This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
© 2018 Ben D’Alessio. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. ISBN 978-1-54392-613-2 eBook 978-1-54392-614-9
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Also by Ben D'Alessio
Part I
1997-98: First Grade
1998: First Grade
1999: Second Grade
Part II
2002-03: Sixth Grade
2004-05: Eighth Grade
2005-06: Freshman Year
Part III
2007-08: Junior Year
2008-09: Senior Year
Acknowledgments
First, I’d like to give a special thank you to Samantha Gordon and Leah Wohl-Pollack of Invsibleinkediting.com for being the two most patient editors in the United States of America and not giving up hope when lesser editors would concede that all hope is lost.
I’d also like to thank Jenny Zemanek at Seedlings Design Studio for designing and creating my fantastic cover.
My deepest thanks to my parents who continue to support my writing despite not being allowed to read any of it—not this one either.
Lastly, I’d like to thank the State of New Jersey, which has certainly provided me with enough material for stories to last a lifetime.
Also by Ben D’Alessio
Novels
Binge Until Tragedy
Short Stories
FREEDOMWORLD
Pigmalion
Hell is empty
And all the devils are here.
—William Shakespeare, The Tempest
We moved to Short Hills on June 29, 1997, my seventh birthday. Our house stood out from the other homes on West Road because it was smaller or less ornate, or both. But my mother liked that. “At least we won’t get robbed,” she would say, defending the brick split-level as if she had built it herself. But it was a good house, and I was happy there, at least for a while, because next door lived two brothers who quickly became my close friends.
George and Karl didn’t live in a house like mine. Theirs was big and imposing and sat on top of rolling hills that cascaded down to the cobblestone gutter separating the lawn from the street. Karl told me that the old woman who used to live in our house would give him cookies and let him play the piano that stood by the windows overlooking the backyard. We didn’t have a piano, or cookies, and my father only let us drink soda if it was a “party.” But at Karl’s house his mother had drawers of cookies and candies and a stocked refrigerator of Dr. Brown’s and Stewart’s root beer; our refrigerator had 2% milk and a plastic container with Italian Water written across it in red Sharpie. Karl’s house was my refuge. I would always make sure to rinse my mouth out before going home, because the sugar film on my teeth would leave me with a guilty conscience when my father would ask, “So what did you do at the Geigers’?”
Karl Geiger was a year younger than me, and George was four years older, closer to my brother’s age. My brother—or half-brother—Tony lived with his mother in Florham Park and would visit every other weekend. When we lived in our old town, I would cry every other Sunday afternoon when my father would drive Tony forty-five minutes back to his mother’s. Forty-five minutes away for a six-year-old might as well have been Budapest. But Short Hills was much closer to Florham Park, and Tony spent more and longer weekends with us, staying up late playing SEGA Genesis and Super NES in the basement.
When school started in September, Karl and I attended Glenwood Elementary, consistently ranked one of the top elementary schools in the country—or that’s what I’d overhear when my mother would complain about leaving our old town for Short Hills: “It better be the best, considering the taxes we’re paying to live here.” Glenwood was far more diverse than my old school. I met Chinese kids and Ukrainian kids and Indian kids and Pakistani kids, and we even had a student from Lithuania—a land I pictured as mystical and full of wonder and magic. There was a kid from Africa named Silas, but he was white, which confused me. He said there were a lot of white people in NAM-I-BIA, at least where he lived. Glenwood also had Jews. In my old town, Jeremy was the only Jewish boy in the school and he was my best friend. But at Glenwood I met three boys named Jeremy, and they were all Jewish! After my first day of school, I called my mom at work and told her the good news and asked if Jeremy’s family knew these Jeremys. “They don’t all know each other, honey,” she said.
There were also the WASPs, as my brother called them. They were the families of “Old Short Hills.” I suppose Karl and George were technically WASPs too, but they didn’t look like it. There were the Barriston brothers, the McAllister girls, Avery Burnham, Bradford Knight (who went by Brad, despite his mother’s protestations), Maine Ogden, Paxton Shaffer, and Pierce Stone. I hated Pierce Stone.
At school I had five different colored marble notebooks, one for each subject: red was social studies, blue was math, green was language arts, yellow was science, and purple was for Spanish. Plus I had one more notebook, a plain black one for personal use. I was excited to write stories about knights and dragons and orcs, and then make drawings to match those stories. And Karl would help. But I couldn’t write
