raising to be better at baseball than me.
• • •
First period is history. Mr. Potts, our teacher, is a young guy who sits on his desk during class. He always has a coffee in a tall Styrofoam Dunkin’ Donuts cup. When I see him in the afternoon he’s still drinking out of it, which probably means that it is cold. On Fridays he wears jeans which is technically against the rules of our school for teachers—Trevor once found a faculty manual and it said so—but Mr. Potts doesn’t care. He calls me Keller because he heard some boys in the hall calling me that. My friends call me Keller. Or Yonkers, or Bonkers, or Keeeel, plain Keeeeel, low in their throats and congratulatory. When the football team loses, Mr. Potts says Keller, what happened yesterday? Keller, he says, lookin’ good today, like the hat. It’s a joke. He’s making friends with us.
We call him Pottsy. He doesn’t mind.
The best teachers are the ones who want to be liked by you. All teachers want to be liked by you but the best ones are the ones who know who to go after, which kids to befriend. I’m one of the ones to befriend. If I like you everyone does. It’s happened in all my classes.
One time I saw Pottsy in Yonkers standing outside of Rory Dolan’s Pub and smoking. I was driving and I didn’t stop. My little-kid instinct took over and I ducked my head, even, I did not want to be seen. He had one foot pressed against the wall behind him and he was wearing his baseball cap sideways like a fool, for a joke. He had friends on either side of him. Everyone was laughing.
When I come into class today Pottsy says What’s on your feet, Keller? Tomatoes?
I’m wearing red huge basketball shoes. As I have found my place in this school I have begun to dress like I used to and this means whatever I want.
Jealous? I say.
I sit down next to Kurt and across from Lindsay. Our desks are set up in a horseshoe. This is the first class I’ve ever had with her even though we have gone to school together for four years. She’s smarter than me. This year I took A.P. U.S. History II just for the hell of it, because I liked my history class last year and my teacher made me feel like I could.
Happy Monday, says Pottsy, and then he dives right in before everyone’s settled. The Beats, he says. Who knows what the Beats are? The Beat Generation. Beatniks.
No one says anything.
Well you all should, says Pottsy. Because it was part of your reading assignment over the weekend.
We look at him blankly and see that he is getting the face he gets when we are not performing up to his standards.
No one? says Pottsy. No one at all can tell me who the Beats were?
In that case, says Pottsy, I won’t have a conversation with myself. You guys will lead the class on the Beats yourselves on Thursday.
He goes around the room and pairs us up and gives each pair some aspect of the Beats to cover. By some miracle he puts me and Lindsay together. It is the first time we have worked together all semester.
I look at her quickly across the room and I’m happy when she returns my glance.
Five-minute presentations each, says Pottsy. Visual aids required.
Then he walks up to the board and draws an exclamation point, his favorite thing to do when we have misbehaved.
After class Lindsay comes up to me and says, You’re my partner!
I am, I say.
Lindsay says, So, should I come to your house, or should you come to mine, orrrrrr . . .
It is a question I have too. Since we have been hanging out, Lindsay and I have met at various places—the movies, the mall—and twice I have picked her up from her house, but both times she was waiting for me on her porch. I have never been inside. I imagine that the inside of Lindsay’s house is cavernous and light. I imagine that if she saw my block she would be frightened. But maybe I’m wrong.
Your house is closer to school, I say. You don’t wanna come to Yonkers, anyway.
These are the jokes I make in advance. When I first got
to Pells I played up my difference because I felt that it earned me a strange kind of respect. Realizing that I could not
beat anyone from Pells