The next morning, Dad drove me the twenty-two miles to Reardan. 

"I'm scared," I said. 

"I'm scared, too," Dad said. 

He hugged me close. His breath smelled like mouthwash and lime vodka. 

"You don't have to do this," he said. "You can always go back to the rez school." 

"No," I said. "I have to do this." 

Can you imagine what would have happened to me if I'd turned around and gone back to the rez school? 

I would have been pummeled. Mutilated. Crucified. 

You can't just betray your tribe and then change your mind ten minutes later. I was on a one-way bridge. There was no way to turn around, even if I wanted to. 

"Just remember this," my father said. "Those white people aren't better than you." 

But he was so wrong. And he knew he was wrong. He was the loser Indian father of a loser Indian son living in a world built for winners. 

But he loved me so much. He hugged me even closer. 

 "This is a great thing," he said. "You're so brave. You're a warrior. 

It was the best thing he could have said. 

"Hey, here's some lunch money," he said and handed me a dollar.  

We were poor enough to get free lunch, but I didn't want to be the only Indian and a sad sack who needed charity. 

"Thanks, Dad," I said. 

"I love you," he said. 

"I love you, too." 

I felt stronger so I stepped out of the car and walked to the front door. 

The white kids began arriving for school. They surrounded me. Those kids weren't just white. They were translucent. I could see the blue veins running through their skin like rivers.

Most of the kids were my size or smaller, but there were ten or twelve monster dudes. Giant white guys. They looked like men, not boys. They had to be seniors. Some of them looked like they had to shave two or three times a day.

They stared at me, the Indian boy with the black eye and swollen nose, my going-away gifts from Rowdy. Those white kids couldn't believe their eyes. They stared at me like I was Bigfoot or a UFO. What was I doing at Reardan, whose mascot was an Indian, thereby making me the only other Indian in town?

 

So what was I doing in racist Reardan, where more than half of every graduating class went to college? Nobody in my family had ever gone near a college.

Reardan was the opposite of the rez. It was the opposite of my family. It was the opposite of me. I didn't deserve to be there. I knew it; all of those kids knew it. Indians don't deserve shit.

 

So, feeling worthless and stupid, I just waited. And pretty soon, a janitor opened the front door and all of the other kids strolled inside. 

"Okay," I said to myself. "Here I go." 

I walked into the school, made my way to the front office, and told them who I was. 

"Oh, you're the one from the reservation," the secretary said. 

"Yeah," I said. 

I couldn't tell if she thought the reservation was a good or bad thing. 

"My name is Melinda," she said. "Welcome to Reardan High School. Here's your schedule. We've got you assigned to Mr. Grant for homeroom. You better hustle on down there. You're late." 

"Ah, where is that?' I asked. 

'We've only got one hallway here," she said and smiled. "It's all the way down on the left." 

I shoved the paperwork into my backpack and hustled down to my homeroom. 

I paused a second at the door and then walked inside. 

Everybody, all of the students and the teacher, stopped to stare at me. 

They stared hard. 

Like I was bad weather. 

"Take your seat," the teacher said. He was a muscular guy. He had to be a football coach. 

I walked down the aisle and sat in the back row and tried to ignore all the stares and whispers, until a blond girl leaned over toward me. Penelope! 

Yes, there are places left in the world where people are named Penelope! 

"What's your name?' Penelope asked. 

"Junior," I said. 

She laughed and told her girlfriend at the next desk that my name was Junior. They both laughed. Word spread around the room and pretty soon everybody was laughing. 

They were laughing at my name. 

I had no idea that Junior was a weird name. It's a common name on my rez, on any rez. You walk into any trading post on any rez in the United States and shout, "Hey, Junior!" and seventeen guys will turn around. 

And three women. 

But there were no other people named Junior in Reardan, so I was being laughed at because I was the only one who had that silly name. 

And then I felt smaller because the teacher was taking roll and he called out my name name. 

"Arnold Spirit," the teacher said. 

No, he yelled it. 

He was so big and muscular that his whisper was probably a scream. 

"Here," I said as quietly as possible. My whisper was only a whisper. 

"Speak up," the teacher said. "Here," I said. 

"My name is Mr. Grant," he said. 

"I'm here, Mr. Grant." 

He moved on to other students, but Penelope leaned over toward me again, but she wasn't laughing at all. She was mad now. 

"I thought you said your name was Junior," Penelope said. She accused me of telling her my real name. Well, okay, it wasn't completely my real name. My full name is Arnold Spirit Jr. But nobody calls me that. Everybody calls me Junior. Well, every other Indian calls me Junior. 

"My name is Junior," I said. "And my name is Arnold. It's Junior and Arnold. I'm both."

I felt like two different people inside of one body. 

"Where are you from?" she asked. 

She was so pretty and her eyes were so blue. 

I was suddenly aware that she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen up close. She was movie star pretty.  

"Hey," she said. "I asked you where you're from." Wow, she was tough. 

'Wellpinit," I said. "Up on the rez, I mean, the reservation. 

"Oh," she said. "That's why you talk so funny." 

And yes, I had that singsong reservation accent that made everything I said sound like a bad poem. 

Man, I was freaked. 

I didn't say another word for six days.