with my parents, in New York,

on vacation in the Catskills

and at Camp Shalom.

I don’t want him

to ask me questions

about being Jewish.

Mark is weak, I say between serves.

Mark is not weak. Not at all.

The mini-doughnut wrapper blows across

the table. Powdered sugar

covers the green field, the paddles, our hands.

You are way tougher, I insist.

Frank is strong, but not the toughest,

maybe in the bottom of the top ten,

behind the obvious choices,

mixed in with the dark-horse contenders,

strong kids, good athletes,

kids who do karate and kung fu.

I tell Frank that he can kick

Mark’s ass, that he shouldn’t worry.

The bell rings.

Frank smiles and grabs his bag.

Later, he says.

I feel the pride of helping,

and soon, in my mind,

I am standing on the far field,

across from the basketball courts,

right alongside him and the other cool kids.

I see Frank later in PE.

He stands next to Mark.

They are looking at me and laughing.

Mark is the tallest in the class.

In the mile run,

he glides past us

like some action hero.

Crushes baseballs,

spirals footballs.

After lunch, in the bathroom,

Brian Yee whispers to me,

I hear Mark and Frank are going to kick your butt.

Why did I open my big mouth?

I meant well.

I just didn’t think past that moment,

that I was the outsider,

but I can’t go through people

to get inside.

I don’t fit into those spaces,

no matter how much I lie to myself.

I am too big,

even in theory,

to hide,

too slow

to run.

I shouldn’t have said anything.

We’re gonna get you, Fatboy, they say.

How long do I have?

First Friend

On one of my first days

in this new school,

the counselor ducks me into class,

unannounced, sits me near the back,

close to a wiry, brown-haired kid

with bright eyes and a square jaw.

I’m John, he says.

Ari, I reply.

His desk is filled with notebook pages

of robots and mechs from Transformers,

Robotech, Voltron, and Battle of the Planets

drawn in blue pen and scratched eraser marks.

I watch him smear ChapStick on his lips every ten minutes,

even digging out the last bits of lip balm with a toothpick.

One day, John drops the toothpick

on the floor and mumbles, My pick …

And that’s where it really starts.

For a while, I try to call him ChapStick,

or Chap, Bot, or anything else he might like better,

but it always becomes the nickname

Pick.

Finding the nickname

finally made me feel like I lived here,

like we shared something just between us.

Pretty soon it’s me and Pick all the time,

watching cartoons together on long Saturday mornings,

Spider-Man, The Transformers, Avatar,

and Pick’s favorite,

an old anime called G-Force.

I love 7-Zark-7, he says,

a round, trash-can-looking robot