"BUT SCORPIONS DON'T HAVE BONES," I said the next day at lunch. "They have a shell, right? Like armor. They're arachnids. They don't have any bones."
Up till then I thought Relly was just plain weird. But I didn't know how weird till he started explaining the name. "Don't you see?" he said, whispering like it was some earthshattering secret. "That's what makes the name so cool. It's something that doesn't exist but it's real. Like if scorpions had bones, what would they be? They'd be us."
Butt took two pieces of baloney off his sandwich and ripped holes in the middle. Then he slapped them on his face like a mask and started singing the old Batman theme music.
"I don't get it. How can something be real and not real at the—"
"That's the whole point."
We were in the cafeteria, me and Butt and Relly, at a table off in the corner. "Did you believe in Santa Claus when you were little?" He didn't let me answer. "You sure did. And it was cool, right? Some fat magic maniac comes out of the sky with presents and a sleigh and zero-gravity reindeer. Christmas Eve was the best, right? But it's not real. Not like school and pizza and scumpack teachers yelling is real. So our name is ten times more cool. Like in some other world scorpions do have bones."
In some other world? "What are you talking about?"
"Nothing is what it seems to be," Relly leaned close and whispered. "You know, like the whole world is wearing camouflage. Everything and everyone is hiding." Butt wasn't paying much attention. He could only take so much of this weirdness. "They're all like puppets. Only, they don't want you to see their strings. Every person in the world. They all tell lies. They all wear a mask."
Butt nodded, then pulled off his baloney disguise and grinned. Relly pointed over to a table where some of the popular kids were sitting. Good-looking football players, girls with beautiful hair and clear skin and perfect figures. "In a couple years," Relly told me. "They'll all be pumping gas or working as a greeter at K-Mart. 'Hello, have a wonderful day!'" He sneered the words. "And you know where I'll be?"
"No," I said, edging a little closer.
"I don't know, either. But wherever it is, I'll be big. I can tell you that. I will be immense. "He said that word like a challenge, like he dared anyone to disagree. "I will be so big, all those jocks and jockesses won't even be able to see me. Like ants can't see a person, just a huge shadow looming over before you squash them flat. I will be so big that these losers who think they're such winners won't even recognize me."
One minute I thought he was pathetic. And the next he seemed awesome. Then he was both at the same time. A whispering scrawny kid with a fiery look in his eye.
"Now that we're together, the four of us, it's gonna start. The big time. The biggest thing you ever saw." He kept watching me as he talked, waiting for me to laugh or say this was all stupid. But I didn't.
"It's the Ghost Metal thing," he said. "When we really get cranking, the four of us, we can cross over to the other side, the other world."
He needed Scorpio Bone with him. That's what he said, sitting there watching the clock in the cafeteria. Going over to "the other world" was too dangerous just by himself. "Four sides of the square to make it safe. Seeing in all four directions.
It takes four and no more.
It takes four to win the war."
Were these lyrics from some song he'd written?
I didn't find out that day. The bell rang and we pushed back from the table. Relly went to math and I had English.