"Hey, everybody!" shouted Ronald. "Nathan just got beat up by a girl!"

"And he's crying!"

"What a baby!"

Beverly gave him one last punch. "The next time I ask you to get off the bars, you'd better do it!" She brushed her hands off on her pants and walked away.

Nathan lay on the dirt and cried. He didn't think he was bleeding, and he'd received much more violent beatings from Bernard Steamspell, but he couldn't stop the tears.

"I can't be your friend anymore," said Gordon, leaping from the jungle gym and heading off in search of alternate acquaintances.

Jamison climbed down from the bars and extended his hand toward Nathan. "It's okay," he said. "She looked tough. I thought I even saw a muscle."

Nathan wiped his eyes then let Jamison help him up. "Can I die with you?"

"So how was school?" Mary asked when Nathan got into the car.

"It was bad, then it was good, then it was bad, then it was good, and then bad again. Do I have to go back?"

"Yes. What did you learn?"

"I learned how to blow things up."

"What?"

"That's what they teach at that school. They gave us all dynamite and showed us how to use it. Then Mrs. Calmon handed me a great big knife and said that it's okay to stab people if they're unattractive."

"Oh, she didn't either."

"She did! And she said that tomorrow she's going to teach us how to drown people with only a little bit of water, barely enough to fill a gla.s.s. I'll be able to kill anyone I want when the school year is over."

"What did you really learn?"

Nathan shrugged. "She showed us places on a map, but I didn't care about any of them."

"Well, that's a silly att.i.tude. What if you wanted to go to those places? You wouldn't know where they were."

"They were all dumb places."

"How would you know that if you didn't care about them?" She stopped at a red light and looked at Nathan more closely. "Why do you have a mark on your face?"

"I got beat up at recess! And I wasn't doing anything!"

"Who beat you up?"

"Her-his name was...I forget his name."

"Why did you say 'her'?"

"I didn't."

"Did you get beat up by a girl?"

"None of your business!"

"Nathan! Don't speak to me like that. Why did she hit you?"

"I don't know."

"Should I speak to your teacher?"

"No! Can we talk about something else?"

"Of course we can, Nathan. We have a guest coming for dinner tonight."

Nathan was suddenly horrified. "It's not Beverly, is it?"

"Is she the one who hit you?"

"Is it her? Is it really?" If Beverly tried to attack him in his own home, he'd show her. He'd dig a pit in the living room and cover it with a rug and as soon as she stepped inside she'd plummet. He wouldn't line the bottom with spikes or anything like that, but if he could coax a tiger inside...

"Her name is Sharon. You'll like her. She's very nice."

"Where did she come from?"

"She came in to the restaurant this afternoon for a late lunch. She ordered the lamb, which I felt was a mistake, and I successfully steered her toward the pasta with blackened chicken."

"Why is she coming over if she's eaten already?"

"You're a very rude little boy today, aren't you?"

Nathan realized that he was indeed being rude. It wasn't Mary's fault that he'd had a terrible first day at school, except for her contribution toward forcing him to go. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sure tomorrow will be better."

"Of course it will. I think you'll really like Sharon."

Nathan pouted in his room for a full three minutes after they got home, but then he decided that he had better ways to spend his time than wallowing in self-pity. He'd made a friend, after all. Jamison didn't care that he'd been beaten up by a girl.

Mary was correct. Nathan did like Sharon. She was very pretty; in fact, Nathan didn't recall ever having seen a woman in real life who looked the way women looked in the movies. She wore a fancy dress and makeup, and both Penny and Mary apologized for the way they looked and for the condition of their home, despite the fact that Nathan thought they both looked nice as well, and they'd cleaned the entire house top to bottom, including the rain gutters, though Nathan doubted that Sharon would inspect them.

Sharon laughed a lot, and they all played games. Mary also laughed often, giggling loudly at all of Sharon's jokes, even the ones that Nathan thought could have been funnier. Every once in a while Nathan noticed Penny looking a bit sad, which was strange since everybody was having so much fun.

Nathan was sent to bed half an hour earlier than usual. He wasn't happy about it, but he didn't protest. He was tired anyway.

ELEVEN.

Despite their pledge to one another, Nathan and Jamison found themselves learning things in school. Nathan didn't like math very much, but he did very well on his spelling, geography, history, and reading tests. Beverly stuck her tongue out at him all the time, but Nathan never told on her. He considered very carefully the idea of squishing something against the back of her head, possibly an egg or a slice of moldy tomato, and ultimately decided that this would be unwise on all levels.

Penny asked if he might want to invite his new friend over after school, and Nathan agreed that it was a fine idea. Jamison said that his parents didn't like for him to visit friends on school nights because the excitement increased the chances that he might be dead the next morning, but that the weekend would be perfect.

Sharon came over for dinner once more that week. The other nights, Mary went over to Sharon's house and she didn't come home. Those nights, Penny was more affectionate with Nathan than usual, giving him kisses on the cheek and asking him if he wanted to play just one more game of Exploding Nines even though it was past his bedtime.

When Jamison came over, they dug for worms, and put Jamison's toy soldiers through a global apocalypse, and played catch with an orange to see how many times they could throw it before it started to leak.

Over the next couple of months, Nathan did not stay out of the Corner of Ridicule altogether, but he spent less time there than some of his cla.s.smates (though, admittedly, more time than some others). Sometimes he thought he deserved it and sometimes he felt that he'd been falsely accused, but overall it was not such a bad thing.

Beverly beat up Nathan on three more occasions. She never beat up any of the other boys, even when they were teasing her, and the third time she beat him up she'd specifically sought him out at recess after a boy that Nathan barely even knew called her G.o.dzilla. Though he didn't tell his teacher, he did tell Penny and Mary and sometimes Sharon all about it. He tried to instill a sense of outrage in them, but all they did was smile.

Near the end of October, Ronald came up to him after school and pressed an envelope into his hand. "It's an invitation to my Halloween party," he explained.

"Where's his?" Nathan asked, gesturing to Jamison.

"He can't come."

"Why not?"

"My mom says that I'm only allowed to invite ten people because she doesn't want to have to buy apples for the whole cla.s.s."

"Then make him one of the ten."

"He doesn't really fit in."

"It's a Halloween party, isn't it? What fits in better at a Halloween party than a dying boy?"

Jamison nodded. "I could die right there, during the party."

"Maybe he fits," Ronald admitted. "But I don't like him very much."

"Well, your mother will just have to allow eleven. If he's not coming, I'm not."

Ronald sighed. "All right," he said, handing an invitation to Jamison. "Cross out Gordon's name and write in your own. It's a costume party, so wear something scary."

"Thank you," said Jamison, after Ronald left. "I've never been to a Halloween party before."

"Neither have I. What should we be?"

"The last time I was in the hospital they took me on a tour of the burn ward. People aren't happy there. We could go as two brothers who were burned so badly that their bodies stuck together."

"Is Halloween supposed to be that gruesome?"

"It can be. Last year I dressed as a boy whose guts were all on the outside. I used real guts, too."

"Human ones?"

"No, not human ones. What human would donate their guts for a Halloween costume? But there was cow in there, and some goat. I got a book from the library and I made sure the parts went where they were supposed to be. I'd never gotten so much candy in my life, though afterward I didn't feel like eating any of it."

"That sounds disgusting. Let's not use real guts."

"I could go as a suicidal boy. I'd look sad the whole time and carry around a big bottle of pills."

"No."

"You could go dressed as a donkey, and I could go dressed as a boy whose face had been crushed in by a donkey kick."

"You're very dark."

"Well, what do you want to be?"

Nathan thought about it. "How about a knight in armor?"

"Knights aren't scary!"

"They have swords."

"So? n.o.body lies awake at night worried that a knight is going to get them."

"I don't want to be anything scary."

"Fine. Be a ballerina dancing on rainbows, then."

"I could be a scarecrow."

"Or go as a kitten. A harmless little kitten. We could get you some pink yarn to play with, and you could purr and roll around to have your tummy rubbed, and you could make squeaky mewing sounds. I don't think you understand Halloween."

When Penny picked him up from school, she smiled, even though she didn't seem happy. "Did you have a good day?"

"It was all right. I got invited to a Halloween party."

"That's nice. Mary and I always enjoyed carving jack-o-lanterns."

"Will Mary be home tonight?"

"She said she'll stop by to tuck you in bed and give you a kiss."

"Will Sharon be with her?"

"I suppose so. Do you like Sharon?"