SIXTH GRADE SUPERSTAR Chapters 4 and 5

Middle school hits hard. But hope is on the horizon.

Welcome back to SIXTH GRADE SUPERSTAR. Now, where were we? Ty Bogart had just started Middle School. He made a friend in Bowen Tu, and a bully in Craig Stone.

Let’s go!

CHAPTER FOUR

I was average height, average weight.  No chiseled features, no piercing blue eyes. I was plain and I was pale.  If life were a video game, I’d be a basic starter character.  The one you play on the first couple of boards, before you earn any kind of cool hair, clothing or accessories as rewards.    I never saw myself as special in any way.  

But Craig Stone saw something in me.  He saw so much in me that made me different from everyone else.  Craig saw an endless list of things to make fun of.  I didn’t think I was overweight, but Craig sure did.   Then the next week, he moved on to my skin. Boy, was I ghost-white.   Craig liked to keep his material fresh, I guess.  Every day I went to school, I worried what Craig was going to say about me.  He was a master at finding something new to make me feel bad about.   The problem was, he didn’t just blurt out an insult, he’d say something funny, so it stuck.  I’d give specific examples of some Craig Stone material, but I’ll let Craig reveal it in his eventual book.

Craig would usually strike when the teachers weren’t paying attention: a quick but loud verbal jab before they entered the classroom, or a whispered reminder that I was awful when they were writing something on the board.  The cafeteria and hallways were a free-for-all, I never knew when a Craig Stone Special was coming.  I just kept my head down and tried to get through it.

On days when Craig didn’t feel like insulting me, his three cronies would pick up his slack because that’s what good friends/bad people do.

There was the behemoth known as Avery “The Horizon” Stern, who was a full week or so behind Craig when it came to what he was supposed to be mocking me about.  “Bogart, why are you so dumb.  Oh, we’re not doing the dumb thing anymore?  It’s about his feet this week?  Okay, Bogart, when I said the dumb thing, I meant your feet are dumb because they’re so big.” 

And then Gary Thumb, a tiny kid who had to sit on his bookbag every class just so he could see over people’s shoulders.  Was he as small as I drew him?  Perhaps not, but please go with it, I deserve this.  

And finally, last but not least (Gary Thumb was quite literally least) who could forget Pony Tail Phillip, a jovial fellow who said everything like he was trying to be helpful but really was insulting you.  “Maybe, Ty, and this is just a thought, you should try being the worst person.  Just a suggestion, buddy.”

So help me, I tried to change everything Craig and his crew didn’t like about me. For instance, when they said my skin was too pale, I sat out in the sun all weekend to give it a nice red burn. 

My feet were too small?  I borrowed my dad’s gigantic loafers and clomped into class in them.                                   

Every attempt at change was met with more derision.  And that led to more anxiety, and a more desperate need to change further.  And the bigger the gesture I made, the bigger a target I painted on myself. 

Don’t get me wrong, things weren’t all bad: For one thing, Bowen Tu and I had become better friends as the weeks and months went on.   It turned out comic books weren’t the only interests we had in common.  We also dug video games, anime and movies.   We’d hang out after school and sometimes have sleepovers where we’d show one another movies the other hadn’t seen.  His dad, who had emigrated from China before Bowen was born, had an extensive collection of Chinese action movies on VHS.  One day, he brought over POLICE STORY,  an action masterpiece directed by and starring Jackie Chan.   My mom walked in, watched wide-eyed for a few minutes and told us to turn it off, that it was too violent. 

Bowen countered that it was serving as a cautionary tale and by watching this, we would be less inclined to go down the dark path of the criminals Jackie Chan was kicking.  Mom relented, and let us continue watching.  Bowen Tu had just unlocked a means for me to watch all sorts of new movies.  A means I dubbed:

We even decided to create our own comic. Bowen and I would write together, and I’d draw, ink and letter it.   Bowen wanted to make the character like Wolverine but better, so we came up with a guy who had four claws on each hand instead of three.  He also had two swords because, as Bowen stated, “You just never know.”   One day I was feeling particularly inspired and started sketching the character during history class.  

Craig passed by my desk.  He made a simple “pfffffft” noise to let me know that he did not like this art.   His friends laughed.  I kept drawing, thinking to myself, they’re wrong, drawing is the one thing I know I can do.

But as the bell rang and everyone picked up their stuff to head to their next class, one of Craig’s minions, lil’ Gary Thumb, stuck around.  He approached me, and looked at the picture I had been working on.  This is it, I figured, this is where he, now that his other friends can’t hear it, admits that it’s a pretty cool drawing. 

He did not. 

“Why do you do what you do?” Gary snapped.  “You’re not good at it, and no one likes it.  Just stop it.  Stop all of it.”

“All of it?”  I asked.

He put his hand up and gestured all around me.  “Yeah, everything.  All of it.”

I never finished the picture I was drawing.  And that night when I went home, and I started drawing while I was watching TV, it was like Gary Thumb was over my shoulder judging it.  

I stopped drawing that picture too.    The next day I told Bowen I couldn’t finish the book.  I stopped writing and drawing altogether. 

But it didn’t stop there. 

I stopped answering questions in class. 

I hung in the back during gym. 

I dressed to blend in. 

I kept my head low.  

They can’t hate what they don’t notice.   That was my plan and that was how it was going to be until, maybe, college.  

______________________________

CHAPTER FIVE

For roughly four months I said nothing in class unless I was called on by a teacher.  And when a teacher DID ask me a question, I would keep the answer as short as possible.  “Yes,” “no,” “I don’t know.”  I did my homework, I paid attention, but I kept to myself.  In gym I did whatever it took to get all eyes off of me.  If we were playing baseball, I swung at the first three pitches as fast as possible, so I could immediately retreat back to the dugout.  If we were playing basketball and someone passed me the ball, I would throw it to whoever was closest: my team, the rival team, the gym teacher, the janitor, it didn’t matter.   My life was like whack-a-mole.  Craig Stone had the mallet, and as long as I stayed in the hole, he couldn’t whack me. 

And aside from one day, when Craig had a solid five-minute routine following what he called my “very weird sneeze,” he left me alone.    My plan was working perfectly.  The only flaw being that it completely prevented me from living my life.   I was there, but I wasn’t there.  My teachers noticed the change, they told my principal, who in turn sent a note home to my parents.  They asked me if I wanted to talk to them about it.  I said no.  They asked if I wanted to talk to someone else about it.  I probably should have taken them up on it, but refused.   I just figured this is how it had to be.

But fate had different plans for me.  We were halfway through the school year.  I was heading down the hall, toward the exit to catch the bus, when I saw a sign that things were going to get better.  It was this sign, specifically.   Hand painted and splattered with glitter, hanging just outside the front office.  

The phrase at the top of the poster, Who Do You Want To Be?, instantly grabbed my attention.    It was a great question.  I certainly didn’t want to be me.  That role wasn’t exactly working out.   The idea of being in a musical, being somebody else, for a full two hours, sounded so appealing.

That said, “bring a song”?  I’d have to sing in front of people?   

No.  Absolutely not.  That wasn’t happening.  I couldn’t sing.  Ever since kindergarten, I was far too self-conscious to sing out loud.  Whenever the teacher would whip out the banjo to teach us about vegetables, she’d yell out “Y’all sing along!”  But I’d simply mouth the words. 

Don’t get me wrong, I learned the lyrics, and I appreciated vegetables.  I was big on carrots before carrots were even a thing, but I wouldn’t sing.   It was hard enough to talk.

So, I figured the school musical was simply not meant to be.  As I began to turn away from the glitter poster, I took one last look at it, checking out the names of the kids who had already signed up. 

There was not ONE NAME I knew. 

It was a roster of complete strangers. 

I would be walking into a group of kids that did not know me, that weren’t pre-judging me.  At the very worst, I would be terrible, I wouldn’t get a part and I would resume my life of doing nothing.  I wrote my name down.

My name seemed super boring among all the other, way cooler names.  Hashir?  Astra?  These were practically superhero names.  I had to add something to stand out.

“I love music”?  What did that even mean?  I could feel my cheeks getting hot.  I thought about tearing the entire list down so no one else would ever see what I had written, but that wouldn’t be fair to Hashir and Astra.  So I added one last note…

…before running away from the list, down the hall, to the exit, as fast as I could.

TO BE CONTINUED! Click this link for the NEXT TWO CHAPTERS!