So, this kid Charlie Menkis, I don’t think I told you about him, he’s a medium-sized kid, who sat next to me in third grade and pretended to shoot spitballs with an oversized straw. He got into this fight with Roger Frye, this guy with the nose—a big kid, medium tall with lots of pimples. Before I get any further, you should know this happened back in Brooklyn, so, yeah, this’ll be a good one.

Charlie thought he was one smart cookie. He always had that attitude, like when you spoke with him, you’d think he was looking down his crooked nose at you. He was a cool guy once you got to know him, but the first time I saw him, and you know I’m a nice guy, not judgmental or anything like that, the first time I saw him, I wanted to punch him in the nose. I wasn’t surprised that his nose was like that, all bent like. Some other guy must have had the same thought and popped him one. I wouldn’t blame that guy, but he probably should have given Charlie a chance. You never know who the good ones are until you give them a chance. Charlie was a loyal guy, the type who would walk an extra block because you had an inkling, or layout some cash because you came up a few cents short for the weeks’ comics.

He lived on Gravesend Road, right off Avenue U. Charlie liked living there because he believed they named it Gravesend after a famous gangster was viciously killed on the street. Me, I think they picked Gravesend because the street ran to the very bottom tip of Brooklyn, and most of the people who lived there ended up dying there. Gravesend, like the rest of the neighborhood, was dirty, run-down, dangerous, crowded, and absolutely wonderful. It was a place, and when people ask me where I come from, I don’t hesitate to tell them. I wear Brooklyn as I wear a fancy coat. It’s more than just where I grew up: it’s who I am.

Roger’s house was a three blocks from Charlie in a brownstone on Avenue W. Charlie and I ate dinner at his house a few times. Roger didn’t have any brothers or sisters and his parents were overly friendly, almost in that creepy way. Most other parents, my parents included, think friends are something you have to put up with, but only for so long. They’re nice to us for a bit, but once we overstay our welcome or eat one too many times at their dinner table, they begin to drop hints like don’t you have your own home, what, your food is not good enough, get the hell out of here, stuff like that. But Roger’s parents, they couldn’t wait to have us over. Roger’s father was a husky guy. He shaved his head completely and had these ingrown eyeballs, the type that you were sure would disappear completely, eye socket and everything, if he shut his eyes. His mother was a tall lady with a very long face, which she unfortunately passed on to Roger.

Roger yelled at his parents. I’m not saying I don’t yell at my mother, because I do, plenty. I find I have to do it more and more as she grows older. It’s as if she can’t hear me anymore. I hear that old people go senile but I didn’t think it would happen to her so soon. Roger yelled at his parents not because they were nagging or telling him to do something unnatural like wake up early or something. No, he yelled at them because they didn’t get stuff the way he wanted. His parents just took it. They sat there all quiet like and didn’t say a word. His mother even tried apologizing but then he yelled at her for interrupting. It was the strangest thing, like visiting a different planet where kids and parents flip flopped.

The last time we saw the inside of Roger’s house, he asked if we wanted to play ninjas. Charlie always pushed to play board games but that grew boring because he knew the game’s rules too well, and the rules seemed to change based on his situation. In the end, we’d throw up our hands and just give up and go toss the ball around or watch TV or something, just anything to shut Charlie up. I can hear only so much about rules and regulations and other crap like that. We got enough of that junk at school.

I didn’t know much about ninjas. When I went over to Charlie’s house, I’d see them on the badly dubbed Sunday movies on channel 11. I knew that ninjas were sneaky, wore black masks, and killed people with sharp weapons, which, after Charlie and I thought about it, was kind of cool. Because of that, and because we never played ninjas before, we agreed. Before you go and start pointing fingers and laughing, remember, there wasn’t much to do in our neighborhood. We were young then, too young to walk the streets alone or go to the diner or late movies. We ended up inventing make-believe games and playing them behind closed doors, where—after learning this the hard way—none of our older brothers or sisters could see us.

Roger opened his dresser and showed us his weapon collection: throwing stars, two sais—the three-pointed unsharpened daggers used by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—grappling hook and rope, and various swords and daggers. Roger wouldn’t let us touch any of his weapons. He took each out, swung it around or sometimes threw it against the wall or the wooden posts of his bunk bed, which was riddled with holes. Roger flung a black dagger at one of the post, and it dug in, the handle still rattling after it struck.

He then picked up a crossbow lying next to the dresser. He cranked back its string and placed in a bolt. The crossbow was long and black, its curved bow jutting out in front. Roger swung the loaded crossbow around, and we backed off. Roger laughed at this. If you’ve never looked down the prod of a loaded crossbow, trust me, you’re not missing much. Crossbows are large and heavy, but when they’re loaded, you can feel the string’s tension in the air. I’m not sure what Roger was trying to do, he might have been aiming at his bedpost, or maybe at the wooden target on the closet door behind us, but he fired. The bolt flew past me and struck Charlie’s thigh with a loud thunk.

Charlie screamed. It was the craziest thing I’d ever seen. Roger stood there, his eyes crazy like, winding the crossbow as if he planned to load another bolt. Roger’s mother knocked on the door, and poked her head in to ask if everything was all right. When she saw Charlie, she came in. She bent down to look at the wound, the jeans around the bolt starting to turn red. His mother kept asking Roger what had he done, but Roger stood there, holding the crossbow, and denied doing anything.

Roger’s parents dropped me off before taking Charlie to the hospital. Roger stayed home. When the doctors removed the bandage three weeks later, the bolt left a large, red, circular welt on his leg, Charlie’s first battle wound. The skin around the welt turned all shades of black and blue. Shortly after that night, Charlie and I agreed that Roger was and always had been screwy.

Charlie wasn’t done, however. That boy can hold a grudge, and I would too if someone shot me. Charlie is one of those guys who when they find something funny about somebody, something they can latch on to, like, you know, someone wears jogging pants all the time or has a large head, he keeps the joke going. Someone like me would maybe say it once or twice and we’d get our laugh, but then we’d think of different things to say, or we’d hold off a bit, let the guy recover before we jumped them again. I’m not saying Charlie was worse than other kids were. It’s just that Charlie really dug in on you. He found the weakness and then stuck his knife into you and started twisting it, all slow and painful. It wasn’t good enough to wound, Charlie was all about the torture. I understand and respect torture, and Charlie raised it to a new level. He was a real artist, if you know what I mean. After Roger shot Charlie, Charlie had a new target for his skills.

Charlie started in on Roger’s nose. Roger’s nose was one of those rare characteristics that we just didn’t talk about at school. It was so freakishly large that we almost forgot about it. Its width was normal and its proportions from the tip to the top would have been normal if Roger’s head was larger, but it wasn’t. The nose didn’t fit his face. It was huge, starting almost above his eyebrows and ending with a hook downward that covered the top part of his upper lip. When we were young, we of course took our jabs at it, but that died off quickly because it became too easy. To make fun of Roger’s nose was like making fun of the sun because it shined too bright. His nose was who Roger was and we accepted it. Sure, we’d say things like, the guy with the nose when we were describing him, but it was more like a characteristic, just as we’d call Peter the Chinese guy just so you’d know who we were talking about.

Anytime Roger came up, Charlie would make a fist and place the thumb side over his own nose. It wasn’t an accurate betrayal, because, to be honest, Roger’s nose was larger than Charlie’s skinny fist, but we laughed. After a few days, everyone started doing it, and Roger eventually saw it.

Charlie wasn’t done with just the Roger nose. He started drawing a caricature of Roger, and I’ll admit it, it was damn funny. Charlie started with a small semicircle, almost like a nose, and you’d think, sure he’s going to draw a pretty big sized nose for Roger, and the semicircle was big, but not huge. Then he’d draw a humongous second semicircle connected to the first one, and the nose would look tiny. The first time I saw it, I didn’t get it. But then he’d look at you, and Charlie’s face was thin, very thin, but he could make these strange, exaggerated faces, like pulling his lips really wide apart or separating his eyebrows and then crossing his eyes. He was always pulling stuff like that. So after he drew the two semicircles, he would look at you and his face would be blank, no looks or gestures or anything, and that would surprise you because you’d be expecting something. With his face expressionless, he’d bring up his fist, still holding the pen, to his nose to give the sign of the Roger nose. And then he’d start laughing. Once he started laughing, it sometimes took him a bit to stop his shaking enough to start drawing, but when he did, boy was he right to laugh. He put a dot in the small semicircle for the eye, a half-circle for the mouth, and a few sticks for the body coming out of the smaller semicircle. The huge circle was Roger’s nose! Damn, it’s funny even thinking about it now. But as I told you before, Roger couldn’t leave funny enough alone. He performed that drawing for just about everyone in the class, sometimes multiple times, and began putting it on all the wooden desks.

Roger isn’t much of a get in your face type of guy. He broods. He’ll start talking about someone for a while, and he might give that person nasty looks, but he’d be unlikely to approach him and start an argument. Part of the reason might be because he usually lost those arguments. He was not quick on his feet and his insults always end up rather flat. He wasn’t stupid, just a slow thinker. Charlie, on the other hand, had a flair for insults. Roger probably did the smart thing by not approaching Charlie in the schoolyard about the drawing and the Roger nose. Hell, even I, and I’m quick on my feet, try not to get into words with Charlie where others can see us. It just always ends badly. So Roger bided his time and didn’t approach Charlie directly.

Roger started giving Charlie funny looks at school. We all saw it. He started talking behind Charlie’s back. At first, he told people what a jerk Charlie was, and attempted to badmouth him to anyone who would listen. After a few weeks, he went further. He said he was going to kick Charlie’s ass.

Our school gym has a disgusting heavy polyurethane smell that overpowers you when you walk in. I’m sure it causes cancer or something, but once you’re there for a bit, it fades into the background, like the buzzing on walkie-talkies. The odor can destroy your sense of smell for hours, ruining lunch if you are unlucky enough to have gym in the morning. Even opening the gym’s back doors didn’t help. If anything, when those doors are open—and they only opened the doors on days where they feared that we’d drop dead from the heat—the air outside the gym starts smelling badly but the gym air doesn’t change.

The gym doors were wide-open on a terribly hot spring day, where all I could think about was the heat. That day, I spent many hours staring at the two hands of the clock, willing it to move. But no matter how long I looked, the clock never moved. On a day like that one, things looked wavy, and everyone moved slowly because their bodies repaid every bit of effort with expended with buckets of sweat. Kids acted out in class eager for the teacher to send them to the principal’s office since his office, like every administrator’s offices in the school, had air conditioning. The teachers caught on quick, though. Only the most resourceful students could find an act that created enough anger in the teacher to send you to the office, but not enough to risk a long detention. Students overcrowded the nurse’s office and she ended up treating them in the hallways, painfully close but still outside her air-conditioned office.

We were hoping the gym teacher would forget to come to class because the thought of playing anything on such a hot day was next to unbearable. Charlie and I were standing around arguing about whether Mr. Gerling, our gorilla of a gym teacher, was capable of speaking in full sentences or only grunts. Roger joined us and didn’t say a word. He took a deep breath, throwing out his chest, and jerked toward Charlie, his fists raised. He pulled back before he got close. I don’t think Charlie expected it, and he took a step back and fell over, ending up flat on his butt in the gym.

Roger grinned when he looked down at Charlie. The rest of the class gathered around and there were some yells to fight. Charlie remained seated for a while and we didn’t know what he was going to do. Instead of standing up, he slowly lifted his fist toward his face, his thumb inward, and formed the Roger nose. Someone chuckled and there were more cries for a fight, but to tell you the truth, I was disappointed. I expected more from Charlie. But he was far from done. Charlie removed his fist from his nose and lowered his arm until both hands were behind him. He used the palms of his hands to push himself up. He wiped off the back of his shorts carefully, and put his hands on his hips.

Charlie spoke quietly, and the circle of students closed in tighter. I think at that moment, Roger was having second thoughts. It looked more as if Roger wanted to get out of there before Charlie started, but it was too late for that. There was no way that the circle would let him get away. That’s when Charlie said it.

“Roger, it wasn’t your flinching that knocked me over. What you don’t realize—and I’m not sure if it’s your greasy hair or puss-filled acne that sucks the essential oils from your brain—what you don’t realize is that when you jerked forward, your nose was at least five feet from your face. Even when you pulled back, it was too late.”

The gym was dead silent. Even the cars driving on the avenue outside the school made no noise. We waited to see what Roger would do. If I had the time to take odds, I would have made a killing. The principal always said that our school was a nonviolent place, a place where, now get this, I’ll quote them because it always cracks me up, “a place where you check your violence at the school door.” Me, I never believed them. I had two broken nose and was in three fights before I turned ten, and I’m not a violent guy. But when they come at you, you have to put up or bad things will happen. It wouldn’t have been too surprising if Roger got into it with Charlie then.

He started to say something, his face turned splotchy red, and his mouth and jaw moved, but no words came out. Charlie stood in front of him and he made a fist and placed the pinky side of his fist on his cheek creating a reverse Roger nose to show us where Roger’s nose hit him. The entire class broke into laughter. Roger stood there and said nothing, his face turning red until the red covered the splotchy white parts. The fight might have happened then if Mr. Gerling hadn’t walked in. He barked something, and the class groaned and began running laps around the gym fighting the heavy air.

When something happens in school, news travels fast. One time Taylor Baylor, yeah, I can’t make that up, that’s his name, it’s kind of messed up but he’s the smartest and fastest kid in our grade. When we play punch-football—and, no, it’s not what you’re thinking, it’s football played with a blue Spalding—his team always wins. Taylor runs straight out and they just chuck him the ball usually like ten or twenty feet in front. No matter how far they throw it, he catches it. We usually made Taylor play quarterback because the quarterback can’t run unless the defender rushes, and we’d kick the ass of any defender who rushed Taylor. Anyway, Taylor puked in the cafeteria. The puke was purple, and there was a lot of it, more than we figured any one person could hold in his stomach. Before the custodian could cover it up with sawdust and sweep it away, almost the entire school came rushing down to see it: the purple lake of puke. We had a substitute teacher that day, so when we heard about it, which was like less than a minute after it happened, we all ran to check it out. I don’t know what the sub was thinking, but for all her screaming, there wasn’t a student left in her classroom.

By the period after gym, the younger kids started coming up to me to ask what happened. One of them even wanted to tell me about it. He was a little guy, and the little guys always try to get on us bigger guy’s good side. He tells me that Charlie kicked the kid with the nose’s ass so bad that his nose spurted tons of blood all over the gym floor. No kidding, that’s what the kid told me. When I tried to tell him that’s not what happened, he wouldn’t listen. He told me he heard from an older friend and he had gone up to the gym and saw the puddle of blood. It’s no use arguing with those little guys. Their brains are all mushy.

I didn’t see much of Roger that week after the incident in the gym. I can’t really blame him. Roger wasn’t that popular before, and the humiliation in the gym really wasn’t what he needed. Many rumors flew around about Roger’s disappearance, but Charlie didn’t do or say much about it.

Charlie and I sometimes walk home together, and I remember the day of the fight well. The weather was blistering cold, a day where any exposed skin turns bright red and your breath looks like exhaust smoke from a car. I’ve lived almost sixteen years next December, and on really cold, clear days like this one, the sky looks three-dimensional. Do you know those skies? It’s like looking into a holographic picture where you see depth even though the picture is on a flat piece of paper. Three dimensions are easy to see when there are clouds floating every which way, but that day there weren’t. It was just blueness, and the blueness was three-dimensional.

We had just turned onto Avenue T, just two blocks from Charlie’s house. We talked about the kind of stuff that ten-year olds talk about, like movies and junk. I can tell you we weren’t talking about sports because Charlie didn’t know the first thing about sports. He was strange that way. I knew a little about it, having played in little league and everything. But Charlie, I don’t think he ever played on a team. He’s the kid we always picked last in anything we played in the schoolyard. It wasn’t because we didn’t like the guy—I mean, some of us didn’t like him, but most of us thought he was cool. It was just that he was real skinny. Charlie turned out to be one of the tallest kids in class, but back then, he was ordinary-sized and skinny with wrists so small I could wrap my thumb and pinky around them.

Roger was waiting on the corner when we turned. He must have misjudged when we’d make the turn because he looked real cold, as if he’d been waiting for a while. His splotchy face glowed red, and snot, the really gooey kind—which I always found strange, because snot, unlike water, is all gooey when cold and hard when warm—dripped down around his lips. Roger wore a blue ratty sweater and his bare skin poked out of the huge holes left by the wide knitting. It wasn’t a good look, and the cold must have bothered him because his hands were the same shade of red as his face and chest, and he kept rubbing his hands together. He looked bigger than I remembered, not huge, just puffed up like a marshmallow man.

“You think you’re a funny guy,” Roger said. He took a step toward us, well, really toward Charlie but I was still standing next to Charlie, and Roger jerked forward with his fists. This time, Charlie didn’t move. I moved a bit, but Charlie stood his ground and looked at Roger with his head tilted to the side as if he were studying a strange animal in the zoo.

A group of third graders played across the street from the corner. I didn’t notice them when we first turned, but when Roger spoke, they stopped playing whatever their game was, and watched us. Now, I know you’ve been out of school for a long time, so you probably won’t understand this, but this was a difficult decision for me. Charlie’s my bud, and I’m a good guy who always looks out for his buddy. If I wanted to, I could have pummeled Roger into hamburger meat, but I had to consider the rules, you know. In school, those rules are different, but once you get past the playground, you have to be careful. It wouldn’t take long for everyone to know what happened here at the corner of Avenue T and East 23rd street, and I was giving my next move a lot of thought.

“What, no jokes this time?” Roger said. Roger was moving from foot to foot either in anticipation or because the cold was getting to him.

Charlie still considered Roger and remained silent. He wore a very large, puffy coat, and his thin neck and head poked out of its zippered neck, like a straw in a glass of milk. I half expected him to bring up the Roger nose, and I was tempted to beat him to it, but I still wasn’t sure if I could step in. I could have fought instead of Charlie and no one would have looked down on me. The only problem with that was that the other kids might question Charlie’s manhood, and I wanted to avoid that. A guy’s manhood was all he really had in school. And anyway, Charlie didn’t appear scared or anything, it just looked like he was chewing over something.

As I was saying, there are rules in a street fight. You can’t just jump in anytime you want. I mean, you can if the circumstances are right. Let me put it this way, if Roger brought a friend and the friend jumped in, there’d be no problem. I’d be there for Charlie. But he didn’t, and Roger ignored me, he was concentrated and talking only to Charlie. If we both jumped Roger, then that would be wrong, unless we were trying to mug Roger—but that’s a whole different situation, and, besides, we weren’t after Roger’s money.

“You don’t want to make fun of my nose now, huh, Charlie? What, you’re not such a big man without Mr. Gerling saving you?” Roger said. He fell back into a karate stance, his front leg bent and his back leg at a wide angle with his foot facing forward. He placed both of his hands on the sides of his waist and I was real close to just socking him one. There was no way he’d be able to stop me if I jumped on him. I’d pummel him down and it would be fair, in a way. But I looked over to Charlie, who was still standing there and I could have sworn he gave a small shake of his head.

“You sure, Charlie,” I said. This time I definitely saw the shake of his head. I remember shrugging my shoulders and taking a step back. He baked his cake, and it was time for him to eat it.

Roger gave out a loud yell, took a strange, almost diagonal step toward Charlie, moving his back foot toward his front foot, and then forward at the same angle. Charlie rubbed his chin like he was in deep thought and watched Roger get closer. Roger looked close enough to strike at Charlie and Charlie finally raised his hands to his face and formed fists. He still hadn’t said a word.

Roger again brought his back foot forward and stepped diagonally forward and his left arm struck moving and twisting at the last moment. His fist fell into Charlie’s padded jacket and Charlie stepped backward. The punch didn’t penetrate the huge padding of Charlie’s jacket, but he still looked confused—outside of wrestling, I don’t think Charlie had ever been in a fight before and it showed. He moved around Roger, and forced Roger to get out of the ridiculous stance he was in to keep Charlie in front of him.

Charlie’s hands were near his head and he tucked his elbows tightly under his neck. I wasn’t sure if he could even see past his arms. Roger moved in again and tried to punch him, but his punch fell into Charlie’s arms. Roger backed off again.

“This is going to be fun,” Roger said.

Charlie remained silent and kept his arms up around his face. He focused his eyes, brown beady eyes that he used so effectively to make hilarious faces, on Roger’s every move. Roger stepped back and jumped toward Charlie, his front leg extended trying to perform a jump sidekick. One of my favorite games in the arcade is the game called Karate Champ. It’s in the pizza store and I can play it for hours. There are two joysticks and the fighters perform their special moves by moving the joysticks in different directions. Like, if you wanted to do a forward flip you would push the first joystick up and the second joystick down. Likewise, if you wanted to do a kneeling punch, you would push the first joystick down and the second joystick up. You could do a flying sidekick, which is what I think Roger was doing, but all in real life, not in the arcade, by pressing the first joystick up and the second joystick to the right.

Roger jumped toward Charlie and he extended his foot. Charlie scrambled backward and when Roger landed, Roger’s foot had landed on Charlie’s front foot. Roger was still yelling when he landed and he stepped back. Charlie lifted his foot up to his hand and he rubbed it.

“That hurt,” Charlie said completely deadpan. Without even noticing, the kids had crossed the street and were watching the fight from close in. They started laughing, their high-pitched laughter echoing off the line of attached houses that lined the sidewalk. Roger looked at them, rubbed his hands together, turned, and walked away.

As he walked away, Charlie said, “Did you see that? He hit me with the flying toe stomp. That was amazing.”

Cutting-Floor (here’s where I put all the stuff that didn’t make this draft):

We didn’t get any weapons, so I stepped behind Roger’s bunk bed and let him know how stupid this game was. Charlie, however, started getting into it. He threw some fake kicks and punches in Roger’s direction.

We planned to sketch out the next issue for our comic. Our first one sold pretty well, although I was hoping for a few more dollars. I don’t think Charlie cared much about the money, but he loved hearing what people had to say about it. We were talking about the story for the next comic. I remember I was pushing for a giant robot villain, but Charlie had his heart set on flying lizard men. Charlie almost always won those conversations. I’m not sure how he did it, but as we turned, I was taking credit for thinking up the flying lizard men and already describing to Charlie what they would look like.

Besides drawing comics, I don’t think he did much but study. I knew in a fight, Charlie would lose badly. I doubted he even knew hot to throw a punch. It just didn’t seem his style. I think he’s trying to make something of himself, and he’s probably scared to death of being sent to the principal’s office and risking his permanent record.

I didn’t see the fight, but Charlie was walking home with Eddie, and Eddie told me all about it. I trust Eddie. He’s strange but good at telling stories.

Charlie and Eddie were walking home together after school. We’re in New York, I should tell you, Brooklyn if

That night we ordered food from this place called Brennan & Carr, an old-style roast beef joint. Before joining Roger for dinner, I never ate from there. My parents didn’t believe in taking us out to dinner. Back then on most nights, we had to suffer with my mother’s terrible cooking. Now I get to go to Brennan & Carr often. My mother doesn’t cook as much anymore, probably because of that impending senility. Brennan & Carr has this great roast beef sandwich, but at the time, because I didn’t know better, I ordered a cheeseburger. The cheeseburger is not bad, but it’s not as good as the roast beef. For the roast beef, they dip the bun in this big vat of gravy, and then dip the roast beef in the same vat with a slice of cheese slapped on it.

Roger’s parents called ahead and went to pick up the food. Roger ordered two roast-beef sandwiches, fries, and mozzarella sticks. The food came in brown paper bags, with the sandwiches, fries, and sticks wrapped in the restaurant-grade tinfoil, which is like regular tinfoil only thinner and with these indentations—it’s real fancy like. Roger’s mother brought the food to the table and his father took out the drinks and silverware. As his mother served, there was a problem: Roger’s second roast-beef sandwich was missing. You should have heard him screaming. It was like his parents had stabbed him or something. I thought his father was going to run away from the table and cry or something, he was that upset. My father would have backhanded me if I had said the things that Roger said. He didn’t curse, probably because we were still too young to know the good ones, but he called his mother a whore and his father a balding has-been. I sat there astonished. I would have taken notes and tried it on my own parents, but I knew better. Besides the back-handing, I’d probably spent the rest of the month locked in my room with my computer broken into tiny bits. I guess it had something to do with being an only child. Charlie and I both come from bigger families, I have a brother and a sister and Charlie has two sisters, and our parents wouldn’t put up with what Roger dished out.

The rumor around school was that Roger had started taking karate lessons, which made sense with his love of ninjas. Now, I liked the Saturday afternoon ninja movies as much as the next kid, but Roger’s fascination went beyond that. One Halloween, I think it was back in third grade or somewhere around that time, Roger dressed up as a ninja in a black costume with lots of sashes and hidden pockets.

Over the last few years, many karate schools began opening in our neighborhood—after the first one popped up, they came in swarms. I think it had something to do with those Saturday afternoon martial arts flick. That’s some good shit, and I know I would have signed up in my parents could have paid for it. But that’s cool. From what I saw with the kids who went there, they did a lot of kicking, but all those fancy kicks weren’t much good in the schoolyard. With so many karate schools, it’s more than possible that Roger attended one. He didn’t talk about, but you had the feeling that something changed in him. He used to walk around all hunched over, like if he didn’t keep moving forward he’d fall over. Around the time that people started talking about him and karate school, his posture improved and his chest puffed out. That’s around the time that he started glaring at Charlie.

Now Charlie I knew went to a karate dojo. There was a Russian kid in our class, Mihail, who Charlie hung around. Mihail was the first kid to take karate and I think he got his black belt when he was nine. Mihail convinced Charlie to go to the karate class. Charlie’s parents encouraged him to do things.

When the principal finished searching Roger, he found thirty different weapons, and from what I heard from Oscar, who was in the principal’s office when Roger’s mother came in for the discussion, Roger would have gotten suspended for sure if his mother didn’t start crying. From what I heard, they gave him counseling during his study hall for the rest of the year. Much good that did.

There’s an attack stance in which you stand with one leg in front of the other and one fist in front of your face and the other one a bit lower. I’ve seen this stance in many movies and those specials where they show karate competitions. Charlie is a serious guy and a bit of a wimp when he’s not hiding behind his clever words. He’s also terribly afraid of dogs. I’m not talking about the scary dogs. I’m talking about all dogs, even the tiny ones with barks that sound more like little girls whining. We were walking to his house a year ago and passed a fenced garden. A small dog jumped out from behind a wall in the garden and charged at us. Charlie fell back into his karate stance and gave a loud, “Kiya!” It’s a cry that they teach you at karate school. I bent down and let the dog lick my fingers through the gray fence. I could see Charlie’s heart beating through his thin t-shirt. I told you he was skinny, and I’ve seen him with his shirt off when we went swimming, and you could make out each rib in his cheat and just about see his heart beat underneath his skin. It’s freaky to look at his almost pinkish blue skin and see bones sticking out and organs doing their thing. I never saw someone jump so high or yell so loud when such a small dog charged forward. But that’s Charlie for you.

Now I always thought Charlie was the smart one. But for some reason, he really took to this ninja game.

The thing is, I don’t think Charlie realized how skinny he was. He didn’t think much and cared even less about what he looked like. Just to give you an example, so you can have a better idea of what I’m talking about, Charlie wore these plastic braces. Eddie is a good friend Eddie is short and his nose always looks like it should be running, there’s always flaking red skin and other yucky stuff around it—now that I really think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen him blow it or any snot dripping from it. Maybe it’s a skin disease or some other thing.

Eddie, Charlie, and I were once talking, and Eddie made this real funny comment. Eddie was like, ‘Charlie, you eat cream cheese for lunch?’ We were standing around and talking in the afternoon between classes. Charlie said ‘nah, he had pizza,’ which was a good choice because there were some real good pizza joints around the school. I’m talking high quality. They say it’s the water that makes the pizza good, you know Brooklyn water. I don’t believe they put water in pizza, so I think they’re full of shit, but I’m just telling you what they say. Anyway, then Eddie says, and this was funny, I almost peed my pants funny, Eddie says, ‘Then what’s that gunk between your braces?’ You see, Charlie’s braces always had this white goo around them. I never thought of it before Eddie said something, but it did look like cream cheese stuck there. Eddie said things like that. He was quick, that Eddie. But Charlie didn’t care much about how he looked so it flew right passed him. I was dying, though. That Eddie’s a funny one.

Once, during gym, Roger jerked at him and Charlie fell over as he tried to get into his fighting position. Charlie stood up, brushing himself off, he started in on Roger. He began with the Roger nose, which everyone had seen already and we all felt was a weak comeback. But that was just his warm-up act. Looking back, we should have jumped in and stopped him, but there was something fascinating about watching Charlie work. His insults were a real art, if you know what I mean.

Roger went into his closet and came out dressed completely in black, even going as far as to wear those funny black slippers with the big toe cut out, like mittens for your feet. Roger’s mouth was covered, but we could see its outline as he spoke.

Right away, I saw how stupid the situation was. I’ve been in lots of fights, but I’ve learned not to face someone with a weapon, even just an innocent broomstick is asking for trouble. Give me fists and I’m there. But weapons are a different story. The last thing I wanted to do was get my head knocked off, and Roger’s weapons looked dangerous.

Even for a little guy, the thing was he wasn’t scared of nothing. He would charge into a fight or stand up to some guy he had no business standing up to. That’s Charlie for you. And he didn’t think of what he was doing until after he did it. After he had words with an eighth grader, Charlie told me how there would be no way in a million years he would have stood up to the guy if he had a chance to think about it. But that’s the thing: Charlie never thought about anything until after he’d done it.

So, not surprisingly, Charlie threw a few more kicks and charged Roger. When he got in close, he grabbed at the sai that Roger twirled around like he was conducting a band, and ripped it out of Roger’s hand. Now armed, Charlie poked the sai in Roger’s direction, pushing him back against the dresser. Roger, yelling at Charlie to stop, lowered his mask. He looked pissed, worse than even when his mom asked him to pass the string beans. Charlie laughed and backed off. He tried to spin the sai in his hand, dropped it, and caught it in both hands before it the floor. Roger went on and on about how that wasn’t how you’re supposed to play ninja—how ninjas were sneaky and you didn’t see them until they attacked. Charlie nodded but didn’t give up the sai.