Armada

by Ernest Cline

One morning, a few weeks after I started seventh grade, I was walking past Knotcher and a few of his friends in the hallway when he smiled at me and said, “Hey, Lightman! Is it true your old man was dumb enough to die in a shit-factory explosion?” I’m not paraphrasing. That’s a direct quote. There were eyewitnesses. The next thing I remember, I was sitting on Knotcher’s chest, staring down at his motionless, blood-drenched face, amid a cacophony of screams from our classmates. Then I felt a tangle of strong arms around my neck and torso, pulling me up and off of him—and found myself wondering why my knuckles were in agony, and why Knotcher was now curled in a bleeding heap on the waxed marble floor in front of me. Afterward, they said I attacked him “like a wild animal” and beat him unconscious. They said I kept right on beating him, even after he went limp. Apparently it took two other boys and a teacher to finally pull me off of him. Knotcher spent a week in the hospital recovering from a mild concussion and a fractured jaw. I got off pretty light, considering—a two-week suspension and mandatory anger-management therapy the remainder of the school year, along with the nickname “Zack Attack” and a permanent reputation as the class psycho.