I SHOULD STOP AND TELL YOU ABOUT THEM. THE TRIBE. MAYBE IT WILL help you to understand what happened. Maybe not. Maybe there is no explanation. Maybe my dad is right and people are just basically jerks. It certainly seems that way sometimes.
I have this theory. I call it the theory of socio-magnetic homogeny. A bunch of big words, but it basically says that people gravitate toward people who share their interests and whatnot. Band kids will hang out with other band kids. People with pierced tongues will hang out with people with pierced noses. The basketball players will clump together like cat hair on a sofa. Kids whose lawyer fathers drive heated-leather-seated sports cars hang with other kids whose lawyer fathers drive heated-leather-seated sports cars. There are exceptions, of course, but all other things being equal, you merge with the crowd that reminds you the most of you.
It’s not that original, I guess. And it’s mostly just common sense, but I took it one step further. My theory has to do with the people who don’t find people just like them. These people—they find each other. And then they realize that not finding people like them is the thing they have in common. That’s what happened to me, I think. I found the people who weren’t quite like other people, and we used that difference as glue.
There were four of us. All boys. And we were all smart, or at least above the national average according to state-mandated standardized tests, so we had that too. What we didn’t have was a tribe.
So we made one.
For me, at least, it started with Bench. Real name: Jeremiah Jones. His parents and teachers call him J.J. but we don’t call each other by our real names. You can blame me for that one. Bench does sports, the big three of football, basketball, and baseball—but he’s not that good at any of them, not good enough to start anyways, so mostly he just moves from bench to bench, waiting for the fourth quarter or the ninth inning, when the game is completely out of hand and putting him in won’t really cost anything or alter the fabric of the universe.
The cool thing about Bench was that he didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t very good; he just enjoyed being a part of the team. The other players didn’t mind having him around because he was a nice guy (who also never threatened to replace them), and the coaches liked him because he was an A student and never complained. Bench was BMS’s poster boy for student athletes; he brought the cumulative GPA of the basketball team up. It was good for us because being attached to Bench, the rest of us were mostly ignored by the other jocks. We didn’t care that he never scored a single goal. In fact, it was probably better for us that he didn’t. It’s not as if the starting quarterback sat at our table.
Besides, Bench could at least make a free throw, which is more than can be said for Deedee, aka Advik Patel, the third member of our tribe. His dad is Indian, which Bench says should make him genetically inclined to love cricket, at least, but Advik prefers to fight dragons instead. Deedee is short for D&D, which is way too geeky to say out loud, even for us, but he says none of us can pronounce his real name right anyway, so Deedee’s fine with him. Unlike Bench, who has an inch on me, at least, Deedee’s a full two inches shorter than I am, with shorter black hair and an even shorter attention span, and he knows way too much about Tolkien and Harry Potter and Gary Gygax.
You probably don’t know who Gary Gygax is, and even if you do, you probably wouldn’t admit it. I don’t blame you. There are some things that have to stay among your tribe.
Deedee’s a polyhedral dice junkie. That’s what you call those dice with so many different faces. He’s got a collection of them tucked away in a wooden box shaped like a treasure chest under his bed. Clear ones and colored ones and ones that look like they’ve been chiseled out of marble. Little pyramids that go up to four and giant, angular eyeballs that go all the way up to sixty. I won’t bother telling you what most thirteen-year-old boys keep hidden under their beds, but I guarantee you it’s not dice. He also keeps one in his pocket, a ten-sider with a dragon in place of the number one. He insists it’s good luck. He uses it to make pretty much all his major life decisions.
We played D&D with Deedee on the weekends—so long as Wolf wasn’t out of town at a recital and Bench didn’t have some kind of camp or practice (turns out I’m almost always available). Deedee was the dungeon master, of course. Bench was a hulking barbarian with too many swords. I was an elvish thief who went around stabbing everyone in the back.
Wolf was a bard. He stood in the back and played his music and tried to stay out of the way.
That’s called typecasting.
Wolf is short for Wolfgang, which is short for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, because, as Wolf puts it, he could never pull off the nickname Mozart. Of course he can’t pull off Wolf either, but we let it go, mostly because his real name is Morgan, which at some point became much more popular for girls than boys.
Nothing about Wolf looks particularly wolfish. Maybe starved-wolf-who-doesn’t-get-out-of-the-cave-much—lanky limbs and freckly face and moppish blond hair that he’s constantly brushing out of his eyes. What he is, though, is a piano prodigy. Three-time Falsin County award winner, juniors division. Wolf has been playing since he was five. Mostly classical. Some jazz. He can actually play that bumblebee song—the one that sounds like the piano itself is having a seizure. We keep begging him to put his talents to good use writing rock songs, but his parents don’t believe in good music. They believe in Chopin and perfect posture and two hours of practice a day. Wolf sits on a bench almost as much as Bench does.
Except we’re all pretty sure that Bench is never going to be a starting wide out for the Lions, despite all his talk of someday winning the Super Bowl. Wolf’s different. Someday we are all going to go watch him play Carnegie Hall. He’ll be wearing a tuxedo and white bow tie to match the keys. And the three of us will have front-row seats.
Bench, Deedee, and Wolf. The tribe. My people. Not that we couldn’t have tried to fit in somewhere else. Bench had guys he knuckle-bumped in the halls from his various teams. Wolf knew people in the band. Even Deedee had a couple of kids he went to summer camp with. But there was something that drew the four of us together. We just got each other. It was easy.
We knew where we belonged.
There were others, sometimes. Nomads. People who hadn’t found their tribe yet. Guys like Nips (superfluous third nipple, on the right, just below his equally superfluous second nipple) and Crash (skateboard versus car, car won), but for the most part it was just the four of us. Bench, Deedee, Wolf, and me.
My name is Frost.
Cool, right?
Trust me, it’s not.
But at least it’s better than Nips.
Ruby’s text—seen by Ms. Sheers, and then the Big Ham, and eventually by most of the student body—was (as one concerned teacher put it) “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Though, if I had to guess, I’d say the camel was pretty well dead before Ruby had her phone taken away. After all, there had been several incidents of technology misuse before Ruby’s rant against Mr. Jackson. Facebook posts. Crude pics on Instagram. A whole Snapchat exchange that got two kids sent home for three days. Flame wars. Threats. At least a dozen instances of kids getting caught using their phones to cheat on tests. No doubt Principal Wittingham had hundreds more occurrences written up in his files. More than enough to fuel a crusade. Ruby’s text was simply a spark.
A catalyst.
Word spread quickly outside the walls of Branton Middle School. Kids told their parents. Parents told other parents. Wittingham sent out a message to every family, calling for a school community meeting. In the span of only forty-eight hours it suddenly became clear to every teacher, parent, and administrator that cell phones—with their texts and their apps and their electric, buzzy addictiveness—were no longer just a nuisance: they represented a clear and present danger to every student at BMS.
The meeting was held. Studies were cited. Statistics were shown. Other school systems were held up as models. Turns out cell phones were to blame for everything wrong in the world. They weren’t just the primary avenue for bullying, though that was brought up several times. They were also eating away at our brain cells. They were almost solely responsible for the decline in test scores in Falsin County in particular and for the failure of the American education system in general. They caused cancer. They could suck out your soul. They were the next step in mankind’s eventual demise.
Forget the fact that half the adults in the room were using their phones to find even more statistics for why phones were bad for you. The point was, in school anyways, cell phones were a menace. “Confiscating them,” Principal Wittingham argued, “is not simply a matter of sound educational policy. It’s in our best national interest.”
A vote was taken. The majority ruled. The students got no say. A new school policy was written into the student code book.
No more phones. Period.
Not in lockers. Not in pockets. Not in backpacks. They were to stay at home. If you absolutely had to bring one for emergency reasons or for use after school, it would be turned in at the office at the start of the day, placed in a labeled Ziploc baggie, and kept there until the final bell. If your parents called to tell you that your aunt Tilda slipped in the bathroom and stabbed herself in the eye with her own toothbrush, the secretary would take a message and have you called down to the office. Principal Wittingham couldn’t control what was said and done off school grounds, but while we were inside the cinder-block walls of BMS, there would be no texting, calling, posting, playing, or surfing. We were there to learn. Case closed.
A few parents protested. Complained that their kids had a right to keep their electronic devices on them at all times. The administration reminded them that there was nothing in the US Constitution specifically governing the individual rights of cell-phone-carrying minors. Having a phone was a privilege. And one that the students of Branton Middle School had finally lost.
When the vote was passed, Mr. Jackson looked like a cat that just ate a three-hundred-pound canary. Ruby just stared at her shoes. They were white Chucks, with red letters to match the color in her cheeks. Everyone blamed her, of course, though it could just as easily have been them who’d gotten caught. Afterward they went online, telling her thanks for ruining our lives and that she should find a tornado and get sucked back to Oz. A couple more eloquent students posted long messages directed at the administration, asking them to reconsider. The Falsin County Gazette published two pages’ worth of articles about it in Sunday’s editorial section—mostly in favor of the new rule.
Everyone had to get all their online complaining out before Monday, when the school’s new policy would take effect and we’d all be disconnected for good.
The new rules were clearly posted on two different signs on the way in (and on several more scattered throughout the halls), informing students that any phones or tablets found in a student’s possession would be confiscated immediately and the student would receive a warning. If it happened again, it was an automatic one-day suspension. After that it got even worse.
By the end of the week, seventeen kids had been suspended. The administration was in full crackdown. Ms. Sheers looked like a sniper sitting at her desk.
Not that it mattered to me, of course, because of the budget and all.
Bench and Wolf both had phones, but Bench just used his to call his father for a ride after practice and Wolf mostly used his to listen to music. The only one of us heartbroken was Deedee. He was a member of several online gaming communities and even contributed to a blog called The Dungeon’s Depths. That first day, I could tell he was getting twitchy. He certainly wasn’t the only one.
There was a mob at the front office when the last bell rang, kids pouring out of their classrooms, swarming like hornets. A few kids were knocked over. As soon as students got their phones back you could see them turtle, faces suctioned to screens. Deedee cradled his and called it his precious, though not loud enough for anyone but me to hear.
The bus ride home that Monday was church-service quiet, everyone desperate to catch up on everything they’d missed, even though they hadn’t missed anything because none of their friends had had their phones either. I finished up my math homework while Bench surfed next to me, telling me a whole bunch of junk I could care less about. I heard the kid in the seat behind us mumble something about how unfair it was. “I can’t imagine going the entire year like this,” she said.
It was clear from the start that this no-phone thing was going to be a problem. The students of BMS would have to find some way to fill the void. Some way to stay connected. I just didn’t know that that something would come about so quickly.
Or that we would be the ones to start it.
Screenless, I looked out the window at the flash of trees. I felt Bench’s elbow in my side.
“Check this out,” he said. He showed me a picture somebody had already posted of Principal Wittingham’s face pasted onto Darth Vader’s body, crushing a Photoshopped cell phone in his hand. “Behold the power of the dark side.”
I nodded and smiled. Then went back to watching the trees.
The bus—this bus—was where it all started. At least for me.
This was where I met Bench.
It was the last week of August. Sixth grade was well under way and I had made zero progress finding my people, despite my mother’s promise. I’d eaten my lunches by myself. Spent my classes sitting in the back. Walked down the halls trying not to accidentally brush up against anyone. I told myself I was just feeling everybody out, getting a sense of the place, but the truth was I felt cut off, stuck behind an invisible wall. Life sucked, middle school sucked, and I was pretty sure I was destined to spend the next three years miserable and alone.
Then one day this boy stepped on. Black hair buzzed to nearly bald, wearing a Calvin Johnson jersey and expensive-looking high-tops, slapping his hands on the back of every seat he passed as if he were marking his territory. I hadn’t seen him before.
I stuffed my nose back into my book—reading was the easiest way to avoid making eye contact—and waited for him to go by. He shuffled past, and then he stopped, turned around, and plopped right down in the seat beside me.
“You saving this?”
I nodded, then shook my head, then tucked my feet back a little so he couldn’t see the cheap shoes I was wearing. Saving it. Funny. Like there was a waiting list of people that wanted to sit next to me. The bus rumbled on. The boy rubbed his head and smiled. He had a really big smile. A count-all-the-teeth smile.
“Cool hat,” he said, pointing at the Detroit ball cap I wore every day to school.
“Thanks,” I mumbled. I made a point of turning a page of the book even though I hadn’t actually bothered to read it yet.
“You like the Tigers?” the boy asked.
“It was my dad’s,” I explained. “He gave it to me. He used to like them. Now he likes the Marlins.” Dad kept threatening to take me to a game in Miami the next time I came to visit even though I really didn’t like baseball and probably couldn’t name more than ten teams, the Tigers and Marlins included.
The boy looked offended. “What? You gotta be kidding me. The Marlins are terrible!” He said it with the conviction of a holy man. “I mean, they got, like, Stanton and Alvarez, but for the most part, they suck big ol’ donkey turds through a straw.”
“Yeah,” I said. I wasn’t sure why anyone would suck a donkey turd, or if it could even fit up a straw, but I could appreciate a good image when I heard one. “Honestly, I just wear it because he gave it to me.”
“Naw, that’s cool,” the boy said. “I didn’t mean anything bad about your dad or anything. Just . . . you know . . . the Marlins?” He shook his head. “Throw a tiger into a baby pool with a fish and see who comes out on top. That’s all I’m saying.”
“They’re pretty big fish,” I said. “I’m not sure they’d even fit in a baby pool.” My father sent me a picture of a marlin that he caught on a chartered fishing trip his first year down there. It was almost as big as he was. “They’re fast, too. And they have swords for noses.” I suddenly realized how nerdy I sounded and shut up.
“Swords for noses?” The boy raised his eyebrows. “Man, that’s got to be awkward.”
I didn’t know what he meant, this strange kid who just sat next to me and started talking about donkeys and tigers for no reason whatsoever, so I just stared at him.
“I mean, how they ever going to kiss another fish without stabbing ’em in the face?” He smiled all teeth again.
I snorted. I couldn’t help it. Just picturing two marlins trying to make out, writhing around, filleting each other in the process. “Yeah. Guess I never thought about that.”
“They’d be, like, poking out each other’s eyes and stuff.”
“Right.”
“Not that fish kiss each other or anything.”
“No. Of course not.”
“Though they got the lips for it.”
Then the boy made a fishy-kiss face by pressing his cheeks and working his lips up and down. He went cross-eyed in the process. It was pretty hilarious.
“You kind of laugh like a donkey,” he told me.
I stopped laughing. I realized it had actually been a really long time since I laughed in front of anyone but my mother. She always said she loved my laugh. I think maybe she was required to, though.
“It’s cool,” the boy said. “Could be worse. My dad farts every time he laughs too hard. That’s why nobody makes any jokes at dinner.” He raised both eyebrows again to let me know he was dead serious this time. Then he stuck out his fist. “I’m J.J.,” he said.
“Eric,” I said, receiving the first fist bump of my middle school career. “But most people call me Frost.” Actually, most people didn’t call me anything, but when they did, they called me Frost.
“Frost, huh? How’d you get that?”
I told him it was a long story, even though it really wasn’t, but we were already pulling into the school parking lot. “I’ll have to tell you some other time.”
The boy named J.J. shrugged.
“What period you got lunch?” he asked.
And that was all it took. A fish face and a fist bump and I suddenly wasn’t alone anymore. I had J.J., soon to become Bench. He lived within walking distance of my house, liked video games, and had a trampoline in his backyard. More importantly, he filled the empty seat beside me and made me laugh.
It was just the two of us for a while. We didn’t complete the tribe until the sixth-grade fall field trip to Newaygo State Park, the teachers trying to squeeze in some appreciation for Mother Nature before winter bit us in the butt. We ate lunch in the grass and then set out on a two-mile trail—ninety-eight sixth graders following teachers like waddling ducklings. But Bench and I wandered off into the woods and got separated from everyone else. By the time we found our way back to the trail the herd had moved on, so we set out on our own, keeping our ears perked for barking teachers, until we ran into two other kids just as lost as we were.
They introduced themselves as Advik and Morgan. We introduced ourselves as J.J. and Frost. We agreed to stick together, working along the trails until we found the rest of the class. It only took thirty minutes, but in that thirty, and in the ten more of scolding from Principal Wittingham that followed, we clicked, just snapped together like Legos.
I’m still not sure what it was about that day, that trip, that moment. Maybe it was the four of us daring each other to pee in the Muskegon River, or Bench climbing a tree and getting his undies snagged on a branch, or Deedee claiming to have found a print in the mud that he swore came from a velociraptor. Or maybe we all just kind of subconsciously realized that there was strength in numbers. That four was better than two and two.
We rode the bus together that afternoon, talking the whole way back to school. About everything. Favorite bands. Lame movies. Best video games. Lousy parents. Worst teachers. The smell on the bus (gasoline, damp leaves, sweat). The odd fact that we had never talked to each other before even though we had a few classes together. How strange it was for us to get lost at the same time, to just run into each other in the woods like that. How Deedee’s farts sounded like a dying baby elephant. How Principal Wittingham looked like he was going to pop when he found out the four of us had wandered off on our own. How none of us really liked our first names.
I remember laughing hysterically and eating most of Deedee’s goldfish crackers. And for the first time in what seemed like forever, feeling like I was a part of something.
The next day at lunch we found each other and just picked up where we left off.
Mom was right. You make your tribe. Sometimes I hate it when she’s right, but not that time.
Looking back on it, I think it had to be something like getting lost in the woods. Otherwise we might have just gone on ignoring each other. I don’t want to make it out to be some big gooey, sappy thing. We didn’t share the same pair of traveling pants or promise over spit shakes to be BFFs. We just kind of glommed together.
And we managed to stay that way for two whole years. Just the four of us. Pretty much perfect.
Then she came along. And the war started.
And everything came unglued.
That first Monday—after the cell phone crackdown—I went to my locker before seventh period to grab my Spanish notebook. Attached to the metal door above the combination was a sticky note. Standard yellow. From one of the packs that every student was required to buy at the start of the year for no real reason whatsoever.
It was from Deedee.
Welcome to the Dark Ages, it said.
He didn’t sign it, but I knew it was from him. No one else would be so melodramatic.
That was the first one. The one that started it all, I guess.
I folded it in half and dropped it in the bottom of my locker without a second thought.