My Miserable Life (2 page)

At home, my sister, Angelina, was still texting. Monkeylad was still trying to escape. Mom was still being excessively safe. But things were good at school with Ms. Washington, Leif Zuniga, and Serena Perl.

Then, at the end of the second week, everything changed. A new kid came into the classroom. He was a pipsqueak with hair like that singer my sister loves, Dustin Peeper. I recognized him from summer camp.

Rocko Hoggen.

*   *   *

The camp was called 4 Kids Only, so when I first went there, when I was around six, I expected to play with just a few kids. The camp logo even had a picture of just FOUR children. But when Mom dropped me off, there were hundreds of screaming kids.

I told my mom I didn't want to stay because of the false advertising. She asked what I meant, and I told her there were way more than four kids, and she laughed, which made me even madder.

“Don't laugh at me,” I said.

“I'm sorry, Ben, but I was laughing with you, not at you.”

But I wasn't laughing.

*   *   *

Last summer I had to go back again. On the morning of the first day, my mom packed me a lunch with an almond butter sandwich, fruit, and seaweed. Then she chased me down, waving her bottle of smelly sunscreen that makes my skin look white and streaky. Monkeylad was leaping along behind her. He loves to lick sunscreen off me about as much as my mom loves to put it on. All
I
wanted to do was stay home and eat sugar and watch TV, but my sister and I aren't allowed to eat sugar on weekdays, and we don't even have TV, only a DVD player, because my mom is a librarian and doesn't believe in television. She makes us read every night, but I'm usually not that interested in the books she brings home for me.

I think she's kind of hypocritical because she sneaks off to the gym almost every day to run on the treadmill and watch bad reality shows. I know this because one of Angelina's friends' dads owns the gym and told Angelina that my mom watches
How to Be a Hottie
and
America's Next OMG.
Without a TV, our house is boring. Which is why, even if I had any friends, they wouldn't come over.

At least I saw someone I knew at camp—Marvin Davis, who was in T-ball with me in kindergarten. He and I hung out at 4 Kids Only and played volleyball, and it was pretty cool.

But the next day, this kid named Rocko Hoggen came to camp. I bet when you hear a name like that, you think big, burly pit-bull-type kid, not a little poodle. Rocko started talking to Marvin right away. I could tell he was trouble.

Later, Marvin and I were playing soccer and I felt a shove. I fell over onto the grass, and it hurt. I couldn't get up, and then the counselor came and helped me, and Marvin helped, too, and the counselor said he was going to call my mom. I tried not to cry by biting my lip, but my arm hurt like a pit bull had taken a bite out of it. A little while later, Mom came running into the nurse's office screaming, “Where's my baaaaaby? What happened?” I was so embarrassed that I forgot about how much pain I was in.

“I think he broke his collarbone,” the counselor said.

“He what? He broke his collarbone?” yelled my mom. She speaks in question marks when she's upset.

One of the counselors drove us to the hospital, and they X-rayed me and gave me some kind of medicine that made me feel better but also really weird. My mom told me I was saying some goofy things like “The kid that pushed me is a peeper-squeak,” but I don't remember. I got a sling for my arm to take pressure off my collarbone, which is actually called a clavicle. I thought I might be able to get out of 4 Kids Only, with a shattered body part and all, but nooooo! I still had to go to camp, but I couldn't run around or play any sports, which made it even worse.

When I got back to camp, I went looking for Marvin. He was hanging out with the pipsqueak I'd only glimpsed for a second before he'd pushed me down “by accident.”

I went up to Marvin to show him my sling, and he said, “Cool,” but Rocko didn't say anything. He just tossed his hair like Dustin Peeper and looked away and started humming to himself. Then he said to Marvin, “Come on, let's play handball.”

Marvin said, “Do you want to play, Ben?”

But Rocko said, “He can't. He broke his arm, and his bones are fragile.”

“Collarbone,” I said. I would have said
clavicle
, but I didn't want to sound like a nerd.
(And
you
actually broke it, pipsqueak.)

They went off to play, and I sat on a bench by myself. At lunchtime I went to eat with Marvin, and there was Rocko again. I sat with them, and Marvin talked to me, but Rocko didn't say anything. I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I came back, my lunch was gone. I hate my miserable lunches, but I had to eat something. I asked Marvin if he had seen my lunch, and he said no, he had gone to throw his away, and when he got back, mine wasn't there. I looked at Rocko. He wouldn't look me in the eye. He tossed his hair like Dustin Peeper and turned away. Marvin gave me an extra fruit roll he had in his pocket. Still, I was hungry for the rest of the day.

Rocko Hoggen is the worst bully there is. If there was a word called
worstest
, that would be him. Although my mom would die if I used the word
worstest
. She also hates the word
funnest
and when people say
a whole nother thing.
“Is there such a thing as the word
nother
?” she will say. “What is that?”

All summer Rocko was the bane of my existence. My mom would say, “Good use of the word
bane
, Ben.” I was just so glad that Rocko was out of my life so I could start the school year fresh.

But there he was again, standing in Ms. Washington's classroom.

 

CHAPTER 2

THE BANE

I decided to ignore Rocko Hoggen. But at recess, when I went to play handball with Leif, there was the BANE. He blinked at me and tossed his hair.

“Can you play handball?” Rocko asked. “I thought you broke your arm.”

“My collarbone,” I said. “And it's not broken anymore.”
Dork. Jerk. Pipsqueak
.

“Well, Leif and I are playing now,” Rocko said, hitting the ball.

I looked at Leif.

Leif looked at me.

I looked harder at him.

Leif shrugged. “Rocko lives next door to me,” he said. “Our moms are best friends. So are our dads. Since we were born.”

“We were born in the same hospital on the same day,” Rocko added, slamming the pink rubber ball against the wall with his little grimy pipsqueak hands. “Kind of like twins.”

I, on the other hand, was born in a bathtub at a birthing center. I didn't have a best friend being born at the same time. I don't even have a dad, since my mom used a donor to have Angelina and me.

When I got home from school, my mom noticed that something was wrong. I know this because she kept asking, “What's wrong, Ben? What's wrong, sweetie?” I wouldn't tell her. How are you supposed to explain to your worried-looking mom that your life is irrevocably miserable? (Even my correct use of the word
irrevocably
would not comfort her.) But when I started throwing my favorite baseball cards, my mom put her arms around me and made me tell her what was going on.

“Rocko Hoggen is in my class,” I said.

“That kid from 4 Kids Only?”

“That pipsqueak from One Zillion Kids Only, who broke my clavicle,” I said.

“It was an accident, sweetie.” I could tell by my mom's squeaky-sounding voice that if I insisted that it wasn't an accident, she would call Rocko's house and make him apologize.

So I just said, “Yeah, but I hate him. And now he's trying to steal Leif Zuniga.” I hadn't meant to say that about Leif Zuniga, but it just came out.

Angelina walked in not wearing her headphones, for once. She had on shiny white leather high-top sneakers, cut-off shorts things that she rolled up when she left the house in the morning and rolled down when she got home, a football jersey with shiny gold numbers, and a gold chain around her neck. She has millions of different outfits with lots of what she calls “bling” on them; I pretty much would wear the same Darters baseball jersey and shorts every day if I could.