A crazy thought crosses my mind. Ugo looks like a football sled. He’s the same shape, big and rectangular. He’s even the color of a sled, or his sweatshirt is. He’s a sled with an ugly head coming out the top of it.
And I know what to do with a football sled.
Run at it.
That’s what I do now. I run at Ugo. April is saying something behind me, but I don’t hear her. I hear this roaring sound. It begins deep in my chest and pours out of my throat—
“Aarrrggghhh!”
I duck my head at the last second and aim my right shoulder at Ugo’s midsection. I tuck my tongue back like Coach taught me so I don’t bite it off.
Ugo’s mouth opens in a surprised “Oh—”
And I hit the sled.
The sled holds. For a second I think it’s not going to budge, but then it gives way, shifting backwards a fraction of an inch. So I push again, harder. Suddenly the sled buckles and flies backwards, and I go with it, pushing and growling, driving Ugo back until we collide with a wall of lockers.
I hear an “Oomph!” as the breath rushes from Ugo’s lungs and his body deflates under me—
I immediately back up, toe dancing like I was taught, popping from foot to foot, ready to attack again.
Kids are coming into the hall from downstairs. “Fight, fight!” they shout. That brings even more kids.
Ugo is still slumped down by the lockers. I don’t know if he’s ever been down before, but from the look on his face, it’s a fairly new experience. He’s slowly coming out of it, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes.
I thought this was a David and Goliath thing, and I could throw one stone and knock the giant out for good. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, right?
Wrong.
Ugo gets up.
He recovers so fast I’m not ready for it. He just leaps forward and swings.
April screams.
Ugo hits.
It’s not like boxing, nothing technical like that. It’s more like his fist is a hammer, and I’m a nail, and he’s determined to drive me into the wall.
But that’s not the biggest surprise. The biggest surprise is that I hit back.
I don’t know how to box, so I slap. We stand in the middle of the hall like that, slapping and wrestling, surrounded by people shouting. Suddenly there’s an opening, so I rush him again. I duck even lower and closer to the ground, and I hit him with everything I’ve got.
We fly backwards again, but this time when we hit the lockers, there’s an ugly smack as his head makes contact with the metal. The fight instantly drains out of him, and he slumps to the ground.
It’s quiet in the hallway. People stand and look at us. Total shock.
For a terrible second, I think maybe Ugo’s dead. I have this CSI moment, an animation of Ugo’s fourth vertebrae snapping. I’m sure I’ve killed him, and I’m going to jail for a thousand years.
Another second goes by, or maybe it’s an hour. I can’t be sure.
Then Ugo groans and moves around. His eyes open, and he looks at me.
But he doesn’t get up.
The crowd bursts into a cheer. People rush forward to congratulate me. I’m trying to hang on to April, but she gets lost in the mass of bodies.
In one second my whole life changes. I’m not the fat weirdo, a tub of lard, the invisible blob, Jurassic Pork. I’m not even Andrew Zansky, football player, anymore.
I’m the guy who kicked Ugo Agademi’s ass.
40. all that testosterone stuff.
I’ve seen Warner smile through nearly everything. When Ugo bodychecks him, he smiles. When jocks publicly humiliate him, he plays it off with a grin. When Billy Rodenheiser called him Abs of Flab onstage at an assembly in fifth grade, he laughed along with the whole school. He even smiled in seventh grade when they added swimming to the Phys Ed curriculum, and his bathing suit ripped halfway up the diving-board ladder.
But here’s something I’ve never seen.
I’m walking down the hall the day after the Ugo thing when I pass Warner.
I say, “Hey, Warner,” like I always do.
His smile drops away. He doesn’t say anything back, only moves to the other side of the hall.
“Warner?” I say.
He puts his head down and speeds up like he didn’t hear me.
At first I think I must have imagined it. But as the day continues, I get strange reactions from everyone.
The geeks act like Warner. They either pass me cautiously or stay far away from me. I thought I’d be a hero to them, but I’m more like an unknown quantity, something dangerous they might need to be afraid of.
The powerful kids have an entirely different reaction.
They simply nod.
Not just athletes. Socialites. Preps. Even Becky Samuelson, spawn of the superstar.
It’s so subtle, you could easily miss it. But if you photographed it with one of those high-speed cameras they use to take pictures of raindrops, you’d see it clear as day—heads bobbing all over the hall, little movements that say, You are one of us. You have entered the realm of the powerful, and we are going to acknowledge you now.
That’s how it goes.
Geeks and outsiders, the popular and respected.
It’s like the whole school has split along some invisible fault line.
Later when I’m on the field running laps before practice, Rodriguez says, “So what’s the deal? You’re a badass now?”
“Not really,” I say.
“Don’t screw with him,” Cheesy says, “or he will mess you up good.”
“I heard the story,” Bison says. He bangs his fist against his chest. “Respect, baby.”
That’s how the football players react to the Ugo thing. As far as they’re concerned, I’ve grown a pair of balls. Balls are good when you’re on a football team. Big balls are better. And humungous, King Kong–sized balls?
Excelente.
All except O. I’m on my second lap when he jogs up next to me.
“Is it true?” he says. “You beat up that dude?”
“I didn’t really beat him up. More like tackled him.”
“The guy who was bothering you a couple weeks ago?”
“That’s the one.”
“You have to be careful,” O. says. “People get expelled for fighting.”
“He started it,” I say.
“When you’re an athlete, they hold you to a higher standard,” O. says. “If Coach finds out, you’re in big trouble.”
“Are you going to tell him?” I say.
“Why would I do that?”
We keep jogging. I notice I can keep up with O. now. It’s not easy, but I can breathe when I’m running. Not like before.
“O., what happened that day with Ugo? Why did you save me?”
“No reason,” he says.
“We never talked about it.”
“Drop it,” O. says.
April walks across the field towards us. Players and cheerleaders aren’t allowed to mix during practice, so she’s kind of taking a risk.
“Hi, guys,” she says.
“Hey,” I say.
We stand there, the three of us, while the team runs by pretending not to look at us.
“Did you hear what this guy did yesterday?” O. says.
A minute ago he was criticizing me, and now he’s acting like he’s proud. Abracadabra.
“I was there,” April says.
“Really? I didn’t hear that part of the story,” O. says. He squints at me. “You were busting out your Heroes moves?”
“It was scary,” April says.
“Ugo’s a scary dude,” I say.
“I mean you,” April says. “You scared me. It freaks me out when guys fight. All that testosterone stuff. I think it’s bullshit.”
A whistle blows from the girls’ field, and April runs off.