I forced a grin, which segued into a wince. Already my cheekbone was bruising. I ran through my options of concealing it from Dad. Oversize sunglasses? A jaunty scarf? Fantasy face paint? He did not react rationally when my safety was threatened.

Tub leaned in to the mirror and frowned. I’d like to tell you all about how real beauty is on the inside, because if that’s the case, Tub’s innards must make surgeons swoon. You could call Tobias Dershowitz chubby, if you were being cute, or husky if you were being diplomatic. The fact is he was fat, and that was only the beginning of his problems. His hair was a thick, orange, out-of-control hedge. His face spilled over with the kind of freckles that make kids like Tub look like overgrown toddlers. Worst of all were his braces, marvels of modern torment: whips of stainless steel crisscrossing each tooth separately and lashed to a dozen silver fasteners. The braces clicked so much when he spoke, you expected sparks.

He was, at least, tall, which is more than could be said for me. He stood before the mirror ramrod straight as if adjusting his military regalia, then looked around the bathroom to make sure we were alone.

“Check this out.” He squirreled a hand up under his shirt and withdrew from his armpit the sweatiest five-dollar bill I’d ever seen. He held it out as if I might like to fondle it. “I had a fiver all along! The asshat didn’t know where to look!”

“You really showed him, Tub.”

“I know, right?”

He chuckled, folded up the bill, and inserted it back into his pit.

In the midst of pulling his shirt back over his gut, his smile faltered. Tub was a kung fu master when it came to covering up injuries with jokes. But there were moments when he ran out of steam and seemed to acknowledge, for just a moment, the bitter truth. And the truth was that the insertion of a clammy five-dollar bill into his armpit was the closest thing he had to a victory.

I hit the button on the automatic hand dryer so it might drown out my next question.

“Did you cry?”

“Nah. Not this time.” He paused and shrugged. “Not a lot.”

Our silence extended too long. Good old Tub knew how to remedy that. He hocked a loogie and spat it into the urinal. Then he slapped me on the back and started for the door. For a second I lingered, watching the bloody wad of snot dissolve into someone else’s piss. It said a lot about our lives, I thought. When I followed him out, I resisted turning back. I could have sworn there was a rumbling coming from inside the urinal drain, somewhere far beneath the tile floor.