I need my brother by my side.

I remember how I first met Nehemiah.

It was back in second grade. Me and Moms had just moved to town. I was new to the school and new to the bus, so I stayed to myself a lot. I purposely chose the seat above the wheel. It shortened the seat, leaving no room for anyone to sit next to me. The constant rumble allowed me to drift in my own thoughts. A couple of middle schoolers kept kicking the back of my seat. They started jeering and cracking jokes, just in case I hadn’t noticed their antics. I didn’t need to turn around to know who was doing it. Their brand of obnoxious was its own fingerprint.

Tim Jackson and Jeff Eastridge. They exited a stop before mine, all hyped up.

“This isn’t your stop,” Mr. Miller, our then bus driver, said to Tim in his gravelly rumble of a voice. He had his gray-tinged black hair tucked under a baseball cap most of the time. He seldom spoke, much less shouted, even when Tim and Jeff had worked everyone into a near mob.

“My mom told me to stay with Jeff until she got home from work, Mr. Miller,” Tim said, his fake innocence fooling no one. Blue eyes within wrinkled sockets glanced back at me, but Mr. Miller let them exit anyway. The bus slowly lurched forward. The two immediately ducked behind the bushes and ran for the next stop, only two blocks away.

The bus slowed down as it neared my house. I drew in a sharp breath, ready to race the final gauntlet to my house. My chest tightened. A familiar dull ache began in the pit of my stomach. My heartbeat climbed into my throat. I tried to swallow, but my throat squeezed shut. The boys managed to keep a lead on the bus, since it had to brake at each stop sign. The bus slowed for the last drop-off. My house.

“Mr. Miller’s a caterpillar. Mr. Miller’s a caterpillar,” Tim and Jeff chanted.

The stragglers stepping off the bus joined in the pair’s taunting. Everyone except me.

The chorus slowly stopped when the bus drove off. Tim and Jeff cornered me. The cartoony grins of their mouths grew so large, reminding me of hungry clowns, because they pressed in so close.

“Hey, lookee here, Jeff,” Tim said. “It’s our friend, Spear Chucker.” Tim stood a full foot taller than me. His red hair shone to near orange in the sunshine. Freckles dotted his face so thickly at times, he wasn’t too much lighter than me.

“Yeah, Spear Chucker.” Jeff was my height and hadn’t lost his baby fat. His chubbiness made him all the more ridiculous when he tried his tough guy routine. Thing was, he was actually tolerable when he wasn’t around Tim.

“So, Spear Chucker, why don’t you just go back to Africa?” Tim says.