AFTER DINNER, WHEN WE WERE DOING THE DISHES, FRITA WANTED TO know if I was still scared of Terrance. She said it was important because being scared of people was the worst kind of scared, and if I was going to get to the fifth grade, we had better get this one right. I thought it over extra hard, then I told Frita I might still be the teeniest bit afraid.
“Well, how come?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I dunno. He’s pretty grumpy all the time and I don’t think he likes me any. Plus, he beats on you a lot. How come you’re not scared of him?”
Frita gave me a funny look. “Scared of Terrance?” she asked. “He’s not scary. He just beats up on me ’cause I like it, and he’s grumpy all the time because he doesn’t want to go to college, but most of the time he’s okay.”
I wondered if that was true, but Frita put down the last plate and studied me hard.
“We’ve got to fix this,” she said. “You need yourself some insight.”
I groaned. If insight meant looking in at something, I was pretty sure I could do without it. Didn’t seem like I ought to get any closer to Terrance than I already was. But Frita latched onto my sleeve and pulled me down the hall.
When we got to Terrance’s room, she pushed open the door and went straight in without knocking.
“What are you doing?” Terrance growled, like we’d barged in on something top secret. I turned around and started to back out, but Frita stayed put. She also kept her grip on my sleeve, so I was like one of those cartoon characters running in place.
“Gabe’s afraid of you,” she said, just like that. I turned about five shades of red and I could feel all that color creeping from my neck to the very tips of my ears.
Terrance laughed. “Good,” he said.
That’s when Frita started to cry, only it wasn’t real crying, it was fake crying—I could tell—but Terrance didn’t seem to know the difference. He was sitting at his desk, reading a book called What Should I Do With My Life? First he stopped reading, and then he glanced at me. I would have bolted if it hadn’t been for Frita’s tight grip.
“Quit that,” he said to Frita, but he didn’t say it mean. She sniffled.
“I won’t,” she said. “Gabe is my best friend and you’re mean to him. He thinks you hate him.” She threw herself onto Terrance’s bed and muffled her face in his pillow. Terrance just sighed and picked Frita up by the ankles so she was hanging upside down.
“Come on, Frito,” he said. “I don’t hate Gabe. He’s a twerp is all. Quit it.”
Terrance was trying to sound tough like he usually does, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it. His voice was soft instead of rough. He swung Frita up in the air and dumped her on his bed. Frita stopped crying.
“Tell Gabe you like him.”
Terrance made a face, but Frita looked at him with extra-big eyes and stuck one lip out. Terrance glared at her, then at me.
“You’re okay, Twerp,” he said.
“Tell him he can be a Peace Warrior, like us.”
Terrance snorted. “He can try,” he said, like he didn’t believe it, but he didn’t say it mean.
“Tell him he can sit on your bed,” Frita said. Then she giggled, which gave everything away. I could tell Terrance was catching on. He looked at Frita, then back at me, and for a second I thought he was going to pound me for sure. He lunged right toward me just like he lunged toward his punching bags, but then he picked me up, flipped me over, and swung me on the bed, like he’d swung Frita.
“Fine,” he said. “Go ahead. Sit on the bed if you want.” Only this time he was almost laughing. All the color drained from my face, then filled back in again. I landed on the bed with a bounce. Maybe Frita was right. It was kind of fun getting tossed around like that.
Frita hopped off, but Terrance grabbed her round the waist and flung her up again.
“Come on, Frito. You said you wanted to sit on my bed. Go ahead. Put your stinky, dirty feet all over it.”
Frita was giggling something fierce now and I slid off the bed purely on accident. Terrance grabbed me up like I weighed nothing and threw me in a heap on his pillow.
“You gotta stay there now. Frito says you want to sit on my bed, so you better sit on my bed.”
Frita hopped off again and he flung her back on, and then we both hopped off and he caught one of us in each arm and flung us both.
“I’m twerp lifting,” he said. “How much you weigh, Twerp? Eighty pounds? I bet I could bench-press eighty pounds.”
Terrance picked me up and pretended like he was lifting a real heavy weight. Frita screamed and knocked him in the stomach with a pillow. Terrance said “Oof” and then he started to topple while he was still holding me in the air, and I screamed because I thought he was going to drop me for real, only he didn’t and next thing you know, me and Frita were both pounding him with pillows.
That’s when Mrs. Wilson came by and stood in the door. “Mmm mmm mmm,” she said, shaking her head, but she was smiling too, like everything might turn out okay after all.