The vice-principal hollered at Roger and I when we pulled up, thoroughly windblown, twenty minutes later.

�I hope you boys realize that you are extremely late for homeroom!� he barked at us as we got out.

I vaporized into a quivering shadow behind Roger, who shrugged and replied, �Sorry, sir, traffic was just horrid by the reservoir!� and skipped into the building.

Once in the main office we parted ways, heading to separate floors for what was left of our homeroom (being the first day, homeroom had been extended for all the students to get acquainted with their schedules and such). The teacher glared at me as I sheepishly entered and apologized for being so late. She handed me my schedule, and I sat down, crimson, in the only empty seat in the class as the entire homeroom gawked at me.

�The hell happened to your hair?� Pete asked, poking me from behind. �Why are you so late?�

I shrugged, trying in vain to comb my hair back to decency with my fingers.

Homeroom ended a few minutes later, and it was off to another year of classes. I found Marguerite at my elbow once more, just as rail-thin and with the same wild black curls and Energizer Bunny mouth as I remembered. I forced a smile as she talked me to the third floor for English. Just how DID that girl manage to get into all my classes every year? Did she pay off the guidance counselor or something?

�You know your hair is a little funky?� she informed me, reaching up and patting a flyaway lock back in place.

First days are usually pretty uneventful. You meet the teachers, collect syllabuses, and get a seat assigned you. Always alphabetically, too, for the first quarter or so. Being �Redde� I was always in the back, more often than not in view of a window, which was a bad thing for a dreamer like me. Blah blah blah, went Mr. This and Miss That as they discussed the upcoming year, but my mind was still out on the open road with Roger and Dolores.

I always tell myself that I�m going to make the new school year great. I�m going to be different this year! I�m going to be cool for once, outgoing instead of shy, spacey, and blush-prone. I�m going to make friends with everyone and get a girlfriend and my life will be perfect. Then that year comes and I�m still a doormat to be walked on and a bundle of social-phobic nerves. It bothers me, for I know that eventually I�m going to run out of �next years� and will only have the sucky years to look back on.

The bell rang. Another period spent daydreaming, soon to be another year spent lost in my head.

Pete and the horndog brigade, minus the Dombrowski boys who had third lunch, caught up with me at lunch and kidnapped me to their table. As tradition, they wedged me in between them and went through my lunch box, making fun of it and sampling my meal. Peeved, I snatched my Ziploc of cookies from Marcus, and he grabbed my wrist and twisted my arm against the table. I yelped, and they all sneered and chortled.

Suddenly a hand grabbed hold of Marcus�s scruffy black hair and yanked his head backwards. Marcus hollered and instinctively released my arm. As he did, the other force�Roger, his thick brows knitted with disgust and anger�let go of his scalp.

�The hell is your problem?!� Marcus screeched, rubbing his head. Roger, narrow-eyed, blatantly ignored him and tapped my collarbone.

�Hey, Arik, I got first lunch, too, come sit with me.�

Needless to say, I fairly leaped to my feet, lunchbox in hand.

Pete grabbed my shirtsleeve. �Hey, Redde, what gives? You sit with US!� he commanded. �You HAVE to! You ALWAYS do!�

�Oh, well�!� I said, too meek to argue directly. Like I said, I am a doormat.

�Sorry, buckos, you�ll have to find a new punching bag,� Roger snapped, and he grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me away from the table.

He directed me to the far end of the cafeteria and plopped me down at a table of mammoth upperclassmen.

�Hey, this is my man Arik,� Roger said to the staring faces. The wall of foreign faces flickered into a few smiles as they introduced themselves. Unfamiliar faces, but ones I knew I should probably learn: the girls with the makeup and fancy hair, the boys with the gel and spikes. The �in� crowd. An attractive, sharp-faced boy with silvery hair glared at me. I smiled back meekly, eyes on the green tabletop. I felt tiny. I may as well have been Roger�s kid brother, I thought disgustedly.

�Dude,� Roger said through a mouthful of turkey sandwich a few minutes later, �why d�you let those oafs harass you like that?�

I stared at the tabletop again, cheek on fist. �Well, they�re my friends. Been that way since first grade,� I droned softly.

Roger snorted loudly. �Friends? Yeah, some friends. Look, why don�t you sit with me and my pals from now on?�

So I did. Roger stole my Oreos on a daily basis. The girls at the table took a liking to me and once braided my hair at lunch. Pete and the brigade taunted me when they saw me in line, always trying to coax me back to their table. They never succeeded. My lunch period for tenth grade was fairly uneventful.

The rest of that day is a blur in my memory. It was probably boring. Immediately after school I went to soccer tryouts.

That I remember. Mainly I remember the sick feeling that permeated through my entire body.

It was something I�d felt during the summer, during my soccer camp under the blistering summer sun. When it gets hot, boys take their shirts off. It�s just what they do. I do it too, when I�m allowed to at practice, and often on the ship. I�m not skinny or terribly self-conscious, and it amuses me when the girls point and giggle at us. They like to see athletic male flesh.

I think I like it, too.

Roger�s body is beautiful. His torso is lean and angular and long, his pecs round, and a six-pack of muscles evident on his stomach. He�s older and more physically mature than all of us, so he has a man�s body, one that should be modeling swimsuits. The first time I saw him take his shirt off my body tingled from my gut to my fingertips, and I flushed. I didn�t know why, but I did. After we went swimming he would stretch out on a lawn chair, and I would try not to stare at his chest, with the water dripping down around his smooth muscles in transparent rivulets that glistened in the sunlight. I�d try not to look at him altogether, because my stomach would feel weird, and I�d end up staring off into space or closing my eyes. Even though I really did want to look at him.

Not just him, though. On our summer team there were other boys, attractive and well formed like Roger. As the temperatures soared and other boys abandoned their shirts, I�d find a prick of a hope at the back of my mind that my favorites would take their shirts off too. But as soon as I realized the thought I�d squelch it, and punish myself, and tell myself not to think disgusting crap like that.

What the hell was wrong with me? My confused hormones were not amusing�it�d been a few years now since I hit puberty, shouldn�t they have fixed themselves by now?

But I never wanted to think about what it might mean, could never bear even entertaining the thought. That couldn�t be the case. There was no way something that hideous and putrid could apply to me. I�d tell myself that, repeatedly, and then I�d stop thinking about it. It was the only way I knew how to deal with it.

Tryouts were easy. This year�s crop of freshmen to the team was nothing special. They were all so little. I wondered if I�d looked that short the previous year. Coach O�Donnell paired me up with some of the boys who had potential, as I seemed to have taken Roger�s place as the star of the team. This acknowledgment flattered me, but I would�ve much preferred been on the team with him. I watched his tryouts with the Varsity team on the other field as I waited in line, bored. They had started before ours and thus it ended earlier, and the players watched us from behind the fence.

I played my best nonetheless, and I made every goal and caught every pass and Coach kept calling �That�s the way, Arik!� The Varsity coach, Peters, strode out into the field towards the end of practice and stood next to Coach O�Donnell for the rest of the tryouts, watching and murmuring to him.

The two coaches approached me as I gathered my ball, bag, and water bottle to leave. �You�ve really got superb skills, Arik,� Coach Peters told me, and he asked if I would consider playing for Varsity. Roger and I stopped for an ice cream on the way home after that.

It amazes me how things work out sometimes.

Chapter Seven...