Keep Your Friends Close

One of the boys, a pimply galoot with a silver cross dangling from his neck on a chain, had a baseball bat in a homemade sling on his back. We had gathered at the baseball diamond, a middle-school courtroom fit perfectly for these proceedings. Two of his lackeys, a fifth grade boy that lived two houses down from my own and a fellow sixth grader I had never gotten along with well, were holding me over home plate, each one inflicting a painful grip on my arms. I was a scrawny child, a small boy yet to hit his growth spurt, my father barely taller than I was at that age, and the beasts holding me in place were only slightly smaller than their master. Never a very fast runner, I had been caught trying to cut across the field to get to my house before the bully had finished talking to the principal. I had been looking for a means of escape, a course of action more appealing than its alternative, since the moment the bell signaling the end of our English class had rung. Running to the safety of my home was the only plan I had been able to come up with, and it had fallen under the speedy foot of the boy holding my left arm, the fifth grader that would grow up to run track in high school and college. I did not suspect that Fred, an abnormally large boy with an affinity for violence, would have his goons stationed around the school should I attempt to escape; for someone who had to cheat on every English test he had ever taken Fred was surprisingly intelligent. I was kneeling before him that day because I had violated a simple rule; don’t tell the teacher when the bully steals your answers. Being one of a set of ancient tenets put into place by ancestral bullies, this rule had a special place in Fred’s heart.

Fred pulled his Louisville Slugger out of its home on his back and swung it into his hand; the sound of the wooden weapon striking his palm shook me to my core. The bat had clearly been Fred’s nerd beating instrument of choice for the two years he had been enrolled in our school, an elementary to middle-school penitentiary in which I had the displeasure of spending my entire academic life, as maroon-colored stains had become part of its design. My knees digging into the pitcher’s mound, I met Fred’s stare; his eyes, a pair of black holes imploring me to remember what he had told me, were filled with grim satisfaction. Fred had described in colorful detail how and in which order he planned to break my bones, his wording less delicate than my own. He raised the bat into the air, his aim fixed on the bridge of my nose. I closed my eyes, tears streaming down my face, my lip trembling, and waited.