Boy in Crowd

Written by: Pudding

In the movie that will undoubtedly be made about my fabulous life, Bryan Fitzgerald probably won’t make much more than a quick bit part; in the credits, he’ll be called “Boy in Crowd” or something. They’ll have to take out quite a lot of those incidents to make room for the years I’ll spend helping the starving children in Chile and when I get my Nobel Peace Prize. The filmmakers probably won’t see why they should bother including some random guy from fifth grade. The thing is, arrogant weasel that Bryan was, things in my life did change, if indirectly, because of him. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all proud of how I treated him, but it did mark a turning point.

Now, the whole thing did start with the best of intentions…for about week. The beginning of fifth grade has already become a blur, with occasional moments of startling clarity. I vaguely remember that the rest of the class had been playing kickball the past few recesses, and my friends and his friends weren’t all that interested. About six of us were playing one of those random games loosely based on tag, when a dispute between Danielle, one of my best friends, and Chester, Bryan’s lieutenant, started. Something about who tagged whom. Then the memory switches to sharp focus. I jumped in, ursine, to defend Dani.

“There was no way he tagged her! Tags with the foot don’t count!” I said. I was always defending Dani. Maybe it was because she resembled nothing so much as a field mouse.

Chester, one of the two boys in the year who even approached my height, looked quite diminished by my fury. I have been told that I have an uncanny ability to seem about seven feet taller than I actually am.

Bryan stepped in. He was nearly as loyal and competitive as I was. “They count, Lila.”

“They do not.”

“They do so.”

“Do not.”

“So we agree.” I rolled my eyes. “This isn’t a cartoon, genius.”

Ordinarily I would have walked off and ended the argument on that…auspicious note, but I was feeling a bit cocky. I can’t really put the words on one side of the argument into print, but eventually they had to break up the shouting match.

I, being Little Miss Perfect Teacher’s Pet Whose Mother Regularly Threatened to Homeschool and Decimate The School’s Test Scores If She Didn’t Get Her Way, got off scot-free. Bryan got a Saturday detention, largely because of the aforementioned unprintable words. It was a Friday, so I went home and forgot all about it.

Ryan didn’t.

I suppose I can see the weasel’s point of view on this one. I’d be mad, too, if some kid were directly involved in my getting a Saturday detention, but he kind of deserved it. Whatever the reason was, he was still mad, which was just enough cause for me to be irate towards him. Sheesh, didn’t he realize that it was last week? If he couldn’t get over it, well, I’d be mad at him for being mad at me.

And so the insults and wars raged on, all through the year. It was Bryan and his freaky friends versus me and…the entire rest of the class, really. I can’t say that our teacher was terribly unbiased, either. He did give Sarah and me permission to hurl water balloons at Bryan and his idiot compatriots. From a tree. In late November. I’m pretty sure that that’s a violation of some sort of teaching code, but Mr. Q did win Teacher of the Year that year, so what do I know?

Both sides of our epic war of the ages were brutal. Fourth grade girls at that school still speak reverently of the time Bryan’s friends tried to get popcorn outlawed in class, and partially succeeded. It was banned, but I convinced Mr. Q to let the girls have popcorn in the classroom.

It was all-out war until March, when there was a sudden incident among the troops. Sarah, my strongest ally, had been fraternizing with the enemy. One of Bryan’s minions, Steven, had developed a crush on her, and it was apparently mutual. I remember subjecting her to a "Fiddler on the Roof"-style monologue about sticking to her principles and being the bird in love with the fish, but, eventually, I was all right with it.

I even started a plan to get them together.

There was going to be this post-graduation party, you see. Sure, it was going to be hosted by those evil girls (all four inconveniently named Katherine) who would continue to be mean to me until I finally got out of that horrific town, but there was to be dancing. Katie L., the least annoying of the Katies, had invited my friends and me.

The end of fifth grade came quickly. (Though summer wasn’t in as much of a hurry—it was 40°F outside for our graduation pool party. Sarah, Bryan, David Johnson, and I swam anyway. I was rather interested in David Johnson.) The day after was the party.

It was held at the clubhouse at the end of my block, so I walked. Everyone else was being dropped off by their mommies, so I felt terribly mature. The Katies’ moms were even chaperoning.

Katie F.’s mom looked surprised to see me there. Katie F. had managed to exclude most of her “enemies”—I imagine her mother assumed I was on that list.

I greeted her brightly and entered the clubhouse. I don’t know what I’d expected a fifth grade graduation party to be like, but this wasn’t it.

To be continued…