Disclaimer: Jonathan Larson owns; I'm just borrowing the characters to express my teenage angst.

MARK

Until junior high school, I didn't have many friends. Okay, I didn't have any friends. I would read, sing, sit alone and try not to get beaten up because glasses don't grow on trees. Can't you be more careful?

Sixth grade was the most painful thing to ever happen to me. I looked like a walking target in Cindy's hand-me-down shirts, as my mother figured that all white, collared, three-button shirts were exactly the same, not gender specific. Unfortunately, Cindy was four and a half inches taller than me. My uniform shirts billowed halfway down my thighs. Add to that the fact that my mother combed and gelled my hair, and my glasses had tape on them.

Usually, the best policy when facing bullies is to run for an administrator or teacher. Don't tell them, that only makes the beating worse (and it always comes). Their presence is enough to dispel the immediate threat. I was new and instead of running towards faculty members, I ran behind the art building. That was the day a bully who wasn't a bully saved my glasses and, I thought, my life.

I followed Roger for days before he said a kind word to me, and that word was: "For chrissakes, Cohen, you can't add unlike denominators!"

Since then, we've been close. Roger took certain liberties, like when I showed up at school one day he said, "You're asking to be beat up," and ran his fingers through my hair. I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw spikes. Mom didn't like it one bit, but the bullying grew less and less--perhaps because I now had a protector.

Roger made me do bad things sometimes, like in junior high when we cut out because Roger decided there were more important things than school. He promised we would be back by the end of lunch, helped me over the fence and led me down to the dirt hill by the aquaduct and announced that we were going to have a picnic.

I cleaned my glasses. "Here?" It wasn't much, just a dirt hill mostly shaded by vegetation. As I had followed Roger off the sidewalk, it had occurred to me that I was inviting any means of torture and murder at the hands of this not-quite-friend.

Roger looked at me like I'd grown a third head. "Yeah," he said, then sat down and took his lunch out of his bookbag.

"I… was gonna buy lunch," I muttered.

Roger held out half a sandwich. I took it and sat next to him. We spent three hours there, just talking, sharing Roger's peanut butter sandwich and Coke. Even then he had a mild caffeine addiction, but he was so crazy no one knew.

Roger never really makes friends. He allows select people to coexist within his sphere. If they stay long enough to realize there's a marvelous boy within the craziness, and he accepts them, they are friends. He doesn't make friends, he and another become friends. They wake up of a morning and are.

Tom Collins is the exception to that rule. Maybe it's because we were thrown together in so many classes--all except Math. Collins and I had Algebra II; Roger, who had always been sharp with numbers, had Calculus. So we parted after morning break to head our separate ways, then met again in the lab for fourth period biology. And, as frosting on the cake, we were nearly always seated together: Cohen, Collins, Davis. The alphabet is darkly reliable.

And Roger just accepted him, just like that. In fourth period biology, when the syllabi were passed out, Roger scanned his, then turned to Collins, who was sitting next to him, nudged his arm and said, "Hey, Col, look-- we're doing the reproduction unit in November." We focused on one topic per month: two weeks' studying, two weeks' lab work, test. When Collins indicated that he failed to see the comedy, Roger rolled his eyes and moaned, "Teddy Roosevelt, man! That's November, too. Teddy 'Big Stick' Roosevelt! Aw, c'mon, laugh with me," he pleaded.

"Ha, ha," Collins said. "Hey, what's that?" he asked, rubbing his thumb on Roger's forehead. "Oh. It's just some dirt 'cause you're so low-brow."

Roger laughed. That is not what I had expected, and to be honest, I was a little jealous. Maybe more than a little.

Fifth and sixth periods were the best part of the day. In fifth we had Library Practice, which essentially meant shelving books and hanging around. Sixth period was Advanced Drama, and our instructor Mr. Trask announced on the first day of school, "Since you are all advanced students I do not expect horsing around. This semester is going to be largely independent work. Get into groups, put on a scene. Make it a long scene. If you do not have a group, you may learn a monologue." So Collins, Roger and I decided to put on a scene together. From that point forward we weren't just friends. We were bound to be friends.

Two weeks into the semester, we sat at our lab station with the imaginary presence of Violet Dennis, who had most unfortunately experienced kidney trouble and was unable to attend school. We were all quite sad for her, but secretly, I hadn't wanted her in our group, anyway. That's a terrible thing to think, and I found myself praying silently every time I thought it. I thought it, anyway, but at least G-d knew I was sorry.

We were building an ecosystem out of empty soda bottles. "Let's fill this one entirely with water," Roger said, and held it under the tap in the lab sink. "That's healthy, it'll keep the air damp."

Collins and I pressed our strawberry plant into some dirt in the second bottle, let our spider and ladybugs out of their respective containers, and taped it shut. "Decomposition chamber--who brought the mulch?"

There is something awkward about admitting, "Oh, I did," and pulling out a brown lunch bag. I opened the bag and my heart jumped up into my mouth. "Fudge." Which was precisely what I saw: fudge cookies, a sandwich, carrot sticks… This was not my mulch. It was Cindy's lunch. "Uhh…"

Roger peeked into the bag, laughed and slapped my shoulder. Collins traded some ladybugs for some mulch from Table One. The disaster was averted, but I couldn't stop blushing.

"Mark? Mark? Look, this is Benjy." Roger was grinning as he held up a plastic cup. Inside, a small fish flickered, trailing billowy blue fins. "He's a betta. Benjamin Franklin. Look, he eats bloodworms." Roger held up a plastic bag to demonstrate: within the bag, in a corner filled with water, tiny red worms slithered. I moaned and turned away, queasy.

"Benjy doesn't like you, either," Roger announced.

"Just put Benjy in the water chamber and stop fooling around," Collins muttered. Roger dumped the fish, the worms and a small plant into the water chamber and taped it closed. We now had a full ecosystem, complete with Roger smiling and saying, "Hey, Benjy..." repeatedly. When at last he looked up, it was to ask Collins and me, "You guys want to come over after school on Friday? Just hang out and stuff?"

I left school with the distinct feeling that my feet never quite touched the pavement. We were going to hang out. It felt to proper, so teenage. For someone with stunted social growth, this was monumental. I was grinning maniacally up to the point at which Cindy joined me, screamed, "You bitch, Mark!" and smacked me hard on the head with a bag full of dirt.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Teddy Roosevelt's foreign policy was to "talk softly and carry a big stick". And the notes in chemical symbols, oh, that hat really exists.

Next chapter is Roger's perspective.