Chapter+1


 * Chapter 1**


 * The Big Mistake**

Doyle regretted lying to his mom. It wasn’t a big lie just easier not to tell the truth. Yesterday his mom asked if he had any clean underwear and the truth was he only had one pair that wasn’t dirty, his Power Rangers. They were getting a bit too small but he didn’t want to throw them away. When his mom came in his room, he was busy and didn’t want his DS Nintendo game interrupted, so he told her he had plenty of underwear and she didn’t need to wash anything for him. Great, now it was 7:00 A.M. and he was stuck with his only clean pair. His power rangers. They were actually his favorite but not the ones he wanted the other eighth grade boys seeing him wear in P.E. He knew what that would mean. He would get ridiculed and laughed at…again. Probably some of the bigger boys would try to give him a wedgie and they would call him names. He might as well not even go to lunch because he would be picked on and laughed at. He hated it now that Taiwan and Dontavious had been kicked out of athletics and put in his P.E. class. He hated P.E. before they were in there but with the last two weeks with them in there had become almost unbearable. He could just imagine Taiwan’s taunts, “Yo, Captain Underwear, what’s up with those non-guy tidey-whitey sissy boy pants?” Then Dontavious would come over and push him around and say something like “Why you wearing those princess panties? What do you think you are? A unicorn rider or something?” Everyone in their group would start laughing and pointing at him. He knew the put-downs would be more than he could take. Doyle’s face began to burn as red as his underwear just thinking about it. He didn’t need the humiliation. He looked frantically around for a dirty pair to put on but even those had been confiscated by his neat freak mom. Certainly he couldn’t go to school with no underwear on. Reluctantly, he pulled up his Power Rangers, did a speedy superhero muscle flexing pose in the mirror, then quickly turned his head in robot-like jerking rotations as he spun around the room to make sure his older brother, York, hadn’t see him. With the coast clear, he breathed a sigh of relief, and tucked his shirt tail deep into his jeans. He tightened his belt to the last notch. He was tired of having boys pants him in the hallway. (This is where guys try to pull another guy’s pants down.) He pulled his jeans up high to make sure no one could see his underwear. Next, he reached for his pen shield and tucked it safely inside his pants’ side pocket. He felt so lucky to find a new one at the local office supply store. Three for 99 cents. What a bargain! He thought his new pen collection might impress Kaitlyn, the most popular girl in all of South Elm Middle School. He like every other boy in the eighth grade had a secret crush on her. In alphabetical order, he lined up his. From right to left, he lined them up. First was the black, then the blue, and lastly came red. He checked his binder to make sure he had enough color coded sticky notes. He had assigned specific color codes for each class to make life at school easier and more efficient. He learned this trick from his mom when she went back to school to finish her college degree last summer. The last thing he did before leaving his bedroom was to carefully wrap a miniature soap bar in a plastic baggie and bury it deep inside his pant’s pocket. With a sigh, he thought: //It is inexcusable that the boys’ bathroom doesn’t keep an adequate amount of soap.// There was no way he would allow himself to not wash his hands thoroughly before he ate or after he used the bathroom. He learned that trick from his science teacher, Coach Williams. Everyone should count to ten by one- Mississippi, two-Mississippi, etc. each time you use the bathroom. He didn’t know what was wrong with all the other boys at his school. They never did thoroughly wash their hands the way they had been taught after they used the bathroom but he didn’t care. There was no way he would allow germs on stay on his hands. He couldn’t get the vision of the germs he had looked at under the microscope in Coach Williams’ room out of his mind. Cleanliness was very important to him. Never would he be caught without hand sanitizer or his little bar of soap. He attributed his perfect attendance record to his good personal hygiene practice. People might call him a dork but at least he was a healthy, clean dork. He heard his brother, York; scream for him to hurry up so they wouldn’t be late for school. As he rushed down the stairs, he caught his reflection in the mirror and also that of York’s. They both had light brown hair and blue eyes. Both of their faces were rectangular and rather handsome but that was where the similarities ended. York was a senior in high school. He was athletic and muscular from spending hours in the weight room. Doyle regrettably looked like a stick cartoon character with glasses. Unfortunately, Doyle had his mom’s genes. She was just five feet and very petite. His dad was six feet two with broad shoulders and a heavy beard. His two older brothers were carbon copies of his dad. York and Ben were star football players in high school. Ben had gotten a football scholarship to North Texas where he played tight end. His dad, Brian, had been a jock in high school and college too. Now he was the head football coach at Haltom High. Doyle knew his dad was probably a little disappointed that his last son was a runt. He was probably embarrassed and Doyle thought he probably called him a “momma’s boy” when no one was listening. His mom, Courtnee, was his best friend. She was the person Doyle related to most. She taught him to keep trying his best at everything he did. One good thing about his mom was that if he made a mistake she never got mad at him. She understood him and encouraged his love for reading and writing. He didn’t know what he would do without her. She wasn’t disappointed that he wasn’t a big football star. She thought he was perfect just the way he was. She was glad he focused on his grades and had good organizational skills, unlike his two older brothers.