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chapter 2

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The friendship between Tommy and me was easily kindled for a few reasons.

While Tommy was less shy and more forthright than I, he was sometimes much too forthright and energetic in a way that wasn’t normal, rendering him somewhat of a social misfit himself. What was most dissonant was that he looked like a ‘cool kid’ but didn’t act like it. His mother kept him coifed with the most up-to-date haircuts and dressed him in tasteful clothing from stores my parents would only let me buy from if they had a clearance rack. He was always the tallest, the most athletic, the most handsome. In this way, he was armored and immune to being bullied for the usual superficialities. But his effervescent personality and ‘new kid’ status made him an outsider, a curiosity to consider but never fully integrate.

Tommy didn’t seem to understand what being ‘cool’ meant, anyway. He was exuberant about everything, somehow more worldly than his peers while remaining immature; more intellectual, yet ignorant of youth culture. The Beatles reference he recognized in my name was part of a much larger Beatles obsession that lasted all through middle school, an obsession not many had time for when kids were mostly into Green Day and blink-182.

Except for me, of course. I had time for all of Tommy’s obsessions and antics. I suspect my shyness toward other kids up to that point was due to a lack of interest; why take the risk of engagement when there was little to engage with?

Tommy, though, captivated me unlike any person my age I’d met before. His primary mode of conversation was in one direction and uninterrupted. He would go on talking and talking about whatever topic he was obsessing over, and didn’t give much room for intrusions, which was fine for someone like me who wasn’t intrusive or talkative to begin with. If whoever I was listening to was interesting enough, that was fine by me. I didn’t mind hearing about the saga of Pete Best, the Beatles’ original drummer and how Ringo supplanted him, or how “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was inspired by a drawing done by John’s son, or how the walrus was Paul.

I’m not sure where I acquired such taste in people.

Perhaps there was a deficit of social directness in my youth. My parents weren’t talkers. Neither was particularly loud or charismatic, although my mother had many close friends and my father—though he had fewer—was an extremely smart and well-read lover of the finer aspects of popular culture, which he imparted to me via exposure rather than conversation. We didn’t play board or parlor games in my house, didn’t discuss politics or gossip. My parents were people who enjoyed quiet, at-home activities, which meant lots of movies, video games, TV shows, and—most often—reading a book.

I never learned to be ashamed of reading in the way that it was considered ‘nerdy’ or ‘square’. To me, reading was the optimum use of time spent alone, of which I had plenty.

Our class had been given a summer reading assignment, which had been passed on to me late in the summer after my move, but I was expected to complete all the same. A boy named Ted—despite having far more advanced noticed than I—had failed to do the reading.

“Oh really Ted? You didn’t have time? Couldn’t you read on your vacation to Cape Cod?” our teacher reprimanded. “Even Jude, who didn’t move here until August, managed to do the reading, didn’t you Jude? In fact, Jude didn’t just choose one book—I’ve just read his essay, and he read all three books!”

Gasps and murmurs arose from the rest of the class, as though I’d solved a metaphysical theorem. The truth was that I had misinterpreted the assignment and thought my task was indeed to read all three, not to choose one. But, thanks to the praise of my teacher, on day two of school I had become the class savant, an anti-social recluse whose only recourse for a life devoid of experience and worthwhile relationships was to stick their nose in a book.

When we lined up in the cafeteria line, I was too late to take up a place next to Tommy, but I positioned myself several kids behind him such that when I would exit the line with my tray, I could take the initiative to sit by him rather than have to hope for him to sit by me, to take the matter of our nascent friendship into my own hands, if I could.

I had yet to turn the corner into the serving area when I heard Ted, the boy who didn’t do his summer reading assignment, talking to his friend at an unconscionable volume:

“What’s up with bushy-hair new kid? Who reads? Like, don’t you want to go outside and, like, ride your bike? Like, read the book, I get it, but reading all three is just showing off.”

“Probably thinks he’s so smart. And what’s with his shirts? Who wears a Rolling Stones shirt? That’s stuff my dad likes,” his friend said. “Mad lame.”

“Do you prefer The Beatles?” I heard Tommy’s voice interject.

“Bro, I don’t even know what the beetles are. Why you got a BOOK at lunch?”

At this point I had no choice but to go around the corner and enter the serving area. I grabbed my usual chocolate milk from the refrigerated milk bin, still unnoticed by the three of them.

“Only an imbecile despises reading,” Tommy said to Ted and friend, book tucked under his arm, piling spinach onto his styrofoam plate. “And if you weren’t allergic to books, you’d also know you shouldn’t judge one by its cover. Like a book with bushy hair and cool shirts.”

Ted and his friend sniggered.

“Imbecile? What the eff is an imbecile dude?” The friend asked, although they both intuited it to be an insult, if not one they could rightly defend themselves against.

When I emerged from the line, I saw that Tommy was once again sitting in our spot from the day before, nearest to the teachers, a quiet and pristine row of empty stools. I took this as an invitation and sat down by him again.

“What’s up, dude! Jude-dude! Do you mind if I call you that? Works really well, don’t you think? You ever have anyone call you Jude-dude? Dad, mother, brother sister? What do you have, by the way? I mean like, do you have any siblings?”

I wasn’t used to people asking multiple questions of me without allowing me to answer them.

“Uh, I have an older sister,” I replied.

“I’m an only child. Just me. One ‘Big T’. THE Big T. And by the way, I read all three books, too, but I only did the essay on one. I didn’t really like any of them. Did you like any of them? I am more into poems these days. My mom showed me this guy, Shel Silverstein—” he held up the book. “And I really like it! He can draw. I can’t draw though. I do like to write though. Sometimes I write poems, but I don’t know if they’re very good. Probably not. My mom says they’re good, but moms are like that, right? Like they are always going to say that they’re good. Do you like to write anything?”

“No,” I said.

“You should,” he said. “My mom says the second best thing a writer can do besides writing is reading, and since you’re already reading so much, you basically got that covered!”

Reading was what would unite Tommy and me more than anything. We’d swap books when we were done, go to the library during lunch, and see who could finish the most books in a week. Tommy always won.

Before we left school that second day, Tommy stopped by my locker to pass me a piece of loose-leaf paper, and—in our time of smartphones—the Goodspeed phone number that was upon it is the only landline number I still remember by heart, and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.

The first half of our first school year together was one of each weekend dialing the Goodspeed number on my parents’ landline, his mother answering, me asking if Tommy was home—he always was, of course—and then me asking if he wanted to hang out, and then him asking his mom, and then him inviting me over.

I could have skipped a lot of these steps and shown up at his house any weekend I was free by simply knocking on their door (I was a short, side-walked walk away). I was welcomed anytime.

But the phone calls were a formality that quickly became familiar and comforting to a friendship that almost ended soon after it began.

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