Top Ten

Not Always Famous

CHAPTER ONE Not Always Famous

I still can't believe this is happening to me.

The girl with the red spiky hair keeps pushing the magazine at us. "I want him to sign it. Let Sid sign my magazine." A couple of guys from the hotel are trying to hold her and the other girls back.

"One at a time, please, one at a time!" Jake is saying.

"Sign my face, Sid!"

"Let me talk to him!"

"Let go of me! I just want to talk to him for a minute! Pleeeese?"

Another pretty girl ducks below an arm and comes right up to my face. "We've got a party planned for you Top Ten IDOLS. My dad is a sponsor. We really want you to be there, Sid." She pushes a note into my hand and squeezes it into my palm. She looks deep into my eyes and it my heart skips like a flat stone on water.

Now that I'm famous, people from my past will say I was cute, or I was their good friend, or that all the girls liked me. But that's all crap.

Back then I was the quiet, small kid who was picked on whenever the teachers weren't looking. Some pin-head would make fun of my curly hair or my small size or my high voice.

"Hey Curly."

"What?"

"You're the size of my baby brother – and he's six." My face would go red. "You're gonna burst, little suck? Gonna beat me up?"

It all began in Junior High. I didn't grow. I looked like I was still in elementary school. The desks were too large and the chairs too tall.

"What's your name?"

"Sid."

"How old are you, like, ten?"

"I'm fourteen, just like everyone else."

"How come you're so small?"

"I don't know." How come you're so stupid?

"Like, do you have a disease or something?"

"No." And what's your disease, stupiditis?

"If I were you I'd eat grow-up pills. Ever try steroids?"

I learned not to speak up in class, even if I knew the answer. Better to let them think I was stupid than draw attention to myself.

People complain about being the last one picked for a team or game, but I was the one chased off the field. I could lose a game all by myself. I was the smallest, the weakest and the last to hit puberty. Gym class was torture because we had to take showers. The guys called me Pre-Pubic Pete.

"Let's toss Pete into the hall." Luckily they never did it.

By high school, a lot of kids thought my name really was Pete. I was the last to have my voice change, and even then it didn't change much... At sixteen I still had a high voice.

"Why do you sound like a girl?"

"I don't know."

"I mean seriously, why is your voice so high?"

"I don't know."

"You're weird, man."

"If you say so."

"Are you being smart? Don't make me hurt you."

Even the girls could beat me up. One day I was being chased by a couple of jocks and I ran down a set of stairs and whipped into the nearest washroom. I didn't realize it was a girls' washroom until I ran into an enormous tough chick named Alicia.