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The winter holidays are behind them and the back to school routine is slowly taking hold of the reluctant Grade Schoolers of Mobile when a new kid transfers to Eugene's class.
“Everyone, we have a new student here with us today.” Mrs. Smith announces after the bell had rung. There's an unfamiliar boy standing at the front of the room, looking around with a board expression on his face.
“What's up with his clothes?” Sid leaned across his desk to whisper into Eugene's ear.
Sid was Eugene's best friend, and often got the both of them in trouble for talking in class. He was also Eugene's only friend, so he tolerated it no matter how much he didn't like it when they got inevitably caught.
Sid was right, this new boy was wearing clothes that Eugene doesn’t think he's ever seen in Mobile before. He looked like maybe he was in one of the rock and roll band's he saw pictures of in his older brother's magazines. He had on blue jeans that were ripped at the knees and a faded jean jacket that, to Eugene's confusion, had a handful of safety pins poked through the hem.
“My Mama would never let me leave the house like that,” Sid said admiringly.
“Of course not. Your Mama still picks out your clothes every morning,” Eugene pointed out.
Sid made a face at him, but then Mrs. Smith's voice was cutting through the classrooms murmuring students.
“Why don't you introduce yourself to the class?” Mrs Smith smiles encouragingly.
“You can call me Shelton,” The boy drawls in a funny accent.
“I wonder where he's from,” Sid nudges Eugene's arm. "Maybe it's someplace cool."
“Is there anything else you would like to say?” the teacher tries to get the boy to open up.
Shelton scans the room, taking in his new classmates ogling him like a new exhibit at the zoo. He doesn’t seem to find anything interesting. Until that is, his gaze lands on Eugene.
Eugene feels his cheeks start to heat up as Shelton's face cracks into a not very nice grin.
“Yeah,” Shelton finally says. “I think Mickey Mouse is for babies.”
Eugene's face gets really red. He glares at this Shelton, who's grin just gets wider.
“What?” Sid chuckles even though he must not really get the joke. “This guy is funny,” He nods to Eugene, then must see the unhappy expression on his face, and looks down to see Eugene's Mickey Mouse t-shirt.
“Well, lets move right along,” Mrs. Smith clears her throat. “Why don't you find a free seat and we can get started.”
Of course the free seat that the new kid picks is the one right behind Sid, and by extension, Eugene.
Only a few minutes later Eugene turns around to a hand tapping on his shoulder.
“Hey, what's your name?” Shelton grins at him.
Up close, Eugene notices just how big and green Shelton's eyes are. He looks friendly, like he might be nice once you get to know him. Maybe the 'Micky Mouse' thing was just a bad joke. He thinks maybe he should give the new kid a second chance.
Sid turns around in his seat once he's noticed Shelton talking. “He's Eugene Sledge,” Sid grins, sticking a thumb in Eugene's direction. “I'm Sidney Phillips.”
Shelton mostly ignores Sid, instead his grin gets bigger. “Eugene Sludge?” he says with glee.
Eugene's tentative friendly smile and forgiving attitude instantly drops.
Sid chuckles at first, but then schools his expression into a glare when he sees Eugene doesn’t like that joke too well.
He turns back around and pays attention to Mrs. Smith and only Mrs. Smith for the rest of the class, no matter how many times Shelton kicks the back of his seat.
“I think we should be friends with the new kid,” Sid announces as he sits down across from Eugene at lunch, the bustle and clatter of the other kids taking out their food and playing games with each other all around them.
“Shelton?” Eugene scrunches up his nose in distaste. “No thanks.”
“Are you just mad 'cause he called you 'Sludge'?” Sid teases, pulling open his A Team lunch box. “C'mon, it was kind of funny.”
Eugene doesn’t even bother to say anything to that, just lets his betrayed expression do all the talking while he bites into his peanut butter sandwich.
“Okay, so he's kind of a jerk,” Sid acknowledges, “But we're supposed to be nice to him anyway 'cause he's new and not from around here, right?”
Eugene didn't want to admit it, but Sid was right. Even though Shelton hadn’t been anything but Rude, he did deserve a second chance. Eugene tries to put himself in Shelton's shoes, and doesn’t think he'd like leaving Mobile at all, and moving to a new place and starting a whole new school did sound a little scary. Especially if he had to leave Sid behind.
“Besides,” Sid looks to see if anyone is listening in before leaning towards Eugene, obviously about to impart something 'secret'. “I heard he smokes.”
“Does not,” Eugene instantly denies. “He's not old enough.”
“That's what makes him cool,” Sid looks positively giddy.
“Does not,” Eugene repeats, sternly. “My Dad says smoking kills you.”
“No it doesn’t,” Sid's eyebrows furrow in confusion. “It makes you cool.”
Before Eugene can argue anymore, Sid excitedly points and says “Look! There he is!”
Eugene reluctantly looks where Sid's pointing. Yep, there Shelton is, sitting in the far corner of the lunch room all by himself and not trying to make friends at all.
Oh, Eugene thinks uncharitably, He's a loner.
“I'm gonna go talk to him,” Sid announces, taking a noisy sip of his milk.
Shelton is unpacking his lunch from the same kind of brown sack Eugene's Mama uses everyday, one after another he takes out an orange, a juicebox and something in tupperware container.
“If you want to go talk to him be my guest,” Eugene grumbles, “I'm gonna eat my lunch.”
Sid sticks out his tongue and calls him a greaser then gets up to make friends with the 'bad boy'.
He is quite content to chew his sticky sandwich and flip through the bird watching book he brought with him that day in silence.
Eugene looks up five minutes later at the sound of Sid stomping back towards him.
His friend sits down heavily next to him, arms crossed and pouting “Shelton is an ass,” He hisses.
Eugene covers up his grin with another big bite of his lunch and hums in agreement.
It was a very nice day, Eugene thought, swinging his legs back and forth in the air beneath the bleacher he was sitting on. Clear blue skies and a cool breeze that kept the sun from getting too hot. A perfect day for the friendly game of baseball held after school at the small field behind the hardware store. There were just enough boys and girls to make two teams, with the gym couch leading one, and one of the more enthusiastic parents leading the other.
Eugene might not be playing, but he was happy enough to be outside, feeling the fresh air on his face. Winter felt far behind them now, and the beginning of spring made everything feel bright and full of life. All around him was the sound of the players warming up and laughing, parents and siblings catching up and playing in the sandy dirt that made up the diamond.
Eugene was here to cheer on Sid who was now warming up. After the game was done they were going to beg Sid's dad to take them out for pizza.
Eugene hears something slam against the chainlink fence and looks up, startled.
“Hey Sludge,” Of course it's Shelton, whole body thrown against the fence and smiling down at him.
“What?” Eugene scowls. That boy had made himself nothing but a nuisance since that very first day in class. Teasing Eugene and bugging him and always using that stupid nickname he had come up with.
“How come you're not playing?” He grins, “We could use another hitter on the winning team.” He makes sure to brag, waggling his eyebrows at Sid, who is standing near the other teams dugout and well within range to overhear.
Eugene frowns and opens his mouth to answer but before he can, Sid is there, pushing Shelton to the side.
“Gene can't play,” Sid glares as Shelton stumbles away from the fence. “He's got a heart condition.”
Now Eugene silently frowns at Sid. He didn't have to go tell everyone about his stupid 'condition'. He'd like to be seen as a boy who was too lazy to play rather than one who couldn't.
“For real?” Shelton's eyes are wide with worry when he looks at Eugene. “Are you gonna die?”
Eugene feels his face heat up. “No,” he bites out. “It's not a big deal.”
“Is that why you're sick all the time?” Shelton barrels on, picking himself up and dusting himself off.
“No,” Sid butts in again, taking the chance to be superior to Shelton for not having the inside knowledge that being Eugene's best friend for years got you. “Gene's just like that.”
This time when Eugene glared at Sid, he at least had the grace to realize he maybe shouldn't have said what he said.
“You know,” Eugene announces through clenched teeth, good mood and appreciation for the day suddenly gone sour, “I think I might not be feeling well enough to watch the game.” He stands from the bleachers and sends Sid a pointed look. “Since, You know, I'm just like that.”
“Aw, I didn't mean it like that,” Sid frowns, hands hanging on the chain link separating them, “I'm sorry, Gene.”
“Don't leave, Sludge,” Shelton whines. “Just 'cause Phillips is an ass doesn’t mean you can't stay and watch me play.”
Eugene is not impressed at all by the way Shelton winks at him and mimes hitting it out of the park.
Without saying another thing he turns around and ignores the way Sid calls after him while he starts walking home.
Eugene is thoroughly upset when he gets sick again that very next week. 'Gene's just like that' runs miserably through his head as his Mother takes his temperature and tuts at him while he tries to convince her 'i'm fine, I can go to school, I don't want to miss again'.
She makes him stay in bed all day and sends soup up to him at lunchtime. He is Sick of soup.
Deacon lies on the floor, staring up at him with sympathy in his big brown eyes. At least he had some company for the day, even if his dog was not allowed on the bed and so they couldn't really play much.
He tries to read but his head is so full of pressure that the words don't want to stay in focus. He tries to sleep but sleeping makes him feel weak. Like he really is just a sickly little boy who can't do anything else. He ends up spending his morning angrily staring at the ceiling and listening to the faint birdsong from outside his closed window, wishing that Sid hadn't been right, that he wasn't 'just like that'.
***
Merry pulls a face at Sidney Phillips when he walks into class that morning without Gene at his side.
He hadn't seen either of the boys since the baseball game on Friday. Not that he cared about seeing Phillips. That boy could fall in a ditch for all he cared, just so long as Gene didn't trail after his 'best friend' a moment later.
But the fact Phillips didn't now have Gene at his side was promising. He remembers how grumpy Gene had gotten at Phillips, how he'd walked away with his nose in the air and missed the whole game. Merry had been both pleased that Gene stood up to that idiot boy, and disappointed that he hadn't been there when Merry hit a triple and then stole home right after. Didn't matter that the coach made him go back to third just because 'Stealing wasn't allowed'.
“Sludge finally realize what a jerk you are and dump ya?” he asks meanly as Phillips takes his seat in front of him.
The other boy makes a face back at him, and hisses just as the teacher walks in “Mind your own business, Shelton.”
And then class starts and the kids' attention is pulled to the front of the room where their teacher talks about stuff that Merry doesn’t find nearly as interesting as where that Ginger Boy could be.
He kicks the back of Phillips chair.
Phillips ignores him, even though Merry can see the way his shoulders hunch up, obviously having noticed that Merry was trying to get his attention.
“Hey, Phill,” Merry whispers, kicking him again.
“What?” Phillips hisses back, glaring over his shoulder as the teacher wrote something on the blackboard.
“Come on, tell me where Gene is,” Merry wheedles. The fact Gene didn't come in with Phillips was great. Phillips really did not deserve Gene as a best friend. The fact he didn't come in at all made Merry worry that something had happened to him.
Phillips looks back towards the front, like he was gonna go back to ignoring Merry.
'He has a heart condition'.
By the way Gene had reacted, Phillips had obviously not been supposed to say that. But now Merry knew about the heart condition and he needed to know that Gene hadn't suddenly died or something.
Merry glares at the back of Stupid Phillips blond head and kicks him again.
This time it was hard enough to make some noise and the teacher looked at them disapprovingly, told them to 'knock it off'.
“He's sick, alright?” Phillips says all sour.
“With what?” Merry hisses, kicks his chair again.
“I don't know!” Sid hisses back, “Why don't you go ask him!”
Merry stops kicking him after that.
At the end of the hour Merry stayed after everyone else had shuffled out to their next class. He asked the teacher if he could please have Eugene's homework and take it to him after school so he didn't fall behind. She smiled and thanked him as she handed over the papers, told him she was glad he was finally taking the initiative to make friends in his new school after a few months of being here.
Merry smiled sweetly and thanked her back, already looking forward to his afternoon.
****
“Eugene, you have a visitor,” Mary Frank smiles as she opens the door to her son's room.
Eugene sits up in bed, excited that Sid had come to visit him after school let out.
Only it wasn't Sidney who stepped through the door his mother was holding open, but Shelton, book bag in one hand and a slightly crumpled stack of papers in the other.
“I brought your homework,” Shelton says in greeting, holding out the papers after walking close enough that Eugene can reach.
Eugene takes them, and notices they are stained with something orange in the shape of fingerprints. He frowns. It smells like Doritos.
Deacon seems to smell it too, and noses at Shelton's fingers once they fall back to his side, licking at the dust that still lingered there.
“Isn't that just so nice of Mr. Shelton,” Mary Frank nods approvingly at the initiative of the young man to bring his classmate his homework. Even if his clothes seemed to be making some kind of... Statement. “Why didn't you tell me about your new friend, Eugene?” she turns on her son with a disappointed air.
Eugene wants to say 'Because he's not my friend, He's rude and mean and calls me 'sludge'' but he knows that would be mean of him and not the right thing to say about someone who just brought him his homework.
So instead of answering he shrugs and thanks Shelton stiffly, who, as usual, seems to enjoy it when Eugene is thinking about how much he doesn’t like the other boy.
Mary Frank decides to leave the two boys alone so they can catch up. She carefully closes the door behind herself with the cheerful thought that her youngest was finally making a friend that wasn't Sidney Phillips. Not that Sidney was a bad friend, of course. She just thought that branching out might do her boy some good.
As soon as the door clicked shut Shelton starts making himself a nuisance, as usual.
“Nice room, Sludge,” he grins, looking around appraising. Obviously notices the Mickey Mouse alarm clock and makes a stupid noise that Eugene thinks must be his imitation of the mouses laugh.
“You don't have to stay,” Eugene says pointedly. "I've got my homework now."
Shelton ignores him. “You've got a TV in your room and you're not even using it?” he looks both baffled and insulted once his eyes have alighted on the shelf that holds the small television set.
Eugene huffs. “The games aren't fun by myself.”
“You've got games?” Shelton hisses, and immediately crosses the room to marvel at the Atari sitting on the shelf below the TV.
Eugene may be an odd boy, but he truly doesn’t enjoy video games that much. He hadn't even asked for the Atari his parents had brought home for him. They had only done it to be nice of course, thinking that it would be a good distraction for him when he was sick and couldn't leave his bed.
Ed Jr. had whined about how lucky Eugene was while their Father read the manual and worked out what wires to connect where. Ed complained about how he hadn't ever gotten a toy that nice, and that Eugene was a spoiled rotten baby just because he was sick all the time and it wasn't fair. Then Edward Sr. told Jr. to leave Gene alone and go ask his mother if she needed help preparing dinner.
Well, maybe Eugene was spoiled. He certainly felt like was treated like a baby. He hardly had a fever at all and he still had to stay home, just cause his parents said he was 'delicate'.
Maybe he was ungrateful too. He didn't think the Atari was very interesting at all. What was fun about moving the joystick around and eating dots, or pretending to play the sports he wasn't allowed to play in real life?
Shelton, on the other hand, seems to like the video games quite a lot. The boy sets it up and sits cross legged on his bed. Eugene has to move to the side to make room for him but they still bump legs as Shelton curses and whoops and makes fun of the computer controlled opponents as he pushes the joystick around so hard Eugene thinks it might break.
At least Eugene did prefer watching someone else play the games. But he thinks Shelton might be his favorite to watch so far.
He plays the games but he doesn’t ignore Eugene when he does like Ed Jr. And he doesn’t get too mad at the game when he starts to lose either, like Sid does on the harder levels. He included Eugene on the jokes he made at the games expense, and laughed when he lost, or made dramatic reenactments of his virtual death that had Eugene fall over himself laughing.
Shelton was actually being kind of nice, Eugene realized. He had even taken a half eaten bag of Doritos out of his bookbag, the culprit of the sticky fingerprints all over his homework, and offered to share them with Eugene.
Eugene knew his mama didn't like him eating junk food, nor did she like it when he made a mess in his bed. But he finally thinks that Sid might have been right all that time ago. Shelton was cool. He was funny and nice enough to bring him his homework and Eugene liked hanging out with him. And he wanted Shelton to think Eugene was cool, and all of those other things, too.
It was hard to be a cool kid when you were stuck in your loony tunes pajamas all day with a stuffy nose. So he bravely accepted the Doritos and didn't think about what his mother would say when she found orange dust all over his sheets.
The metal pins on Shelton's jacket sleeve clink as he passes over the bag, and Eugene is struck once again by how odd they are.
“Why do you have safety pins on your jacket?” he can't help but ask as orange chips crunch against his searching fingers in his quest for a good handful.
Shelton looks away from the TV screen, seeming very pleased that Eugene had asked. “Because it's Punk Rock,” he answers.
Eugene tries to remember if he had ever learned what that was.
He didn't think he had.
“What's that?” he asks once he carefully swallowed his mouthful of chips.
Shelton's eyes get all wide as he drops the joystick. With his inattention Pac-man runs into a ghost and that little trill that marks his death plays out. “You don't know what Punk is, Sludge?”
Eugene only frowns a little at the nickname and shakes his head no.
“Do you have a tape player?” Shelton asks seriously, video game very much forgotten.
“Yeah,” Eugene nods, confused, “Right over there,” he points out the boxy little stereo sitting on his desk.
Shelton bounces off the bed and digs through his backpack, coming up with a worn cassette tape that he waves in Eugene's face. “This” he announces, “Is Punk.”
Eugene just has enough time to read 'sex pistols' and wonder what on earth that meant, before Shelton is sliding the tape into the player and pressing play.
The music is loud. And odd. Eugene is not sure he likes it very much. But Shelton obviously enjoys it, bobbing his head in time to the heavy crash of the beat and holding his hands in front of himself like he's playing the guitar, singing along to the lyrics loud and angry.
Then Eugene hears some of the lyrics over the loud rush of the the guitar, and realizes that if his mother heard them he would be in a lot of trouble.
“I don't think I can listen to Punk,” Eugene hurriedly informs Shelton in the silence that follows him clicking off the stereo. He is embarrassed about it. Feels again like a little kid, following his mother's rules instead of letting the music play and enduring whatever punishment his mother will give him when she finds out.
He thinks Shelton will scoff and call him a baby and then leave.
He is surprised when Shelton doesn’t do any of that.
Instead he just pouts and pops his cassette back out of the player and into his pocket. “I guess it's an acquired taste,” Shelton sighs, probably misunderstanding what Eugene had meant. That Eugene hadn't liked the music (which he hadn't, really), and not that he was scared of his mother overhearing it. But quickly smiles again, “I'll just have to bring something a little more tame for you to listen to tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Eugene finds himself asking, a strange kind of hope bubbling in his chest. He thought it was strange that Shelton even came by in the first place. The thought that he would come back to visit him again hadn't even crossed his mind. But something he would very much like.
“Well, I mean if you're still sick,” Shelton explains, then seems to be a little nervous, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “I mean, if you'd be cool with that.”
“Yes,” Eugene nods furiously. “I'd be really cool with that.”
Shelton smiles at him big and wide. The sight of it, of Shelton being so happy at the idea of coming back and visiting him again, makes Eugene want to smile too, so he does.