Free The Heartbeat of Halftime by Stephen Wunderli

time. When I caught his eye, he mouthed the words “You’re dead,” and held up his fist. I wasn’t in the mood for his threats, so I smiled at him and tossed a handful of cooked peas at him.
    He went berserk.

    He picked up all the peas and held them up to the faces of everyone at his table.
    â€œI’ll kill him!” he kept shouting. “I’m gonna kill him!”
    When he had all his buddies as mad as he was, he stormed over to our table, kicking over chairs as he came. When he arrived, I stood up, shoved my lunch tray out of the way, and stared back at him. They all surrounded me. Taco Bell stopped singing, and for the second time that year, everybody in the whole lunchroom went quiet. Ed was so mad, he was having a hard time finding the right cuss words; so I started the conversation.
    â€œLose another game, Ed?”
    This question, and I guess my willingness to ask it, caught Ed completely off guard. Ed’s not real bright anyway. He likes people to back down when he tells them to. It confuses him when they don’t. Ed fumbled around his head for the right answer, and all that he could come up with was: “So?”
    He shouted, the way he shouts everything, to give it meaning. Before I could say anything else, and before Ed exploded with rage, the janitor stepped up from behind him.
    â€œYeah,” he whispered. “I heard you guys lost again.”
    â€œWho are you!” Ed screamed before turning
around. When he did, he realized what he had done.
    â€œOh, nobody,” the janitor calmly said. “Just the guy who can throw you out of here. Be too bad. You can’t play football if you get kicked out of school.”
    â€œHe threw these at me,” Ed pleaded, holding up a pea.
    â€œOooh, that could be dangerous,” the janitor said. “Too bad I didn’t see it.” And with that, the janitor turned back to his mop.
    â€œWhen football is over,” Ed sneered into my face. “So is your life!”
    Ed and his buddies walked away like they were going off to prepare for war.
    â€œYou are crazy!” Taco Bell said.
    â€œYeah,” I said. “Maybe I am.”
    â€œYou’re gonna get us all killed,” Taco Bell said.
    â€œYou’re not sittin’ in the garbage dump anymore, are you?” I said back to him. “You wanna spend the rest of your life in someone else’s crap, go ahead.”
    Taco Bell was quiet then. I think I hurt his feelings a little. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t gonna put up with it anymore.
    â€œYou do have something to prove, don’t you?” Bam said, smiling. “It’s about time.”
    Everybody laughed then, except me. I walked away and stood at a window and watched the cars
drive by in the distance. I know it sounds strange, but I wished my father was there to see what had just happened in the lunchroom. I wished we could talk about it the way we talked about football. “Did you see me throw those peas?” I would ask him. “I don’t know why I did it.”
    â€œYou stood up to him,” my father would say. “That’s good, but be careful.”
    â€œYeah, sure,” I mumbled into the glass.
    â€œWho are you talking to?” I heard someone say.
    I was embarrassed, you know, how you would be if someone caught you talking to yourself. So I didn’t turn around very fast.
    â€œNobody,” I said still looking out the window.
    â€œOh. I thought maybe you were talking to me,” I heard the voice say.
    I turned around then and there she was, Leisl. I hate it when girls sneak up on you like that.
    â€œI was just throwing some peas in there, and well …” It was the only thing I could think of to say, and it must’ve sounded pretty stupid.
    â€œPeas?” she said. Now she was really confused. First I’m talking to the window; then I tell her about peas.
    â€œWell, there’s this guy in there, Ed.