The Social Contract, Chapter 0.5

Abraham Foellinger and I are not friends. We don't get together for fishing trips, or bar crawls, or any of those friendly activities that friends do together. And we definitely don't call each other on the telephone to catch up, because if we did, the conversation would go something like this:

Abraham: Hello.
Me: Hi, Abraham. I just called to catch up.
Abraham: But we're not friends.
Me: Oh, yeah, I forgot. Sorry about that. Have a good day.
Abraham: You too.

Don't get me wrong, I like the dude, but he and I operate a little differently than most. The relationship between Abraham Foellinger and myself is not a friendship in the same way that an AK-47 is not a crossbow.

It all started about twenty years ago, in the fifth grade, when Abraham approached me at lunchtime with an unusual proposition. I was on my way to the water fountain, minding my own business, when a tap on the shoulder made me look up. My surprised brain placed the tapper as Abraham Foellinger. This was not to say I knew Abraham on any sort of personal level, because I didn't; we just went to that kind of school. For instance, I don't think I ever spoke two words in my life to Katie French, but  if forty-seven years from now, in the muddled twilight of my life, you were to place a 2006 Dunmore Elementary yearbook in front of me, open it to Mrs. Santucci's fifth grade class, and point to a particular fuzzy-haired headshot, I would involuntarily say, “Katie French!” Sometimes I wish I could put those previously allocated memory cells to a more useful use, but there you go.

So, Abraham Foelligner wanted to talk to me. How odd. I couldn't remember ever having spoken to Abraham, so I had no idea what he might want with me. When you think about it, most taps on the shoulder from strangers end with either a request for a favor -- e.g. 'Please pass the mustard' -- or an embarrassing revelation about your deficiencies in personal hygiene -- e.g. 'You've got mustard on your shirt'. But Abraham just motioned for me to follow him, no obvious mustard bottles in sight, and I did.

Let's be honest, the day we met, Abraham was about as poised as a hummingbird. He kept pulling on his sleeves for some reason, and sort of vibrating, like a jogger at a stoplight. I wish I could say this adventure began with some memorable and badass catchphrase, like 'I have an idea that's going to change your life forever, and you're going to LIKE it.' But at ten the guy walked like a coast guard and spoke like a train conductor, so I'll just tell you how it really went down.

“Hello, Tyler Freimann,” he said when we'd reached a reasonably quiet corner.

“Hi,” I replied, curious. “Abraham, right?”

“Yes,” he said, playing with a button on his pocket. After a long pause, he added, with a hint of hope, “Maybe you've heard of me.”

I nodded.  Abraham was the kind of kid everyone in our small class knew by reputation – and the color of that reputation was a mixed one. He was what I like to call 'kid-brilliant': he came out with schemes that made kids sigh in awe and adults chuckle in appreciation of the sheer creativity involved. They tended to require at least two random leaps of logic that you couldn't possibly make unless Abraham was holding your hand the whole time, dragging you along with him. And afterward, you'd swear the idea made sense when he'd explained it to you.

In fourth grade, he convinced half the school to wear red socks on the same day in a show of solidarity against the dress code. In third grade, he led his side of Cambridge Lane against mine in the most epic snowball battle I've ever seen. Knocked me right down with a powdery projectile from his homemade trebuchet. We all thought he was kind of a neat kid when we were really little, but I guess one day we woke up and realized memorizing an eight-page symbol code for passing notes in class just wasn't the thing anymore.

Abraham's lips kept opening and closing, as if he didn't know how to do this.

“So what's up?” I said, realizing I didn't know how to do this either, then realizing he started it, and finally deciding I'd better find out what he wanted as soon as I could.

“Clouds. Lots of clouds today.”

I had no response prepared for this. Why was Abraham talking to me? And, given that he was talking to me, why was he treating me like a mountain lion? I'd seen this kid address huge crowds of children without breaking a sweat.

Finally, he seemed to gather his courage.“I've been thinking,” he said, and I didn't take those words lightly. Abraham's thoughts were known to lead to actions.

“Remember in social studies today when we learned about allies?” he began his sales pitch.

Obviously I didn't; I'd spent the whole period drawing stylized bubble letters on my folder like any self-respecting ten-year-old. “No.”

“What? But you were present in social studies.”

I shrugged. “Let's say I forgot.”

“But it was only an hour ago!”

“Are you going to tell me what allies are or not?”
 
Abraham sighed. “Well they're like … teams for fighting. Countries have them. Like … in the Middle Ages, England and France fought all the time. So then England made America and they were allies and they kicked France out of the New World. But then America got mad at England and was allies with France and they kicked England out of the New World. And then a lot later England, France and America were all allies and they beat Germany and Japan forever!”

“So?”

He cleared his throat. “So,” he said. “We should be allies.”

I wrinkled my brow. “What? Why?”

“Think about it. You never know when you'll need an ally, because you never know when you're going to get in a fight. The archduke didn't know he was going to get in a fight. Maybe if he'd had an ally he'd be alive today!”

Still confused. “But who would we fight?”

“Well no one yet.”

“Hey, let's fight Joey Hull and them!”

“Uh … no,” he said. “It's not like, you fight people on purpose or anything. But if we ever ended up in a fight, we'd promise to be allies.”

“Do you get in a lot of fights?” I asked, because he didn't seem the rough-and-tumble type to me.

“No! But wouldn't you feel better knowing you had an ally anyway? It's just smart! You wouldn't have to be afraid of losing a fight.”

“I guess it couldn't hurt,” I said, seeing the sense in this arrangement but fervently hoping I wouldn't end up in any big wars before middle school. “Like actual fights with our bodies, or does teasing count?”

He pursed his lips. “Any time we're really in trouble. Maybe we can make up a secret signal.”

He'd said the magic words. What life couldn't be made 59% more badass with the addition of secret signals? It would be like playing comic book heroes, but all the time. “Like a bird call!”

Abraham laughed. “Probably something that's not so obvious.”

“Oh, right … maybe a flashlight? I know how to make lots of shadows with flashlights.”

“Maybe,” said Abraham carefully. “So are you in?”

As I considered his offer, I glanced around the cafeteria. Back then lunchtime wasn't a desirable social break you waited all morning for so much as the half-period immediately preceding recess. A parking lot tailgate outside the stadium, if you will. We didn't even stress about who to sit with because the teachers had crammed us all into three long tables, and it wouldn't have occurred to us to segregate the ends by anything but gender.

“For Pete's sake!” the lunchroom monitor told a group of boys as she gathered up the remains of the folder barrier they'd erected through the middle of the third table. “Give it a few years,” she muttered. “Give it a few years.”

My friends, Tim, Ross, and Nathan were going on about some trading card game with mages in it. I wasn't sure what mages were, but apparently they didn't wave their arms and shout, 'MAAAAGE!', because Nathan had gotten very snippy with me when I tried this particular role playing technique, then gone back to telling Tim about his big shiny enchanted bough.

“Seriously though, the plant class is really useful,” said Nathan. “It's like having all your regular cards twice!”

“Really?” said Ross, my most easily impressed friend. “That sounds great!”

Tim shook his head knowledgeably. “Plants are a joke. They can't even attack. They're like … the pit crew of Dalemark. I'll hook you up with some 'tackers, Ross; they're all you really need.”

“No way, fool!” Nathan protested. “I could take your whole 'tack line with one roan magid and a stack of oaks.”

Across the room, some little kids were trying to build a plastic spoon tower. They didn't have any glue or anything, just vanilla pudding, so their tower fell over a lot, but every time it did, they just giggled harder.

“No!” a little girl kept saying. “You're going to crush the ballroom!”

“It's fine,” said her friend. “The bees haven't moved in yet. We'll just wait until we're done and get a hairdryer and dry it like in art class and then they can move in.”

“You can't dry pudding,” the girl insisted. “It's too floppy.”

But the other girl was pretty sure you could dry anything if it got hot enough. Her dad said so.

I continued to watch the girls with a healthy amount of mean amusement, because clearly they still had a lot to learn about the world, but also no small amount of envy, because, well, they still had a lot to learn about the world. Why didn't my friends and I ever do anything fun like that anymore? Yes, we were in the double digits now, but couldn't we occasionally set aside our dignity and build something out of pudding?

I returned my attention to Abraham. Something about the way he stood told me he wasn't going to go away until I agreed.

“Okay,” I said. “We can be allies.”

“Great. Sign this,” said Abraham, holding out a new sheet of loose leaf printed in childishly careful script.

WE THE UNDERSIGNED AGREE TO HELP EACH OTHER OUT WHENEVER WE NEED IT, I read. Well, fair enough.

But there was one problem. “I don't have a pencil.”

Sighing at how unprepared I was for this completely unexpected event, Abraham handed me a pencil. Now that I think about it, you're supposed to sign a contract in ink. I could've wimped out whenever I wanted. But by the time I'd realized, leaving my alliance with Abraham wasn't really an option anymore.