Chapter 3: East Boston High

May, 2003

"Hey yo, Chet! Wait up, man!"

I looked behind to see the looming form of Kevin catch up with me in the hallway. "What did I tell you about walking around without me, man! I've got you."

"Oh please, Kev. You're worse than my Mom. It's fine. It was just that one time, dude." I rolled my eyes for the millionth time. It was probably quite a laugh when people saw us walking side by side to class. Kevin, all six foot four of him, moving down the corridor, with me, all four feet nine at his side, almost being swallowed by his shadow.

It was really that one time.

A few months ago, not long after we started in East Boston, I accidentally walked into the back of a Hispanic kid. In my defence, I was focused on staring at this girl whom I totally crushed on. Well, no surprises were had when the kid turned around and shoved me into the lockers nearby.

"Fucking gringo..." he muttered.

"Dude, what's a gringo?" I asked.

"You making fun of me now, eh?" he said as he took a step closer.

What the fuck? For all the worldliness that I had, for all the exposure we had as kids to various languages, somehow Spanish never made it into our lexicon of basic understanding and expert mastery of cussing. Sure, we understood and were fairly fluent in Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and English, we never took up Spanish. Besides, I was confident in my cussing in Malay, Japanese, Korean, on top of the other languages spoken.

So when Mr. Aggro stood closer, I took a guess at the meaning of 'gringo' and cussed him with the first curse I could think of, "Eh, puki mak square!" As far as curses go, it was not fairly invective. It was however, extremely entertaining as it just meant 'mother's cunt square'. How did the Malays decide that a 'mother's cunt' being shaped like a square was insulting, I would never know.

"What the fuck... ?" He had slight puzzlement written all over his face which was when I decided to shove him, you know, just cause he had a slight body odour that was making my head rather faint. "Dude, deodorant, man!"

As he got ready to shove me once more, Kevin appeared. Now Kevin, as it turns out was a fairly young boy in a man's body. He was six foot four, which was one inch taller than Charlie who had levelled out at six foot three. Kevin was however the same age as me. In addition, Kevin was also immensely athletic, and entirely obsessed with football, or as he calls it, his way to getting' some. As to what 'some' meant, I never knew. It couldn't be girls, because Kevin even managed to date a junior despite our status as freshmen last year.

"Hey dawg, he's with me yo." With a glare, Kevin helped B.O boy move along.

"Thanks ... dawg." I said.

"Nah, it's all cool, yo."

Speaking of girls, it was unfamiliar territory for me being in East Boston. All our lives, both Charlie and I had always attended single-sex educational institutions. Until now, that is. While Mom always felt that our lives were enriched by attending the local schools, she also managed to satisfy her inner-snob by selecting the best – read: most prestigious – school where the local elite sent their kids to. For some reason, those schools, from Catholic High Primary (Charlie's first Primary school in Singapore) to Eton, were all boys' schools. I suppose single-sex schools fell out of favour in America.

Either way, this left me rather inexperienced, and ill-equipped in the ways of functioning as a confident, intelligent, or witty young man that I was. I should also mention that I had a high self-regard of my innate characteristics.

Of course Charlie did not have this problem given that he was extremely vocal and extroverted in nature. To a large degree, so was I. But the inherent confidence boost that he had with being physically attractive was the reverse in my case. All in all, I had what I would describe as a crippling sense of self-doubt because of my acne, and short stature.

In any case, my problems were only beginning. Having girls around me in school did not help as I was constantly distracted by them. The way they smelt, their voices, their nubile bodies, those budding ... I digress. It was no wonder I had walked into B.O boy. But as things would turn out, I gained a good friend from that incident.

I had chanced upon Kevin in the library one day reading while doing the same, so I struck up a conversation with him. "Hey bro, what's up dawg? Don't you have football practice?" He glanced up and looked at me strangely.

Hmmm, I really shouldn't try to be black.

Anyway, ever since we started school, Charlie joined the football team and took to it like fish to water, viewed by the Varsity team Coach as a God-sent, our Mom, not so much, Personally, I reverted to being my tried and tested time-wasting activity of gaming. Football had no appeal to me because it was full of stoppages, which meant lots of standing around. Also, since I was fairly small, I was limited as to my game-time and time spent with the ball. Since East Boston had no football team, or in the American parlance, a soccer team, it just meant that I foresaw playing more tennis at the local country club for exercise. It also meant that I was stuck with waiting for Charlie to be done with practice before Mom would come to pick us from school.

Kevin, I knew from what Charlie told me, was a prospect that was merely bidding his time. In view of his development, the Varsity team Coach was allowing Kevin to play some games with the Varsity team, but he mostly played Kevin in the JV team to allow him to develop his fundamentals further. Even so, Kevin had the size and the talent to walk on to the Varsity team. As such, I was legitimately curious as to his presence in the library while practice was scheduled.

"Hey man." He finally replied.

As I sat down next to Kevin, he stiffened slightly before choosing to ignore me. 'Oh well, ' I thought to myself, 'Can't win all of them.' Before long, I realised from my peripheral vision that Kevin turned his pages at the rate of one to my fifteen. While I am a prodigious reader, such a ratio was definitely suspect.

"Hey man," I tried, "Do you have difficulty reading?"

East Boston was interesting as it has an enrolment of over 18 per cent of its students with disabilities. This was largely due to the fact that it also had a Special Education department, and is one of the partner schools for Harvard's Faculty of Education's Teacher Education Program. So it's not surprising to find that the school in general, more capable to catering to different needs.

Kevin looked at me before sighing, "Yeah, I've got dyslexia. That's why I have to practice my reading while the others have practice."

"Cool," I offered. "It's not that bad."

"Yeah, well, it is for me man. I wanna go to college and dyslexia is fucking my grades up."

"Huh, no shit." I was at a loss for words. "Well, I'll be happy to accompany you whenever you're here then. Either way, I have to wait for Charlie, so it's no biggie, dawg."