neither had mine.
The boy plopped down next to me. I didn’t say anything. I put my head down and studied my 90 percent in order to avoid eye contact. Eventually he introduced himself and I did the same. That was the extent of it. I didn’t want to go any further than that. I figured that once he got to know the other white kids, he would join them in my persecution. I had seen it before when new kids had been added to the class. I’d make friends with them and then they’d go through their “don’t be friends with the nigger” orientation and that would be that. Why set myself up yet again? It was all about survival now.
We sat next to each other for about a month and communicated little. I pretty much kept to myself. He made friendly overtures, showing me pictures that he’d drawn and trying to strike up conversations. I would smile, but I remained wary. I didn’t share much. I certainly didn’t tell him anything personal.
Soon, it turned out that I had been wrong about his relationships with the other kids. Like me, he wasn’t much of an athlete. He was better at basketball than I was (who wasn’t?) and he could kick a ball a little better than I could, but his proficiency was still far behind that of the other kids. He got 100 percent marks on his tests. Unlike me, he had no secret identity to protect. After a while, the kids started to pick on him, too. They called him “reject” instead of Regan. They played tricks on him. At recess, when the kids were choosing up teams, the only thing that saved him from being picked last was the fact that I was there. I could tell that it hurt his feelings, but he took it in stride.
One morning, I came in to find a small white envelope on my side of our desk. It was an invitation to Jon’s birthday party on Saturday. He was turning nine.
“Do you think you can come?” he asked me, anxious.
“I don’t know. I’ll try. I have to ask my mom,” I muttered. My answer was short, terse. The whole invitation was problematic.
I didn’t really want to go. He had invited just about the entire class. Why would I want to spend a Saturday with the same kids who picked on me and refused to play with me during the week? On the other hand, no one had invited me to a birthday party since we had moved there. It was nice to be included. I eventually relented and decided to go.
Saturday came and I headed to Jon’s house. As I daydreamed on the half mile walk down the street, I suddenly I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach. I was a little nauseous. I felt myself starting to get a little sad. Then I looked around and realized where I was. I was in the spot I had run to when the kids chased me that first Saturday in San Leandro. The boys in the “rebels” jackets. I was standing where the cop had frisked me and put me in the police car. I hadn’t been there since that day, but it was right on the route to Jon’s house.
I continued the walk feeling a little blue, eventually knocking at Jon’s front door, where his mom answered. Whereas most of the mothers of my classmates appeared to be older, she was a younger mom, like mine. Her smile was warm and she was friendly. I went into the house, which was all decorated with balloons and streamers. Jon stood in the front room with his two little sisters and his little brother. He invited me to sit on the floor and play a board game with him until the other kids arrived and we could start the party.
We played a game. And then another. And then another as we waited for the other kids to get there. Forty-five minutes later, no one else had arrived. It hit me at that moment that no one else was coming. I started to feel sad again, but this time for Jon. I realized that he was just like me. He was an outsider. He didn’t fit in. He was a nice guy and he was smart. And like me, he was different. An idea hit me.
I thought to myself, “Maybe we can be different together.”
Jon’s mother started the party. It was just Jon, his siblings, and me. We played games and we ate and we laughed. It was the best time I’d ever had at a birthday party. I stayed long after the party was supposed to end and it was wonderful. I wanted to cry, but this time it was because I was happy. I wasn’t the only one of my kind anymore. I wasn’t alone. I had a buddy who liked comic books and the Hardy Boys. He wrote great stories and he drew the best pictures I had ever seen a kid draw. He got good grades and wasn’t ashamed of it. Best of all, he didn’t look like me and it didn’t matter. It didn’t even occur to him.
Now, when my mom said, “Brian, why don’t you go out and play,” I had someplace to go and somebody to play with. For the first time, I had a friend. For the first time in a long time I didn’t feel lonely.
The next week’s English test would be on synonyms: words that are the same. Sameness. Similarity. Resemblance.
“I’ll do pretty well on this test,” I thought. “I think I’m going to answer all of the questions correctly, too.”