No Big Deal

MONTCLAIR, NEW JERSEY
APRIL 1994

“I don’t think you’re stupid. That’s the last thing I think you are.
  “But you’ve been here now so many times, sitting there just like you are now, and every time I see the same thing: somebody who does not understand the gravity of his situation. You think you’re a hot shot. I get that. I’ve seen hundreds of kids like you. And I know what you think of guys like me. All I am is the nuisance, the basic fact of life that you have to deal with so that you can keep on being the kind of person that you are. You think I just come with the territory, right? A little annoyance that spoils your day, like stepping in a puddle. Thing is, you keep getting caught, so it doesn’t seem to me like you’re as clever as you clearly think.
  “This is strike three. Even you got to know what that means. Let me help you: means you won’t listen. Means you won’t change. I tried. Nothing more that I can do for you, ‘cause you’re always going to do this to yourself.”
  John Lyndon got to his feet and strode to the door, flinging it open, the doorknob striking the dent in the wall. Lyndon stood in front of the open doorway for a moment, his frame blocking out the light, and circled back around his desk to look Nate Slidell in the eye.
  “Only thing between you and the door right now is you. You want to keep being a punk out there, fine. You and I both know you’ll end up back here. And it’s only going to get worse for you.
  “Out there, you’re whoever you want to be. But when you are in this room, who you think you are means nothing. When you are in this room, you are whoever I say you are. And you will listen to me.”
  Nate Slidell shifted around in the wooden chair. “Whatever, man. I’m good. Can I go?”
  “You really think it’s going to be that easy, after what you’ve done?” said Lyndon. “You’ve been warned two times about gum chewing. You don’t come into class with gum. How many times do you need to be told that?”
  Nate sneered. He didn’t need gum to affect derision for authority figures.
  “Well, I guess we have our answer. We’re past basic detention. I hoped that this was something we could work out one human being to another. Clearly that’s not the case. I’m going to have to call your parents.”
  “Get real. You’re not going to call my parents,” Nate said, eyeing Lyndon lift the receiver.
  Lyndon leaned forward over his desk, a mocking smile on his face. “Then tell me something I want to know, Nathan,” he said, his inflection contemptuously melodic.
  “About what?”
  Lyndon slammed the receiver down. “Somebody wrote an obscenity on one of the sixth graders’ lockers. You know what I mean; you’ve seen it. The a-word. They wrote the a-word. I want to know who did it.”
  “I didn’t do it.”
  “I didn’t say you did. Tell me what you know.”  
  Nate shrugged. “Whatever,” he said in a way that Lyndon took to mean the boy was receptive. Settling back into his chair, the vice-principal brushed aside the crowded pages of his notebook and clicked his pen into readiness.
  “Give me a name.”



“I can’t even figure out what I’m doing wrong. I’m going through the ship and I get up to this fight with Edward Diego and he keeps killing me instantly. I guess my character isn’t powerful enough to beat him, but I don’t know what I could be doing differently. I’ve tried using the assault rifle or the pistol or even the lead pipe instead of the laser gun, and every time it doesn’t seem to make that much of a difference; I always get killed a couple of seconds in.”
  Wringing his meaty hands together, Sean held his gaze on the concrete beneath his feet.
  “And after so many times of getting killed, I always hit this point where I’m, like, now I have to focus. I’m really, really going to beat him this time. Concentrating so much makes it worse somehow. It doesn’t matter what I do differently. I honestly don’t think there’s anything I can do. I can’t beat this guy. It’s driving me so crazy. I just need to get past that one part. This is the only new game I have.”
  Sean looked up. “I need to get past this.”
  Evan Lewis, listening dispassionately to Sean’s confession, removed his glasses and cleaned them on his t-shirt. “You want the code.”
  Sean straightened up. “I want the code.”
  “I can have that for you by tomorrow morning. It’s two dollars now and three dollars tomorrow.”
  “Five dollars?!”
  Evan groaned theatrically. “You said you wanted this. Come on.”
  “Fine, fine,” said Sean, opening up his Velcro, McDonalds-branded wallet. He unloaded eight quarters into Evan’s outstretched palm.
  “Alright. Thanks. Come back tomorrow.”
  Sean walked off across the grounds, shaking his head. Tuesday was shaping up to be a pretty good day, marred only by Evan’s having to spend the next eight hours in class. Heading off across the early morning grounds of Dearborn Elementary, past the poorly-maintained foliage and over deteriorating chalk outlines of hopscotch courts, Evan shifted the weight of his backpack onto one shoulder, in case any girls were going to look at him.
  Half-jogging up the steps to the gymnasium, Evan almost failed to notice Justin Harrell running past, an understandable near-omission given the fifth grader’s deficit of personality.
  “Hey, Justin,” said Evan, turning on a dime, “I got what you asked for.”
  Justin blinked. “Hey, Evan.”
  “Here you go,” he said, pulling a yellow Post-It note out from the pocket of his sweat pants. “Here’s the numbers of how many notches you need to pull up the sliders from the bottom. Then pull the lever. 8, 20, 23, 13, 6.”
  “Man, I could have thought of that.”
  “Well, anybody can think of something when they know it, so… pay up.”
  “I should have called the helpline.”
  “Your parents are letting you call the helpline again?”
  “No. They’re not.”
  Evan held out his hand. “You owe me four dollars.”
  “Okay,” Justin removed the cash from his wallet. “I might take a break from Myst. I want to get the new Space Quest.”
  Handing over the Post-It, Evan hiked up the remaining stairs towards the school gates, up around where the hotter sixth grade girls – meaning that they were dressed more or less like Courtney Love –pierced their ears with safety pins.
  “Did you see someone wrote ‘asshole’ his locker?” he heard one of them say.
  “Like, the word ‘asshole’? In marker?”
  “Yeah.”
  “Intense.”
  “Yeah.”
  “That’s so bad.”
  Evan walked into the gym with the self-satisfied smirk of someone who had six dollars in his pocket.

Flanked by two other kids scaling the ropes in swift serpentine motions, Evan tried to will his hand to unclench and grab at a higher point. His bare knees, locked tight against the cord, chafed at the slightest movement. If someone could convince him that in real life he was actually going to be called upon to climb a few feet of rope suspended from the ceiling, then maybe he would deign to consider this an efficient use of his time. Prying his fingers away from the rope, the grip in his other hand slipped and he fell hard onto the gym mat below.
  Sitting with the other guys at the bleachers behind Evan, Tom Donnelly started to lose his shit.
  “That is pathetic,” Tom laughed, joined after a beat in his laughter by his backup singers-slash-enforcers. “He can’t even pull himself up once. Come on. That is sad.” Evan, refusing to look at or otherwise acknowledge Tom, felt his face flush.
  The gym teacher reprimanded Tom Donnelly ineffectually, and encouraged Evan to try again with the same detached brusqueness. Tom lowered the volume of his sniggering. Still prostrate on the mat, Evan looked up to the rope, then to the ceiling, and tried to figure out why this mattered at all.



The brazenness of the affront unsettled Lyndon. It showed great disrespect not just from one student to another, but to the entire establishment, and meant that students were comfortable placing their personal vendettas above all other earthly concerns. Selfish is what it was. And then, the vulgar choice of word: ‘asshole’. Lyndon could expect phone calls from hysterical, high-strung parents the longer that this stayed up.
   He stood still in the corridor, looking for something new. ‘Asshole’: ascending diagonally across the metallic canvas, black ink, block capitals, simple calligraphy. Olivia Kennedy stood at Lyndon’s back, arms folded beneath her long, flat brown hair. Lyndon reached a hand towards the locker and clinically traced the trajectory of the ink with his finger.
  “Permanent marker,” he murmured, “whoever did this knew what they were doing.”
  “Someone wrote ‘asshole’ on this kid’s locker, John, it’s not the Goddamn Rosetta Stone you’re looking at.”
  “Please watch your language.”
  Olivia rolled her eyes.
  “There’s something missing,” Lyndon whispered.
  “What I’m missing is why this is still even up on the wall.”
  “The janitor took a personal day.”
  “You could clean it off.”
  “I don’t have time for that.”
  Olivia nodded, looking up and down the hall. “My mistake.” In lieu of further human response from the ensorcelled Lyndon, Olivia stuck her hands in her pockets and shifted her weight from her heels to her toes. “Well, quite a puzzle you have here, John. I, myself, have to get back to my class, but by all means continue making more money than me while staring at a wall.”
  “Yes,” said Lyndon, lost in thought. Olivia, having exceeded her quota for rolling her eyes at things John Lyndon said, quietly excused herself. Lyndon remained in position.
  The word ‘asshole’. On this locker.
  “What am I not seeing.”



The burden of Pamela Glaser’s disapproval hung heavier than usual in the empty room. Evan dutifully waited at her desk for her to assess his math test. Recess had just convened, and out the window Evan could see two of his classmates making animated conversation.
  “You must know that this isn’t your best work,” said Ms. Glaser, “so this can’t be a surprise to you.”
  “No.”
  “Help me understand. What do you think the reason for this is?”
  “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t study that much.”
  “You guess?”
  “Yeah,” Evan said absently.
  Ms. Glaser finally looked up at him. “This work is worse than you were doing earlier in the year. What is going on? You would be doing really well if you would only apply yourself.”
  “Yes, yeah, yeah,” said Evan, craning his neck to follow the conversation happening out the window. “I know.”
  After being admonished a few more times, Evan managed to pull himself from the room. Power-walking through the hallway, he passed by Tom Donnelly standing at his locker and furiously trying to scratch off the ink with a compass needle. Slouched against the wall, Tom’s friend Anna scowled indiscriminately at pedestrians.
  “It is so messed up that somebody did this,” she said.
  “When I find out who did it,” said Tom, “they’re the ones that are gonna be messed up.”
  Anna touched his arm. “You’re so bad.”
  Evan hurried out the door to the courtyard and tried to catch the eye of someone who owed him money.



John Lyndon’s office, with its overflowing bookshelves and yellowing world maps tended to oversell the academic element of his vice-principal role; seeming more in the province of a quaint college professor than a no-nonsense disciplinarian and Vietnam veteran. It better resembled a closet, thanks to Lyndon’s interior decorating choices and lone window that didn’t open all the way. The principal’s office, adjacent, sported two couches and half an empty wall and would definitely accommodate all of Lyndon’s books on child psychology.
  Lyndon realized that Pamela Glaser was ready for their meeting when she leaned across his doorway and slammed her open palm against his door repeatedly until he looked up from his papers.
  “Pamela,” he said, standing and gesturing for her to take a seat, “please, thanks for coming.”
  Pamela crossed her legs in the chair. “What do you want, John?” Pamela was one of the few teachers who’d been here even longer than him: nine years to his seven. That earned her some respect in Lyndon’s book: exactly two years’ worth.
  “I want,” said Lyndon, preparing to take notes, “to talk to you about Evan Lewis.”
  “Evan?” Pamela smiled oddly. “What did he do?”
  “I’m not sure,” said Lyndon, “but tell me about him: who is he, what does he like to do?”
  Pamela exhaled deeply. “Evan… Evan keeps to himself a lot. Very quiet, sort of studious, I’d say, but his grades aren’t impressive. Particularly as of late.”
  “How’s his penmanship?”
  “What?”
  “His handwriting.”
  “I know what penmanship is. I was taken aback by your question. It’s fine. I’d say his penmanship is fine.”
  Lyndon wrote something down. “Tell me about his interests.”
  “I don’t know much about his interests.”
  “Well,” began Lyndon, with the sudden suspicion that Pamela Glaser was a worthless witness, “what does he bring in for show and tell? What kind of thing does he write about for his homework assignments when he can choose his own subject matter? Free writing assignments?”
  “You know, he likes computer games a lot. He plays a lot of different computer games. Whenever he has the opportunity, he’ll talk about a new computer game he has. Last week we heard all about a thing called WarCraft. It has a monster in it.”
  “He plays a lot of computer games?” Lyndon made another note, which he underlined, twice. “That’s curious.”
  “Is it?” said Pamela, stealing a glance at her watch and the open doorway.
  “What else does he like?”
  “Sometimes movies. Something he talks about every now and then is those Back to the Future films.”
  Lyndon paused. “You know why those are interesting films?”
  “I couldn’t care less.”
  He frowned at her. “That’s not an appropriate way to speak to me. Do you talk to Jason Hayde like that?” Lyndon referred back to his notes. “Computer games. A lot of computer games, in fact. And Back to the Future.”
  “Yeah,” said Pamela. “Look, he’s good for the most part. Not an achiever, but no trouble.”
  “Do you want my advice?”
  “No thanks.”
  Lyndon dismissed Pamela, and swiveled around in his chair to stare out of his half-open window. A lot of computer games. It wasn’t adding up. Pamela Glaser’s testimony had done nothing to discourage Lyndon from his initial suspicion that Evan Lewis was an unlikely candidate to commit this aggressive an act of vandalism. Lyndon didn’t put a lot of stock in Nate Slidell’s word, but nonetheless, Evan Lewis was the only lead he had. He mulled these questions over and over in his head, letting five minutes slip by in this fashion, until he heard Olivia Kennedy’s mocking voice from outside the office.
  “Do you ever do any real work?” she chided.
  “I guess delinquency doesn’t mean anything to you,” said Lyndon. Olivia held her right hand against the doorway.
  “When do you hear back about your job?” she asked.
  “They say by early next week.”
  “I bet you have big plans to tear apart this whole place.”
  “It’s not called ‘tearing apart’, it’s called ‘reform’.”
  Olivia pushed away from the doorframe back into the hallway. “Try not to forget about us when you’re a big star,” she said.



“You get home and you only have so much time to play games before your parents tell you it’s time for dinner, and then right after that it's time for bed. Who has a television in their bedroom? I know I don’t. Those hours you have matter. And do you really want to spend those few hours frustrated at the problem that you’ve been trying to solve for days already? By the time you have go to bed, you’re nowhere. That isn’t why you wanted this game, to be stuck. You want to play a game.”
  Danny equivocated. “I should think about it.”
  “That’s fine,” said Evan, “No rush. I’ll be around.”
  Evan had made the pitch enough times to know it had done the requisite number on Danny. Even so, something as small-scale as the Sonic 3 infinite lives secret really wasn’t worth waiting around all day for Danny to change his mind. There had to be a more effective way to do this. Maybe throwing Danny a free level select code would have been a smart idea. He’d run into trouble soon enough and come back to Evan for a bailout. The mistake he’d made with Justin was that by the time he’d come back to him with the solution, his interest in Myst had already diminished. Evan was going to lose out on a serious source of revenue if Justin really did put Myst aside, and in favor of Space Quest V of all things? Even a numbnuts like Justin could plow through Space Quest V with no trouble. The only way this was going to be sustainable if he could keep guys like Justin on the line for as long as possible. There was room to be a little bit smarter about this.



How could it be this difficult to remove an obscenity from school property? Lyndon had abandoned his goal of eliminating it entirely by the end of the day, and his thoughts had turned to where he could find a bumper sticker large enough to cover up the problem. Someone in the office had a sticker for a local radio station’s morning zoo program but this was arguably more offensive. At least Tom Donnelly wasn’t the type to complain about dirty words.
  Lyndon had his black, leather-bound incident folder opened on his desk, with a lined legal pad turned to a page with the heading ‘April 12: Obscenity/Vandalism’ written in marker and underlined twice. As the day went on, he was increasingly troubled by the seeming inconsistencies in the character of Evan Lewis. If Lewis was the culprit, as Nate Slidell claimed, then Lyndon had trouble reconciling Lewis’ history of timidity with the audacity of his alleged crime. Lyndon could understand the repressed hostility that an Evan Lewis might develop towards a thug like Donnelly, but Evan couldn’t have the confidence to retaliate so dramatically.
  That was the first big hole in the Evan Lewis story. The second – not that one had anything to do with the other – was Pamela Glaser’s statement that Evan played a lot of video games. Lyndon acknowledged that he lacked in awareness of the computer and video games industry. Nonetheless, he thought, there had to be something unusual about the fact that Evan seemed to play so many of these things. Any kind of new media was at least somewhat expensive. What was a VHS tape? Twenty dollars?
  Lyndon stood up, collecting his binder, and walked out of his office, heading thirty paces right down the corridor until he arrived at the receptionist’s station.
  “Josephine,” he announced, leaning his arms over her desk, “I need to talk to somebody who has a son between the ages of eight and thirteen.”
  Josephine’s expression veered between disoriented and bored. She adjusted her thick black glasses, and Lyndon didn’t know what that signified.
  “I have two kids. You know that. My son is ten.”
  “Does he go to this school?”
  “God, no.”
  “Alright. That’s fine, then. Do you buy computer games for your son, on Christmas or birthdays? I need to know how much a new computer game costs.”
  “A new one? Around fifty dollars.”
  “Fifty dollars?! How much does a kid make?”
  “Doing what?”
  “Doing… being alive?”
  “He only gets one game a year,” said Josephine, returning to what Lyndon assumed were her filing duties, if she was filing that women’s magazine.
  “This is very curious.” Lyndon walked the thirty paces back to his office, closing the door behind him. He sat back down at his desk and opened the incident binder up again. Few students could be swimming in video games as Evan was, given the expense. He must be getting that cash from somewhere, although, Lyndon paused, maybe he was looking at this the wrong way. Of course Josephine’s son wouldn’t be living in the lap of luxury. Evan’s parents, though. Lyndon had to admit that he’d never even met Evan’s parents. Well, no time like covertly prosecuting their son for vandalism.
  Lyndon abdicated his chair again, took the binder, opened his door and walked down the corridor back to Josephine.
  “Josephine, I need to see a copy of the current sixth grade phone list.”
   “Can it wait until this afternoon?”
  “Josephine, I am trying to solve a mystery.”
  They sighed at one another as Josephine grudgingly excavated a cabinet drawer. She thrust the stapled A4 pages into his hand and turned away from him.
  “Outstanding work, Josephine, thank you.” Slotting the phone list into the incident binder, Lyndon walked back to his office, closed the door and sat back down at his desk. Scanning for Evan’s name, Lyndon found his parents – David and Maria – but only a home number, no work details. Lyndon got back out of his chair, opened the door and headed down the corridor in order to berate Josephine about this, but he could see she wasn’t at his desk, and he went back inside.
  Groaning a little bit, Lyndon held his index finger to the Lewis’ home phone number, and lifted the receiver to his ear. He dialed, thinking about he’d busted students for doing exactly what he was about to do.
  “Hello?” The voice of Maria Lewis.
  “Yes, hello,” said Lyndon, adopting an indeterminate accent that he regretted instantly, “I’m trying to get in touch with David Lewis, but I’m afraid I think he’s given me his home number instead of his office number.”
  “Oh, I can help you out there,” said Maria, and proceeded to give up her husband’s work number, not pausing to ask who he was or why David Lewis would be giving out his home number to this strange man. Maybe there was a reason why she was a housewife and not a detective.
  With the new number in hand, Lyndon closed his eyes, said a Hail Mary, and dialed the telephone.
  “Morrison, Connors and Lewis,” someone answered, “this is Karen, how can I help you?”
  “I’m sorry,” Lyndon said, holding onto the accent for some reason, “I think I have the wrong number, I was trying to reach a cook.”
  “No, sir, this is a law firm.”
  “Oh, what kind of law?”
  “Corporate law.”
  Mystery solved. A home run of a phone call. “Sorry to trouble you.”
  A partner at a corporate law firm, was it? Of course Evan Lewis would have money. If his parents were spoiling him, buying him a fifty-dollar video game every month, then what else could they afford? What else did Evan Lewis have that his peers didn’t?
  Picking up the incident binder, newly furnished with clues, Lyndon walked back to Josephine’s desk and returned the phone list.
  “Thanks for this, Josephine. I’m getting close.”
  “You can’t imagine how thrilled I am.”
  Lyndon frowned and leaned in closer. “I’m not wild about this attitude, Josephine. Would you talk to Jason Hayde like that? Do you think you’re going to be able to talk to me like that when I’m principal?”
  “Look,” said Josephine, ironically not looking at him, “I really have a lot of work to do. If you have to come and talk to someone about your mysteries, can’t you do it when you’re flirting with Olivia?”
  Lyndon blinked. “Excuse me?”
  “Oh,” said Josephine, leaning over to a stack of papers by her telephone, “you have a message. Someone threw up in gym class.” She handed him a note.
  “Well,” said Lyndon, glancing over the note, “I’ll take care of that then.”



Evan watched the shakedown unfold as he ate a big sandwich. He supposed he was relieved that Tom Donnelly and his buddies had turned their attentions to somebody else, but he sympathized with the new kid forced into the corner. Evan watched Tom press his hand flat against the kid’s chest, and in a single practiced motion used his other hand to rip the pocket off the kid’s t-shirt. Tom and his friend laughed and left the kid alone, giving him another shove for the road.
  The kid sat on the ground with his back against the wall, looking appropriately miserable, for the remainder of Evan’s sandwich. Evan walked over and sat next to him.
  “Tom's an asshole.”
  “Yeah,” agreed the kid through what appeared to be choked-back tears.
  “He thinks he runs this place.”
  He nodded. “I really hate this school so far.”
  “Yeah, me too,” said Evan. “What’s your name?”
  “Adrian.”
  “I’m Evan. Did you just start here?”
  “Yeah, my family moved here from Philly.”
  “Oh, yeah? What kinds of things do you like to do?”
  “I like computer games.”
  “Hey! Me too.”
  “I really like – do you play adventure games? My favorite is Day of the Tentacle, and Monkey Island as well.”
  “Which Monkey Island do you like better?”
  “The second one. There’s so much more to do in that.”
  “Yeah, that’s the best. And do you read that magazine that comes in the game boxes?”
  “Yes! With those Sam & Max comics?”
  “Those are amazing. Do you play a lot of adventure games?”
  “Just those LucasArts ones.”
  “Oh, cool, you could borrow some of mine,” Evan said excitedly. “Have you ever played Myst?”
  “Myst?” Adrian enthused, “no, but everyone talks about that, Myst is supposed to be great. I really want to play it. Do you really have that? Could I borrow that?”
  “Yeah,” said Evan, who was starting to feel confused without really understanding why.
  “Thanks so much, that’s really cool.”
  “No problem,” Evan said slowly. “Let me know if you get stuck.”



Turning to a new page in his binder, John Lyndon wrote out ‘Interviewed Marcus Weil’ and underlined it once. He realized that was technically incorrect, so rewrote it as ‘About to interview Marcus Weil’. Lyndon set the pen down just as Marcus Weil arrived in his doorway as scheduled, escorted by his teacher.
  “Here he is,” said Olivia Kennedy. “Please return him in the same condition.”
  “Thank you, Ms. Kennedy,” said Lyndon, a little too briskly.
  “Thank you, sir,” she deadpanned, and left him alone with the boy. Marcus shuffled into a chair at Lyndon’s invitation.
  “I didn’t do anything,” Marcus began.
  “Not everything’s about you.” Lyndon produced a Super Nintendo cartridge from his bottom desk drawer and placed it carefully in the center of his desk. “Do you recognize this?”
  “Yeah, you grabbed it from me yesterday.”
  “I don’t ‘grab’. I confiscate.”
  “Yeah, well you confiscated it for no reason.”
  “It was confiscated because in this game you can decapitate a man and see his head go flying through the air. That is repulsive.”
  Marcus shrugged. “You just don’t get it.”
  “You’re right,” said Lyndon, folding his arms across the table, “I don’t. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
  “What?”
  “Tell me why you like to play video games.”
  “They’re fun.”
  “‘They’re fun’? Give me more than that. When you get home, why would you play Mortal Kombat instead of reading a book or watching TV?”
  “I wouldn’t.”
  “Why not?”
  “You confiscated it.”
  Lyndon held his index finger to the cartridge and pushed the contraband half an inch towards Marcus. “How about we say that if you answer my question, you take this home.”
  “Are you serious?”
  “That’s not an answer, Marcus, that’s another question. That’s the opposite of what we want.”
  Marcus stared at the cartridge. “What is the question again?”
  “What do you like about video games?
  Marcus tore his gaze away from Mortal Kombat and tried to concentrate on his shoes. “I guess,” he said, “because you always get to play as a cool character; like a spy or a soldier or a superhero or something like that. Real powerful guys, you know? Not wimps or whatever. And you get to, I don’t know, escape from reality? And do these awesome things like saving the world or winning a fighting tournament. And you can watch movies about that kind of thing, but in games it’s even better because when you win, it’s actually you doing it. I don’t get to do any of that in real life, so.”
  “So it’s a chance to do something different.”
  “Yeah. Be someone else.”
  Lyndon wrote that down. “What do you do if you can’t win the game?”
  “Well, then – well, I mean you can cheat.”
  “Cheat? How do you go about that?”
  “You can get, like, a code to type into the game, and it’ll make your character invincible or faster or more powerful or whatever.”
  “And why would you need to do that?”
  “Some games are really hard, man. I guess sometimes you might think you’re okay at a game but at some point it gets so hard it’s basically impossible to make any progress. Sometimes you have to cheat if you want to get ahead at all. Not me, I mean. I’m actually good at games.”
  “Where would you get a code?”
  “There are some game magazines that have them, but they have them for free on the Internet now.”
  “Does your family have an Internet connection?” Lyndon asked.
  “No.”
  “Where could you get the codes, then?”
  “Oh, well, if I wanted to I guess I could buy them off Evan Lewis.”
  Lyndon underlined something in the binder three times.
  “Is that so.”



Evan took the shortest steps possible from his classroom to the boys’ bathroom, savoring every second. Class had broken his brain. He couldn’t even begin to feign interest in the Founding Fathers. What had they founded for him lately?
  The boys’ and girls’ bathrooms were situated opposite one another, and when Evan approached he caught the eye of the skinny, dark-haired girl slumped sullenly against the wall. They didn’t share a class, but he’d seen her before and he was maybe sixty percent sure her name was Violet.
  “Hey,” he said cautiously, “Violet?”
  She looked up. “Yeah?” Score. “Evan?” Double score.
  “Are you okay?”
  “Uh, can I ask you, like, a huge favor?” said Violet, kicking at the floor with her sneakers. “I just need to borrow like one dollar for lunch. I mean, my parents did give me money, but I had to skip breakfast because I slept in, and I’m seriously starving. I can pay you back tomorrow, I promise.”
  This all reminded Evan of some art movie he saw thirty seconds of on HBO once. “Is that all? Seriously, I can give you a dollar. Take two dollars.”
  Violet looked perplexed as Evan handed over the cash.
  “What, are you serious?”
  “Yeah,” he said, waving the cash at her face, “it’s not a big deal. Don’t worry about it.”
  Violet took it carefully. Evan thought about saying that she owed him a favor, but that would be crass, and anyway, it was pretty heavily implied.
  In the bathroom, Evan relieved himself thinking about how he really should go ahead with this idea of distributing free hints and then selling further hints in smaller increments. He knew games well enough to be able to chart other peoples’ progress. He’d know when they’d reached a peak or a valley and the idea shouldn’t be to sell cheats at the same rate but to make sure that each cheat would sustain a player’s interest so they’d always want to keep playing. Like, obviously. If only he’d thought about this stuff earlier.
  Evan exited the bathroom wiping his hands on the back of his pants. Violet was gone. Heading down the hallway back to his class, he passed Vice Principal Lyndon in the corridor, and, forced to make eye contact, he was cautious not to disrespect him, but not respect him either.
  “Evan,” said Lyndon as he walked past, “are you behaving yourself?”
  “Yeah,” said Evan. What was this guy’s problem?
  Skeeved-out and shaking his head as he rounded the corner, Evan heard someone hiss his name urgently. Evan stopped and turned around to see Lyle huddled in the stairwell. Speaking of skeeved-out.
  “Lyle? What’s going on?”
  “Hey, man,” said Lyle, scratching at clusters of dandruff underneath scraggly blond hair, “do you, like, sell video game cheat codes and stuff?”
  “Yeah.”
  “Wow, that’s heavy duty. Do you think you could get me some cigarettes?”
  Evan didn’t know where to begin. “Yes. Obviously.”
  “What brands do you have?”
  “All of them.”
  “Dude, can you get me a couple of Marlboro reds?”
  What? “Yes.”
  “Cool, how much do I owe you?”
  “Five dollars?”
  “Really? That’s awesome. I’ll hit you back tomorrow.”
  “Alright.”
  Evan hurried back to class. He was going to have to write all of this down.


Interviewed Marcus Weil. Lyndon nodded with the contented satisfaction of a job honestly and decently done. He turned to a new page: ‘About to interview Tom Donnelly’.
  Tom Donnelly sat in Lyndon’s office while he wrote, scratching at the arm of the office chair.
  “It’s regrettable that it took this long and that so many people already saw it,” said Lyndon, “but rest assured that we found an inoffensive bumper sticker that we’ll be plastering over it with. Do you listen to WNYC?”
  “No.”
  “Well, it’s more of a temporary solution.”
  Tom glanced around Lyndon’s office. Lyndon thought the bully would have been sufficiently familiar with it by now.
  “We’re close to finding out who did it, you know,” said Lyndon.
  “Whatever.”
  “Do you even care?”
  “I know who did it.”
  Lyndon leaned forward. “Who do you think that is?”
  “I don’t know for sure,” he smirked: the dead giveaway of a liar. If Tom had talked to Nate Slidell as Lyndon had, then he’d know about Evan Lewis. Lyndon could easily imagine Nate Slidell giving that up. Despite his bravado, Slidell was the consummate pushover.
  “You’re a confident kid,” said Lyndon.
  Tom shrugged: the dead giveaway of a confident kid.
  “How did you get to be so confident?”
  Tom didn’t say anything.
  “You must feel like you’re on top of the world.”
  Nothing.
  “I know that you’re thinking about getting revenge,” said Lyndon. “You must know at this school, there are rules. You must know that two wrongs don’t make a right.”
  No change in Tom’s expression.
  “I bet you think you can get away with anything,” said Lyndon. You’re not even listening to me now; that’s how irrelevant you think I am. That’s how important you think you are. All I am to you is just – what? Some nuisance that you just have to deal with as part of your day-to-day, so that you can keep being the person you think you are?”
  “No, I respect you.”
  “This is my school,” Lyndon hissed across the desk, “and you don’t make the rules. Don’t think for a second that you do. It is not your job here to punish other students. I won’t tolerate that. Do you understand?”
  Tom nodded. It alarmed Lyndon how little of this was getting through.
  “Well,” said Lyndon, “you’d better get back to your class.”
  Tom got up without a word, and Lyndon watched him leave with a frown, still clutching the pen over an empty page.



“You’re going to be back at home soon, and you’re not going to have me around, and you’re going to be sitting in front of your TV getting killed and killed by Dr. Robotnik. Think about smashing buttons for three hours, your mom yelling at you that dinner’s ready, and you wanting to throw your controller out the window. I know how you feel; I seriously do. This is why I’m here.”
  “Alright,” said Danny, searching for his wallet, “I want it. I don’t know how I’d get through this point otherwise. This is going to be so helpful, I can’t wait to play the rest of this game. Thank you for doing this.”
  Evan accepted the proffered cash. “No problem,” he said, giving Danny a genuine smile, “I hope you enjoy the game.”
  It was a good feeling, helping people, Evan thought as he walked away. He’d just made Danny’s day. This was a legitimate Good Samaritan experience. The two dollars in his pocket didn’t hurt either. Holding his head up high, he strutted down the playground even as somebody in his peripheral vision called out to him, “Hey, dipshit.”
  “Bite me,” Evan threw back without thinking. He only realized what he’d said and who he’d said it to when the back of a hand smacked him hard against his head, sending his glasses flying off his face and skittering over the ground. Evan stooped to pick them up, hoping they hadn’t chipped again.
  “Why’d you say that?”
  Evan secured his glasses back on his face. The only time that Evan saw Nicholas in any other context than getting the back of his head slapped was when Nicholas was hanging out with his friend Lyle and their similarly-dressed buddies, in an amorphous smear of denim, chain wallets, and nascent, intimidating patches of facial hair.
  “Did you just say bite me?”
  Evan tried to say yes, but the word died on the way out of his mouth.
  “Yeah, I didn’t think so,” said Nicholas. He shifted his stare to something over Evan’s shoulder. “What’s that?”
  Evan looked over, and his arm took the brunt of Nicholas’ punch.
  “See you later, moron,” Nicholas said airily, already with his back to Evan by the time he turned around. Evan grabbed his throbbing shoulder and limped away, biting his lip.

Nicholas notwithstanding, Tuesday had been a pretty good day. Evan had eight dollars come in, besting his expectations, and he could count on at least eleven more tomorrow. He had to subtract the two dollars he gave to Violet, but that was charity. What goes around comes around.
  It was six thirty sharp, meaning Evan was at the dinner table poking at some chicken and pasta dish. Evan had never bothered to learn the name of the pasta. Why would he need to?
  “I got a phone call today,” announced Maria Lewis.
  Evan looked up from the table, his mouth crammed with unidentified pasta.
  “From your principal. You didn’t even show up to your last two classes, Madeline, and from what I hear it’s hardly the first time. Where were you?”
  Maddy Lewis, sitting to Evan’s left, shrugged. “They’re making that up.”
  Maria dropped her fork and leaned across the table. “No, I think you’re the one who’s lying. To me. About where you were all this afternoon.”
  Maddy threw up her hands. “I can’t believe you’re going to listen to some teacher over your own daughter!” Her chair screeched against the polished wood floor as she got to her feet and stormed out of the dining room.
  “Maddy!” yelled Maria, standing up and following her into the hallway. “Come back here right now!”
  David Lewis continued to scrape at his plate. “How was your day?” he asked Evan.
  “It was fine,” said Evan.
  “What did you do?”
  “I don’t know. Just the usual.”
  “Good,” said his father.
  Evan chewed on a forkful of pasta as he geared up for a question of his own. “Dad, can I go on the Internet tonight after dinner?”
  “Sure,” his father nodded, “only until eight, though; I’m expecting a phone call. Do you have any homework?”
  “Yeah, some math.”
  “Well, make sure you prioritize.”
  “I definitely will.”

Evan stretched out against the leather back of the study’s desk chair, the modem dialing up, and reflected on the single page of lined notebook paper in front of him. Something on System Shock for that big kid Sean, a Sonic 3 infinite lives secret, and an invincibility cheat for Mortal Kombat. Those were good orders for a Tuesday.
  Browsing the Spoiler Center’s entry for System Shock, Evan wondered if he’d be able to get into this game, although from the basic outline he was reading he had a hard time visualizing its allure. The only thing he found for Sean amidst the walkthrough was a cheat to score the player free energy and health. He started taking it down: always carry a battery and a first aid kit. Throw the battery on the ground in front of you and use the first aid kit on the battery. Talk about obtuse.
  Evan cleaned up the rest of his list with time to spare. He wrung his hands a little over how to spend his remaining thirty minutes of computer usage, and noticed the boxed copy of Sim City 2000, the city-building simulation he’d asked to get for his birthday, lying up on the desk shelves, untouched since February. He went back and forth about whether to finally install that or to watch TV instead.

With serious reluctance and self-preparation, Evan knocked twice on his sister’s door. After identifying himself in response to Maddy’s screechy reply, he swung open the door. Maddy’s bedroom was wallpapered with posters of forlorn guitarists and a surly Juliana Hatfield. Maddy was flopped out on her bed, the muffled sounds of generic rock emanating from her Walkman headphones.
  “Hey, sis.”
  “What do you want?”
    Evan took another step into the room, closing the door behind him and lowering his voice. “Uh, can I have some of your cigarettes?”
  Maddy looked at him and pulled her headphones down around her neck. “Are you serious?”
  “Yeah, so what?”
  “No, you can’t.”
  “Why the hell not?”
  “Because you’re like twelve?”
  “Oh, so when did you start smoking?”
  “I’m so much more mature than you. Come on.”
  “Can you at least tell me where you got them?”
  “I have a cigarette guy.”
  “Someone from your high school?”
  “Please. This guy is the real deal; he goes to college.”
  “Can I talk to him?”
  “No fucking way! Get lost!”
  “Whatever!” Evan yelled, exiting her bedroom with absolutely no intention of getting lost, and he made plans that moment to come back at midnight, rummage through her sock drawer and slip seven cigarettes out of the pack she kept hidden there and then flip her sleeping body the bird as he snuck out, which is exactly what he did.



John Lyndon stood behind his desk, arms crossed, watching the sunrise to the degree that his stuck office window allowed.
  “I was thinking about what you said yesterday,” he said, not turning around to face Marcus Weil shifting awkwardly in the chair, “and I was interested in what you said about the appeal of computer games being that you get to play as somebody else. I think, though, that the appeal might go deeper than that. Any one of you kids can put on a costume and run around your living room saying they’re a cowboy or a knight, but nothing else responds to the fantasy you have in the head. A computer game is a true simulation tool. It puts you in a role and models the world around you to reflect whoever you’re trying to be. That’s why it’s more interesting than simple make-believe. There’s a full world out there that is responding to you, and most importantly, testing you. The idea behind video games is not just to be someone else, but to prove that you can be someone else.”
  Lyndon looked over his shoulder. “Don’t you think?”
  “Why am I here?”
  “You’re a good kid,” said Lyndon, sitting back down at his desk and producing a Styrofoam cup from a brown paper bag on the floor. “I got you a hot chocolate.”
  “Oh, thanks,” said Marcus, accepting it with something less than overwhelming gratitude.
  “You helped me out,” said Lyndon, pointing a finger at him, “and I’m not going to forget this when I’m principal.”
  “Okay,” said Marcus, waiting for further instruction.
  “Get to class.”
  Marcus left his chair, cup in hand, and made it out the door. Lyndon reclined and settled into a state of deep thought.
  “Josephine!” he shouted down the hallway. “I need to leave a message!”



The students, in gradually diminishing numbers, filtered in through the school gates. Evan hung around outside, checking his watch every minute as he waited for Lyle to show up. The longer the delay here, he knew, the more trouble it’d create down the line. His unfinished math homework was going to be enough of a problem with Ms. Glaser before adding tardiness to the mix.
  The crowd of students eventually narrowed to the lone straggler, leaving Evan, last he checked his watch, two minutes late. His heart skipped a beat when he recognized one of those blasé stragglers as Lyle, sauntering towards Evan at a pace not nearly urgent or covert enough for his liking.
  “Hey, dude.”
  “Hey.” Evan unzipped his backpack and gathered the seven cigarettes out of his lunch box.
  “Awesome, man, thank you,” Lyle said, and started to rifle through his pants for his wallet. Evan watched him for a second, the cigarettes still in his outstretched hand.
  “It was five dollars, right?” asked Lyle.
  “Yeah,” Evan replied, and even as he said it, five dollars didn’t sound like all that much. “Wait.”
  Lyle looked up, his hand stuck in his jean pocket.
  “How about,” said Evan, “you don’t have to pay me for this, and instead you get Nicholas to stop picking on me.”
  Lyle seemed amused. “What, you want me to punch him or something?”
  “No, you don’t have to fight him, just get him to leave me alone?”
  Lyle nodded, and took his hand back out of his pocket. “No problem,” he said, nodding, “if he knows you’re cool with me, then he’ll treat you alright.” Evan extended the cigarettes to Lyle, and after taking them, Lyle, to Evan’s surprise, shook Evan’s hand.
  Walking slowly back to class, Evan was immensely pleased at the notion that he’d just shut off the faucet of Nicholas’ constant torture for no more than seven stolen cigarettes. Nicholas was done, and it had cost him nothing. It hadn’t even occurred to him that he could do that.
  Stashing his bag in his locker, Evan opened the door to his class, where Ms. Glaser stopped him in his tracks.
  “Evan Lewis,” she said, “so glad you decided to join us.” Four minutes late! Get over it! He started to look at her with mounting resentment. “You’ve been called to the vice principal’s office.”
  “What?”
  “Get a move on, young man.”
  Ms. Glaser ushered him out of the room and shut the door behind him. Evan blinked a couple of times. The vice principal? Since… what?



The padded leather cover of the black binder slammed against the desk. John Lyndon turned to a clean sheet of paper, writing the words April 13 at the top. He set down his pen parallel to the lines of the page and crossed his hands over the book.
  “Evan,” he said, “how are you enjoying sixth grade?”
  Sitting quietly in the chair, Evan Lewis flicked his gaze around the room suspiciously until finally looking Lyndon in the eye.
  “It’s alright.”
  “That’s great to hear. It’s been a while since we’ve been able to talk, I wish I could make more time to catch up with all of you kids one on one.”
  “Yeah,” said Evan, unenthused.
  “When you were in here last time, you were feeling very upset.”
  “Yeah.”
  “Do you still get bullied?”
  Evan seemed to catch himself before actually saying something.
  “It’s alright,” said Lyndon, “you can talk to me. I can help you.”
  “No. I don’t.”
  “That’s great news. You’re doing well, then? Making friends?”
  “Yeah.” Evan fidgeted with the arm of the chair. “Mm-hm. Yeah.”
  “That’s great. What kinds of things do you like to do in your free time?”
  Evan looked utterly lost. “Uh… usual things.”
  “TV? Movies?”
  “Sure, yeah.”
  “Video games?”
  “Yeah.”
  “Tell me what you like about video games.”
  Evan paused. “Uh, I don’t know.”
  “Come on,” Lyndon coaxed. “Try and think of one thing.”
  “They’re fun?”
  “Good, that’s a good reason.” Lyndon paused to write something down, taking his time. “How are you at games? How good of a player do you think you are?”
  Evan shrugged. “I don’t know. Pretty good, I guess.”
  “Can you win games against your friends?”
  “Yeah.” Lyndon noticed Evan allow himself a small smirk.
  “I have a young nephew,” said Lyndon, reclining and smiling a little in reciprocation, “not much older than you, and he’s into games. He’s got one of the consoles, I don’t know the name of it, it’s Japanese-made and it’s got this little pad that you hold, with a cross at the left and about four buttons on the right. The game comes on a little tape that you slot into the top of the box.”
  “Super Nintendo?”
  “That’s the one. My nephew tried to get me to play this one game on it once, this is a couple years ago. Now, the name of it… you controlled this little guy and helped him jump up on top of these platforms, and jump down on these little creatures. You collect coins.”
  “Super Mario World.”
  “Yes. I try this game once, and I’m just hopeless, Evan.” Lyndon laughed. “I don’t know, me and video games… it’s not my generation. I don’t think I’m built for it. But my nephew, he sees me flailing around in this game and he looks at me like he can’t believe we’re related.”
  Evan smiled politely.
  “I could probably learn a few tricks from you,” Lyndon said.
  “Maybe.”  
  “You know, someone told me,” said Lyndon, snapping his fingers together to mimic spontaneity, “this student here told me that if I’m ever stuck in a video game like I was in front of my nephew, there are these, I think they’re called cheat codes that help you get through it.”
  Lyndon observed Evan’s poker face. “Yeah?”
  “Yes,” said Lyndon, “and he also said that those cheats can be pretty hard to get normally, but they can get them from you.”
  Evan looked at him.
  “It’s alright,” Lyndon reassured him, “there’s nothing wrong with it. I just wondered if that was true.”
  Almost imperceptibly, Evan nodded his head, then flicked up his gaze to meet Lyndon’s and answered definitively, “Yeah.”
  “I guess your parents must have an Internet connection.”
  “Yeah.”  
  “And, what, do you get a couple bucks for your trouble? I mean, an Internet connection’s not free.”
  Evan hesitated again before answering in the affirmative.
  “That’s fine,” said Lyndon, bending his head down to write something and to let Evan have his reaction to himself. “How much could you get in a week? Let’s say it’s a good week.”
  “Maybe twenty dollars.”
  “Twenty dollars a week?” He gave Evan an appreciative look. “You’re not hurting for pocket change, then.”
  “Yeah. Not really.”
  “How long have you been doing it?”
  “A couple of months.”
  “You’ve probably made more in that time than I have,” Lyndon chuckled. “What do you spend all that money on?”
  “Well, I buy other games sometimes, when there’s something new out that I want to play. But I also just like to save it up, you know?”
  “That’s good sense. You must have a lot saved.”
  “Yeah.”
  “Good for you. Are you the only one here that does this?”
  “I think so.”
  “Then everyone here who plays video games must be coming to you for help, right?”
  “Yeah.”
  Lyndon tapped the pen on the binder, smiling. “You know what’s different about you from last year? You’re a confident kid.”
  Evan grinned. “Yeah.”
  “How did you get to be so confident?”
  “I just think it’s… you know. It’s hard to say.”
  “You must feel like you’re on top of the world.”
  “I… kind of, I guess. Not that much.” Evan frowned after a second.
  Lyndon returned his attention to the binder. “Now I have to ask you one more thing. Do you know anything about this offensive word that was written on Tom Donnelly’s locker?”
  “No. I mean, yeah, I saw it, I know it’s there, but I don’t know who did it.”
  Lyndon showed Evan his own poker face. “Nothing at all?”
  Evan started to betray his frustration. “No.”
  “It wasn’t you that did it, then. For instance.”
  “I didn’t do it.”
  “Good. I don’t think you did either.” Every muscle in Evan’s body that had visible tensed in the last ten seconds just as visibly relaxed. “Because this is what I think. Tom Donnelly’s a mean kid. We all know that. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. He’s a bully. He doesn’t care for the people who are younger than him or weaker than him or smaller than him. Even so, within a certain circle, he’s popular. He doesn’t lose friends, and so I don’t think that that word on his locker is the act of someone who felt betrayed by him. The only real enemies he has are the people who’s he bullied or mocked or made fun of.
  “Writing that word on his locker, that’s an attack. An attack on this mean, violent kid. Now I’m thinking, what kind of person both hates and is intimidated by Tom Donnelly, but has the confidence to pull something like this off? They need the confidence to simply do it in the first place. They need the confidence to think they could get away with it. Because it’s a big deal, what they did. Not just because that person broke the rules of this school, but because Tom Donnelly, if he finds out who did it, is going to come after that person. You must know that.
  “There aren’t many kids who can take Tom Donnelly in a fight, so it would have to be someone who feels sufficiently powerful. And if they’re not physically powerful, then I’m confused about why they’d do it at all, unless they simply didn’t think it through. Maybe they thought they’d get away with it because they were already getting away with other things that they shouldn’t be allowed to do.
  “I didn’t think you would do it. You were bullied, and God only knows, Evan, you were bullied bad, and last year you came to me and that’s the way we solved it. I would think that if you were having trouble now, that you would have come to me again, like it’s supposed to work. That is, I mean, unless you felt like now you were able to handle the situation better than I could. But I don’t see how that’s possible.”
  Lyndon let his words rest, studying Evan’s face closely for the slightest reaction. “Can you?”
  Evan shrugged.
  “Do you want some advice, Evan? The way you see yourself is not the same as how other people see you. And it’s not fair, but this attitude you have… what you think you’ve become, coupled with how they’re going to see you out there… they’re going to eat you alive in high school, Evan.”
  Evan glanced down at the floor, then up at the clock hanging on Lyndon’s wall.
  “You’d better get back to class,” Lyndon said.
  “Okay,” said Evan, getting up out of the chair and out of the room as quickly as he possibly could. Lyndon watched him leave, and made another notation.
  Interviewed Evan Lewis.



Evan scribbled in the margins of his notebook while Ms. Glaser endeavored to explain the difference between a metaphor and a simile. When the lunch break arrived, Evan booked it outside in order to track down Sean and cash in on the System Shock cheat as soon as possible.
  “Hey buddy.”
  For a second, Evan was puzzled by how nobody ever called him buddy. He turned around to see Tom Donnelly looming over his shoulder and the buddy comment made more sense. Tom’s sour-looking girlfriend Anna, and another henchman whose name Evan couldn’t give a shit about, hung back behind Tom.
  “Hi, Tom,” Evan said. Caught off-guard, he let a little nervousness slip into his voice.
  “Evan, man, Evan,” Tom began, “I heard you fucked up my locker, man, what’s that about?”
  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” yelled Anna, who Evan noticed was wearing black nail polish. This was serious.
  Evan tried the same practiced blank expression he’d used on the vice principal earlier. It didn’t seem to go over as well.
  “Come on, man, own up to it.”
  Evan wondered how everybody knew this all of a sudden.
  “Did you do it or not? Is all I’m asking,” said Tom, his tone level.
  The question hung in the air for what felt like an awfully long pause until Evan held up his head and met Tom’s stare.
  “Yes.”
  “Holy shit!” Tom shrieked, spinning around to catch the others’ reactions. Choked laughter sputtered out of his mouth. “Are you serious? Who do you think you are? You think you can do that to me?”
  Evan stuttered something.
  “You little shit,” Tom hissed, jabbing Evan below the throat. “What did you think was going to happen?”
  “I don’t know.”
  “Hey, well, guess what. When school ends, you’re going to be right outside the gym, or I’m going to find you and it’ll be ten times worse. Yeah?”
  Evan broke off his gaze.
  Tom shoved a finger at Evan before leaving with the others. “Don’t fuck with me.”
  “Loser,” Anna added.
  Evan felt ill. He stood there for a minute, playing that entire conversation back in his head. He began wandering uneasily across the playground, and after a second he broke into a full sprint. Brushing past other kids, Evan skipped down flights of concrete stairs, the sound of his heart echoing inside his head, until he saw Nate Slidell sitting on a bench drinking a Sprite.
  “Did you tell him?” Evan gasped. “About the locker?”
  “What? You talking about Lyndon?”
  “Mr. Lyndon knows too?”
  “Or Tom?”
  “Yes! Tom!”
  “Yeah, he made me.”
  “What?” Evan waved his hands around wildly. “Why would you do that?”
  Nate shrugged. “Just happened.”
  Evan slapped the Sprite can out of Nate’s hand, its contents violently spraying over the pavement.
  “What the fuck!”
  “Why would you tell him? Why would you tell him?”
  Nate glared at him with either residual anger from the Sprite thing or over something else. “You’re not my problem.”
  Evan looked around, pulling nervously at his hair. He needed a plan this minute.



“Josephine,” Lyndon announced, “I need you to make three photocopies of this, please.” He removed four pages from his incident binder and handed them over the desk.
  “No problem,” she said with uncharacteristic politeness, and walked them over to the photocopy room five feet from where they stood. Tapping his fingers on the desk to the hum of the photocopier powering up, Lyndon looked around the room casually, as if he hadn’t been here every day of the last seven years. He glanced over his right shoulder, where Principal Hayde’s office door was closed. After he heard the photocopier’s initial exertions subside, he walked over to the room and stood outside the door.
  “I don’t know what it is you think of me, Josephine,” he called to her, “but it has never been a policy of mine to make a pass at colleagues.”
  A pause in the photocopying. “What are you talking about?”
  “Your accusation yesterday that I flirt with Ms. Kennedy.”
  “I didn’t mean to say that you flirt. God forbid.”
  “Then why bring it up?”
  “I meant her; she can’t keep her eyes off you.” Another pause. “You didn’t realize that?”
  Lyndon considered that a strange statement. “I’ve never even… looked at her that way. That’s unprofessional.”
  “Again, John, we’re talking about her, not you.”
  “It’s unprofessional of her, then.”
  Josephine sighed. “Oh please. What do you think life is about, John? Wait, I don’t even want to know.”



Evan gripped the sides of his desk and settled into his chair. The oldest, lousiest, most bargain basement wooden chair in the world had never felt less comfortable. Two and a half hours until school let out. Eyes glued to the classroom wall clock, every move of the second hand felt like another reason to panic.
  “Next question, question seven, an example of personification.”
  He was trapped in this room.
  “Hey,” a voice from behind hissed at him urgently, “what did you write for that one?”



Josephine emerged from the copy room, shuffling the sheets of paper as Lyndon waited. “Three copies, collated and stapled. You didn’t ask for staples, but I know that’s usually what you want.”
  She turned the copies around to face the correct side up, and glanced down at the page.
  “Is this kid in trouble or something?”



Alone in the hallway, Evan splashed his face at the water fountain. He knew people did this to calm down, like, on television, but it wasn’t doing anything for him other than getting his face wet. One more hour and Tom would be out there already. He couldn’t even ask himself if he was prepared for this since the answer was so immediately obvious and pathetic.
  The clock running out on Evan’s bathroom break, he reluctantly walked back to class. He stopped in the hallway by the double doors, looking out through the glass and checkered wire to the deserted playground. He could just go, he figured. He could go outside, avoid the windows, and run in the opposite direction from the gym. There was a bus that went past the 7-Eleven five blocks from the school. If he ran, by the time Tom Donnelly started to wait for him, he’d have almost made it to the bus stop, and all he would need to do from there is get on the bus and he would be home. All he had to do was make it to the bus stop on time.
  Evan urged himself to take a step forward. He told himself all that he had to do was reach out his hand and open the door. To open the door and run, that’s all it would take. Why was this so difficult?
  “Evan?”
  He jumped.
  “Evan,” said Sean, “do you have my System Shock cheat codes?”
  Evan could have murdered him. “Sean, seriously, I am so in the middle of something.” He turned back to the door.
  “But you said you’d have it for me today,” Sean whined, “and it is today. I already gave you two dollars. That’s a lot of money.”
  “I…” Evan pressed his hand to the glass. “Do you want your two dollars back? Is that it?”
  “No, I want the cheat.”
  Evan screwed up his eyes in frustration and hit his forehead against the glass. Please, he thought, leave the video game cheat codes out of it for one moment. He needed badly to focus on finding a way out of this situation. A real life cheat code, that would be helpful.
  Pulling away from the glass, Evan looked back over his shoulder. “Hey,” he said to Sean, “have you ever been in a fight?”



At his desk, Lyndon separated the photocopies into piles to distribute to the relevant people, collecting them all in the binder. Making a note of the time and folding the binder under his arm, Lyndon headed out the door to go and pull Evan Lewis out of Pamela’s class. Turning the corner left out of his office, he almost immediately collided with a clearly alarmed Olivia Kennedy, who took a step back and laughed.
  Lyndon shook off his surprise. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”
  “Do you have one second?” Olivia asked.
  Olivia was smiling. Bright teeth, thin lips, freckled skin, brown hair, shoulder-length. He’d never even thought about her in those terms before, and never intended to, but in the short span of time since Josephine opened her mouth, he couldn’t see her in any other way. How old was this woman, even? Was this a practical match in any way?
  “I think so,” he said, “what is it?”
  “I wanted to ask you about something you said yesterday.”
  Lyndon’s office phone rang.
  “Were you serious when you told me that…”
  “Can you hold on one second? I should answer that.”
  “Sure.”
  “You can come into the office, though, you don’t have to wait out here in the hallway.”
  Olivia followed Lyndon into his office, where Lyndon made a grab for the phone on its fourth ring.
  “John Lyndon speaking.”
  “John, this is Stuart calling.”
  “Stuart, hi.” Lyndon held up his index finger at Olivia and edged his way around the desk.
  “Listen, thank you again for coming in last week and interviewing with us. Now, I just have to say, we’ve thought long and hard about this, but ultimately the Board has decided to go in another direction.”
  Lyndon frowned. “I’m sorry?”
  “I assure you it was a difficult decision, John.”
  “No, what I – can you just clarify what you mean?”
  “The Board has decided to go with another candidate for the principal role.”
  “I don’t think I understand,” said Lyndon, setting down the binder on the desk.
  “What is it you’re not sure about?” asked Stuart, not unkindly.
  “I’ve been at this school for seven years. I’ve served as the acting principal. I’ve literally done that job.”
  “I know, and we took all of that into account, but we just chose another candidate. Again, it was a really tough decision, John, you’re a great vice principal and we really value you in that position.”
  “I only…” Lyndon paused to collect himself. “I only wish I was more clear on exactly what areas in which the Board found that I was lacking. Because I don’t understand it.”
  “John, it’s not a case where we see you as lacking.”
  “Clearly it is.”
  Lyndon heard Stuart sigh over the receiver. “There were areas… there was a concern, I think, about your focus. There were some who thought that you often didn’t look at the bigger picture and got tied up in minutiae. And you know as well as I do that principal is a big job, and you have to be attentive to so many things. The Board was not, I suppose, fully convinced that you were right for the position in that respect.”
  Lyndon slouched into the chair. “What else.”
  “Well,” said Stuart, “based on our discussions… it isn’t necessary to go over this.”
  “Tell me. I want you to tell me.”
  “The Board was concerned about whether, as principal, you would be able to command the respect and confidence of your colleagues and your students, which is absolutely vital in that job. Leadership. We were looking for leadership, and we didn’t see… we were not sure that…”
  Lyndon tightened his grip on the phone. “I went to war for my country, and then I taught in public schools for more than seven years, what exactly is it that I haven’t done to gain respect?”
  “We’re sorry, John, we value your service, it’s just based on the evidence we don’t think… we think that there was a more qualified candidate for the position.”
  “Are you telling me that I don’t have the respect of the students here? Of the teachers?” Lyndon lowered his voice. “If that’s what you’re making your determination on, you’re wrong about that. If you talked to more… if I could show you… I know that I can do this. I don’t know how else to say it to you.”
  “John, we’ll be thrilled if you’d continue on with your responsibilities as Dearborn vice principal.”
  Lyndon closed his eyes.
  “Thanks again, John. Goodbye.”
  Lyndon let the receiver go limp in his hand. Even with the dial tone, he could hear the faint sounds of Olivia’s breathing, and then a sharp knock on the door.
  “John,” said Josephine, “I got a call from downstairs, there’s a bulimic girl who won’t come out of the bathroom. Can you take care of that?”

“Look…” called Lyndon, leaning against the wall outside the girls’ bathroom. “Violet, you can’t stay in there forever. You haven’t done anything wrong, you won’t get in trouble, but you have to come out.”
  “I don’t want to come out!” Violet shrieked from behind the door.
  Standing opposite him, Olivia gave Lyndon a look. Lyndon scratched at his temples. He couldn’t summon the energy for this.
  “Violet, you have to come out,” Lyndon said again, laconically.
  “I hate myself!”
  “It’s only me and Ms. Kennedy out here, you won’t be embarrassed, you won’t be…” He trailed off, and let the pause linger.
  “For God’s sake, John,” Olivia muttered, and burst past Lyndon into the girls’ bathroom. The door flung back from her push and shut with a thud.
  “Violet, please look at me,” he heard Olivia say.
  “I don’t want to!”
  “It’s okay, sweetheart, it’s okay.”
  Violet burst into loud, racking sobs. Lyndon craned his head back against the outside wall of the bathroom. His legs went slack and he started to sink down to the floor.
  “Violet,” Olivia said, “you don’t need to change anything about you.”
  Violet kept bawling. Lyndon pressed his hands against his forehead.
  “Please come out, honey, please come out. It’s okay. There you go. Don’t cry. It’s okay. There you go. Come here. Come here. Shh. You’re okay. You’re okay. It’s okay.”
  Lyndon closed his eyes.
  “It’s alright.”



Twenty minutes remaining until Evan was expected outside the gym. There were so many things that could go wrong with this plan. Could he even count on Sean? Who was Sean? Evan looked at the clock, clawing at the underside of his desk. Twenty minutes. He had to get out of this.
  Evan raised his hand. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
  Ms. Glaser looked over at him. “You just went.”
  “I need to go again.”
  The class tittered. What was making the whole thing worse was the fact that he genuinely did need to go to the bathroom.
  “Fine,” said Ms. Glaser, “be back in two minutes or I will come and get you.”
  Evan took a breath in the hallway, as the classroom door shut behind him. Over the past hour, he’d etched the escape route in his brain: left down the hallway, down two flights of stairs, exit the building for the courtyard outside, sticking close to the walls and avoiding all the windows, take a right turn around the edge of the building to the larger courtyard and sneak through the west gate out to the street. From there, bolt. Forget about Sean, he thought. This was better.
  Urging his shaking legs into action, Evan started his walk down the corridor. He walked at an agitated, stilted pace, a compromise between wanting to get out of the school as fast as possible and trying to stifle the echoes of his footsteps. He eased open the door to the stairwell and looked at his watch. Nineteen minutes left.
  After creeping down the stairs, he burst past the door into the courtyard, deserted and soaked in mid-afternoon sunlight. There were two other kids heading for the exit, he noticed, looking like they’d been sent home for dental appointments or nosebleeds. Evan thought he could pass for one of the nosebleed kids. Quickening his step, he passed by someone he thought he recognized, though he couldn’t put a name to the face. Shrugging it off, he kept walking until a hand clenched his shoulder and shoved him around. Evan looked up, his heart seizing in his chest, and looked into a sneering face: the face of Tom Donnelly’s nameless, silent enforcer from earlier in the day.
  “You really trying to get away?” The enforcer grabbed Evan’s left arm above the elbow and bent it hard against his back, nearly pulling it out of its socket.
  “Ah! Fuck!” Evan gasped for air.
  “Shut up.” The enforcer’s other hand went over Evan’s mouth, and he forced Evan around. Evan watched, over the enforcer’s meaty fingers, the west gate disappear from sight.
  “You thought you could get out of this? Come on.”
  As Evan acquiesced into a stumbling walk forward, the pain in his shoulder intensified, a searing feeling like his muscles being ripped apart.
  There were stairs to climb. Pushed along the path back to the gym, Evan felt he would pass out from the pain. He wished he would. He tried to get out a scream. Struggling against the tight hand on his mouth, he couldn’t even pry his lips apart. The enforcer gave Evan’s pinned arm a sudden, excruciating jolt, and then shoved him forward, prompting him to pick up the pace.
  Why was nobody seeing this? Evan clenched his eyes shut and then opened them again sharply when the enforcer squeezed Evan’s cheeks together to make him pay attention.
  He couldn’t say how long it took them to arrive outside the gym, with his arm on fire and consciousness drifting in and out. The enforcer released Evan abruptly, unleashing a horrible surge throughout his arm that sent him to the ground and made him need to throw up.
  Taking rapid, shallow breaths, Evan brought himself to his feet. Arching his head up, he saw, to his utter lack of surprise, Tom Donnelly smirking.
  “See, not even you think you’re a tough guy.”
  Evan smudged his wet eyes with the back of his hand as he straightened up.
  “What do you want?”
  “What do I want? You called me an asshole in front of the entire school. You put that shit on my locker. You fucking came at me. I’ll kill you for that.”
  “Don’t.”
  “No? How about you fucking apologize to me?”
  “I’m sorry.”
  “Say it again.”
  “I’m sorry.”
  “Seriously,” said Tom, “of all the people I thought could have done that to my locker, you were the last person on my list. I guess you hate me, whatever, I get it, but I really didn’t think you would have done that.”
  Evan glared at him.
  “I honestly thought it was Anna for a second, ‘cause I thought maybe she’d found out about that girl from Montclair High that I kissed. At least that would have made more sense. But I guess it was you. I don’t really get it.”
  Tom looked down at Evan. “I can’t figure out. What made you decide to do this? Try not to piss yourself.”
  Sniffling, Evan looked back and forth between Tom and the enforcer.
  “I…”
  Tom leaned forward. “Yeah?”
  “I, I was selling cheat codes. For video games.”  
  Tom blinked. “What?”
  “I was selling cheat codes for video games to other kids,” Evan said, wincing as he did so.
  “And that’s it?” yelled Tom. “Holy shit, Evan! What the fuck is wrong with you?” Tom spun around in hysterics. The enforcer laughed.
  “Jesus Christ, Evan,” said Tom, “you are, I mean you are…” He shook his head.
  “You are the worst kind of nerd. It’s one thing for you to play video games and act like you’re a super badass in a fucking fantasy world, but now you play video games and actually think you are a badass in real life. Don’t you see how you’re out of your mind?”
  Evan couldn’t think of any response.
  “I don’t think you’re a badass, Evan,” said Tom. “And you called me an asshole, but you did that to me so I think you’re the asshole.” Tom crossed his arms. “Say it.”
  Evan looked up at Tom helplessly. The enforcer gave him another shove.
  “Say it!”
  “I’m an asshole.”
  “Say you’re a loser.”
  “I’m a loser.”
  Tom shared a glance with the enforcer. “Get a load of this. I don’t think that’s enough.”
  Evan raised his head.
  “What do you want?” Tom and Evan followed the sound of the enforcer’s voice to where, in the otherwise abandoned courtyard, thick, big Sean was approaching them.
  “Sean?” said Tom. “Get lost.”
  Sean shook his head as he neared them, looking utterly distraught.
  “I’m sorry,” he said to Tom, “I really need those System Shock cheats.”
  Tom frowned slightly and Sean struck him in the stomach. Tom recoiled and gasped for air, the enforcer taking a shocked step back.
  “Take that, shithead!” Evan screamed, watching Tom go down.
  Staggering, Tom lunged forward and haphazardly grabbed Sean around the neck in a headlock. Sean struggled as Tom tried to pull him down, and their fists flailed around, smacking each other in the back. The enforcer seemed completely lost without Tom’s direction. Evan’s heart raced. Stumbling, Sean threw his elbow up toward the sky and hit Tom in the nose with a nauseating crack. The sound sent a shudder through Evan’s body. Sean released his grip and Tom dropped to the ground. Evan’s initial glee vanished as the steady trickle of blood from Tom’s nose accelerated until it gushed down to his neck.
  “Tom, are you okay?” Evan asked.
  Tom pressed his hands up to his mouth, trying to stem the bleeding. Sean took a step back, looking pale. Evan’s heart started racing.
  “Tom, are you alright?”
  Tom drew his hands back and, collapsing to all fours, coughed specks of blood over the concrete. He coughed again, and again, flecking the ground with more blood each time.
  “Evan,” said the enforcer, “what did you do?”
  “I didn’t…” said Evan, “I didn’t…”
  Tom shivered and ran his wet hands through his hair and over his clothes, bloody trails streaking through both.
  “Help,” Evan whispered.



Lyndon rocked a pen back and forth between his thumb and forefinger, staring out the stuck window at the rear of his office. The only thing he could even see from that angle was part of a fence.
  “It’s important to follow the rules, even if they seem unfair. You have to believe that things will get better with time. If it doesn’t seem like it’s working, if you’re having trouble, you still have to believe that, because if you don’t…”
  Lyndon turned around and looked down at his desk.
  “You can’t sell these video game codes anymore,” he said after a moment. “You can’t keep taking money from your classmates.”
  Head hung low, Evan nodded. “I know.”
  “It’s not right.”
  “I know.”
  “Acting the tough guy, Evan, acting the boss…” The words, rote, fell unceremoniously out of his mouth. “Cheaters never win. If you go through life cheating then you haven’t actually gone through life. You don’t learn anything. When you get challenged, and you will get challenged, you’ll fold. You’ll fail.”
  Evan wiped away a tear.
  Lyndon tapped the pen against the desk dispassionately. The black binder rested in front of him, its cover closed.
  “It’s important, Evan,” he deadpanned, “that you work hard, if you learn things, if you are dedicated, if you are a good person, if you follow the rules and if you treat others with kindness… and if you live your life that way, the hard way, then eventually, in the end, that’s how…” Lyndon rubbed at his temple.
  “You will be rewarded,” Lyndon said flatly. “That’s how you’ll be rewarded.”
  Evan shook his head. “I don’t even get what the point is. It doesn’t matter what I do, it doesn’t matter how I act differently, there is always… Tom is always going to be more popular than me. He is always going to tease me. He is always going to…” Evan broke off. “This is so unfair.”
  Lyndon, drained, propped up his chin with his hand. “Do you want to know what I think?”
  Evan picked his head up. “Yes.”
  Lyndon looked at the shaking twelve year old. “You know what’s interesting about Back to the Future? In the first movie, Marty McFly has a miserable family, his uncle is in jail, he doesn’t have the money to take his girlfriend out and his band can’t pass the school audition. When he travels to the past, he manages to prevent everything that would go wrong for his parents over the course of their lives. He goes through a huge ordeal, and when he comes home at the end, his parents are beautiful and thin and rich, his dad’s a successful science-fiction author, the school bully washes their car, and Marty has his own car, his dream car. That’s the happy ending.
  “Do you see what’s wrong with that? It’s superficial. It’s a happy ending only because Marty has more money. Now, in the second and the third movies, what Marty’s fighting to change is himself. He’s an impulsive guy, he’s proud, he’s arrogant and he has a temper. In the future, that’s going to get him in trouble. That pride is going to get him into a car accident that’s going to cast a shadow over the rest of his adult life. What Marty does in those last two movies, by going back into the past and having these adventures, is resolve this unhealthy part of his personality. He overcomes it, and so in the future, instead of being insecure and trying to be tough, he can just let it go. He lets it go, and he moves on. That’s how the movies end, with Marty a better person That’s the ending. Do you understand?”
  Evan dried his eyes on a tissue Lyndon provided.
  John Lyndon remained seated at his desk after Evan left and the door closed. Outside the building, the lights went out one by one as the sky turned dark, leaving only the light from Lyndon’s half-open window.



In the city, en route to his usual diner and his usual dinner of coffee and steak, Lyndon saw something up ahead on the side of the road that caused him to pull over sharply, the drivers behind him bleating their horns in response. Stepping out of his car and locking the door, Lyndon walked north, his shadow jumping about erratically as he passed under the streetlights.
  The first thing that caught Lyndon’s eye as he entered the arcade was the Mortal Kombat cabinet, as it brandished the same garish colors and logo on the cartridge he’d confiscated. Lyndon opened his wallet and fed the machine some loose change. It sprang into garish life and instructed Lyndon to move his character – a stocky, pale gentleman with a crew cut – around the screen and to defeat a overly-muscled opponent. Lyndon tugged at the joystick and mashed the buttons at random, none of which had any direct effect as far as he could tell. After scoring a few hits and, more frequently, seeing his character reel back in blood-soaked defeat, his turn ended and he was prompted to insert another coin.
  Lyndon obliged, pushing a few coins into the slot. The machine seemed to jam as he did so, and after he shook it a little, his coins cascaded out the return slot. Lyndon tried it again and gave the machine another shake.
  A lanky, teenaged arcade staff member wandered past. “Do you need help?”
  “No,” said Lyndon, “I can do it.”



“Shoplifting!”
  In the police station parking lot, Maria Lewis opened the door to the family car and roughly guided Maddy Lewis into the backseat. Maddy, with smudged eyeliner and tousled hair, toppled into Evan’s lap before regaining her composure. Evan pulled his notebook closer towards his window, where he squinted and hoped to catch a little more light on the page.
  Maria Lewis crouched against the open door. “This is unthinkable. Shoplifting. I can’t believe you. I am going to go back inside with your father and then I am coming out and you and I are going to have a talk.”
  Maddy made a dismissive gesture with her hand.
  “I am at my wits’ end,” said Maria, “I don’t know what to do with you. Why can’t you be more like your brother?”
  Maria slammed the car door and stormed back inside the station. Maddy glanced over at Evan.
  “Are you doing your homework?”
  Evan shrugged.
  Maddy rolled her eyes. “Honest to God,” she said. “Live a little.”