Sample:

I was used to eating alone.

I mean, I preferred it. When I’m hungry, I need a lot of food. I really put it away, and it’s easier if I can just concentrate on getting fuel in me without paying attention to my friends.

Not that there are whole lot of friends to distract me in the first place. We’re talking, like, count-on-one-hand quantities, here. We’re the misfits rejected by all the other cliques at Abbeque Valley High, too weird for the rest, and even in my little band, I stand out.

So it’s just as well that Abbeque Valley High School’s become so crowded over the last few years they have two lunch periods, and my friends happen to have the other one. I can concentrate on eating.

On the eighteenth of April, 1985, I sat down in my usual spot in the indoor commons, against the brick wall under Ms. Elp’s office window, and got to it.

Yes, it was that day. It was a Thursday, kind of on the cool side. Do you remember where you were and what you were doing?

Anyway, I liked to eat lunch under Ms. Elp’s window because she spent her lunch keeping her eye on activity out in the commons. She’s the discipline advisor – if you’re going to get busted, you’ll deal with her. For a freak like me, having her literally at my back provided a little insurance I might be able to eat my lunch in peace.

It’s not always enough.

My hearing is very, very sensitive. Even with the racket of a few hundred kids yammering away while they eat their lunches, I can pick out certain things that might be important to my well-being. It’s part of what makes me different, same as needing to eat so much and so often.

I was halfway through my second salami sandwich when I heard the distinctive, sloshing, whoosh a partially open carton of milk makes as it flies through the air. It’s a sound I’ve heard before, and I’ve learned from the past.

I grabbed my lunch bag in one hand, my backpack in the other, and stood up. I shuffled a few feet to the left of where I’d been sitting.

The milk bomb burst against the wall. Pretty good shot; right where my back had been a few seconds before.

I looked along the arc of the milk bomb’s trajectory, across the commons. I was not surprised to see Byron Teslowski standing over in the jocks’ corner, holding court with his Wingmen. I was a target for a lot of jerks, but I’d had Teslowski’s special attention since sixth grade.

What did have me wondering was the look I saw on Teslowski’s face. He didn’t sport the grinning sneer I expected.

He looked disappointed, and confused, sure, but there was something else there I couldn’t figure out. We locked eyes for a second before Terrance Felder knocked him on his arm and got his attention, and that was that.

I sighed. Milk dripped down the wall and pooled at my feet. I was still hungry. Ms. Elp, who somehow missed the whole thing, caught my eye through the window and gave me a curt smile. I could see myself in the dim reflection of the window: short brown hair that shed just enough to never really get any longer; too-broad cheeks to support green eyes that were way too big for the rest of my head.

I looked away.

A pack of girls strolled by. The alpha bimbette, Gaby Samson, had been wearing spandex tops and leggings every day since “Flashdance” came out. I tried not to notice how puberty’s blessings had provided her with gifts she hadn’t had when we were in junior high. She took a second to look me up and down, lingering on the dirty white pool trickling around my feet.

“Nice puddle,” she said. Her friends all laughed, musically, obviously thrilled with themselves.

Just about your normal day for Nate Charters, boy freak.