It started in math class. Gustavo Cruz was tapping him on the back. Connell had been resisting all year, but Gustavo hadn’t given up. It was the time of year when every point counted for some kids. Usually Connell just framed his test more tightly with his arms, leaned over it more to obscure it with his body. He didn’t care if it made him look like a hopeless nerd; he wanted the teachers to know he had nothing to do with cheating.
Gustavo was slapping him on the neck now. Connell couldn’t turn around to tell him to stop without risking looking like a conspirator.
He thought about what he must look like to the others—a stiff kid incapable of acting normal, a former fat kid still awkward in his body, a nerd with no style or balls who would never, ever kiss a girl. He’d been insulted and made fun of a thousand times, and he’d hung from the basketball hoop, desperate to shift his hand down to cover his privates but too afraid to fall, but he hadn’t suffered the truest humiliation, because his parents always told him he was worth more than other kids could see. He wasn’t sure he believed that anymore.
He sat up straighter, leaned to the side, and gave Gustavo full view of his paper—the top part, at least. It was a multiple-choice test with a couple of show-your-work problems at the bottom. The multiple-choice alone was enough to get Gustavo to pass. Connell was nervous. He would have been even more nervous if Miss Montero ever even looked his way during tests, but he’d put up such staunch resistance that it must have seemed to her as if the fight on that front had been permanently won.
In the lunchroom Gustavo exulted.
“Man, that was the shit. Cuh-nell!”
“Shh …” Connell tried to play it cool, but he felt exposed. “Keep it quiet.”
“I get you, man.”
A couple of days later, when they had a surprise quiz, Connell waited until he’d finished and then leaned to the side a little. This time Miss Montero snapped, “Eyes on your own paper!” but Gustavo had probably had enough time.
“Cuh-nell!” Gustavo said again, and Connell thought, Con-null. Con-null.
That afternoon, instead of hustling home, he found himself sitting on the rectory steps with them. Some cosmic sleight of hand had deposited him in their midst. He hoped none of them would notice he didn’t belong.
They went to Shane’s apartment to make prank calls. They called Gianni’s and had a pie delivered to the address in the phone book for one of their teachers. They called Antigone Psillos, a good-hearted, untouchably homely girl who had been given the unimaginative nickname of An-pig-o-nee. Pete asked her out, and when she cautiously agreed, he said, “Psych!” and hung up the phone.
“What’s that Chinese kid you hang out with?”
“Who?”
“Your friend,” Shane said. “Elbert. Elbert Lim.”
“He’s not my friend.”
“Whatever. What’s his number?”
“I don’t know,” Connell said.
“Here,” Shane said, passing him the phone. “You dial it. Order some Chinese food.”
The guys were sniggling and slapping their knees. They were in Shane’s living room. His mother worked late, and his father wasn’t even in the country. He was a Marine who’d been in the Gulf War. He was supposed to have come back in March, when the war ended, but he’d been sent to Bangladesh to do relief work after a cyclone. There was a picture of him in his uniform on the wall right above the phone.
“I don’t know the number,” Connell said.
“Bullshit,” Pete said. “You talk to that kid every day.”
“Hang on,” Shane said. “I had to call him once for homework.”
Shane got his address book and dialed the number. He made excited faces as it rang.
“Hello?” he said into the phone. “Is this Chow-Chow Kitchen? I want to order some fried rice and spare ribs.”
The other guys were hooting. Connell tried to smile. Shane had his hand over the receiver. His father, he mouthed.
“No, I said I want to order spare ribs. For delivery.”
Shane slipped into laughter and hung up.
“Call back!” Pete said. He handed Connell the phone. “You call.”
Connell pretended to look at the paper and picked up the receiver. He dialed slowly, made a mistake on purpose and started again. Then he made a genuine mistake, from nerves. Shane grabbed the sheet and dialed. Connell was still holding the receiver. It rang a few times and someone picked up. It wasn’t Elbert’s father. It was Elbert himself now.
“Hello?” the voice said.
Connell was too nervous to speak.
“Hello? Who is this? Can you stop calling, please?”
Elbert hung up.
“He slammed the phone down,” Connell said, hoping that would be enough.
“Call back!”
“Don’t you want to call someone else?”
“Call back!”
Connell took the sheet and dialed the number. The phone rang for a while. He was relieved to have been spared. Then the line clicked on. It was Elbert again.
“You assholes need to leave us alone now. Isn’t your break over at McDonald’s? Oh wait, I forgot. Even McDonald’s wouldn’t hire you. I bet they’d hire your mama, though. By the hour. I hear she comes pretty cheap.”
He’d always appreciated Elbert’s adult air, his razor-sharp intelligence. Now it made him feel ashamed. They were looking at him intently, his new, old friends.
“Say something,” Shane urged.
“I want to order spare ribs and fried rice,” Connell said in a fake voice deeper than his own.
“That’s really funny,” Elbert said. “Original. I’ve never heard that before. Not even once.”
Connell didn’t know what to say. He felt an idiot grin spread across his face. He could feel himself getting dumber. He saw the other faces looking back at him with—could it be?—appreciation. All he could think to do was order more food.
“And some egg rolls,” he said in a fake Chinese accent that made his friends laugh even louder. “And wonton soup.” It made him feel sick to do it—his father would have lost his mind if he knew—but it also felt good to be one of the guys.
“Shane Dunn? Is that you? Pete McCauley?”
He was praying Elbert wouldn’t say his name.
“We’re not even Chinese,” Elbert said. “Not that you idiots would know the difference. We’re Korean. I don’t even like Chinese food. Why don’t you ask for some kimchi? Maybe my mother would make some for your ignorant asses. I could come over and throw it in your face.”
Elbert was like that: pugnacious. Usually it was awesome; now it just scared Connell. Elbert’s mother’s kimchi was delicious. The first time Connell had had it, he’d felt like his mouth was on fire; he’d never had anything so spicy at home.
“Come on, Connell!” Pete shouted. “Say something.”
A hush fell over the guys at this transgression of protocol. They feigned shock and started cracking up.
“Connell? Is that you?”
Connell hung up before he could answer. He knew Elbert wasn’t going to talk to him anymore, so when they told him to call Farshid, he just took the phone and dialed.
“Give me that,” Shane said. “I want to talk to this sand nigger myself.”
Standing beneath his father’s stern portrait, Shane shouted a stream of insults into the phone. He didn’t bother trying to disguise his voice.
When Donny went to the bathroom, Connell stood by the hall door and listened for the sound of a flush or footsteps. He grabbed handfuls of coins from the big bowl on the breakfront, filling his pockets. He had an allowance, but he took the money anyway. It made his stomach ache to do it.
He bought food, comics, baseball cards. At a store on Roosevelt Avenue, he watched some guys buy nunchuks and throwing stars. Then he bought a curved-bladed knife that snapped with a violent click into its protective handle. He brought the knife to school and unzipped his backpack to show his new friends.
“Put that shit away,” Shane said. “How can you be a nerd and so stupid at the same time?”
He didn’t have a game at Elmjack, so he went to the park. All his new friends played hockey. He didn’t have any hockey gear, so he played catch with one of the older guys for a while and then sat and waited.
Afterward they walked up to Northern to Dance Dynamics to watch through the blinds while the girls danced. All the girls he’d ever had crushes on were in that class, and every guy there but him was dating one of them. The class took a break for a few minutes and some girls came outside. He was the only guy not in hockey gear. He tried to hold his glove behind his back. “Baseball’s gay,” he’d heard Shane say, and even though he’d seen how awful Shane was in the field whenever he played softball with the older guys, he still felt like a kid carrying that glove, while the others wore protective padding and towered over him on skates and rollerblades. The girls only glanced at him quizzically, as though waiting for one of the guys to explain why they’d let Connell follow them there.
They headed to the Optimo store to steal. It was coming on evening; he knew he was supposed to have gone shopping for his mother before dinner. He should have left a while ago, but he wanted to preserve his legitimacy by doing everything they did.
The plan was for each of them to take something while the rest distracted Andy the Korean guy behind the front counter and his mother back by the storeroom. They fanned out around the store. Connell stood up front, by the baseball card display case. It wasn’t hard for him to pretend to be interested, because he went in there a lot for comic books and cards. He kept Andy busy by asking a lot of questions, but he didn’t steal anything. He was sure he’d be congratulated anyway for helping the cause, but when they got down the block and showed each other their loot—candy, soda, a thermos—and his hands were empty, they called him a pussy.
They went to Pete’s house a few blocks away. Pete got some liquor bottles out of his parents’ closet and passed them around. Connell wouldn’t take a sip.
“You are such a nerd,” Pete said. “I can’t believe what a nerd you are. What is he doing hanging out with us again?”
Pete looked to Gustavo, who shrugged his shoulders. “My man Connell is helping me out,” Gustavo said, and then he shot Connell a look that said, You have to help yourself out.
They went back out to meet the girls after their dance class. He could imagine what it would feel like to be able to relax, to talk to them as if he had a right to. Once, in seventh grade, he’d called up Christin Taddei at Farshid’s urging and asked her out. The call had ended in humiliation. Now Christin was standing right there. She said something he didn’t understand. He felt like he could barely hear anything, the way the excited blood was coursing through his system.
“You reek,” Christin said again.
“What?”
“You need to use deodorant. Or cologne. Or take a shower.”
The other girls tittered. “I will,” he said. In his embarrassment he could feel his toes curling.
“Damn, yo!” Shane said. “My girl just dissed you hard.”
Shane peeled off with Christin, Pete headed home, and Connell walked down Northern with Gustavo and Kevin. They neared the Optimo store.
“You should have taken something,” Gustavo said. “Everybody else did.”
Dusk was coming on. The store would be closing soon. Andy had his back to the window. He was in college; Connell had seen him wearing an NYU sweatshirt. Connell bought cards from him every day practically, and comics once a month at least. Andy put together a regular bag of comics for him. Sometimes he threw him a free baseball card pack, just for being such a good customer. He liked to watch Connell open packs and find rookie cards.
Gustavo was saying something, but Connell had stopped listening. He walked into the street to get a little distance, turned, and threw the ball he’d been carrying as hard as he could. The big pane shattered with a terrific crash. Sheets of glass fell like icicles.
Gustavo shouted “Holy shit!” and he and Kevin ran down the Boulevard. Connell ran across it into traffic and kept running until he stood in front of his house, alone, his chest pounding. The front door was unlocked. He stood in the vestibule looking out to see if anyone had followed him. He wanted to switch skins with someone else, switch bodies.
His father was on the couch, wearing his headphones, and his mother was in the kitchen cooking what smelled like broccoli and ziti, which was what she whipped up when there was nothing left in the fridge. He said he was home and didn’t answer when she asked where he’d been. He headed to his room. He heard a cop siren outside and started biting his nails. He went into the bathroom and stripped naked and smelled his armpits.
She was right; he did smell. Maybe he was getting ready to stop being such a damned baby about everything. He got in the shower and turned the knob for hot water all the way, with only a little cold to balance it out. The water scalded his skin and he started turning red. Steam billowed out into the room, filling it up.
He couldn’t stop thinking of that window breaking. He could see it happening over and over, the glass caving in, the one big piece dangling and falling off with a crash. They would find the baseball. They would have it dusted for fingerprints. They wouldn’t need fingerprints, because he went in there every day carrying his glove and a baseball. Once, he’d even left his glove there and called in, and they’d held the store open late for him to come get it. He could see Andy shaking his head in wonderment at what the hell had come over this crazy kid. He’d always enjoyed Andy’s sarcasm whenever somebody said something less than intelligent or acted like an ass. Andy was in college but he had to spend all his time entertaining these little kids. Connell could see him banging his fist on the counter. He could see him locking the door and consoling his mother, and then the two of them sweeping up the shards. He pictured him emptying the window display of cards, picking pieces of glass out of boxes of packs, pulling the gate down with a muttered curse. They deserved better than what he’d given them.
He scrubbed himself with punishing quickness, but he could not calm down. He kept thinking of Christin Taddei telling him he reeked. Christin used to date Gustavo before she dated Shane, and some people said she and Gustavo had had sex. She hiked her skirt higher than the other girls did, and her blouse was always a little tight. He had an erection. He grabbed it in that steamy cloud, and after a few quick strokes he brought himself off and watched the viscous stuff disappear down the drain. He rubbed at his hand, trying to get the gluey residue off. He felt even worse now, even more scared. He was guilty, guilty. He would have to get caught. It was only a matter of time. He wanted to get out, get away. High school couldn’t come fast enough, but it would not be sufficient. He wanted to get far away. He never wanted to see Andy or Andy’s mother again. They would carry around the truth about him wherever they went.
He heard a knock at the bathroom door. “Dinner,” was all his mother said, but he felt like he’d been called up before a judge.