Frank Portman - King Dork

I walked past his office on my way to first period, then doubled back, took the note I had written on Saturday out of my backpack, and slid it under his door. Maybe he would be more reasonable when he’d had a chance to cool off. And maybe then we could have a more productive discussion, with our pants on, in neutral territory, say at Linda’s Pancakes on Broadway, rather than in the boys’ bathroom, though it would still be a weird scene. I’d even be willing to apologize for my rude lyrics, given the right conciliatory ges-ture. And he would tell me all about my dad and their carefree youth together, and the turmoil of the Turbulent Sixties, their hopes, their dreams of sailing away to sea to find the answers to their souls’ mysteries. Maybe he’d even reveal his softer, human side, and I’d realize that he wasn’t such a bad guy after all, just misunderstood. The wounds wouldn’t heal instantly. There would have to be time for reflection, for honest soul-searching, for letting go. But bit by bit, we’d learn to laugh again. “You know, you remind me a lot of your old man,” he’d say from time to time, with a twinkle in his eye.

I’d start referring to him as Uncle Tony. And then Mr. Teone would finally explain the whole story behind Timothy J.

Anderson, CEH, the dead bastard, John the Baptist, and The Catcher in the Rye. Not the most solid plan, perhaps, but it was worth a shot, and anyway, I couldn’t think of an alternative.

273

N E R D B LO OD

I missed out on a lot of what happened next and had to have it explained to me later, for reasons that will become clear in a minute. I still have some numb spots on my head from the experience, though they tell me that some of the nerve tissue may well end up growing back over time. We’ll see.

Anyway, looking back, I suppose it hadn’t been the smartest idea to end our set with “The Guy I Accidentally Beat Up.” The Paul Krebs–Matt Lynch people had been looking for a discreet, plausibly deniable way to wreak vengeance on me ever since the Brighton Rock incident. What am I saying? They had been looking for d., p. d. ways to w. v. since they first became aware of my existence around the third grade. And finding them, too. But that song, not to mention its inclusion in a bestselling publication—by second period, Sam Hellerman had unloaded another forty copies—had invited immediate retaliation. Sam Hellerman thought the conspiracy went all the way to the top, at least up to Mr. Teone himself, who of course had his own reasons to wish me ill, despite my magnanimous decision to give him the tentative benefit of the barest doubt. I don’t know about that, but Mr.

Donnelly had certainly been in on it to some degree. If we could prove even that, Sam Hellerman promised, the lawsuit could bankrupt the school system, which was a nice thought.

But I doubted it could be proved. Their plan wasn’t particularly brilliant, but it was elaborate and involved several actors, all of whom were responsible only for their individual parts.

It did the job.

Sam Hellerman had just been sent to the nurse’s office, having once again used his magic bleeding nose to end a boxing match before it began. Mr. Donnelly had slated me to box Mark McAlistair next. Mark McAlistair was one of the lower 274

Matt Lynch minions, no more than a gopher, really, but he had clearly committed some transgression because he was the fall guy in the scheme. Soon after our match began and everyone had begun the usual chant of “pussy, pussy, pussy,”

someone tripped me, and Mark McAlistair, as instructed, fell on top of me and pinned me down while a couple of accomplices in the “ring” stood on my wrists and knees. Then he removed his right glove and hit me on the back of the head with his ungloved fist repeatedly as hard and fast as he could.

That was really against the rules, but Mr. Donnelly pretended not to notice at first. Then, when I was already seeing stars and starting to fade, he yelled, “What the hell are you doing, McAlistair?” and pulled him off me. Then he sent Rich Zim, another Lynchie, to escort me to the nurse’s office. On our way there, while I was still more or less in a daze, Rich Zim led me past the band room where a person or persons un-known stepped out while we were passing the door and brained me on the back of the head with a brass instrument.

I lost consciousness completely at that point. I think they may have kicked me in the ribs a bit while I was out, judging from the feeling when I came to. At some point, though, Rich Zim and another guy carried me to the nurse’s office, bang-ing my head on lockers and posts and doors and dropping me on the ground all along the way. At least, it felt that way when I assessed the damages after the fact. They did just about everything except beat me with a bag of oranges. And maybe they did that, too, for all I know.

The whole thing could then be blamed on Mark McAlistair’s gloveless punches. That was the plan, anyway, as near as I could figure. At any rate, Mark McAlistair was toast, and was headed to some sort of facility for delinquents that would be even harder to take than Hillmont. I felt a little sorry for him, as he was only a pawn. But he should have 275

known better than to sign up with a pack of depraved normal people, who didn’t care whom they sold out as long as it meant a chance at a couple more drops of nerd blood.

Savages.

So I ended up with a concussion and some skull fractures, and I had to spend the next few days in a hospital so I wouldn’t fall asleep and die. I didn’t die and life went on, but for a while there I wasn’t around to observe much of it. It takes more than a blow from a brass instrument to kill King Dork, apparently. Who knew?

It turned out I needed surgery because of some nerve damage. I was told that the surgeon was very good, but that there was a possibility that I was going to have some permanent numb spots on my scalp. That didn’t seem so bad, though part of me wished there was some way that I could have some numb spots inside my head as well as outside.

They supplied that on a temporary basis, anyway, which was nice. For a while there, I had feared that Hillmont was going to end up with another helmet guy on its hands, but fortunately it wasn’t going to come to that.

I have no recollection of the operation. Afterward, they moved me to a recovery room on a different floor, which I shared with this guy named Mr. Aquino. We were separated by a curtain: my side was by the window, while he had the door side. I don’t know what was wrong with him, but whatever it was, it resulted in a steady stream of moaning from his side of the curtain. After I got used to it, I took it in stride and didn’t really notice it anymore. But when anyone approached the door, the volume would increase, and if someone actually entered our room, he would break into a kind of hysterical wheezing. It was like an alarm system. When Mr. Aquino

“went off,” I knew someone was about to enter, which was 276

useful. I always had a few seconds to compose myself before entertaining guests.

More people came through that door and over to my side than you might imagine. My recollection is fuzzy, partly because of deluxe pain medication that would have quite literally made Sam Hellerman drool and partly because the whole situation was so disorienting. I gradually learned what had happened at Hillmont High in the aftermath of the Festival of Lights by piecing together accounts from various sources. But now I can’t quite recall which parts were explained by visitors, which parts I read about in the paper or saw on TV, and which parts I figured out afterward by putting two and two together.

The school ended up banning the Chi-Mos zine, which only made it more sought after, of course: Sam Hellerman had added a sticker that said “Banned in Hillmont” and had been able to raise the price to three dollars. Some of the punky kids, Sam Hellerman said, had even started showing up to school with “Chi-Mos” written in Wite-Out on their jackets and bags. We were famous.