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Barry said it was because beating up a guy named Gay was REALLY gay. Dave said it was because Barry was smaller than Bobby and therefore beating him up proved nothing. Mark Zambini said maybe your brother calls you faggot so much, Bobby just thought faggot was your actual name. John Dourville said his father had gotten his nose broken once and that his dad said it hurt like hell and it bled a lot and your eyes watered and then it hurt for like another five or six weeks or so and then after a while it was okay. Andy Zambini hocked a huge loogie onto the sidewalk. And I mean huge: several ants immediately became suspended in it. We stared at them for a while as they tried to wiggle out of the goo. By a while I mean about an hour and a half. We poked at them with sticks.

I went home, said nothing to my dad or my brother-who said pass the salt faggot at supper and got whacked across the head with a gravy ladle by my mom-then I went to bed, staring at the low ceiling of the basement and wishing I could just disappear.

I woke up the next morning and briefly considered pretending to be sick but after a couple of minutes I decided to get up and get it over with. If Bobby Burns was gonna kick my ass I might as well get my ass kicked as quickly as possible and carry on with the rest of my summer. I spent a couple of minutes staring at my nose in the bathroom mirror-imagining what it would look like moved over another inch to the side of my face. Then I went outside to meet the guys.

So I guess you didn't move, huh? Dave Minor said.

Or run away, John Dourville added.

Barry Gay piped in with this headline: my sister said a kid in her grade said that he knows a kid who used to go to school with a kid who knew Bobby Burns's first cousin and the cousin said Bobby killed one of their drunk uncles with a Vulcan Death Grip.

No one said anything for a second. The Vulcan Death Grip was a move that Spock used to kill people on Star Trek, which of course I never watched because I hated science fiction because it seemed like bullshit. Until now.

Needless to say, later that morning we were playing street hockey when everyone just froze, right in the middle of a scoring play. They all were suddenly looking over my shoulder and beyond me with fright in their eyes. I turned to see what they had seen: way down at the end of the block-Bobby Burns. Approaching.

I looked down at my feet for a second-gathering my thoughts-until I realized-my thoughts sounded a helluva lot like breaking bones.

Looking up, I could see that Bobby Burns was only about twenty yards away, cracking his knuckles, each crick of a finger echoing off the asphalt like a bullet's ricochet:

Crack.

Thwang.

Crack.

Zwing.

I could feel the blood leaving my body-apparently not wishing to get spilled.

As Bobby came closer, I could sense everyone else starting to move away from me-I think I even heard a couple of uh-ohs and maybe even some whispered prayers. One of the guys even moved the street hockey net out of the way. As if they didn't want it covered with my blood and intestines and stuff.

Within seconds Bobby Burns was right there in front of me. The hair. The open denim jacket. No shirt. His beady eyes looking up-glaring. He smiled his menacing, evil grin.

Then-two things happened:

1. I didn't shit my pants.

2. Not shitting my pants made my lower lip-which had begun to tremble-stop trembling.

Then Bobby Burns yanked my street hockey stick right out of my hand and threw it behind him. It clattered across the road. Then-Bobby Burns called me a faggot and slapped me in the face. Hard. Really really hard.

Then, his left hand slowly began to move upwards-in what looked to me much like what I knew the G.I. Joe With The Kung Fu Grip's hand always looked like-ready to kill or hold a plastic grenade. Or maybe this was what Spock's hand looked like just before he tried to kill Captain Kirk.

Two more things happened, almost simultaneously:

1. I didn't shit my pants again.

2. I kicked Bobby Burns in the balls-so fucking hard that my foot almost