Chapter 5

From that day forward, Jimmy and I were inseparable. Spot one of us, and it was a guaranteed bet the other one wasn't far behind. It didn't matter to us what we got into, as long as we were doing it together. More often than not, we found Heather along with us for the ride. Despite some grumbling from Jimmy about his sister hanging with us, the two got along surprisingly well.

As we got older, it was only natural that our interests began to diverge. Jimmy was a natural born athlete. Put a ball in that kid's hands and there was nothing he couldn't do. Fourth grade, he started playing Pee-Wee football. He was the starting quarterback and middle linebacker. And, for those of you unfamiliar with Texas and football, this wasn't your friendly neighborhood let-all-the-kids-play-who-cares-who-won-as-long-as-they-have-fun Pee-Wee football. This was serious stuff. Practice three times a week. Overzealous adults living vicariously through their kids, screaming at the top of their lungs. These kids had actual playbooks they had to learn. Playbooks! At 9 and 10 years old! Can you imagine that shit?

And even then you could see Jimmy was something special. He was throwing tight spirals that his receivers had trouble catching up to. He was laying kids out with open-field tackles. It got to the point where even the normally die-hard parents who told their children to suck it up and play were complaining that Jimmy was hurting their kids.

Me? See, maybe you didn't quite catch what I was saying before. This was TEXAS Pee-Wee. You don't just pay the fee and join a team. Nope. You try out for the league. I tried out once. Lasted all of 10 minutes before they asked me to leave the field and stop wasting their time. Nearly got my dad arrested as he went all Marcellus Wallace on their asses. The football fathers of Cedar Hill weren't quite sure how to handle a 6'2", 220-pound black man who blew through irate at Mach 3 and skipped straight to "let's kill some white people". My mother was finally able to drag my father back to the car, before he could invoke the name of Huey Newton and really start a riot.

Springtime was baseball season. Jimmy pitched and played left field. Hit over.400, led the league in dingers and doubles, and never lost a game he pitched. By the time the season was over, he had learned how to throw a curveball that high-schoolers would have killed for, plus a killer slider. 10 years old and had a fastball approaching 80mph.

Baseball wasn't as serious a proposition as football, so I got to be on the team. I watched from the dugout. Cheered as Jimmy put on a show. Actually got into two games. My skills made Timmy Lupus look like Barry Bonds. Remember when Jose Canseco headed a home run? Got that from me. Fucking copycat.

As we got older, Jimmy's scope of friends got wider, while mine stayed fixed at one. We still hung out a lot, but there were times when he got enveloped in his new circle of friends. I understood. Jimmy tried to include me in their activities, but I knew when I wasn't wanted and always found an excuse to stay away. Jimmy finally accepted this and stopped pressuring me to go with him, but he still made time to hang out with just me.

The vast majority of our time was spent at the movies. I was a film freak, and Jimmy wasn't far behind me. Name the movie, and chances are we saw it together. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Jedi. Rocky 3. ET. Superman 3. We even sat through that piece of shit Stroker Ace. That was summer to me. Ice-cold Coke, buttered popcorn, and the big screen.

More often than not, we found ourselves accompanied by Heather and her best friend, Layla Zimmer. Layla was contemptuously tolerant of my existence. She had a crush on Jimmy, and to spend time with Jimmy was to spend time with me. Kids learned quickly that, while Jimmy was pretty good-natured about most things, one thing he didn't put up with was kids dicking with me. So Layla ignored me while throwing herself at Jimmy, who ignored her while discussing the finer points of The Goonies with me.

All in all, things went by pretty much the same, until we started high school.

1986. Ninth grade. High school. Supposed to be the best years of your life, right?

What a crock of shit.

The teenager's predatory skills begin to hone themselves by the beginning of high school. Crude insults give way to sharp, organized taunts. Cliques begin to form. A pecking order emerges.

And at the top of the heap was Jimmy.

As I said before, in Texas, football was King. And could Jimmy play football. Ninth grade, freshman, and he was named the starting quarterback on the JV team. That is just unheard of. If you were exceptional, you made JV your sophmore year as a backup, then broke into the starting lineup midseason. Jimmy was starting from day 1. 4 games in, the starting varsity quarterback, Michael Traylor, broke his ankle against Highland Park. The next game, Jimmy was called up from the JV as the backup varsity quarterback. By the end of the game, he had come off the bench to lead us to a come-from-behind 26-24 win over Sunset. By the end of the season, he had led Cedar Hill to an 8-2 record and a bi-district victory over Waxahachie before bowing out to eventual state runner-up Rockwall. Named second-team All-District despite not even being on the team the first month. From that moment on, the world was Jimmy's oyster. Well, Cedar Hill, at least.

He played shooting guard for the basketball team and pitched and played center field for the baseball team. He didn't have the immediate success he had in football, but was starting on all 3 varsity teams as a sophmore. He began dating Misty Bennett, the head of the varsity cheerleaders. A sophmore dating a senior was unheard of, let alone the head cheerleader, but Jimmy pulled it off no questions asked. He and Misty dated for most of the year, until he overheard her make a snide comment about me and broke it off immediately.

When this got back to me, I went through the roof.

"You gotta be kidding me! You broke up with Misty Bennett because of something she said about me? Are you a fucking idiot?"

We were in his backyard. I had come over after I heard from Jackie Goodman, one of the JV cheerleaders, that Jimmy had dumped Misty "because of my bloated geek ass."

"Look, Jimmy, I'm a big boy. I know where I stand. Man, you can't just dump the hottest chick in school because she said something about me!"

"Dude," Jimmy said, "I'm not gonna spend time with a chick who insults my friends."

"Jimmy, man, stop doing this shit. Fuck, man, I don't even understand this shit. You gotta stop taking pity on me."

Jimmy's eyes turned cold. "You think that's what this is? You think I pity you? I can't believe you think that little of me."

I sighed. "I don't think little of you. I just wish you'd stop coming to my rescue. Dude, I'm the biggest loser in the school. I know this. You're the most popular kid in Cedar Hill. Don't let me drag you down any more."

Before he could answer, I turned around and went home.

So I've spent all this time telling you about Jimmy, but really haven't said much about me. Well, that's because there's not a lot to tell. Just imagine the biggest geek you can remember from your high school experience. Got a mental image? Good. Now, multiply that by 10, add about 50 pounds, and you've got me. I was a 5'8", 230-pound geek. In seventh grade, I took the SAT's as part of a national scholastc contest and scored 1330. In ninth grade I took them again, just for the hell of it, and scored a 1510. I was ranked number one in my class from day one. My sophmore year, I was receiving letters from Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, MIT, Cal Tech, you name it, asking me to keep them in mind when I made a decision regarding college. In the meantime, my social life made a leper look like Hugh Hefner. I was spit on, teased, made fun of, and generally treated like a boil on the school's ass. The only thing that made life tolerable was my friendship with Jimmy. But after the Jimmy/Misty incident, I began to avoid Jimmy. He called my house, tried to speak to me in school. I just ignored him.

Heather came by one day to talk to me about what had happened. We had stopped hanging out together a long time ago, as she found her own circle of friends. But she was still nice to me, and always took time to speak to me whenever I was around. She had grown into a beautiful girl. About 5'8", she had a trim, fit body that was the result of her running on the cross-country team. Her hair was about shoulder-length, always in a ponytail. Her skin was deeply tanned, and her smile was blindingly white. And she was one of the sweetest, most good-natured people you could ever meet. I had never heard one person say anything bad about her, and that's rare in high school. I mean, everyone has someone who hates them. Not Heather. She was truly one of a kind.