Neal Shusterman: Bruiser

If he touches her, I swear I’m going to rip out his guts with my bare hands and send them to his next of kin for lunch.

What is my sister thinking? This guy—this looooser—has got no business breathing the same air as her, much less taking her out on a date. Just because he asked doesn’t mean she has to accept.

“Are you afraid that if you say no, he’ll bury you in his backyard or something?” I ask the question over dinner, while I’m still steaming from the news.

My sister, Brontë, gives me a look that says Excuse me, but I can take care of myself, and she says, “Excuse me, but I can take care of myself.” She learned that look from our mother, God rest her soul. I give Brontë back a look that says I think not, and I say, “You gonna eat that piece of pizza?”

Brontë peels off the cheese, throws it on Dad’s plate, and eats the bread. She’s on a high-carb diet, which basically means she eats everything that Dad can’t on his low-carb diet. It makes them part of an evolved symbiotic relationship. That’s science. Just because I’m an athlete doesn’t mean I don’t have brains.

Mom, God rest her soul, is still on the phone. She’s negotiating with the next-door neighbor, hoping to get him to stop mowing his lawn at seven AM on Sunday morning. I don’t know why she needs the phone; we can hear the other end of the conversation through the window. In order to get to the point, Mom has to strategically weave around the field, breaking down the neighbor’s defenses by talking gossip and being generally friendly. You know—lulling the guy into a false sense of security before going in for the kill. It’s such an all-important conversation that Mom had to order a pizza rather than cook. She also had to order it online, since she was already on the phone.

Mom doesn’t cook anymore. She does nothing much motherly or wifely anymore since Dad did some unmentionables during his midlife crisis. Brontë and I have become convinced that Mom, God rest her soul, kind of died inside and hasn’t come back from the dead yet. We keep waiting, but all we get is Domino’s.

“I’m sixteen,” Brontë says. “I can spend time with whoever I want.”

“As your older brother, it’s my sacred duty to save you from yourself.”

She brings her fists down on the table, making all the dinner plates jump. “The ONLY reason you’re fifteen minutes older than me is because you cut in front of the line, as usual!”

I turn to our father, searching for an ally. “So Dad, is it legal for Brontë to date out of her species?”

Dad looks up from his various layers of pepperoni and breadless cheese. “Date?” he says. Apparently the idea of Brontë dating is like an electromagnet sucking away all other words in the sentence, so that’s the only word he hears.

“You’re not funny,” Brontë says to me.

“No, I’m serious,” I tell her. “Isn’t he like… a Sasquatch or something?”

“Date?” says Dad.

“Just because he’s big,” Brontë points out, “that doesn’t mean he’s apelike; and anyway, you’re the lowest primate in our zip code, Tennyson.”

“Admit it—this guy is just one more stray dog for you!”

Brontë growls at me, like one of the near-rabid creatures she used to bring home on a regular basis. Our house used to be a revolving doggy door, until Mom and Dad put their feet down and we became fish people.

“Is this a boy we know?” Dad asks.

Brontë sighs and gnaws her cheeseless pizza in frustration.

“His name is Brewster Rawlins, and he is nothing like what people say about him.”

This is not the way to introduce your father to a prospective boyfriend, and I figure maybe Dad might be terrified enough to forbid her to date him.

“Exactly what do people say about him?” Dad asks. Dad always begins sentences with the word exactly when he suspects he doesn’t want to hear the answer. I snicker, knowing that Brontë is stuck; and she punches me on the shoulder.

What do they say about the Bruiser? I think. What don’t they say? “Let’s see…in eighth grade he was voted Most Likely to Receive the Death Penalty.”

“He’s quiet,” says Brontë. “He’s inscrutable, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. You know what they say: Still waters run deep—”

“—and are full of missing persons.” Brontë hits me on the shoulder again. “Next time,” she says, “I’ll use your lacrosse stick.”

“Inscrutable…,” Dad says, mulling over the word.

“It means ‘hard to understand,’” shouts Mom from across the room as if he didn’t know. Mom never passes up a good opportunity to make Dad look stupid.

“Your mother,” grumbles Dad, “knows full well that inscrutable was one of my words.”

“Nope,” says Mom, “it was one of mine.”

They’re referring to the vocabulary curse Brontë and I have been under since kindergarten. Mom and Dad alternate in force-feeding us one power word every day, which we are expected to swallow without vomiting. That’s what you get when both of your parents are professors of literature. That, and being named after dead writers. Very aberrant, if you ask me (Mom’s word). As teachers, however, they should have realized that Tennyson Sternberger would not fit on a Scantron.

“The Bruiser comes from a screwed-up family,” I tell Dad. “They’re a bunch of nut jobs.”

“Oh,” says Brontë, “and we’re not dysfunctional?”

“Only your father,” says Mom. “But apparently he’s taken care of it.”

Mom could have been a great sniper if she had chosen that line of work. Every time she gets off a nice one, it gives me hope that her soul might be reviving.

As for the Bruiser, he has no mother. No father either. No one knows what the deal is there. All people know is that he lives with his uncle and an eight-year-old brother who looks like he’s being raised by wolves. And this is the family Brontë wants to date into. My sister obviously was never visited by the common sense fairy.

“Exactly when were you planning to see this boy?” Dad asks.

“He’s taking me miniature golfing on Saturday afternoon.”

“Real high-class,” I say.

“You shut up!”

And I do, because now I know everything I need to know about her so-called date.

I take my girlfriend, Katrina, to play miniature golf Saturday afternoon. Is it coincidence, or is it design? You tell me.

“Must we?” she asks when I suggest it.

“We must,” I answer, and offer no further explanation. Her hatred of miniature golf, I think, is born of the fact that her father golfed away her entire childhood instead of spending it at home. I suppose Wackworld Miniature Golf Emporium is a reminder of those dark times.

“It’s a happy place,” I tell her. “You can’t hate Wackworld; it’s like hating Disneyland.”

“I hate Disneyland,” she says, although she won’t tell me why. Actually, I’m afraid to find out.

“Okay, I’ll go,” she tells me, “as long as we don’t keep score.” And since my motives have nothing to do with golfing competition, I agree.

“You’re paying, right?” Katrina asks. “Because I will not pay money to hit a ball with a stick.”

I tell her that I’ll pay, but she really didn’t need to ask because I always pay. Katrina’s very old-school when it comes to dating. The guy always pays, and holds doors for her, and pulls out chairs. I actually kind of like it; it’s cool pretending to be a gentleman.