Huh?

Eyelids flutter open as brain reboots from a math-induced coma. My nose twitches at the scent of Old Spice aftershave. Mr. Klech stands beside my desk, ruler in hand.

“Having a nice nap, Mr. Meehan?” he asks, cracking the ruler on my desk a second time. I flinch. The classroom snickers. Mr. Klech always addresses us formally, using our last names like it’s his own personal joke, like he knows how far any of us are from being actual adults.

“Yes. No,” I offer, pretty sure one of those has to be the correct answer. Mr. Klech doesn’t even wait. He’s already waddling back to the chalkboard to complete the same equation I nodded off to first go-round: (x² - y²) + (z² + m²) = something you—Danny Meehan!—will never figure out.

The only good thing about Mr. Klech’s class is Glory Svenson, who sits in front of me. My eyes drift off the board full of math scribble and focus on Glory reaching up behind her to undo the black clip securing all that golden hair into a pile on top of her head. Set free, her hair tumbles down in perfect, sun-streaked ringlets that hit my desk and fan out over my algebra textbook. I inhale deeply and am rewarded with the citrus-mango aroma of her shampoo.

Summer still lingers in the air this first week of my sophomore year and, even with the windows wide open, the classroom bakes at a snoozable eighty-four degrees according to the doughnut-shaped thermometer by the light switch. Outside, you can hear the machine hum of John Deere tractor lawn mowers grooming the football fields. The sweet smells of cut grass and gasoline waft into the class, mixing happily with Glory’s shampoo. Sure beats getting stuck behind Wally Peters’s pimply peg-head in science or DuWayne Runyon’s speed-bump Mohawk in study hall.

With eighteen minutes and forty-seven ... forty-six ... forty-five seconds remaining until the bell releases us, I begin tracing around Glory’s spilled goldilocks to stay awake. I’ve got a pretty decent pencil outline going on pages 31 and 32 of my Algebra for Life textbook when the classroom door opens. A guy who looks like he’s been through puberty three times—while I’m still waiting for my first shot—walks through the door with muscles stacked on him like blocks. The guy actually has side-burns and chin whiskers. Chin whiskers! Though he tries to hide it with an overgrown mop falling over his face, I can see a scar traveling from the outside corner of his eye down to his heavy jaw and a patch of skin on that same cheek mottled pink and white, with the rough texture of cauliflower.

The guy looks tough, setting off my internal alert. Everyone knows a guiding principle of underclassman survival is identifying dangerous upperclassmen. The fact that I don’t recognize the new guy troubles me. He keeps his eyes down, like he’s already been busted for something. Around the patch of weird skin and the long scar, his face—what isn’t hidden behind his hair—starts to redden. He holds a green hall pass folded over a white note. Mr. Klech stops filling the chalkboard with coded al-Qaeda sleeper cell instructions and impatiently glances at, then pulls a double take of, the big intruder.

“Yes?” Mr. Klech asks with that tone teachers use to make even a simple question sound like a put-down.

The big guy won’t speak. He walks toward Mr. Klech, offering up the green hall pass and the white note. His other hand reaches up to rub the scarred cheek, shielding it from our gawking. His clothes look old but not retro, more like Salvation Army. Or asylum. He wears the long sleeves of his satin shirt rolled to the elbow, revealing forearms corded with muscle and—no joke—about the size of my calves. His longish hair rides over a shirt collar with lapels big enough to flap. His dark dress pants stop at his ankles, revealing white tube socks and vinyl Kmart sneakers. His clothes don’t matter, though, because the guy moves with size and power and remains scary quiet. No way, no how, is anyone in that class going to laugh at him, not even Fred Calahan or Erik Berry, two varsity football starters. The closer he gets to Mr. Klech, the more he looms over our teacher.

Mr. Klech snatches the papers from the guy’s hand and starts reading. The man-beast continues forward, putting himself between Mr. Klech and the class, eclipsing our teacher while a serpentine sound slithers out of him.

Glory Svenson’s hair rises off my desk as she and the rest of us sit forward to listen.

“Sure, Mr. . . . your name, again?” Mr. Klech asks from somewhere behind the giant. With his back still turned to us, I hear the guy make a kuh-kuh-kuh and then a buh-buh-buh noise like he’s attempting really bad suburban beatbox.

“Well, Mr. Brodsky—Kurt—welcome,” Mr. Klech says, and steps back into my sight line. “Just have a seat over ... hmmm, it looks like we’re full up at the moment.” Mr. Klech looks around the classroom. “You can take my seat up here for the next few minutes until we finish. I’ll see about getting an extra desk for tomorrow.”

The guy takes a moment to study the teacher’s chair at the front of class and then shakes his head no.

“There’s really no other alternative,” Mr. Klech says. The new guy, Kurt Brodsky, isn’t listening. He heads toward the back of the classroom, down my aisle, like a bull hauling logs. As he passes me I notice his right hand bunched into a thick fist, knuckles white, looking capable of splitting the thin wood of my desk with one solid punch. He reaches the back wall and then turns around, leaning up against it, watching us watch him.

“Mr. Brodsky, I prefer my students not stand during class,” Mr. Klech says, clearly miffed. “I’d like you to take my seat.”

“I’m sssssssssssssss,” the new guy, Kurt, starts cobra hissing. Then his eyes roll up into half-scrunched lids, leaving only zombie-slits of white. “Ssssssssssssssss . . .” His face grows rosy as the class twists in unison for a better view of him wrestling some demon word out of his mouth. You can tell he’s getting angrier the longer it drags on. “Ssssssssssssssss . . .”

Without warning he brings up his fist and swings it down into the back wall.

“Ssssssssstaying puh-puh-puh-put!” he finishes with a heavy stomp of his big, vinyl, Kmart sneaker. His eyes unroll from his head and glare out at us.

No one says anything. No one dares. We all turn back around in our seats. Mr. Klech ignores the outburst and returns to the chalkboard. I forget all about Glory Svenson’s hair. I pretend to understand the final problem Mr. Klech puts up on the board. I slouch down in my desk and hope that when Kurt Brodsky gets expelled for slaughtering a couple of underclassmen, it isn’t my corpse they’ll find hanging in his locker.