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  It was also not surprising that he became a particular target of Defenseur Fabron, Ryan’s best friend.

  Defenseur wasn’t really a bully. He never picked on anybody weaker than himself. Instead, he singled out people of arrogance and authority. Principals and teachers and counselors hated him because of his mastery of the pointed remark—usually nothing that could get him expelled or even sent to the office, but nevertheless a barb that stuck and stung and often got repeated by other kids around school.

  He got people to call one English teacher “Professor True-or-False” because of his reliance on that easiest-to-grade and most worthless type of exam. The remark, though, was simply this, while yet another test was being passed out: “Wow, Mr. Pritchard, you really really love true-false tests. I bet they take almost no time or thought to grade.”

  The voice was enthusiastic and cheerful. The class didn’t even laugh. But the new nickname spread through the school very quickly, and Pritchard overheard “Professor True-or-False” being spoken even in the faculty lounge, more than once. But how could he send Defense to the office for making a statement that sounded rather admiring and that was also demonstrably true?

  Defense, however, did not have much experience with the vanity of athletes, who did not have the kind of boundaries and self-discipline that teachers were required to have. Errol Dell’s godlike saunter through the halls of Vasco da Gama was an irresistible provocation for Defense, whose attempts to humiliate without provoking punishment were not quite as successful with athletes as they were with teachers, counselors, and the principal.

  There was the matter of “Foot-Man,” the nickname that Defense attached to Errol after the first game in which Errol was the top scorer for the da Gama Explorers. It was actually a good nickname for a kicker, and Errol took it that way for quite a while, until he started hearing that it was being used to imply that the only functioning part of Errol was his foot, or that Errol had an unnatural fondness for his own and other people’s feet.

  There was no way to prove that such weirdness was Defense’s doing or his intent, but Errol began to get a chip on his shoulder about the nickname, so Defense’s persistent use of it became a provocation.

  When this became obvious, Defense switched to just calling him, and referring to him, as “Foot.” It soon became a chant at games, the entire da Gama side of the stadium chanting, “Foot! Foot! Foot!” whenever Errol came out to kick.

  Errol claimed it was distracting, and if he ever missed, he blamed it on the chant. Defense claimed that Errol’s completion average had improved since the chanting began.

  “Statistics don’t lie,” Defense said when Errol began haranguing him one day. After that, Errol knew he would look stupid for complaining to Defense about the chant. It wasn’t as if Defense could have stopped it, anyway.

  But the day after Ryan’s first meeting with GRUT, Defense got all excited about the possibilities of his micropower. “So is it just bees and girls, or is it, like, anybody you really, truly love?”

  “I didn’t even like my sister when I unstung her, so no, I don’t think so.”

  “Not liking your sister doesn’t mean you don’t love her,” said Defense. “And anyway, I know you love me. You do love me, don’t you, Ryan? Oh, admit it, Ryan, you love me!”

  Since they were in the cafeteria at lunch, and Defense was getting louder and louder, Ryan had to say yes just to shut him up. And it was true, as long as everyone understood that it was a friendship kind of love.

  “So I’m betting,” said Defense, “that we can put your micropower to a test. For instance, if something bigger than a bee is threatening to harm me, I bet you’ll know exactly how to prevent it, and you’ll do it, even if it’s a kind of thing you normally wouldn’t do, like putting a bee in your mouth.”

  “Defense, I wouldn’t put a bee in my mouth to keep you from being run through a car compactor.”

  “That’s what you say right now, when I’m nowhere near a car compactor. And besides, bee-mouthing probably wouldn’t be the correct action to take in order to save me in such a case.”

  “What I’m saying, Defense, is that if you get yourself into a dangerous situation on purpose just to test me, I won’t help you. Neither my sister nor Bizzy did anything to attract the bee.”

  “That you know of.”

  “Period.”

  “Tell you what. You meet me after school and we’ll discuss it further.”

  “I’m walking Bizzy home tonight.”

  “No you’re not,” said Defense. “Not till play practice is over.”

  “She dropped out of the play.”

  “If she did, she hasn’t told anybody,” said Defense. “It would have been all over the school, and it isn’t.”

  “Whatever,” said Ryan. “If you do something to get yourself killed, I don’t plan to be there to watch it.”

  Defense put on his mock-weepy face and said, “You’d make me die alone? Like a death-row inmate who killed all his friends and family so there’s nobody left?”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  Defense pretended to be in a huff as he carried his tray to the return. But at the end of the day, Ryan made it a point to intercept Defense at their adjacent lockers in order to keep him from doing something stupid.

  Unfortunately, Defense had already started his provocation of Errol Dell before even opening his locker. It happened that Errol was swanning his way through the after-school crowd when Defense called out to him, “Hey, it’s Athlete’s Foot, the Hero Fungus!”

  Errol stopped cold and turned to face Defense from twenty feet away. “Take that back,” he said.

  “Sorry,” said Defense. “Not a hero fungus. Just a regular fungus. Treatable with Tinactin—no need for Lamisil.”

  “Don’t ever call me that again,” said Errol. The menacing edge to his voice was making people start to back away.

  “Sure,” said Defense. “‘Athlete’s Foot’ is such a pedestrian name. The scientific name is tinea pedis. Or is it tidea penis? I’m always getting that confused.”

  Errol lunged toward Defense, but some of Errol’s friends restrained him.

  “He’s not worth it.” “Nobody cares what he says.” “He’s nothing.” “No reason to get yourself in trouble over him.”

  The voices of reason restrained him for now, but Defense saw Ryan arriving right then and grinned at him. “It’s sad that Mr. Foot never learned the poem ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but—’”

  “You want broken bones?” shouted Errol.

  “Well, not now,” said Defense. “Not here, inside my beloved high school, with all these witnesses.”

  “So you want to die alone?”

  “No, he doesn’t,” shouted Ryan. “Don’t let him get to you, man.”

  “When did I start needing advice from you, loser?” Errol shot at Ryan.

  Ryan realized that he was just making it worse. Errol could take such advice from his friends, but not from a nobody like Ryan. Even though he was in the running for valedictorian of his class. That only made him more of a loser in Errol’s eyes.

  In the end, as Defense strode boldly past Errol and his entourage, Ryan had no choice but to try to catch up with him. He reached him at the door and grabbed his arm. “Come on, idiot,” he pleaded. “Go back inside and hang around with me near the principal’s office until Errol gives up and goes home.”

  “I don’t think he’ll ever give up now,” said Defense. “But it’s sweet of you to care.”

  Ryan tried to talk softly enough that other people wouldn’t overhear. “My micropower won’t work if you—”

  Defense certainly didn’t act as if he could hear Ryan.

  That’s when Errol reached the door and shoved Defense hard, tearing him out of Ryan’s grasp. Defense staggered and finally fell onto the pavement of the walkway toward
the buses.

  Errol’s friends rushed past Ryan, trying to prevent him from getting anywhere near Defense. But Ryan managed to get off to the side, where he had a perfect view as Errol, instead of letting Defense get up and make some kind of fight out of it, simply kicked him in the ribs.

  Kicked him with all the force of a game-winning field goal.

  Defense gave a horrible oof! that sounded as if all the air he had ever inhaled was discharged at once. That was followed by a high gasp and then a whine that told Ryan that Defense probably had some broken ribs.

  So much for my knowing how to save Defense and then doing it. Mine must be a bees-only micropower.

  Then he saw Errol getting set to kick Defense again. This time in the face.

  It wasn’t about keeping Defense pretty. His face was attached to his head, and that kick could cause major brain damage, if it didn’t actually kill him outright.

  Before he had consciously registered that thought, however, Ryan was already moving, taking three running steps and then launching himself into the air directly toward Errol.

  Ryan’s right arm was already extended, his fist formed. But instead of presenting the flat of his gathered fingers, he was aiming with the first knuckles of his index and middle fingers, as if to make a precision strike.

  And his leap had not had enough loft to allow him to aim at Errol’s face. He was at exactly the right position to strike Errol on the Adam’s apple.

  Ryan had heard somewhere that a direct strike to the larynx could be fatal. He had just enough time and control to aim a bit lower and strike below the larynx.

  The blow landed with Ryan’s full mass behind it. Errol’s body instantly went limp and he fell straight down, with Ryan landing atop him. Ryan expected to be pummeled immediately, to be pushed off Errol.

  Instead, it took a few moments before people began to pull Ryan off and shove him back. But nobody was trying to hit him or even hurt him. They were trying to look after Errol, who wasn’t moving.

  Wasn’t breathing.

  It took a few minutes for the school nurse to be summoned, but she had been an EMT for several years, and within a couple of minutes she had performed an emergency tracheotomy and had Errol breathing again.

  By that time, Ryan had helped a groaning, panting Defense to his feet and helped him limp a few yards away.

  A few minutes later, the official EMTs arrived in an ambulance, along with a cop car. The cops got all the bystanders into one place and questioned people. The EMTs surrounded Errol and got him into the ambulance, and they were about to leave with him while the school nurse tried to tell them what to do.

  Ryan interrupted. “My friend, guys. Defense Fabron. That guy kicked him in the ribs and I think they might be broken.”

  “In a schoolyard fight?” said the nurse. “I don’t think so.”

  “Errol is the kicker for the football team,” said Ryan, “and he can kick a field goal from the forty, they say.”

  One of the EMTs stayed to look at Defense, and despite the nurse’s constant skepticism, he called for another ambulance while he bound up Defense’s chest on the outside of his clothes. Ryan insisted on riding in the ambulance with Defense, and when the school nurse protested, the EMTs told her that it would be an excellent plan. Ryan figured they said yes only to annoy the nurse, but motive didn’t matter. He got to be in the hospital with Defense and call Defense’s mom from there.

  By the time she got there, Defense had real bandages around his ribs, and Ryan had used Defense’s phone to take a couple of pictures of the massive bruising underneath and how his ribs looked caved in.

  “I don’t need a picture of that,” said Defense. “I can feel it from the inside.”

  “In case we need it for the trial.”

  “You think they’re going to try Foot for assaulting me?” asked Defense.

  “From this moment on, the only name you use for him is Errol, got it?”

  Defense blinked. “Um.”

  “Because you picked this fight, you moron. You goaded him.”

  “Well, words against kicks, man. He shoved me from behind and put me on the ground and then he kicked me.”

  “Yeah, he’s a kicker. I’m sorry you never thought of that.”

  “You laid him out, man.”

  “And that’s the trial I’m talking about,” said Ryan. “Mine.”

  “Yours! That was self-defense, man!” said Defense.

  “No it wasn’t. I wasn’t being threatened in any way. I jumped in and punched him in the throat because he was about to kick you in the head.”

  “Well, duh,” said Defense.

  “But is that the story that all those kids watching the so-called fight are going to tell? All those kids who worship Errol and who see you and me as complete nothings?”

  “Who would believe I would pick a fight with Errol Dell?” Defense asked scornfully.

  “Everyone at school,” said Ryan.

  “Well. Yeah.”

  Then Defense’s mother got there.

  And a few minutes later, there were cops. One to question Defense, the other to talk to Ryan.

  Or, as far as Ryan knew, to arrest him. Was fifteen old enough to try him as an adult? Just in case Errol died and it was going to be a murder charge?

  As the cops were approaching, Defense whispered, “What do I tell ’em, Ryan?”

  “The same thing I’m going to tell them,” Ryan answered. Out loud. “The whole, honest truth. That way we don’t have to get our stories straight.”

  “Good advice, kid,” said Cop A.

  Cop B took Ryan by the shoulder and steered him off to somebody’s office, which the hospital people had opened up for him.

  Cop B soon became Detective Sergeant Wilbur Nix, and he set down a stack of four cell phones on the desk in front of him. “Before I ask you anything, I’m going to show you what the cell phone videos I confiscated as evidence have to say.”

  Nix played him the first one. Pretty good angle. It caught Errol’s first kick—even showed the toe denting Defense’s rib cage. It was an excruciating sight. Not for America’s Funniest.

  Then it was very, very clear that Errol was going to kick Defense even harder in the face. Until Ryan appeared in midair, flying in from out of frame, and straight-armed Errol in the throat. Ryan went back and replayed it and paused right at the point of impact. He nodded. “I tried not to hit him right on the larynx,” he said. “And it looks like I did that.”

  “Yes,” said Nix. “The doctors working on Errol Dell say that if your blow had landed on his larynx, it would have been beyond reconstruction. But you did some serious damage, kid. He had to have an emergency trake right there at school. And he’s still not breathing through his mouth and nose. He won’t be swallowing anything for a while, either.”

  “But he’ll be okay, right?” asked Ryan.

  “It depends on how you define ‘okay,’” said Nix.

  “You can see that he was going to do some serious damage to Defense, right?” asked Ryan.

  “Kid. These videos all tell the same story. If you hadn’t poked the kid, he’d be facing murder charges, because I don’t think your friend on the ground would have survived that kick. Okay? So nobody’s going to charge you with anything. If the kicker’s parents protest, we’ll play the videos for them. If there’s some kind of community protest, we’ll put the videos on television. You saved a life today, kid.”

  “That was all I hoped for,” said Ryan. “Please don’t put the videos on TV, though.”

  “I know, people think you’re a fighter, they want to pick fights and take you on,” said Nix.

  Ryan hadn’t thought of that at all. He had only thought how the way he flew in there with his fist extended had a definite Superman vibe to it, as if he could actually fly, and the last thing he needed was for morons to
think he actually had a superpower.

  But Ryan held his tongue and let Nix think that he was worried about people picking fights.

  “So you’re not charged with anything,” said Nix, “and unless you want police protection against mob violence for taking the top scorer on the Vasco da Gama Explorers out of football for the rest of the year, you won’t be seeing us after today.”

  “I don’t think I’ll need protection,” said Ryan.

  A silence hung in the air for a long moment.

  “I still want to ask you something,” said Nix.

  “Okay,” said Ryan.

  “I’ve looked at these videos, including the one that actually shows you from the moment you started moving. And here’s the thing. You started moving the moment the kicker turned back around to face the kid on the ground. You were already moving when the kicking motion first started. Even then, kid, there’s no way you could have launched yourself into the air and punched him in the throat before the kick even landed.”

  “But I did,” said Ryan.

  “It’s like you knew it was going to happen,” said Nix.

  “Of course I did,” said Ryan. “Errol was crazy angry, and what he does is kick. When he turned around, it was clear he wasn’t going to go for the ribs again.”

  “Maybe. But come on, where’s the deciding time? You immediately launched yourself at exactly the point where his throat was going to be. Why did you go for the throat?”

  “I didn’t know I was going for his throat until I was in the air, and his throat was the only thing I could reach with my full strength. So maybe I unconsciously decided that, but I didn’t know it, like, with my actual brain, until I was almost on him. And all I could do was aim a little lower so I didn’t shatter his Adam’s apple.”

  “So you knew you could really mess him up, and you decided not to,” said Nix. “Guy was ready to kill your friend, and you decide to take it easy on him?”

  “I knew hitting his throat would take him down and stop the kick. That’s all I cared about. You think I wanted him dead?”

  “Why didn’t you?” asked Nix.

  Ryan sighed. “Because except for the kick in the head, Defense was begging for it.”