It was on that very morning that I walked to the bus stop, taking only one step in every square on the sidewalk out of boredom, and I met a kid named Patric Hoehnke. There he was, sitting on the electrical box near the end of the street with his stepdad, Tom. As I walked by, Tom saw me dressed in schoolboy attire and asked, "Excuse me, is this the bus stop?"

 

"You're retarded," I replied. "Can you not see that there is an enormous swelling of children about a mile up the street from here?" Tom never liked me much after that. "Here, come with me, it's up here," I told them.

 

"This is Patric," Tom said.

 

"Hello Patric, I'm Klafterus," I said, extending my hand. Patric nervously waved, politely refusing my attempt at a greeting.

 

I could feel Tom staring at me as we walked. He had the sort of stare a Walgreens employee has when a crossdresser walks in, which is quite distinctive. "That's an... interesting name," he commented, sounding as if it was difficult for him to remain politically correct.

 

"Yeah, well, I'm an interesting guy, punk," I said. We reached the bus stop without any of us saying another word. As the bus came around the corner to take us away, I stepped on as quickly as I could through the crowd of neighborhood children, without waiting to bid Tom farewell or welcome Patric politely into the vehicle.

 

I sat down near the back, hoping that by doing this I could maybe hold onto the world outside of school for a little bit longer. I looked toward the front of the bus and saw Andrew getting on, appearing out of breath. He had apparently been late and had to run. I waved to him, but before he reached my seat, Patric plopped down next to me.

 

"Um... did I say you could sit here?" I inquired.

 

"No, but you seemed nice enough," was his reply.

 

I shall never understand it. I can be a complete and total jerk to people, not to mention have an abnormal name by their standards, and somehow I always get classified as "nice." I never asked to be nice. Quite frankly, it's much more fun to be mean. But I am apparently doomed.

 

"So what's your real name?" he said suddenly after several minutes of silence.

 

I was taken by surprise. "What in the world are you talking about?" I asked.

 

"Your name," he repeated. "You said it's Klafterus. That can't be it."

 

I gave him a quizzical look. "Why can't my name be Klafterus?"

 

He looked flabbergasted that I didn't know why. "You've gotta have a normal name! You know, like Patric! Completely normal! My stepdad's name is Tom! Another normal one! No one names their kid 'Klafterus'!" he complained.

 

"No one named me this," I told him, looking at him right in the eye. "It's just who I am."

 

He was quiet the rest of the way to school.

 

As we sat down in Miss Carlin's and Miss Slack's second grade classroom, I managed to catch Andrew's eye several seats away. I pointed at Patric and rolled my eyes. He grinned. The bell rang.

 

"Ambrose," Miss Carlin called, beginning to take roll. As she continued, I heard several children snicker. I knew it must've been at Patric. For a moment, I felt sorry for being so rude. To look at him, with his near perfect soldier's boy appearance, I had thought he'd be as instantly accepted as someone like Dallas. I figured it didn't matter what he thought of me, because once a guy like him learned what a loser I was, they wouldn't want to be associated with me at all.

 

"Joey," came the sweet, vegetarian-ish voice of Miss Carlin.

 

"Here," I replied reluctantly. Kids began snickering again, this time at me. I had told them that if they ever called me that name I would set their houses on fire. In my mind's eye, I could see a lightbulb over Patric's head as he discovered my generally accepted identity. Also in my mind's eye, I smashed the lightbulb down over his head, burning him and getting a few shards of glass in his eye.

 

School proceeded as it usually did, an eternal drone reminiscent of a concentration camp except that our lunchladies were uglier. After stepping off the bus to go home, I tried to catch up with Patric. "Hey, Patric!" I shouted, since I knew from the bus stop incident that he was the type of person who wouldn't realize I was trying to catch up with him just because I was running toward him as fast as I could when my house was halfway down the street behind me.

 

"Oh, hi Joey!" he exclaimed, looking cheerful that someone had noticed him.

 

"It's Klafterus," I told him through gritted teeth. "Anyway, I just wanted to say I was sorry for being such a jerk this morning. I just thought that you were the kind of kid who wouldn't care about a loser like me."

 

"Yeah, I probably won't after I make some real friends."

 

I tried to ignore this comment, hoping that by forgetting it, it would go away, which was a tactic often in such situations and was most likely the ultimate reason I was such a loser. "So... do you want to come hang out at my house or anything? I don't know if you met Andrew or not, but he's coming over. It'll be fun," I lied. I never had fun with Andrew, but he was the only thing I really had to attach myself to.

"Oh, sure, that would be really cool!" he said, sounding relieved. "I'll go ask my mom, then I'll be right down, okay? What's your house number?"

 

"6667 Rose Petal," I told him, turning around and heading for the residence I had just given him the address to, which was my house. "See you in a little bit!" I called over my shoulder.

 

As I approached the sidewalk before my house, Andrew came trampling out of the bushes and crashed into me, knocking me into some nasty gutter water. "Woah! What are you doing, dude?" I asked.

 

"Oh... hey," he said. "I... came over here since you told me to... you weren't here."

 

"No, I wasn't," I snapped. "I was down the street talking to Knick-Knack-Pattywack. He's coming over, he's probably on his way now."

 

"That Patric kid?" Andrew spat, confused. "I thought you said..."

 

"No. He's... different. Than what I thought he was. Come on, let's go inside." And we walked up the driveway into the house to wait for Patric.

 

What the three of us did that day is lost somewhere in the buffet of my memory. Certain pictures float into my head as I think about those early times: pictures of video games, action figures, bedsheets, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Sometimes we'd shoot baskets on our neighbor's hoop, Andrew being the only one tall enough to actually score anything. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and months turned into years faster than any of us would've liked. But the future also had a strange magnetism to it; it seemed exciting, the possibilities of getting older. We could fly planes, become rock stars, or maybe get jobs in acting together. Indeed, there was an innocence about those adventures, but something in the formula was missing. And I found exactly what it was one day as I walked home from the bus stop, very similar to the day I had confronted Patric about coming to my house.

 

I heard a series of clicks, bangs, and splashes from across the street. At first I thought someone was choking to death, but then I realized it was a boy attempting to beatbox. And then a deep, loud voice rang out across the neighborhood. This is what it said:

 

"Yo, yo, yo

My name is Moe

Get out of here, hos

This is my show

Got a lotta class, and I know ya know

Mess wit me, I blow yo' brains out, fo' sho'!"

 

Laughter erupted from the small group surrounding the boy, consisted completely of black children. Then a kid about Andrew's size, who, by the look on his face, was the misfit of the clan, stepped forward. It was apparent that he was up next in the rap battle.

 

"Matt

And his brother Pat

Sat

On a fat

Cat

And made it flat

You sure about that?

I got a big hat

Yo' mom's a democrat..."

 

He didn't get to finish because the other children were booing him so loudly, and Moe, the boy who had rapped before him punched him so hard in the face that he fell down. I immediately ran over.

 

"Hey! Dude, you all right?" I said to him.

 

"Gdafdfoldofdfa, dfdIfdf haaotee teheosse klddioss, theree'eeye saffjkuujvchc jrejkees!" he said through a mouthful of blood and tears.

 

"Woah dude, settle down!" I said, puzzled. "Give me that one more time?"

 

He took a moment to become calm. "God, I hate those kids, they're such jerks!" He sniffed for about sixty seconds. "They say I'm not black."

 

"Hey, it's all right, man, I'll take care of them," I tried to reassure him. I stood up and turned to face the group.

 

"All right, what's your punks' problems? Leave the kid alone!" I commanded them.

 

"Ooooh! Tough little white boy, huh?" Moe taunted me. The rest of the boys laughed. "Give me one good reason I should leave that sad excuse of a black man alone."

 

I stared at him for a moment and then looked away, which was stupid and probably made me look like a wuss. But then I looked back at him. "I bet I could rap better and longer than you."

 

There was a rather loud silence filling the street for a moment. "Fine," Moe finally replied. "Fine, let's hear it."

 

And I began.

 

"I got a big house and plenty of cash

But do I like it? No, it sucks lots of ass

My mom, she's a creep, I think she's schizophrenic

And my dad wouldn't smile watching pigs drink arsenic

My one bro, Mike, thinks he knows everything

And my other bro, Dave, is too lazy to dream

My grandma, she's the only one who seems to give a care

She's the only friend I've ever really had up in herre

So before you run off, saying, 'Oh! That lucky rich kid!'

Just know for me as much as you that life's a bitch, kid

I sure as hell ain't happy and I'm hardly a schmoozer

I'm just Joey Hines, this damn neighborhood's loser."

 

The crowd listening in on the event had grown during my performance, and the response was more uproarious than ever. Soon the entire street was chanting, "Joe's blacker than Moe!" like some creepy tribe of natives. But Moe wasn't happy. He screwed up his face and lunged at me, fists flying.

 

"I'll teach you to mess wit me, whitey!" he screamed.

I stretched my fingers straight out. He ran right into them. The speed he was traveling at was such that there were now five circular, bloody holes in his shirt. He collapsed and the cheering grew even more. I merely walked away from the scene, picking up the misfit boy as I did.

 

"I don't think he'll bother you anymore, dude," I told him.

 

"Hey... thanks... I mean... sorry... I mean... that was awesome, dawg," he said, his eyes wide.

 

I laughed. "What's your name, homeboy?"

 

"Tyler," he said. "Tyler Collins. And you are?"

 

"Name's Klafterus," I replied. "You wanna come over to my place, Tyler? You can go home and get cleaned up first if you want. I'm at 6667 Rose Petal."

 

And that day, Tyler became one of us. He, Andrew, Patric, and I became inseperable, like tennis balls stuffed in a Pringles container. Together we were losers, and each helped to build the others' childhoods. It all culminated one day in the beginning of our third grade year.

 

We had a little alcove in the wall next to the fire hydrant at the end of the street where Andrew, Patric, Tyler, and I would hang out when we weren't terrorizing the community. That day, as we four sat there, our feet fiddling with our Razors, I decided it was time to reveal the last secret I had been keeping from them.

 

"Guys, I need to tell you something," I told them. "Something I'm not supposed to tell anyone." I gave Andrew a knowing look. "I'm the Messiah."

 

There was a moment of silence like the unanimous intake of breath by a choir before they start to sing. Then Tyler said, "What's a Messiah?"

 

I explained, "It means the son of God. The savior. It means one day I am going to die for the world's sins, so you can all go to Heaven." There was another, more uncomfortable pause.

 

"How... how do you know this?" asked Patric. Patric came from the sort of family that probably wouldn't have let him be friends with me had they known the claim I was making.

 

"I just do," I told him. "It's like those deer crossing signs on the side of the road. Sure, technically, the deer could cross the street anywhere it wants, but it just knows that it's supposed to cross at the sign. And I just know that this is what I was born for."

 

The bright, early summer air provided an extreme contrast to the uneasy feeling surrounding us. Andrew eventually spoke up. "What we need is our own secrecy group," he stated. "A group where we all take a vow that we will keep the information that Klafterus is the Messiah to ourselves."

 

"A gang, sort of," Tyler said, a look of realization coming over his face.

 

Patric's face glazed over. "Yes," he said. "Our own gang."

 

"What should we call it?" Andrew asked.

 

"The Truth Holders," Tyler said.

 

"Too Power Ranger-ish," Andrew commented.

 

"How about K.I.S.S.?" Patric suggested. "For the 'Klafterus Is Savior Society.'"

 

"How about P.I.S.S.?" Tyler retorted. "For the 'Patric Is Stupid Society.'"

 

Andrew cracked up. Patric hit him.

 

I looked around. Yes, a gang was what we needed. The four of us would one day grow older and take control over this wrecked world and fix it up, under my direction. My eyes fell upon the street sign over our heads. Rose Petal Avenue.

 

"The Rose Petals," I said. My friends all focused on me. "That's what we'll call ourselves. The Rose Petals."

 

"Um... why?" Patric asked.

 

I thought for a moment. "Because... because we're all just little kids. We can't really do anything by ourselves. But together, we're this gang, with this beautiful purpose. We're all just petals on the rose."

 

"That's gay, dude," Andrew said.

 

"Okay, fine, it's because it's the street we're all growing up on and it just sounds cool, okay?" I confessed. I stood up and stepped into the middle of the group, placing my hand on my heart. "I, Klafterus, swear to stay true to the belief that I am the Messiah, and if anyone stands in my way, to set their house on fire."

 

The other three Rose Petals stood, placed their hands on their hearts, and repeated the vow.

 

"We need some sort of ritual," Patric said.

 

"Yes," I said, my eyes suddenly getting wet with excitement. "I know just what. I'll be right back."

 

I ran across the street into my house, rushing through Grandma's room to steal a pack of her cigarettes. I went back outside.

 

"We're going to smoke these," I told them. "The whole pack. And after each one, you need to hold the tip down on your forearm, burning it into your skin."

 

"Are you crazy?" Tyler yelled.

 

"Do you care about this or not?" I asked him.

 

Tyler seemed to consider for a moment. He looked around at Andrew and Patric. They both had looks of determination on their faces. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I care."

 

"Great," I said. "Uh... anyone got a lighter?"

 

And so we sat there in our alcove that day and smoked the whole pack together, burning each cigarette out on our arms. It was now marked on each of us. We were the Rose Petals.

 

It makes me sad to say that it was the happiest I would ever feel. There I was, for once in my life with friends who believed in what I believed in. I felt almost as if I was not a loser in those times with the Rose Petals. It destroys me now to think that I didn't hold on to every moment, and that I let it come to an end. But I had been happy once, and that was what mattered.