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bottom with all those rocks in your shorts? Your Uncle Mo saw you go under but when you didn’t come up after a few minutes, he dialed 9-1-1. It took your mom and me thirty minutes to convince paramedics that having no life signs was normal for you.
    “Or how about when you took first place with your Diversity Day essay last year, then read it aloud at the district assembly? Jed, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and we spent an hour afterward just talking to so many people about you. And all of them said they wished they had your courage and strength.
    “That’s when I’m happy you’re not normal, you’re not just another one of those guys who gets up and go to school and comes home and blends in and every day is just like the other and on and on … Jed, I’m not sure what’s going to happen as you grow up. Only that it’s going to be different. And I think that’s pretty exciting.” I was still a bit angry, but Dad was right. I was different, but different didn’t have to be bad. I just needed to use it to my advantage.
    And right then, I thought I knew how.

Chapter Nine

     
    Halloween. God, I hate Halloween. I stayed in my bedroom, and nobody bothered me. As far as I was concerned, Halloween was amateur hour.

Chapter Ten

     
    I’m not sure who thought woodworking and middle school went together, but whoever decided to put a bunch of thirteen-year-olds around very sharp tools with minimal adult supervision, I salute you. Woodshop was always my favorite class of the day, even if I wasn’t very handy. In that, I followed in my dad’s footsteps.
    “When something needs fixing around the house, I’m very good with my hands,” Dad always said. “They know how to pick up a phone and write a check. Perfect.”
    Each day I walked in to the smell of sawdust and left with the smell of defeat. I didn’t care. I loved Woodshop, despite the fact that Robbie sat just a few desks away. And I didn’t know it yet, but that class would play an important role in my survival as a zombie, if that makes sense.
    Desks were lined in six perfect rows, looking strangely out of place in the large workshop cluttered with circular saws, table saws, band saws, hand saws, lathes, and sanders. Given the tools and the lumber stacked along the walls, together we could have built the biggest and most awkward-looking birdhouse ever, capable of bringing years of shame to Mr. Anderson, the shop teacher.
    “Ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Anderson said. “You should have assignments. Lineups are attached to each piece of equipment. Only those people listed may use the equipment. They must use the equipment in list order. No deviation. Understood? Get to work.”
    There was no hesitation between Mr. Anderson’s question and his answer. The only result you’d get out of raising your hand in his class was having it chopped off. I knew from the first day in Woodshop, and the second I laid eyes on Mr. Anderson, that this was not an environment where differences would be embraced and encouraged.
    Mr. Anderson stood six feet, two and five-eighths inches (we knew because on that first day, he paired up all twenty-six of us and had each team measure him because “before I see if you can handle this class, I have to make sure you can handle a tape measure”). And he was precisely six feet, two and five-eighths inches because he stood ramrod straight, his very thin frame capable of bending only at the waist and knees.
    With his close-cropped hair, it was pretty easy to tell he was ex-military, even before he spent the rest of the first class filling us in on his career record.
    Many of us can still quote him from that first day, when he laid out the Woodshop rules.
    “I don’t expect all of you to be able to build a bridge in an hour,” he said. “Like I was trained to do in Desert Storm. Not a great call for that in I-raq. I was ready if needed. And why was I able to do so? And how? Because I could handle a tape measure. Had it on me