Here’s what you have to understand: I’m a PK, a preacher’s kid. My dad, Matthew Hopkins, is the rector of East Valley Church, which is on Washington Street, which is in our town, which is Sawnee, which is a small place of about seven thousand people in upstate New York. And see, when you’re sixteen and your dad is a preacher—and you live in a small town so everybody knows who he is and who you are—there’s a lot of pressure on you. It’s not that anyone expects you to be perfect or anything. You don’t have to be brilliant. You don’t have to be an athlete. You don’t have to get great grades in school. All you have to do is—well, nothing. Or nothing wrong, that is. You can never, ever do anything wrong. Ever. Other kids can get into trouble, get sent to the principal’s office, get a little wild sometimes. But not you, not the PK. See, people like to gossip about the preacher. Since he’s always reminding them to be moral and good, they get kind of a thrill out of it when they find out his life isn’t perfect. And if you—the preacher’s kid—get in trouble, everyone will start whispering to one another: Did you hear about the preacher’s kid? Tsk, tsk, tsk, Reverend Matt’s boy has really gone off the rails . . . It makes your father look bad. It makes your mother upset and angry. And it makes you feel like the worst person on earth. Trust me on this.
So, on the one hand, there’s all this pressure to be good. But then, on the other hand, you don’t want to be too good. You don’t want to be so good you can’t be . . . well, ordinary. One of the guys. You don’t want the other kids to feel like they have to fall silent whenever you walk by or stop telling the joke they were telling or say “Excuse me” to you after they curse or something as if you were their maiden aunt and had never heard a bad word before.
It can be a problem. Like, with girls, for instance. I can’t help noticing that a lot of the girls in school are very polite to me. I mean, very polite. Extra polite. Too polite. Like I’m their best friend’s little sister or something. Like I’m their mother’s good china and they want to be careful not to break me. Now and then, for instance, I’ll be looking at a girl . . . Okay, specifically I’ll be looking at Zoe Miller. Because I have what is technically called “a major thing” for Zoe Miller. Because Zoe Miller happens to be insanely cute and nice. She’s got this short black hair and these big green eyes and this pug nose with freckles on it and this smile that makes you feel like she really means it. And the thing is, when she’s with most people, she’s really funny too. Not funny like a circus clown or anything, but just kind of good-natured and teasing and easygoing and comical. People are always laughing when she’s around. She’s fun to be with, that’s what I’m trying to say.
So anyway, I’ll be looking at Zoe when she’s talking to—let’s say, for instance—Mark Sales. Mark Sales, the star runner on our track team. Mark Sales, who set a new school record in the 3,000-meter steeplechase of eleven minutes and five seconds. Mark Sales, who’s seventeen and nearly six feet tall and whose teeth practically flash and sparkle when he smiles, so that girls wait until he walks by and then clutch their books and look up to heaven with their mouths open as if some sort of miracle has occurred just because he said hello to them. And don’t get me wrong: Mark is a great guy, a really nice guy—but somehow that only makes the whole situation worse . . .
So, as I was saying, I’ll be looking at Zoe when she’s talking to Mark Sales. And Zoe will be all relaxed and easygoing and joking around like she usually is. And Mark and his track-star pals, Nathan Deutsch and Justin Philips, will all be laughing around her with their sparkly teeth. It’ll just be cute Zoe and the Big Men on Campus standing around the school hallway having a blast. Right?
Then I walk by.
And I say, “Hey, guys.”
And suddenly everyone stops laughing. Everyone kind of clears his or her throat and they all glance at one another. It’s as if I’d caught them doing something really embarrassing.
And then Mark says, “Hey, Sam.” In this sort of formal way.
And Nathan and Justin mutter, “Hey.” Because they’re not as good at pretending to be relaxed as Mark is.
And then finally Zoe smiles at me, but it’s not her supergreat smile that she gives to everyone else. It’s this ever-so-polite smile. And she says, “Oh, hello, Sam. It’s nice to see you,” in such a polite, formal, inoffensive, and not-joking way that I really would prefer it if she just took out a gun and shot me dead on the spot.
That’s what I’m talking about. Being a preacher’s kid. It can be a problem.
So you might be wondering: What has this got to do with Jeff Winger? With me saying I would be friends with Jeff Winger?
Well, okay, since you ask, here’s the answer: whatever else you could say about him, Jeff Winger was not a preacher’s kid. Jeff Winger didn’t have a father at all as far as anyone could tell, and he only lived with his mother when he could find her. As a result, Jeff didn’t have to worry about being a good guy all the time. Good guy? He was a full-blown juvenile delinquent! He had once been arrested for stealing a car. He had once been arrested for driving under the influence—under the influence of what, I’m not entirely sure, but it must’ve been pretty influential because he piled his cousin’s pickup fender-first into a lamppost. What else? Oh yeah, Jeff had been suspended from school twice or maybe three times for various reasons: fighting, smoking, carrying a weapon—a knife, I think it was. And one time he had shown up for first period with his face a mass of purple bruises—the rumor was he had taken part in a knock-down, drag-out brawl at the Shamrock, a nasty bar over in Ondaga, one town over.
So that was Jeff Winger. And again, the big question: Why would I have any reason to want to be friends with a thug like that?
Well, for one thing, I couldn’t help noticing that girls didn’t fall silent around Jeff. They didn’t treat Jeff like their best friend’s little sister. Not at all. Girls loved Jeff. Okay, not all girls. Not—just to be completely accurate—any of the girls I was particularly interested in knowing. But still, they were girls, which is no small thing, and they just loved him. No kidding.
One day I remember I was sitting in algebra class. And unfortunately, at Sawnee High School, algebra is taught by Mr. Gray, who is every inch as exciting as his name suggests. You know the sound a lawn mower makes when someone’s cutting the grass about halfway down the block? Like: uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh? That’s how Mr. Gray talks.
So anyway, Mr. Gray was droning on in that uuuuuu–hhhhh voice about how some imaginary guy named John Smith took a job and received a three percent raise in salary every four years—which, by the way, sounded like a pretty crummy job to me. And the numbers and letters Mr. Gray was scrawling on the whiteboard were beginning to blur in front of my eyes into a single hazy shadow. And after a while I sort of turned and glanced out the window, hoping there might be an alien invasion or nuclear war or something distracting out there to keep me awake. And instead, far across the track field, I saw Jeff out by the bleachers with Wendy Inge. And to put it bluntly, Wendy Inge was hanging from his lips like a cigarette.
Now, again, let me emphasize: Wendy Inge is not a girl I really want to know very well. In fact, she’s not someone I even want to stand very close to. All I’m saying is: she was a girl and she wasn’t being superpolite or formal or saying, “Oh, hello, Jeff,” like he was her maiden aunt. Nobody ever mistook Jeff for anybody’s maiden aunt.
So sometimes I couldn’t help thinking: Hey, if I could learn to be just a little more like Jeff, then maybe people wouldn’t expect me to be so nice all the time. Maybe people would feel more relaxed around me. Maybe they could clown around with me like they do with everyone else. Maybe Zoe would laugh with me the way she laughs with Mark Sales.
And that’s why, when Jeff Winger asked me if I wanted to be one of his friends—that’s why I said, “Sure. Okay.” Because I was thinking: Hey, maybe this is my chance. Maybe this is exactly what I need in my life. Maybe I can learn something important from these guys.
Like I said: stupid. Very.