The New Kid

The new kid stood there at the door of Mrs. Hill’s fifth-grade class. He wore thick glasses and red jeans. Who wears red jeans? I paid attention to the looks he got from other kids. I could see that they judged him as a weirdo and an outcast. I felt sorry for the new kid.

Mama told me a story once about when she was the new kid in school. When her daddy died they moved to Cleveland from the safety of their little town. They moved there because Great-Aunt Celia lived there. Mama told me how scared she had been when she walked into that new school. How snotty some of the girls were. How they made fun of her clothes and called her a “hick.” But then a girl named Cynthia walked through the crowd, smiled at her, and took her hand. Cynthia saved Mama that day. When Mama told that story she always got teary.

So when I saw this new kid getting the cold shoulder from the other kids, I thought about Cynthia. I knew I had to be like Cynthia. I walked up to the new kid and introduced myself. “I’m Clarence,” I said.

He gave me a funny look. Sort of a down-his-nose look. “I’m Kevin,” he said. “I am a very talented photographer.”

“That’s neat,” I said.

When I got home I told Mama about the new kid. Mama is our Cub Scout den mother. She said, “Why don’t you invite him to the next den meeting?”

So I did. When Kevin showed up at my house he brought his Instamatic camera. He showed us how to work it. Mama told him that in Boy Scouts they have a merit badge for photography and he got all excited. The kids in Scouts were friendlier to him than the kids at school had been. That made me feel good. I felt like Cynthia then.

“You want to go exploring with us on Saturday?” I asked. I told him that there was a secret cave out near the high school and he could come with us if he wanted.

“I’ll bring my Instamatic,” said Kevin.

On Saturday morning Kevin joined me and the O’Dell twins, Garry and Barry, out behind the VFW hall. We climbed down to the river bank to the mouth of the cave. It isn’t really a cave. It’s a cement storm drain that leads out into the river. If it hasn’t rained too much, you can walk inside it for a long ways with only a little trickle of water running down the middle. It is cool and spooky in there and voices sound different. And kids write things with spray paint and chalk on the walls. Stuff like—“BLOOD IS EVERYWHERE!” and signs that look like devil worshippers made them.

Kevin took lots of pictures with his flash camera. He told us to pretend like we were trapped down in there and we were really scared. He took a picture of me and Garry O’Dell, with Garry acting like he was trying to strangle me. Kevin took pictures of us with our flashlights aimed under our chins so we looked like ghosts. It was a lot of fun.

“You guys are nice!” said Kevin. “Not like the kids in Little Rock.”

Little Rock is a city in Arkansas where Kevin used to live.

That made me feel good, like I was helping Kevin feel welcome. Like I was being a real Cynthia. I felt good being nice to the new kid. But a few days later, Kevin pushed me into a corner in the lunch room.

“How come I didn’t get invited?” he demanded.

“Invited to what?”

“To Ricky’s birthday party!”

Ricky O’Dell was Barry and Garry’s eight-year-old brother. He’s two years younger than us, and nobody ever would have expected Ricky’s mom to invite big kids to his party, even his two brothers, to a little kid’s party. “I don’t know, Kevin. Probably because it was a party just for third-graders?”

“Don’t lie to me!” said Kevin. “Just tell me who is saying bad things about me!”

I could see he was real upset so I did my best to calm him down.

“Kevin, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do!” he snarled. “Everybody always lies to me! You just don’t want to tell me the truth!”

I didn’t know what else to say. “Kevin, I swear! I don’t know anything!”

“Who are you protecting?” he demanded again. Then he kind of calmed down. “I know that kids are jealous of me because I’m such a great photographer. But I’m a little sensitive about it ‘cause I had a lot of trouble back when I lived in Little Rock.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m telling you the truth. I never heard anybody say a single bad thing about you. If I did, I would tell you, Kevin.” We shook on it.

The next Saturday just me and Kevin went into the cave again. This time we went even deeper, to the place where the tunnel is blocked by a grate and the rest of it turns into a big pipe.

“This is as far as we can go,” I said.

“Look how rusty it is,” said Kevin, looking at the chain and padlock on the grate. “Maybe we can break it.” And he did, by kicking it with his boot.

This was vandalism, like Principal Harris told us about. Destroying public property is a crime. I got real nervous. It just isn’t done.

“Kevin, you shouldn’t have done that! “ I whispered. “It’s public property!”

“Are you chicken?” said Kevin.

What could I say? He pulled open the grate and crawled in a little farther. I followed him. In the skinnier part we had to go one at a time and on our knees. We had to use our flashlights the whole way. We wrote our names on the walls with chalk. It was fun. Like being cave explorers.

Kevin kept coming to Cub Scouts. He seemed pretty happy, especially when Mama put his photos in the Cub Den newsletter. But at school, Kevin always seemed unhappy. I felt bad that he thought kids didn’t like him, but I knew it was true. He was kind of boring because all he did was brag about what a great photographer he was. It was like me and the O’Dells were the only ones who knew he could be fun. I had to try extra hard to be his friend, though even I got tired of him always wanting to know which kids were against him and who was talking about him behind his back.

Kevin’s ideas were so crazy! Sometimes I just wanted to get away from him. He was suspicious and he complained a lot. But other times, Kevin was just fine. He liked being a Cub Scout and he was always real nice to my mother.

“I’m sorry, Clarence,” he said one day at a den meeting. “I’ve been thinking about it and you were right. I shouldn’t have broken that lock in the tunnel. So I bought a new one.”

He showed me a combination bike lock and showed me how you had to turn numbers on the barrel to make it work. Me and the O’Dell kids agreed to go with him to put the new lock on.

We all showed up at the entrance of the cave on Saturday but, before we entered it, Kevin told us we all had to memorize the combination so only us guys could explore past the grate. “It’s nine, four, eight.”

“Nine, four, eight!” we all said together. And me and the O’Dells went with Kevin into the tunnel.

When we got to the grate, Kevin said, “Hey, guys, do you want to see a naked lady picture?”

“A naked lady? Where?” asked Garry.

“Down there past where we wrote our names,” said Kevin.

We all shined our flashlights down the circular concrete pipe. We couldn’t see anything so we all crawled in. After a little while, Garry, who was at the front, said, “Oh, I see it now!”

“Me, too!” said Barry.

I saw it in the light from Barry’s flashlight. It wasn’t a very good drawing. I started feeling a little claustrophobic, though, so I started crawling backwards to get out of there.

“How did you know there was a naked picture here?” asked Barry.

“I drew it. I’m also a very good artist,” said Kevin.

His voice sounded far away. I realized that Kevin hadn’t followed us into the narrow drain pipe. My foot hit something as I was backing out.

It was the grate. Kevin had locked it behind us.

“Kevin! What’s up? This isn’t funny!”

“You’re right! It’s not funny, you guys pretending to be my friends!” Kevin said. “You think you’re so smart but you can’t fool me! I know it was you guys who made it so I didn’t get to go to your brother’s party and you are saying things about me so other kids don’t want to play with me.”

“What the heck are you talking about, Kevin? We’re your friends!” It was hard to turn around in the little space but I managed to. I tried like heck to open the combination while Kevin watched me, smiling at my failing efforts. Nine-four-eight. Nine-four-eight.

“Oops,” said Kevin. “I might have accidentally told you the wrong combination.” 

Garry and Barry had crawled up behind me. We felt like those dogs we had seen at the dog pound, with our noses pushed between the bars.

“Why are you doing this?” cried Barry.

“Because I’d rather have no friends than fake friends,” Kevin spat, and he turned around and started walking out of the tunnel. We could see the black form of his body getting smaller as he walked toward the light. “I hope you guys don’t drown when it rains!” he yelled.

Garry screamed, “You’re crazy!”

“Yeah,” Kevin yelled back. “That’s what all those other kids said! That’s what that doctor said! That’s what the Little Rock police said when they told my dad we had to leave town!”