The Dark Pond

Chapter One

Feeling things. That is one of the gifts I got from my mother, being able to feel things that other people don’t. Spooky, isn’t it? That is how most other kids see it. And me. Spooky Armie. Ever since I was really little (which was a looong while ago) I’ve been teased because I was weird. It wasn’t just because I looked different, with my thick black hair and my brown skin. It was also because I said things that other kids thought were strange.

In second grade I transferred to a new school. On my first day there I’d made it through the morning by just keeping my head down so I wouldn’t be noticed much, but then came recess. I was outon the playground when I felt that something was wrong. It was like I could hear a bunch of little voices calling for help. A group of kids were gathered in a circle at the edge of the soccer field. When I got closer I saw that they were dropping pebbles onto an anthill. I got in between them and the anthill and held up my hands.

"You gotta stop," I said.

"Why?" the biggest kid asked me. He had red hair that stuck straight up. I think his name was Ray, but I’m not entirely sure. I was in three different schools that year, so all the kids who were bullies or made up clever new names for me kind of blend together in my memory.

Anyhow, instead of saying nothing, which would have been the smartest move, I gave him an honest answer.

"You gotta stop ‘cause you're hurting them. The ants are all upset. They're really scared.""How do you know that?" the red-haired kid said.

"I can feel it," I said.

"Feel this, weirdo."

Then he pushed me. It ended up with me on the ground, crouched over the top of the anthill, while the other kids poked me and tried to pull me off. Finally a teacher came and broke it up. For the rest of the two months I was at that school the other kids called me Armie the Anteater.

Weirdo. Geronimo. Spookie. Tonto. I won't bore you with all the other nicknames I got over a parade of years and a succession of schools. It sort of changed when, as they say, I got my growth. That happened in sixth grade. Except I didn't just get my growth, I got a good part of someone else's, too. I'd always been stronger than I looked, which surprised some of the bullies who tried pushing me around. But now I was also bigger than I felt. Even though I was so much taller than any of the other kids and people stopped trying to push me around, it didn't mean an end to the names they called me. They just called me names when they thought I couldn't hear them. But most of the time I could.

Of course there were times at a new school when some kids would try to buddy up to me -- because I was so big. But I'd gotten so used to being the strange little geek the others pushed around that I just stayed inside myself. Like a kid inside a suit of armor built for a giant. Maybe I wanted friends, but I wasn't going to let them know that. Sooner or later they'd look through the visor of that suit of armor, realize how weird I was, and decide they didn't want me as a friend after all.

People didn't even have to make up names for me. My real name was strange enough. Armin. Armin Katchatorian. I can thank my father for that name, him and all our Armenian ancestors. I can also thank them for being built like a bull and for being endowed with just about as much stubbornness as your average buffalo. When something upsets me, my first impulse is to lower my head and charge. Smart, eh?

A part of me knows just how dumb that kind of behavior is. That awareness of my own stupidity is also something I got from my mother.

"Armin, I just know you'll outgrow that headstrong nature, when wisdom comes to you."

So she says. She even said it when they sent me off to this school with its "personalized counseling and healthful outdoor environment." My mother believes that nature is healing. I pretty much agree with her. It is an Indian thing, I guess. Did I mention that my Mom is Indian? As if being half Armenian wasn't bad enough.

We are Shawnee, the people of the South Wind. Another reason I just loved being sent to a school on the side of the coldest mountain this side of the North Pole. But I suppose it was appropriate. Of all the Indians in North America, it may be that us Shawnees got shoved around from place to place the most, even more than the Cherokees. All the way from the Yucatan peninsula to Florida to the Ohio Valley and then to Oklahoma, and every point in between.

And if you know anything about Armenian history, you'll realize that Mom and Dad were sort of meant for each other. Just like the Shawnees, there were lots of people who didn't want the Armenians to have a country or a history -- or a future.

Like I was saying, the North Mountains School is so far north that the locals think the fourth of July is a skiing holiday. It gets so cold that if you light a match, the flame freezes and you have to thaw it out to start a fire. In the winter the birds don't dare sing early in the morning because if they did their songs would freeze around their little beaks and they would suffocate.

Funny, eh? But I can't take credit. Those are all Devo's remarks. I'm not that good at expressing myself. According to Grayson, self-expression is one of the Top Ten Tasks I need to accomplish.

The Dark Pond. Copyright © by Joseph Bruchac . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Dark Pond by Joseph Bruchac
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