The door was open. The two windows were open. Still it was hot in the clubhouse. But we didn’t care. We sat on folding chairs—Ernie, me, Burke, Nacho. Our lemonades sat on a TV tray, along with a bowl of munchies that Ernie’s mom kept coming in to refill. She was funny. Every time she came, she knocked on the door and said, “May a lowly female have permission to enter the grand palace of major dudes?” Ernie acted all serious and granted her permission, then said, “Females are welcome, Mom.”
We sat and munched and talked and just chilled out in the coolest clubhouse in town. We talked a lot about school, which starts next week. Then Ernie said, “Let’s play Revelation. You have to tell something about yourself that the rest of us don’t know.”
We said okay. Nacho went first. He told about the time in third grade when he sang “God Bless America” for the class and everybody was laughing because his fly was open.
Burke told about the time he cut a bug in half. That was years ago and he just remembered it the other day and he really feels bad about it.
I took a deep breath and told them about the first sleepwalk to the train station. Their mouths and eyes were gaping. When I finished, I never heard such silence in my life. Finally Ernie reached over and touched my arm. “You’re lucky,” he said.
Nobody said anything else. We were waiting for Ernie’s revelation. It took awhile before we realized he had already started. He was holding out his hand, palm up. In the middle was a mark. Round. Smaller than a dime. Whitish. I wondered why he was showing us.
“Blister?” I said, remembering our blister lies.
He shook his head, still smiling.
“So, what?” said Nacho.
“Scar,” said Ernie.
And then he told us. Back at his last school in Gary, Indiana, there was a kid who zeroed in on him. The kid would trip him and knock his books to the ground and make life miserable for him. The kid was already smoking, and one day he shoved Ernie up against a wall and said, “I heard you been bad-mouthin’ me.” Which of course Ernie wasn’t, but the kid was just setting him up. “I’ll teach ya to bad-mouth me,” the kid says, and he grabs Ernie’s hand and snuffs out his lit cigarette right there in the palm.
“One day you asked me why we moved away from Gary and came here,” he said. “That’s why.”
“I don’t blame you for leaving that dump,” said Burke.
“It wasn’t my choice,” said Ernie. “My parents made me. I tried to hide the burn, but it got infected and the school nurse saw it and sent me to the hospital, and that’s when my parents found out.”
I was shocked. “You mean, after all that, you didn’t want to move?”
Ernie shook his head. “I had friends. Most of the kids were nice.” He laughed. “I wasn’t going to let one rotten apple run me outta town!”
We all clinked glasses and drank to that and I thought, Goobers have guts.
“But,” Ernie said, holding up his finger, “that doesn’t mean I’m sorry. Because if we didn’t move, I never would have met you guys.” He was doing it again, smiling and hard-staring each of us.
I swallowed. I clinked his glass. “We’re glad too, Ernie.”
Ernie took a swig. “I’ll tell you, it was coming down to the wire. I was getting nervous at the prospect of starting a new school without having a single friend.”
“Now you have three,” said Nacho.
“Right,” said Ernie. “Too bad it’s not four.” We knew who he was referring to. “I guess Bump is busy looking for more goobers.”
I almost gagged on my mouthful of corn chips. For a minute you could practically hear the ice melting in the lemonade. Sooner or later somebody had to say something. I swallowed. “He’s prob’ly away on vacation.”
“Or maybe”—he snapped his fingers—“he just can’t bring himself to be friends with a goober.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” said Burke.
“You’re not a goober,” said Nacho.
“Sure I am,” said Ernie. He looked proud. He laughed. “Whatever it is.” He looked at me. “What exactly makes a goober a goober, anyway?”
Dead silence.
I finally choked out, “You guys are all so stupid. There’s no such thing as goobers.”
Ernie just smiled. Then chuckled. “And I bet Soop doesn’t really mean ‘cool,’ does it?”
More silence. Enough of this, I thought. “Hey,” I said, “anybody going out for football this year?”