B.u.g. Big Ugly Guy (9781101593523) (4 page)

I like this guy!
Sammy thought.
A smart friend
.

Sammy did end up playing Skink some Itzhak Perlman as well. He also played him
Klezmorim
and
Streimel
and
Brave Old World
and all the best tracks from his best CDs.

Finally, after a half hour of listening, Skink spoke up, saying simply: “I like it.”

“Excellent,” Sammy said. “Let's . . .”

“But,” Skink interrupted, “I think we should play more than just Klezmer.”

It wasn't something Sammy had ever considered.

“Why?”

Skink frowned. “Well, it kind of limits our audience.”

“I suppose it does.” He grinned. “You don't think James Lee is a closet Klez-maniac?”

“'Fraid not!” Skink said. “But since you, like, love the music, let's learn us some Klez.” He bent to open his guitar case. “But then let me teach you some jazz. And some funk. And maybe just a little bit of rock.”

“Rock the clarinet?” Sammy asked uncertainly.

Skink grinned at him. “You'll certainly get points for originality.”

And points
, Sammy thought,
for interesting friends
.

Skink took his guitar out of its case and began to tune it. His hand seemed entirely healed.

“Doesn't it hurt even a little?” Sammy asked, pointing to the hand and remembering how swollen it had looked just days earlier.

“Nope. I'm like my dad. My body gets better almost instantly. It's—like—a gift. That's why No Nurse . . .” He began to let his fingers run up and down the strings.

“Maybe you're an alien.”

“I am.”

Sammy's mouth dropped open. At this point, he was ready to believe anything.

“I was born in Korea. But not to worry. I have an American passport as well. Won't be able to become president of the United States, though.”

Sammy nodded, oddly relieved and yet oddly disappointed about the alien thing.
I mean, if he'd actually come from Mars . . . how cool would that be?
But as Skink ran some small riffs, Sammy stopped worrying and really started to listen. Finally, he picked up his clarinet, moistening the reed with his tongue.

He thought about the way Skink was riffing. Not a real tune but just noodling around, playing with the klez tunes they'd been listening to for the past thirty minutes.

Skink's really good,
he thought.
Not just good for an almost fifteen-year-old. Good-good!

Sammy listened some more till an idea came to him. He gave his clarinet a few tentative honks and then swung in.

Skink immediately switched to fuller voicings for his chords, providing a deep background of notes for Sammy to soar over. Sammy dipped and dived around the chords, and when he threatened to touch bottom, Skink dove up the neck of his guitar and rattled off a few high runs while Sammy oompahed a faux bass line on the clarinet.

They went on like this for Sammy didn't know how long, trading licks and exploring rhythms till Sammy went for a note and missed and produced one of those squeaky, creaky squeals that only a clarinet can do, and they both burst out laughing.

“Is that klez—or even close?” Skink asked.

“Are you Jewish or even close?” Sammy asked. “Seriously, it might not be real klez, but I really like the other styles you were throwing in. Why can't we be a klezmer fusion garage band?”

“Because,” Skink said, affecting a deep drawl, “we ain't in no garage.”

That started them laughing again.

“Seriously . . .” Skink said, taking a deep breath, “that's a rowser of an idea. Klezmer. Fusion. Garage. Band.”

“But there's only two of us. Not much of a band,” Sammy said. “More like a duo.”

“Exactly like a duo,” said Skink. His nose crinkled as if he were smelling something bad.

More laughter ensued, threatening to turn into more giggles.

“Maybe we could get one of James Lee's crew to drum for us,” said Skink. “They like to bang on things.”

“And think of all the drummer jokes we could tell,” Sammy said. “How do you know if the stage is level?”

“The drummer drools out of both sides of his mouth,” Skink said. “How do you confuse a drummer?”

“Put a sheet of music in front of him.”

They broke out into hysterics all over again. Finally—and simultaneously—in an attempt to be serious, they began to play, up and down minor scales, in and out of songs they each knew and some that they both knew, trying to give each a wailing klezmer sound.

Sammy had never been happier. To have a friend. To have a friend who plays music. To have a friend who wants to be in a band. Well, a duo anyway. All the past—the bullying, the dunkings in the toilet, the spitting in his food, the not-so-subtle trippings as he walked down the school hallway—even the black eye—he let go. Or rather he put it into his mouth and blew it through the clarinet, until it was gone.

They played for two hours, maybe three, never keeping track of the time. And then a drum started. A series of rat-a-tats. A loud taradiddle.

A drum?

There was no drum. They had no drummer.

Only then did Sammy realize that someone was knocking on the basement door. He stopped playing and slowly Skink stopped playing, too. They both looked expectantly toward the door.

“All right, boys, we've finished our meal and are back, and the general says it's time to go.” The major's stentorian voice boomed through the door.

Sammy turned to Skink, and mouthed, “The
general?
”

Skink was already slipping out of the guitar strap and bending over the case to put the instrument away. “That's what he calls my mom.”

“Oh.” Sammy put the clarinet on the music stand.

Skink smiled. “But not, like, to her face.”

At the door, they all shook hands, smiling, the grown-ups speaking adult pleasantries.

“See you tomorrow,” Skink said.

Tomorrow,
Sammy thought.
I'll see my
friend
tomorrow. In school.

That's when he remembered all the bad stuff that school had on offer. And he knew as surely as he knew the sun was coming up in the morning that the bad stuff would start all over again. Probably be worse. But at least this time he had a friend to share it with.

6.

Fight or Flight

Monday morning bus ride, no problems. Ditto for morning classes. At lunch Skink and Sammy brainstormed names for their band.

“Could name it Van Halen,” Skink suggested.

“How do you mean?”

Skink put his fork down and flashed his hands out in front of him, exclaiming, “Greenburg!”

Sammy frowned. “Too Jewish.”

“Skink!”

“Not Jewish enough.”

“Metalliklez?”

“Too weird.”

“Well,” Skink said with a sigh, “do you have any, like, suggestions?”

“Not really. I'm still thinking.” Staring down at his tray, he added, “Mostly about what they were trying to do when they cooked this meat, whatever it is.”

Skink shoveled a forkful into his mouth. “I learned a long time ago to not ask those kinds of questions,” he said, chewing, a lot of his consonants lost in the mush. Enough survived for Sammy to catch the sentence's meaning. “Army food, you know.”

“
You
weren't in the army. Your dad was.”

“Yeah. And sometimes he decides to cook.” Skink shuddered at the memory. “But enough about food—we need to name our band.”

Sammy poked at the lump on his plate, not quite ready to eat until he'd positively identified it. “What we need are more band members and—that way—more ideas.”

“That, too.” Skink scooped up some more food. “I might know someone.”

“Chicken,” Sammy said. “I'm
pretty
sure it's chicken. Well,
almost
sure.” He closed his eyes and took a bite. All he tasted was salt. He decided that was probably not a bad thing. “Who do you know?”

“Julia Nathanson.”

Sammy almost choked on his almost-sure chicken. “Julia?” His heart skipped a beat. Either that, or the chicken had tap-danced on it.

“Yeah, the girl who sat with us on Friday. Remember her?”

Only all night long since Friday. Only all weekend long
. Sammy didn't say it aloud. Not even to Skink. Skink might laugh. He might say something snotty.
He might
—and here Sammy sighed, then quickly covered it with a cough—
Skink might even—like—like her
.

“She's in my homeroom. I called her to thank her for her concern and asked how she knew about
Hwa Rang Do.
Turns out she knows lots of cool stuff. And she, like, plays fiddle.”

“Fiddle!” Now Sammy's heart was beating overtime. He couldn't tell if it was because he was mad that Skink had called Julia, or glad. “Do you think . . .”

“I can ask,” Skink said.

“
I
can ask,” Sammy said.

Skink grinned. “Okay. It's your band.”

“Naw,” Sammy said, “it's ours.”

And they would have asked her together only Julia wasn't in the lunchroom. In fact, she wasn't in school that day.

Julia didn't come to school the next day or the next either, which was just as well because the Boyz were back to bashing on Sammy. Before Julia had inserted herself into his life, it hadn't mattered who knew how often he was picked on. And now, somehow, it did.

He supposed the renewed bashing had to do with his own big mouth. Sammy couldn't help it. He said something snotty to the Boyz, and in return they knocked the snot out of him. Then he said something even snottier. It had become an endurance contest, though he was the only one doing the enduring. But if Julia had known about the bashings, Sammy suddenly knew that everything would have been worse. A disaster. An embarrassment. The end of his particular world. Of this Sammy was absolutely sure.

So while Sammy wondered why she was absent—family crisis, the flu, a change of schools, possibly a move to another state, time travel, abduction by aliens—he was actually relieved.

Of course, James Lee didn't care about any of that. All he cared about was cornering Sammy. Cornering Sammy without Skink around. Because it had become clear to Sammy that James Lee was not about to face Skink down. Not yet. Not till he figured out Skink's weaknesses.

“That's it!” Sammy said aloud as he walked down the hall between classes. He finally understood the main thing about James Lee. He wasn't good at schoolwork. He couldn't remember anything about English or civics or math. But he has a positive genius—
like a predator
, Sammy thought—for finding someone's weak spot and poking it hard.

Sammy's weak spot was that he didn't—couldn't—fight back with his fists, which seemed to be the only kind of fighting James Lee considered worthy, because he was deathly afraid of being hit in the mouth and ruining his
embouchure
forever, meaning he might never be able to play clarinet again. So he did everything possible to get out of fighting James Lee and his crew, except he couldn't seem to shut up when cornered by them. Or when the Boyz threatened someone smaller. Which meant—he shuddered—one of these days fist and mouth were bound to connect.

But as for Skink, James Lee didn't know his weak spot yet. Sammy hoped he didn't have one. Because if he did, James Lee was sure to find it.

Sammy spent the three days Julia was absent skulking around corners. He was late for every class, just making sure he didn't run into James Lee, which meant he had three days worth of after-school detentions to serve.

He played sick for one period on Monday just so he could use the bathroom off the principal's office. Another time he sneaked out of the school and peed in the bushes. Yes, he was scared that someone might see him and call him a pervert or something. But he didn't care, as long as he was safe from another dunking in the toilet.

And his sneaking worked for two days.

Two whole days!
It seemed a vacation, a heaven, an eternity
.

He and Skink only had gym class together. Since that was a class without James Lee, it was the one time he could relax.

Perhaps,
he thought,
I've relaxed a bit too much.
For in the middle of a fast-paced dodgeball game, the big red ball hit him on the side of the head. Not near his mouth, thank goodness. But close to his right eye. He didn't exactly see stars. They were more like half notes. He shook his head to clear it.

“Hey, sorry,” Bobby Marstall called out. He'd been the thrower and, for once, accurate.

“Nothing broken,” Sammy yelled back, “except my pride. And I've got plenty more of that.”

Everyone in the gym class laughed, and Sammy—liking the sound of it— laughed with them.

Skink pounded him on the back. “Careful with that mouth,” he whispered, and it wasn't clear if he meant that Sammy shouldn't mouth off, or if he was worried about Sammy being able to play the clarinet.

“No problemo,” Sammy said, meaning both.

Either way, Sammy was glad he had a friend who cared.

Both days he and Skink sat down together at an empty table that quickly filled up with seventh and eighth graders.
Safety in numbers,
Sammy thought gratefully, though he knew the others weren't there to save him but to talk to Skink. But Skink often deferred to Sammy.

“Hey, Skink, where'd you learn those karate moves?” Bobby Marstall asked, making a chopping motion with his right hand while his left pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

Mouth full, Skink gestured to Sammy.

“It's not karate,” Sammy said quickly. “It's a Korean martial arts. Over a thousand years old. He's been studying it for some time.”

“Though not a thousand years, I bet!” That was Marsha Hazelton. She looked around expecting a patter of laughter, and there was a little.

Sammy nodded, adding, “Skink's mom is Korean and she's got great moves, too. A black belt. She's known throughout Korea. In fact, she's amazing.” Now Sammy was just making stuff up, but Skink seemed to enjoy it. “His mom was born in Seoul, which is the capital of Korea, which makes Skink a soul man in two ways.”

For a moment there was a blank look around the table, and then Bobby brightened. “Oh, like soul food. And . . . er . . .” Now laughter pounded the table and Sammy glanced to the right where James Lee and his gang were at another table, not even eating, just watching. They were too far away to have heard any of the actual conversation, but their reaction to the laughter was one of scowls and rapid-fire glares, as if they assumed the laughter was at their expense.

Sammy realized there was a battle brewing, but for the first time he felt he was holding his own. He had a champion in Skink, and a table full of friends.

But James Lee suddenly began to stand up, unfolding in a loose, almost boneless way, like something out of a monster movie.

“Attack of the skin men,” Sammy whispered, nodding in James Lee's direction.

Still chewing, Skink flexed his hands. It was clear from his expression that the right hand was still sore.

Sammy imitated him, then looked around the table to see if anyone was noticing. All he saw was a sea of scared faces.

As James Lee walked toward them, his crew followed in his wake.
An armada of know-nothings,
Sammy thought. They'd been studying the Spanish Armada in history class.

James Lee planted himself at the head of Sammy's table. He was smiling lazily, like Dirty Harry on a slow day.

“Not laughing at us, I'm sure,” he drawled.

“Why?” Skink said. “Are you funny?”

“Or just funny looking?” Bobby Marstall said, from the safety of the far end of the table. His face was almost green with fear. He'd clearly spoken without thinking.

Sammy swallowed visibly. He was the one closest to James Lee. He wondered if he'd be punished for what Bobby had said.

Suddenly, the James Lee crew began to surround the table, and the boys and girls all started bailing out, like rats over the side of a soon-to-be-sinking ship, leaving Skink and Sammy to face the trouble alone. There was a clattering of trays as they went, and some stuff even spilled onto the floor, but no one stopped to pick anything up.

“Now, James—” Sammy began, in what he often thought of as his apology voice, a bit whiny and higher than usual. But he never got a chance to finish because just then James Lee took a swing at Skink.

It was a big looping punch that Sammy thought would have probably knocked Skink's head clean off his shoulders if it had connected. But Skink had obviously not been as surprised as Sammy by James Lee's assault. He leaned back so that the fist whistled past his chin, assisted by a left-handed slap to the forearm that Skink delivered with the swiftness of a cobra. Then Skink was on his feet, his right hand flashing forward—holding a milk carton that smacked James Lee in the face.

Sammy was expecting the fight to be like the movies, where every blow was accompanied by a bass thump and crack, and the action was smoothly choreographed. Instead, Skink's milk carton slap sounded like a piece of uncooked pizza dropped on a countertop. It made Sammy's stomach flip over. Blood exploded from James Lee's nose, mixing with the milk and making a crazy, starless American flag down his white T-shirt. And then Skink went down in a rush of bodies as the rest of the Boyz tackled him high and low.