King Dork

I’m getting at is, the first living creature Sam Hellerman and I encountered when we penetrated the school grounds on the first day of school was none other than Mr. Teone.

The sky seemed suddenly to darken.

We were walking past the faculty parking, and he was seated in his beat-up ’93 Geo Prizm, struggling to force his supersized body through the open car door. We hurried past, but he noticed us just as he finally squeezed through. He stood by the car, panting heavily from the effort and trying to tuck his shirt into his pants so that it would stay in for longer than a few seconds.

“Good morning, Peggy,” he said to Sam Hellerman. “So you decided to risk another year.” He turned to me and bellowed: “Henderson!” Then he did this big theatrical salute and waddled away, laughing to himself.

He always calls me by my last name and he always salutes. Clearly, mocking me and Sam Hellerman is more important than the preservation of his own dignity. He seems to consider it to be part of his job. Which tells you just about 7

everything you need to know about Hillmont High School society.

It could be worse. Mr. Donnelly, PE teacher and sadist supreme, along with his jabbering horde of young sports troglodytes-in-training, never bother with Moe or Peggy, and they don’t salute. They prefer to say “pussy” and hit you on the ear with a cupped palm. According to an article called

“Physical Interrogation Techniques” in one of my magazines ( Today’s Mercenary), this can cause damage to the eardrum and even death when applied accurately. But Mr. Donnelly and his minions are not in it for the accuracy. They operate on pure, mean-spirited, status-conscious instinct, which usually isn’t very well thought out. Lucky for me they’re so poorly trained, or I’d be in big trouble.

But there’s no point fretting about what people call you.

Enough ill will can turn anything into an attack. Even your own actual name.

“I think he’s making fun of your army coat,” said Sam Hellerman as we headed inside. Maybe that was it. I admit, I did look a little silly in the coat, especially since I hardly ever took it off, even in the hottest weather. I couldn’t take it off, for reasons I’ll get to in a bit.

I know Sam Hellerman because he was the guy right before me in alphabetical order from the fourth through eighth grades. You spend that much time standing next to somebody, you start to get used to each other.

He’s the closest thing I have to a friend, and he’s an all-right guy. I don’t know if he realizes that I don’t bring much to the table, friendship-wise. I let him do most of the talking.

I usually don’t have a comment.

“There’s no possibility of life on other planets in this solar system,” he’ll say.

8

Silence.

“Well, let me rephrase that. There’s no possibility of carbon-based life on other planets in this solar system.”

“Really?” I’ll say, after a few beats.

“Oh, yeah,” he’ll say. “No chance.”

He always has lots to say. He can manage for both of us.

We spend a lot of time over each other’s houses watching TV

and playing games. There’s a running argument about whose house is harder to take. Mine is goofy and resembles an insane asylum; his is silent and grim and forbidding, and bears every indication of having been built on an ancient Indian burial ground. We both have a point, but he usually wins and comes to my house because I’ve got a TV in my room and he doesn’t. TV can really take the edge off. Plus, he has a taste for prescription tranquilizers, and my mom is his main unwitting supplier.

Sam Hellerman and I are in a band. I mean, we have a name and a logo, and the basic design for the first three or four album covers. We change the name a lot, though. A typical band lasts around two weeks, and some don’t even last long enough for us to finish designing the logo, let alone the album covers.

When we arrived at school that first day, right at the end of August, the name was Easter Monday. But Easter Monday only lasted from first period through lunch, when Sam Hellerman took out his notebook in the cafeteria and said,

“Easter Monday is kind of gay. How about Baby Batter?”

I nodded. I was never that wild about Easter Monday, to tell you the truth. Baby Batter was way better. By the end of lunch, Sam Hellerman had already made a rough sketch of the logo, which was Gothic lettering inside the loops of an in-finity symbol. That’s the great thing about being in a band: you always have a new logo to work on.

9

“When I get my bass,” Sam Hellerman said, pointing to another sketch he had been working on, “I’m going to spray-paint ‘baby’ on it. Then you can spray-paint ‘batter’ on your guitar, and as long as we stay on our sides of the stage, we won’t need a banner when we play on TV.”

I didn’t even bother to point out that by the time we got instruments and were in a position to worry about what to paint on them for TV appearances, the name Baby Batter would be long gone. This was for notebook purposes only.

I decided my Baby Batter stage name would be Guitar Guy, which Sam Hellerman carefully wrote down for the first album credits. He said he hadn’t decided on a stage name yet, but he wanted to be credited as playing “base and Scientology.” That Sam Hellerman. He’s kind of brilliant in his way.

“Know any drummers?” he asked as the bell rang, as he always does. Of course, I didn’t. I don’t know anyone apart from Sam Hellerman.