After Trip had pedaled off on his bike, meandering up the street toward his house to sit in the air-conditioning and watch the Phillies game with his dad, Tabby and I settled into a more casual home run derby in the circle that afternoon. The September sun still sat above the tree line, baking the street and our shoulders, and the sky was the kind of deep, cloudless blue that made you dizzy to look at for too long.
“Rebecca will not shut up about Michael Martinez. It’s driving me crazy.” I lobbed another easy one as Tabby talked. “They’ve been going out for, what, like, a week? She’s already sending me pictures of prom dresses. It’s ridiculous.”
“You can’t stand in the way of true love,” I said. She ignored me.
“Plus, that kid’s a complete perv-ball. Have you seen what he does on his phone at lunch?”
I had. But I didn’t say so.
I kept lobbing easy ones to Tabby, who hit them without much effort, gabbing away. We had no classes together that year, for the first time, and I relished the chance to hear her take on new teachers and classmates and drama. I always loved listening to Tabby; it was like she gave me this window into the normal social world.
My moment of machismo had passed, at least for the time being, and I felt almost like my normal self again. I still felt like an idiot, granted—not helped by the fact that every few minutes, Tabby would start giggling again, right before I’d toss her an acorn, and reenact Trip’s beaning with uncanny realism.
“Watch it, pal,” I said to Tabby after her third reenactment while she sat on the street laughing. “I’m dangerous with these things. I’m not scared to give you the heater, too.” I wound up and pretended to go full force at Tabby, easing up at the last second and lobbing the acorn at her where she sat. She squealed mid-laugh, throwing her hands up over her head for protection as though she were swatting at an invisible mosquito. The acorn plunked off her shoulder and onto the ground in front of her.
“You turd.” She picked up the acorn and fired it back in my direction from where she still sat.
“That’s right, there’s more where that came from,” I said, reaching for another acorn as Tabby got to her feet.
“Oooooh, can I have some, then?”
Tabby and I both turned at the sound of this new voice as Corey Sheridan coasted into the circle on his BMX, two of his buddies in tow. They rode up a few yards behind me and stopped, Corey leaning forward, his elbows resting on his handlebars. He smiled as Tabby and I watched them in silence.
“How’s it going, kids? Playin’ a little Wiffle ball?” He kept smiling, a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Now, in an audio recording of this exchange, Corey Sheridan would sound friendly and sincere, almost like an uncle dropping by for a visit.
But I should tell you that Corey Sheridan is not a nice person. And by that I mean that Corey Sheridan is a giant fucking asshole.
When Corey and his buddies weren’t smoking weed from his parents’ stash, they would cruise through neighborhoods on their bikes, loudly telling one another hilarious stories about all the times they’d been giant fucking assholes, all while searching for new opportunities to be giant fucking assholes.
It looked like we were their opportunity that day.
Sadly, Corey Sheridan was also three years older than me—two grades ahead. His buddies I recognized as eighth graders, a year ahead of me, but I didn’t know them much beyond that. At fifteen, Corey Sheridan was good-looking and well-built, with shaggy hair and piercings.
Even now, I see older, popular, otherwise intelligent girls fawn over him in the hallways at school, petting his shaggy hair, giggling at his alarmingly honest comments about them and their bodies, squealing—Ohmigod, Corey, stop!—when he openly tries to get them to touch his dick at his locker.
Yeah, not a nice guy.
“You aren’t going to let us play? Your game looks really awesome.”
Corey leaned forward on his handlebars, still smiling, still—to an outside listener—sounding sincere. It’s what made him such a gifted giant fucking asshole—his ability to look and sound like he really wanted to be buds, to join in and be part of our fun.
And, you know, if I had said, “Sure, Corey, you’re up after Tabby. She gets one more good one, and then it’s your turn,” there’s a good chance he would’ve hopped off his bike and taken a few good hacks and enjoyed it. But I didn’t say that, because even if he did join in, it wouldn’t be to be a part of our fun. It wouldn’t be to shamelessly enjoy imagining himself as a big leaguer crushing a baseball for real, or to enjoy listening to a friend’s analysis of the latest drama in the seventh grade. It would be to make us feel stupid. To make a show of really enjoying himself, rounding our imaginary bases and high-fiving his laughing buddies, so that it was clear to everyone in that circle—without ever directly saying the words—that we were still lame-ass little kids.
And I fucking hated that.
So I didn’t say, “Sure, Corey,” when he smiled and asked to play.
But I didn’t do anything awesome, either.
I did what I always do when I am simultaneously pissed off and terrified of confrontation: I turned away and told him to go fuck himself under my breath.
Which was the response Corey was hoping for.
“What was that?” he said, smiling wider, turning his head to the side to hear me better, side-eyeing Tabby still sitting on the curb. When I didn’t reply—just looked away, my face burning with shame—he coasted up next to me on his bike.
He was shirtless, and up close I could see the defined lines of his chest and abs, the scabs on his elbows and forearms, the five inches of underwear showing above his worn white skater jeans, his cell phone protruding from his front pocket. He was the complete opposite of me: gangly twelve-year-old limbs like paper towel tubes sticking out of a baggy Franklin Middle School T-shirt and mesh shorts that were probably getting too short for my rapidly growing legs.
“I’m sorry, bro, I missed that. I couldn’t hear what you said to me.”
I felt weightless, my entire body trembling, like tiny needles were pricking every inch of my body. I swear, it felt like he sat there on his bike for an hour, waiting for me to say something. My ears were ringing, and I couldn’t get myself to even look up from his spokes. My throat couldn’t take in air, let alone talk; had I opened my mouth, my voice would have caught. I would have choked, and hot tears of humiliation would have spilled down my cheeks—in front of Corey Sheridan, in front of Tabby, in front of the two eighth-grade douche bags who’d now have a reason to remember my face at school.
Tabby stood, the red bat resting on her pink shoulder, her other hand on her hip, clearly unimpressed by Corey Sheridan or his little posse. “Go home and smoke some more weed, loser.”
Corey turned his full attention now to Tabby. He smiled that same empty smile, and his eyes moved slowly down over her body, blatantly lingering on what he felt were the important parts, before lazily resting on her face again.
“You know, if you grow some tits, I’ll let you suck my dick.”
Tabby took one step off the curb, but stopped when his buddies burst out laughing on their bikes behind me. Tabby did her very best to remain unaffected by this, to still appear unimpressed, but I caught her flinch, no more than a couple of extra blinks, her eyes dropping for the briefest moment. Corey caught it, too—he’d spent the better part of his useless life making kids weaker than him feel this way. He knew he’d cut her.
A decade of catching fireflies and filling water balloons, of neighborhood hide-and-go-seek tag and home run derbies, of lying around talking about what we’ll do when we’re older. And he just rode in and shit on all of it.
Tabby opened her mouth to speak, the corners trembling, and that’s when I found my voice again.
“Hey, that’s what I said to your mom last night, bro.”
It didn’t feel as good as I’d hoped. I was out of my depth here. For one, I’d never said bro in my life, and it sounded as stupid as it felt coming out of my mouth.
But I didn’t want them to just leave, to finish laughing and ride away on their bikes and let Tabby and me get back to our day. I wanted to beat them at their own game. I wanted to match Corey’s cutting, shaming insults, and smile as I did it. To have his ears burn red and the corners of his mouth tip down, watch him pedal away swearing under his breath. And that was my mistake. Because I don’t have it in me to be Corey Sheridan, and Corey Sheridan didn’t give two shits about me—probably didn’t even know my name. I couldn’t beat Corey Sheridan at being Corey Sheridan.
He had my shirt in his fist the moment bro fumbled out of my mouth.
“You want to talk so we can hear you now, bro?” he said, emphasizing bro, pulling me to within inches of his face, where his bloodshot eyes stared right through mine.
Tabby moved closer—I think everyone was assuming she’d beg Corey to stop, and complete the humiliating scene as scripted. But Tabby didn’t follow the script.
She said nothing. She swung. Hard.
The bat slammed into Corey’s right arm, the dented plastic barrel and duct-taped head finally giving way. And though it probably didn’t hurt Corey that much, the effect was awesome: on impact, golf balls shot out in all directions, bouncing and colliding all around us and ricocheting off their bikes.
She’d gone Graig Nettles on his ass.
Corey fell to the side, tripping over his bike, and had to catch himself with his hands on the street to keep from tumbling, his bike clattering to the pavement.
When he stood back up, he looked around him, breathing heavily, brushing his hands off on the back of his jeans. Half the golf balls were still rolling toward the curb, the only sound in the circle. His eyes locked onto mine for a moment and then onto Tabby’s, and in that instant, Corey looked like the stupid little kid.
Tabby was a freaking hero.
“Fucking bitch!”
With one fast step, he shoved Tabby to the ground. Tabby flew backward, landing hard on her elbows to keep her head from smacking the pavement. Corey’s buddies shook their heads at us and, possibly sensing that this had gone too far, that maybe shoving a twelve-year-old girl to the street was out of bounds even for giant fucking assholes, turned on their bikes and started pedaling up the street. Corey got back on his bike, a sneer on his lips, but didn’t look up or say anything else to us and rode up the street after his buddies.
I ran over to Tabby and knelt down beside her, taking in the blood forming on her elbows. “Tabby, that was the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen.”
She laughed, turning her head away from me, her eyes closed, tears and snot now running freely. And I knew she was okay.
“Thanks for saving me, bro.” She laughed again.
“Hey! I was about to give him a titty-twister when you went all apeshit on him with the bat.” She was laughing harder now, smiling up at me, squinting into the sky, her face a blotchy mess. So I kept going. “It would’ve been a good one, too, with no shirt on. I could’ve ripped that fucker clean off.” I pinched the air above Tabby’s head and pretended to pluck Corey Sheridan’s nipple off his chest. “Pop it in my mouth, chew on it like an eraser, and spit it back in his face.”
“Ewww, you’re making it worse!” Tabby put her hand over her mouth, eyes squinting back more tears.
“Too far?”
“Too far,” she said, sitting up and examining her elbows for the first time.
“Come on,” I said, pulling her to her feet. “My mom can clean you up.”
“Know what I could use right now?”
“Nerds?”
“Ewoks.”