STARSCAPE BOOKS(8)

But I didn’t just punish the wicked. I also helped the weak. Like Aubrey Toth, the class nerd. I helped him hit a double in gym class. I can still remember his stunned expression when the ball shot over the heads of the outfielders. The pitcher was pretty shocked, too. And it was funny how my one mean teacher, Mr. Dinzmore, was always losing his pens.

Life at home got better, too, at first. Things had been tense between me and my parents for years. Mom kept trying to get inside my head and find out what was bothering me. Dad would glance up from his phone calls when I walked by, and study me like he was staring at a puzzle written in another language. I could hear them talking at night. The words were never clear, but the tone was unmistakable. What did we do to deserve this? What can we do to fix it?

There was a time, back when I was little, when Mom sang songs to me and took me on trips to the zoo. There was a time when I sat at the table after dinner and drew pictures of dragons while Dad told me about his business deals. I never understood what he said, but I loved that he said it to me.

I know the exact moment when my life took a sharp left turn. The memory still has the sting of a razor cut.

Fourth grade. Mr. Rostwick’s class. The day we got back from spring vacation. The end of my life as a normal, happy kid. There was a new kid at the desk next to me. I don’t even remember his name. Just that he was twice my size, with small, beady eyes and a crusty patch of dried snot next to his left nostril.

“Whatcha doing?” he asked before class started.

I held up the drawing I was working on. I’d always liked to draw. Especially monsters and rocket ships. This one was a cool monster with three heads.

“Can I have it?” he asked.

“Nope.”

He reached over and snatched it. “It’s mine now.”

“Give it back.”

He shook his head. “Finders, keepers.”

I wanted to hit him, but Dad always told me not to solve problems with my fists. You can negotiate with anyone. “You didn’t find it. You stole it.” When I tried to grab it, the kid yelped like he’d been pinched, and leaned away from me.

“Edward! Stop bothering the new boy,” Mr. Rostwick said.

“But he—”

“I said stop.” Mr. Rostwick gave me the glare he used when he was about to explode.

I gave up. “Fine,” I whispered. “Keep it.” I figured I should be happy he liked it that much. But the kid stuck his tongue out at me and started to slowly tear up the drawing. As he ripped each piece off, he slipped it in his desk. I grabbed the legs of my desk and squeezed them hard to keep from leaping up and smashing him in the face.

When we headed out for recess, I went around the building and climbed back into the classroom through the window. I was just going to get the pieces back. That’s all. And, okay, maybe tear up something of his.

Mr. Rostwick caught me right when I reached the kid’s desk. “What are you doing?”

I froze. For a moment, I couldn’t even remember how to breathe. Mr. Rostwick walked over and knelt so he could look into the desk. He gasped, and then started pulling stuff out and piling it on top of the desk. “Edward, how could you?” Everything was trashed. The notebooks were shredded, the pencils were snapped in half, and the calculator was pulled apart. It looked like someone had tossed a grenade in there.

“I didn’t do it.” I tried to think of some way to prove I was innocent, but my mind was as frozen as my body.

“Young man, you are in serious trouble,” Mr. Rostwick said.

My parents had to come in for a conference. Nobody believed me when I said I hadn’t done anything. They took money out of my allowance to pay for everything. Before the end of the school year, I’d gotten in trouble two more times—once for trashing another kid’s desk, and once for destroying the set for the play after I wasn’t allowed to help paint it. Nobody would believe I hadn’t done either of those things. Mom and I had more and more long talks. Dad and I had more and more long silences.

It got worse in the fifth and sixth grades. Everyone started calling me Trash. Kids tried to get me mad, hoping they’d see me wreck something. Things got wrecked, but nobody ever saw it happen. By then, I had a permanent desk in detention, and no chance of an allowance for a very long time.

When I went to middle school, I hoped things would change. But the first week there, I got into an argument with my art teacher, Ms. Eberhardt. She wanted me to hold my pencil a different way. I told her I’d been holding it this way all my life. She snatched it out of my hand and broke it in half, then told me to get out of her class. I stomped out of there and left the building, but went and sat outside the window of the art room until long after school let out. I was too angry to go home right away.