Twerp Read online

  The first one was decent enough. It starts off, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” I like that. It says what it says. Except for “thee.” But if that’s how people said “you” back in Shakespeare’s time, then maybe he couldn’t help himself. The rest of it’s like that too. It gets egotistical at the end, when he says that the girl will live forever because of the poem. But you know what? He was right. I just read the poem, and I wound up thinking about the girl, so in a way the girl is still alive. She did live forever. I don’t know if that’s what he meant, but whatever he meant, it’s a decent poem. I was glad I read it.

  The second Shakespeare poem wasn’t as good. It kind of made me mad at him again. It’s the one that starts out, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.” First off, I had to look up about half the words. Second, he rhymes “love” with “remove.” I mean, either you’re writing a rhyming poem or you’re not writing a rhyming poem. You don’t get half credit just because the two words are spelled alike.

  But you know what poem stuck out? “My True Love Hath My Heart” by Sir Philip Sidney. I’d never heard of the guy before, and he’s as old as Shakespeare, but he’s not as complicated or egotistical. The poem was only fourteen lines long … and I got it the first time through. That’s how a poem should work. It’s about a guy and a girl who trade hearts with one another, and how each one takes care of the other one’s heart, and how both hearts ache with love, and how the pain brings them closer together. That’s the entire poem in a nutshell. I read the poem over and over until I could almost recite it with my eyes closed:

  My true-love hath my heart and I have his,

  By just exchange one for the other given:

  I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;

  There never was a bargain better driven.

  His heart in me keeps me and him in one;

  My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:

  He loves my heart, for once it was his own;

  I cherish his because in me it bides.

  His heart his wound received from my sight;

  My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;

  For as from me on him his hurt did light,

  So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart:

  Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,

  My true love hath my heart and I have his.

  It’s kind of humorous, the way it sounds, but also romantic, and it made me think about love and life, which proves you don’t need to get so flowery and so complicated to get your message across.

  So, to come to the point, after a couple of hours of flipping through the poetry book and rolling poems around and around in my head, I got real inspired and sat down to write Lonnie’s love letter to Jillian.

  Here’s what I came up with:

  Dear Jillian,

  Lots of guys only give away their heart if they know they’re going to get a heart in return, so it evens out. But I think giving away your heart means more when you don’t know what’s going to happen, when you might get nothing back. You might have to walk around afterward with a big hole where your heart used to be, knowing a girl has your heart and you’ll never have hers. But it doesn’t matter. Because what good is a heart if you keep it to yourself? So instead of giving you a card this Valentine’s Day, I wanted you to have my heart. Not because I expect your heart in return. But just because I know my heart will be happy if you keep it next to yours for a little while.

  Sincerely,

  Your secret admirer

  After I wrote it down, I read it over a couple of times. Then I typed it up. I figured I had to type it up because girls like to save love letters. Which meant, down the line, Jillian would be able to compare my handwriting to Lonnie’s. I mean, if it ever came to that. Which I still highly doubted.

  The last step was to show it to Lonnie. No way was I going to pass the letter to Jillian until he’d given me the go-ahead.

  He started to nod as soon as he read the first line, and by the end he had a big grin on his face. He said it was as if I’d read his mind. But he also wanted me to put in something about her being cool. He wanted me to use the word “cool.” I told him “cool” didn’t go with the rest of the letter. Lonnie thought about it some more, and then he said that, well, of course I knew best because I was in the gifted class, which he said in a sarcastic way. So in the end I changed the ending to “because I know you’re real cool, and my heart will be happy if you keep it next to yours for a little while”—which meant I had to retype the letter. But I figured he should have the final say-so.

  It was his letter.

  Getting the letter to Jillian was more awkward than I thought it would be. My plan was to get it over with as fast as possible. I was torn between saying “Somebody asked me to give this to you” and “Here, this is for you.” I figured I’d go with whichever felt right at the moment. I waited until right after English period so I knew she’d be in a reading mood, and then I walked up to her with the letter behind my back.

  Jillian looked at me in a strange way, and her face went red even before I started to talk, and that made me feel strange, doing what I was doing. Suddenly, neither of the sentences I’d rehearsed felt right. There was a long pause with the two of us just standing there outside the door of the classroom. The hall was full of kids rushing off to the cafeteria for lunch. But it was like time stopped as I struggled to talk. I mean, it was real uncomfortable. I tried to figure out a gradual way to lead up to slipping her the letter, but nothing came to me. She was looking me right in the eye, and my mind was a total blank.

  Then she said, “Why don’t you ever raise your hand in class?”

  That was just such a weird question. It threw me. “I don’t know.”

  She smiled. “I always raise my hand when I know the answer.”

  “So do I.”

  “Tell the truth!”

  “Maybe I don’t feel like answering the question,” I said.

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  I squinted at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Knowing the answer. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Why would I be ashamed of it?”

  “I don’t know. Why would you?”

  “I’m not ashamed of knowing the answer. I just don’t always like to show it off.”

  “But if you know—”

  “If I know, then I know. And I know I know. That’s enough.”

  “If I know the answer, I want everyone to know I know.”

  “Why?” I asked, not even thinking about the letter anymore.

  “Just because,” she said.

  “That’s not even an answer,” I said, which might have come off as annoyed. If it did, it’s because I was. I still hadn’t given her the letter, and I’d gotten sucked into a conversation that made no sense.

  “But it’s the truth. I always tell the truth.”

  “No one always tells the truth.”

  “I do … except when I don’t.”

  She smiled at me again. I thought she meant it as a joke, but I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t smile back at her. Then came about three seconds in which nothing happened. I felt the letter in my left hand, slightly behind my back, and began to bring it forward. “Look,” I said, “I’ve got—”

  She caught sight of it. Her eyes got real wide. “Did you write me a letter?”

  “Not me.”

  “Did someone write it for you?”

  “What? No.”

  “But it’s for me, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then can I have it?”

  For no good reason, I felt ashamed and looked down. I couldn’t even look her in the eye as I handed the letter to her. She took it from my hand and waved it back and forth. It was as if she was teasing me with it—as if to say she had it now and I couldn’t take it back.

  “It’s not from me,” I blurted out.

  “No?”

  “I
didn’t … it’s not my letter.”

  “Who is it from?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you.”

  “It’s a mystery!”

  “You could think of it like that.”

  “But it’s not from you?”

  “I just said so,” I said.

  “So you didn’t write it?”

  “I said it’s not from me.”

  “Yes, you did,” she said.

  “I’ve got to go—”

  “Goodbye, Julian.”

  “Yeah, goodbye.”

  “Say my name!”

  “Jillian,” I said.

  “Doesn’t that sound weird?”

  “What?”

  “Julian and Jillian.”

  “So what?”

  “It’s like your name is my name inside out.”

  “I guess.”

  There was another awkward pause—a long one.

  Then she asked, “So that’s all you have to say?”

  “I gave you the letter. What else do you want?”

  “Then I should go to lunch.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Do you know what’s for lunch today?”

  “It’s Tuesday. That means turkey hash.”

  “I hate turkey hash,” she said. “It’s so gross.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s disgusting. It grosses me out.”

  “I think it’s all right,” I said.

  “Do you want to walk with me to the cafeteria?”

  “No, I’ve got a few things I need to do first. I’ll be down in a couple of minutes.”

  “Then I guess I’ll see you in social studies.”

  “Right.”

  She started to walk away but then turned around. “That joke about the Indians cracked me up. It even cracked up Mr. Loeb. I was watching him after you said it. He had no right to make you sit in the hall. Your parents pay taxes. You have a right to sit in the classroom.”

  “I shouldn’t have razzed Mr. Caricone,” I said.

  “No, but Mr. Loeb was still wrong to do that.”

  “I felt bad afterward.”

  “Why did you get suspended for a week?”

  “What?”

  “Did you really beat up a kid?”

  “What? No! It was just a neighborhood thing. I never laid a hand on anyone.”

  She smiled at that, like it made a difference. “Goodbye, Julian.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Say my name!”

  “Goodbye, Jillian.”

  “Goodbye, Julian.”

  I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more relieved when a conversation ended.

  February 26, 1969

  Eduardo

  It’s been two weeks now since I handed Jillian the letter, and Lonnie is getting pretty antsy. I knew this would happen, or something like it. Jillian hasn’t said a word about it. It’s like the thing never existed, at least as far as she’s concerned. She says hello to me every morning, strolls over to my desk to ask me about homework or else just to chat about nothing. But the letter never comes up. It’s kind of mean, if you think about it. She knows she’s got a secret admirer, but it’s like it slipped her mind. No skin off my nose, but Lonnie keeps pumping me for information, and I don’t have a clue what’s going on with her. He keeps telling me she looks at him weird when he passes her in the hall, like she’s figured out what we did. But I’m pretty sure that’s just in his head. I’ve checked out her expression a hundred times in class when she’s not looking. There’s no difference from before.

  Besides, I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Shlomo Shlomo told me he was playing tag after school a couple of days ago with a new kid named Eduardo. He’s from Panama or Honduras or somewhere like that. But the thing is, Shlomo said he’s fast. He said I should race him. He said he’d pay to see that race. Except here’s the kicker. Shlomo said Eduardo’s a fifth grader. Which at first I took as a kind of insult. Most of the time, I won’t bother to race a fifth grader. But Shlomo’s not the type to run his mouth just to hear himself talk. There’s usually something to what he says. He said that this kid was not only fast but big, real big, and that maybe he got left back a couple of times.

  So I decided to have a look at this Eduardo. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it—which meant I couldn’t show up with Shlomo because he’d start talking about the race right off, and I wanted to see what I was up against. I waited until after school on Thursday when I knew Shlomo had to rush home for his clarinet lesson. Then I headed out to the playground at the north end of Memorial Field, which is where Shlomo hangs out when he’s not hanging out on the block with us.

  I don’t hang out at Memorial Field a lot because it’s lousy with junior high schoolers, and those guys live for the chance to make the rest of us miserable. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. June rolls around, and a guy graduates from sixth grade, and he’s a decent guy, but the next September, as soon as he walks through the front doors at McMasters, he turns into a beast. The only thing I can figure is that there must be something in the water fountains.

  So I headed out to Memorial Field for a look at Eduardo. He wasn’t hard to find. He was sitting on one end of a seesaw with two fifth graders sitting across from him … and it was balanced. He had to be at least six feet tall. I mean, if I didn’t get a good look at him, I would’ve pegged him for a grown-up. But I did get a good look. I strolled past the seesaw, minding my own business, and sized him up when he wasn’t paying attention. He had no interest in me anyway because he was too busy with his friends, coaching them in Spanish to keep the thing from drifting up or down—or at least, that was what it seemed like from his hand gestures. But then one of his friends started to laugh, and the seesaw started to go down on Eduardo’s side, and he peeled off his overcoat, dropped it to the ground, and then he leaned forward, and the seesaw came even again. He was just dead set on keeping that seesaw even. That was a sure sign, in whatever language, that he was a fifth grader. No one but a fifth grader could get so worked up about something so pointless. On the other hand, your average fifth grader doesn’t have a mustache, which Eduardo kind of did. It was real faint, like a training-wheel mustache. But it was noticeable. He also had long hair, as long as the Beatles’. It was down to his shoulders.

  But here’s the thing: he looked likable. I know that doesn’t paint a word picture of what he looked like. If I were doing a word picture, I’d say he had a dark complexion, with brown eyes and a narrow nose and a large mouth with thick lips—especially the lower lip, which hung down like a flap. It wasn’t the features of his face that made him look likable. It was the expression on his face, a kind of wide-open expression. He looked like whatever was going on inside his head would be right there in his eyes. You’d see it floating on the surface, with nothing hidden. I mean, if you think about it, he could’ve jumped off that seesaw and sent his two friends crashing down—which would be a standard fifth-grader move. But you just knew it was the furthest thing from Eduardo’s mind. It wouldn’t have occurred to him even if the three of them had been up on that seesaw, in perfect balance, for a million years.

  I walked right past the seesaw and sat down at the end of a row of green benches. It was near enough that I could keep an eye on him but still far enough away that he wouldn’t notice me. That’s what I thought. But then, a couple of minutes later, one of Eduardo’s friends got tired of their balancing act and called to him, “C’mon, Eddie. I’m cold. Let’s do something.”

  Eduardo heard that, and right then he turned around and looked straight at me. He knew exactly where I was sitting. It turned out he had noticed me. He’d noticed me from the start. He smiled and said, “Hello, my friend!”

  My first reaction was disbelief. I pointed at myself and said, “Who, me?”

  “Mi amigo.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You want to play tag with us, yes?”

  “Tag?”

  “Sí, it will keep us
warm.”

  “What kind of tag?”

  The question seemed to throw him. He glanced back at his two friends and spoke with them in Spanish. They spoke back to him in Spanish too. Then he turned again to me. “Just tag.”

  “Well, I like wolf tag,” I said.

  “Wolf tag?”

  “You know. Round-up tag.”

  “Ah. But we are only four.”

  “Then you guys go ahead.”

  He shrugged, then turned again to his friends. “Sorry, Paulo. We don’t have enough.”

  Now Paulo, who had curly hair and thick black glasses, glanced over at me. “C’mon, play with us!”

  I sighed to myself. There was no way out. I stood up and pulled off my overcoat.

  Eduardo stretched his legs to the ground and let the two of them climb down from the seesaw first, then stepped off himself. The three of them walked over to me. Eduardo had a wide grin on his face. He stuck out his right hand, and I shook it. “My name is Eduardo—”

  Paulo cut him off. “But you can call him Eddie.”

  “These are my good friends Paulo and Hector.”

  I shook their hands too. It felt like a strange thing to be doing on the playground, shaking hands left and right like we were actors in a play. Hector was around my size, but skinnier. He was as dark-skinned as a Negro kid, which is what I would’ve taken him for, except his hair was straight. Paulo, the one with glasses and curly hair, was maybe three inches shorter. Eduardo towered over all three of us. I had to keep reminding myself that I was a grade ahead of them.

  “I’m Julian.”

  “Ah, Julian.” Eduardo said it as though the j were an h, and he stretched out the last two syllables to make it sound even more Spanish: Hooleeahhnnn. “Do you speak Spanish, Julian?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry.”

  “I will teach you, mi amigo. That means ‘my friend.’ ”

  “Mi amigo,” I repeated.

  He smiled and nodded. “Yes, mi amigo. My friend.”

  Paulo said, “Are we going to play or what?”

  “Yes,” Eduardo said. He glanced left and right with a sly look on his face. His eyes met mine, but only for a split second. Then, without warning, he poked Paulo on the right shoulder and said, “You’re it, my friend.”