peer

my name is pierre. i'm ten years old, and i'm going to be greater than muhammad ali. watch.

i beat up a twelve-year-old when i was nine, because i'd already been training for four months then. now i bet i could probably beat up a sixteen-year-old. i haven't even hit my growth spurt yet.

my stepdad works at the italian restaurant. i hate it when he gets home early.

my mom drinks a lot.

i'm going to be greater than muhammad ali. i'm going to fight in vegas and europe and win all the cups and money. i'm going to have a house in california.

i'm in fifth grade. i'm not a stupid fighter, like lenny toledo is. he's punch drunk. that happens when you get hit too many times. i'll never have that problem because i won't let them hit me more than a couple times, so i never will be punch drunk, not even when i'm old and close to retirement.

and when i retire i'll live in california and have some dogs and a big car.

my teacher is mrs. reilly. she's pretty. she's really pretty, i guess. she has yellow hair and earrings, kind of long ones with pearls, and she has green eyes. if i was older, like sixteen or eighteen, i'd fight her husband.

but i guess that wouldn't probably be any good, because she's not the type. probably i'd have to save her husband in a fight outside a bar or something. and then she'd be like that lady in the movie with the priest. then we'd have to wait for her husband to get sick or have an accident or something and die.

mrs. reilly gave me this old book that i wouldn't have read except that she gave it to me. i didn't read it anyway until the school year was close to over; it was the easter holidays so i read it because the gym was closed for a couple of days, because leo goes to church and thinks everybody should, like him, even jews.

i kind of liked the book. i don't read books almost ever so i don't know if it was really any good, and i didn't really like it, but i guess i kind of thought about it for a while, since i didn't have much to do and i couldn't go to the gym.

mrs. reilly asked me what i thought about the book, when i gave it back to her. i didn't know what to say, so i made something up to tell her. her eyes got real big and she said i should come with her to the teachers' lounge after school. aw shit, is what i thought.

when we went to the teachers' lounge, she sat down with me next to this old fellow who had glasses and a bald head and probably couldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight, and she said i should tell this fellow what i thought about the book she gave me to read. so i told him, just the same as what i told her, and while i told him i thought, go ahead and expel me or whatever you want, old man, i'll just go to the gym some more, and i thought some things about mrs. reilly that i guess i shouldn't have. because, you see, the old man's eyes got really big, like hers had, and he looked at her and he looked at me and i was thinking, aw shit, and then he asked if i read any other books. i didn't say for a minute, then i said, no, because if they were going to expel me anyway, why should i lie? and then he and mrs. reilly excused theirselves for a minute and talked, and then they came back and that was when the real shit started. because they talked to me for about an hour, and i was thinking how i was going to be late for work, and the end of it all was that they made me a proposition that i should read some more books they would pick out, and i should talk with them about the books after i read them, and they would get me places in the end that i never could go otherwise; they would see to it, the old fellow and mrs. reilly.

i just looked at them and then i saw the clock and i thought, aw shit, so i said yes and ran out of there. i wasn't too late for work but they made me stay later than anybody else tying up the papers, so i couldn't go to the gym after, and by the time i got home my stepdad and mom had eaten all the spaghetti he brought home from the restaurant and there wasn't any left for me.