Sprout

waiting to go all Columbine and stuff. I don’t even have a walkman, 2 let alone an ipod, 3 let alone any death metal. No trenchcoat, no Guns & Ammo , and (more to the point) no guns. No BB gun or air rifle or bow and arrow (although we do have this old set of lawn darts, which why my father didn’t pack the shovel but did pack lawn darts—and Christmas lights, and something that I’m pretty sure is the top half of one of those screw-together pool cues—is beyond me).
    Anyway.
    While I freely cop to being something of a loner, I’m not a dropout or a hater or anything. I mean, I’m junior captain of the cross-country team (although I suppose that’s the ultimate loner extracurricular activity, unless maybe it’s essay writing) and I do have a few friends, and one good friend, Ruthie Wilcox, who’s probly p.o.’d it took me twenty-eight pages to namecheck her (sorry, Ruthie). When you add that to the fact that the nearest kid my age lives 5.8 miles from my house (why yes, I did measure it) and I only get the car one day a week, I think I have a pretty good excuse for spending a lot of time by myself.
    The truth is, Buhler’s both hermetic (he said, stuffing his dictionary behind his back) and (glancing over his shoulder) pretty monolithic too. In Long Island, groups tended to form along the Old Big Lines—girls and guys, whites and blacks, Jews and gentiles, south shore and north shore. Buhler, by contrast, is completely white, completely Mennonite, and (to keep with the rhyme scheme) com plete ly uptight. Of course there are the usual cliques—jocks, cheerleaders, geeks—plus a couple of local staples, my favorite being the Fuffas (from FFA, or Future Farmers of America), who all chew tobacco and wear belt buckles bearing the logo of their favorite make of truck. But all of these are pretty relaxed. I mean, nobody’s ever shot someone over whether the Chevy Silverado is a better ve- hi cle than the Ford F-150. The one hard and fast division, though, is between locals and outsiders. People We Know and People We Don’t. Although in the second case “people” should really be “person.”
    I.e., Daniel Bradford.
    I.e., me.
    I mean, look. Everyone knows it’s rough being the new kid. But I was the new kid in a school where all the other students had known each other since, like, birth . In a crate of bright red apples, I was a hairy kiwi of indeterminate but slightly blech color. To make matters worse, I had a funny accent. I freely admit this. When, every year on Christmas, I call my Aunt Sophie (dad’s side, in case you’re wondering) and she gives me one of her “Was Santer Claws nice to youse guys this ye-ah?” I think, Man , you talk funny.
    But Buhler. New kid. Me. The age-old immigrant saga, from Vito Corleone in The Godfather to Kevin Bacon in Footloose . Only this time it’s twelve-year-old Daniel “Not-Yet-Known-as-Sprout” Bradford in:
    “LOVE AMONG THE WHEAT SHEARS”
    (A little heads up: there’s no love in the next couple of pages, or wheat shears for that matter, but Mrs. Miller says “a good title is half the battle.”)
    Curtain rises on a typical elementary school classroom in a typically Bauhaus-inspired elementary school. Along one wall, a line of shallow awning windows is cranked open as far as they’ll go, which is to say about six inches, as if to remind students There Is No Escape. To make the setting more realistic, I suggest the theater pipe goodly amounts of wheat chaff through the windows, just to the brink of Man-I’ve-really-GOT-to-sneeze level. The theater should also be heated to approximately one thousand degrees, filled liberally with flies (and a couple of yellowjackets), and twenty-seven students wearing identical Children of the Corn overalls and straw hats. A bell rings, announcing the start of class.
    SEVENTH-GRADE TEACHER: Class, we have a new student joining us this year.
    CLASS giggles.
    SEVENTH-GRADE TEACHER: ( squinting around the room in mock-confusion, as though she might not realize who the new kid is, or maybe just needs glasses ) Daniel Bradford, are you here?
    DANIEL BRADFORD, a.k.a. THE ONE KID NOT WEARING OVERALLS AND A STRAW HAT, a.k.a. ME: Um, yeah?
    CLASS giggles louder.
    SEVENTH-GRADE TEACHER: ( whose name was MISS TUNIE, by the way, and who would later turn out to be okay, but who was pretty much THE ENEMY at that particular moment ) Do you prefer Dan, or Danny?
    ME: Daniel.
    SEVENTH-GRADE TEACHER, a.k.a. MISS TUNIE, a.k.a. THE