“Show some backbone,” Johnny says. “Gunboy didn’t steal your bike, Boo. He stole your life.”

Later in the day, as we finish our picnic lunch in Jerry Renault Park in Ten, Johnny decides I need boxing lessons to prepare for our battle with Gunboy—who, Johnny supposes, has rounded up a posse of goons we will need to defeat. My roommate and I have taken off our T-shirts. I look like the ninety-pound weakling I am, and Johnny, given his fluid diet in the hospital, is no Atlas either. He stands before me, jaw clenched, staring me meanly in the eye. “Look fierce,” he says, and I furrow my brow.

“Boo, you look as fierce as an albino bunny,” Esther says. She is eating her cucumber sandwich on a patch of grass infested with weeds, which grow everywhere in Town. Dandelions must be heaven’s official flower. Also, the grass is usually really long here because we have no mowers.

Johnny raises his fists to spar, and I think of the expression “put up your dukes” and wonder again about etymology: how did a title of British nobility transform into a fist?

Johnny punches me in the shoulder, and I back away. He follows and punches me again. I look around for Thelma, who should return soon from the nearby cafeteria, where she went to fetch extra fruit for the road. “Thelma wouldn’t want us fighting,” I say.

“Forget your mama,” Johnny replies, “and hit me back.”

“But I have no reason to hit you, Johnny.”

“I’m not Johnny, damn it,” he cries. “I’m Gunboy and I want to snuff you out, you jockstrap.”

I raise my fists to humor him.

He bops around and calls me names like “d*ckhead” and “assw*pe.” I find the whole exercise pointless. I am about to respond, “I’m rubber, you’re glue,” to show how childish he is being, but then he cuffs me in the jaw—lightly, but still it hurts. I reason that the only way to end the silliness is to wallop him.

I ball up a fist and swing it at his jaw. Baf! The blow hurts my hand. Johnny staggers back. He bends over, hands on his thighs, wincing in pain. “Sh*t,” he mutters, and then spits on the ground.

I see a red blob in the grass. “Is that blood?”

“I bit my f*cking tongue.”

“Serves you right, Rocky,” Esther says.

Johnny’s eyes water. He spits again. More blood. I ask him to open wide so I can examine the wound. He gapes his mouth.

“Incisors as sharp as a dog’s. No wonder you punctured your tongue.”

He wiggles his tongue. The gouge is on one side of the tip. I must check the wound regularly so I can mark the healing time in my ledger.

Thelma arrives with a bag of oranges and bananas. “For the love of Zig, what’s going on here?” she yells, shaking her bag of fruit at us. “Where are your shirts? Why’s Johnny spitting up blood?”

Esther explains about the boxing lesson as Thelma tsk-tsks. “For goodness’ sake, I can’t let y’all out of my sight for five minutes.”

“Why are you trying to change Boo into something he’s not?” Esther says to Johnny. “It won’t work. We don’t change here. We’re stuck. Stuck for fifty years at thirteen.”

Thelma disagrees. “We grow up in other ways, Esther.”

“I don’t feel more mature than back in Utah,” Esther says. “Except then I didn’t believe in dorky Jesus, but didn’t have the guts to say so.”

“That’s maturity, honey,” says Thelma. “The guts to say what you believe.”

“What about you boys?” Esther says. “Feel any different than down in America?”

“I feel more social,” I say, “but I fear it comes at the cost of a lower intelligence quotient.”

“Well, is it better to be dumber with friends or smarter without?” Esther asks.

“And you, Johnny?” Thelma says.

Johnny shrugs. He looks into the gray sky, perhaps checking for beauty in the cirrus clouds. “We should hit the road,” he says. “It’s getting late.” He slips his T-shirt over his head, and I do likewise. We head back to our bicycles parked near the monkey bars, us boys walking ahead and the girls tagging behind.

“Kids at school thought you were weak, Boo,” Johnny tells me. “But nothing could get to you. They’d tease you, punch you, steal your lunch, call you a geek and a f*ggot.”

A geek was originally a circus artist who performed morbid acts like biting heads off live chickens and swallowing frogs. I am obviously, given my vegetarian diet, no geek. As for f*ggot, I have no tendencies, homosexual or heterosexual, and since I am forever thirteen and dislike touching others, I may never develop any sexual interest—which, from what I hear about sex, is for the best.

Johnny went on: “They’d trip you to the ground, and you’d lie there looking at something nobody noticed, like an anthill spilling out of a crack in the sidewalk.”

How I miss ants! What interesting creatures! Their pheromones, their metamorphosis, their caste system, their incredible strength.

“You were strong, man. Stronger than me. Stronger than any of us.”

“Thanks, Johnny,” I say. “I try not to let the outer world wreak havoc with my inner one.”

Johnny stops me in the playing field. “Can you do me a favor, Boo?”

“A favor?”

“When we catch Gunboy, can you be strong?” He assumes his boxer pose, dukes raised.

I nod in agreement.

“Because I’m not sure I’m going to be.”