Bruiser by Neal Shusterman

didn’t?
    What if I suddenly started to care?
    And their friends became my friends,
    And every ache and pain,
    Every last bit of damage,
    Drained from them to me,
    Until I was nothing but fractures and sprains,
    Cuts and concussions,
    But as long as I keep them on the right side of resentment,
    Despising them all,
    I’m safe.”
    Â 
    Listening keenly, passing no judgment, Brontë takes it all in, then leaning close, she kisses my ear, healing me in a way she will never understand, and she whispers, “But you did choose to care about Tennyson and me. You let us in, Brew.”
    So I nod and whisper back: “Promise you’ll close the door behind you.”

26) ENUMERATION
    Here are the ten things
    I will never tell Brontë
    Or anyone else:
1) My father could be one of five men I’ve met,
    And after having met them,
    I don’t want to know.
2) Cody’s only my half brother, but he doesn’t know it.
    I once knew his father, but not his last name,
    Or where to find him.
3) Men were constantly falling in love with my mother,
    They thought she took away their innermost pain.
    But that was actually me.
4) We once joined a cult that eventually changed its name
    To The Sentinels of Brewster.
    I don’t want to talk about it.
5) My mother developed ovarian cancer.
    But I couldn’t take it away;
    I have no ovaries.
6) She left us with Uncle Hoyt when she first got sick;
    She knew if it spread to other organs,
    I would get it, too.
7) She called me every day until she died.
    I still talk to her once in a while.
    When no one’s listening.
8) Someday I want the government to find me,
    And pay me millions of dollars
    To sit near the president.
9) Someday I want to be on a Wheaties box,
    Or at least on the cover
    Of TIME magazine.
10) Someday I want to wake up and be normal.
    Just for a little while.
    Or forever.

27) ORIFICE
    With neck hairs standing on end, secret panic tripping in my brain, I cross into the petri dish of despair, the chasm of chaos, the school cafeteria,
    Where larval troglodytes of blue and white collar breeds practice the vicious social skills of peacock preening and primate posturing amid the satanic smell of institutional ravioli,
    When I reluctantly join the line for food, I avoid all eyes but notice, across the cafeteria, Tennyson and his girlfriend, Katrina,
    Who cling to each other like statically charged particles, and I wonder if Brontë might cling to me in the same way, even while under the judgmental glare of the hormonal high school petting zoo, if she didn’t avoid the cafeteria on principle,
    When a hairless ape named Ozzy O’Dell forces his way in front of me as if I’m nothing more than a piece of soy-stretched meat lurking in the ravioli and calls me the nickname he would much rather call the special ed kids, if he could get away with it.
    Â 
    â€œHey, Short-bus, make some room.”
    â€œNo. The end of the line’s back there.”
    â€œI don’t think so—we’re in a hurry.”
    â€œSo am I.”
    â€œFor what? Freak practice?”
    Â 
    While he laughs at his own idiotic joke, I think how, in the past, I would just let it go, but meeting Brontë has changed me, and I’m boldly standing up for myself in places that used to give me vertigo, so as the lazy-eyed lunch lady hands Ozzy a plate of ravioli, I tell him how shaving his head for swim team was not a good idea, because it emphasizes how small his brain is, the same way his Speedo emphasizes how small other things are,
    Which makes his friends laugh at him instead of at me, and Ozzy laughs, too, telling me it’s so funny I deserve to get my ravioli first, because I’ve earned it, then he hands over his plate full of the slithery, sluglike pasta pockets, and I’m confused enough to think thatmaybe he’s sincere, because I don’t know the rules of the game,
    When he rests his finger on the edge of my tray, not forcefully