I had a minute before I needed to go, so I took out my diabetes bag and fished out my glucose meter. I thought I’d be all right until lunch, but I’d started to feel spacey and dreamy at the end of my last class. Blood sugar levels might be falling. Best to check now.
As I rummaged, I noticed the tall kid next to me struggling to get his locker open. He was as Cuban as they come: brown, built like a track-and-field champ, with a haircut so short you could see the bumpy skin of his scalp beneath what was left of his tiny curls. He’d wrestled with his combination lock yesterday, too, and never figured it out, so he’d had to carry a full backpack of books to his next class. I’d had trouble with my lock on the first day, until I’d figured out you have to squeeze it as you turn the dial.
And I’m a nice guy. So I said to him, “Hey, man. My lock sucks, too. The trick is to squeeze the top while—”
That’s all I got out before he punched his locker. The whole hallway grew a little quieter.
Yasmany—I learned his name later, but why keep you in suspense?—slowly turned to look at me. He scanned me up and down, doing some tough-guy calculations to figure out if he could take me.
Apparently he thought he could, because he stepped up to me fast, ferocious, chest out, arms wide. He’d been in a lot of fights, judging from his flat-as-a-shamrock nose.
“Just come back from safari, white boy?” he asked. “I mean, if you even are a boy.”
Let’s take a second to break down this insult.
The “safari” crack was because I had on canvas cargo pants and a cargo vest, each with four pockets brimming with gadgets and tricks of the trade. Pretty much all the clothes I own have tons of pockets. I’m ready to perform at any time. You never know when the world is going to need a little magic.
The “white boy” crack was because—I guess?—to him I looked white. Back when I lived in Connecticut, kids were telling me to “go back to brown town” all the time. But I was in Miami now: new place, new rules about skin color.
And the “if you are a boy”? I kept my hair pretty long. It gave me a place to hide stuff in the middle of a trick. And to this caveman’s mind, calling someone a girl was an insult.
Whatever. I tried the My Little Pony approach to handling bullies. “Sorry. Just trying to help.” And I started to walk away.
He body-blocked me. “You? Wanted to help me? Why would a sandwich like you think I’d need your help?”
Now I looked him in the eye. “Your locker’s still locked, isn’t it?”
I probably shouldn’t have said anything. But he called me a sandwich. Some insults you can’t let slide.
In response, he did what bullies do. He slapped my diabetes bag out of my hands.
It hit the ground with a glassy crunch. My stomach crunched right along with it.
That pack contained my insulin, my syringes, my blood-glucose meter, my sharps disposal container (for used needles), my Band-Aids, and a fun-size bag of Skittles. If he broke something important in that pack, I could be in real trouble.
I knelt down to pick it up, my hands shaking as they reached for the bag. I tried to relax. I closed my eyes, breathed slowly, and remembered what Papi had said to me after Mami died: Fear is your body trying to tell your brain what to do. But the brain is the king of the body. It calls the shots.
I opened my eyes slowly, the way the good guys in movies do when they’ve just figured out how to beat the villain. I noticed that the bright young scholars of Culeco Academy of the Arts had formed a ring around Yasmany and me. This crowd didn’t seem as bloodthirsty as the ones in my last school had been. In Connecticut, kids hooted like in Planet of the Apes whenever a fight was about to start, jumping up and down and beating on each other in anticipation of someone getting wedgied back to the Stone Age. But these kids looked kind of grim and quiet, like this was some boring school assembly they had to attend.
Well, from my perspective, it didn’t really matter whether they were enjoying themselves or not. They had me surrounded just the same. I was trapped.
Wait. No. That’s an excuse, and I don’t lie to myself. I could have pushed my way out of there if I’d wanted to. But now all eyes were on me. I had an audience. And I am a showman.
Yasmany stretched his fingers wide before he made two fists. “Time to die, little man. Stand up.”
I stood all right. Got right in his face. “Time to die?” I asked.
“Time. To. Die,” he repeated.
“Like the dead chicken in your locker?” I asked.
“What?”
See, that’s the real secret of dealing with bullies: Change
the game. You thought we were going to fistfight, Mr. Tough Guy, but—surprise!—suddenly we’re talking about murdered poultry.
“The dead chicken in your locker,” I said, explaining it to the crowd. “That’s the real reason you didn’t want to open it. You didn’t want anybody to see your dead chicken so they wouldn’t know you keep dead chickens in your locker. Because,” I said, turning to face Yasmany again, “what kind of weirdo keeps dead chickens in his locker?”