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their chairs, and soon the whole cafeteria was in an uproar.
    And there, of course, in the center of all the action, stood Tuffy Buck.
    “So Stuella, you have brought cockroaches from home!”
    By this time, Drainboard had disappeared.
    “There was only one!” Fatso said.
    “Only one?” Tuffy Buck exclaimed. “That’s one too many to suit the boss of the cafeteria! Where is it? Would you like to eat it, Fatso?”
    “Make him eat it,” Fatso pointed to Shoebag. “He brought it to school. I didn’t.”
    “Where is it?” Tuffy Buck said.
    Then a voice Shoebag had never heard before said, “I stepped on it. It’s gone.” At the same time this boy said those words, and just as Shoebag began to feel his eyes hurt again, and the moisture come, he looked down and saw a hand nudging him, with two fingers crossed. Shoebag happened to know that signal, from watching people over the years. That signal meant: I am fibbing.
    Tuffy Buck could not see the signal.
    He said, “Good for you, Gregor! We can always count on you to show up out of nowhere and save the day!”
    Shoebag looked up at this boy Gregor, and he knew then why Tuffy Buck’s voice was suddenly so polite.
    Gregor was taller than Tuffy, and he was huskier, too. He was also mysterious, for he wore very dark glasses, the kind with mirror lenses in which you saw your own reflection. And he had a strange long nose, with a twitch to it, as though he was catching the scent of something wild. His hair was so short it was almost like a beard on his head, a bristle, and it was blacker even than Tuffy’s, blacker than midnight. But the spookiest thing about him was his voice, which was not as loud as it was deep, like a grown man’s.
    “All right, the roach is gone!” said this peculiar fellow. “Everybody move away!”
    “You heard what Gregor said,” Tuffy told the other boys and girls. “Everybody move away!”
    And everybody did. They all went back to their tables and their food, except for The Ghost, who had long ago run from the cafeteria in hysterics.
    Gregor sat down in her chair. He put a Sony Watchman down on the table, and turned it on to the noon news. Then he stuck out a large, long-fingered hand. “I am Gregor Samsa,” he said.
    “I am Stuart Bagg.” Then Shoebag had to whisper and find out, “You didn’t really step on the roach?”
    “I don’t step on things,” Gregor Samsa answered.
    “Where did you come from?” Shoebag asked him.
    “I come from here and there. I go back and forth. I smelled your sandwich.”
    “Would you like half?” Shoebag asked him.
    “Would I!”
    Bark spoke up then. “Even though a roach was near it?”
    “Roaches have been around for 250 million years,” Gregor Samsa answered. “They were here 249 million years before people were.” He reached over and took the sandwich.
    “I know that, but how did you know that?” said Shoebag. “Not many people know that.”
    Fatso joined the conversation. “He knows that because he watches television all the time, and he never forgets a fact.”
    “He memorizes everything,” said Bark.
    “He learned the part in the new school play just like that,” said Handles, snapping his fingers.
    “He doesn’t have to come to regular rehearsals,” said Fatso. “Only dress rehearsal.”
    Gregor Samsa took an enormous bite from the sandwich half, and changed the TV channel to a movie.
    “Do you ever stop watching television?” Shoebag asked him.
    “Om uddyin me man mactor.”
    “What?” Shoebag asked.
    Bark answered for Gregor. “He says he’s studying to be an actor, Stu.”
    So for the first time, he heard a classmate call him by a boy’s name, and all because of Gregor Samsa.
    “I bet Tuffy would have made me eat the dirty cockroach if it wasn’t for you, Gregor,” said Fatso.
    Gregor was busy eating, and watching TV, his nose twitching, his forehead furrowed.
    “Too bad you’re not around more, Gregor,” Fatso said.
    Shoebag could not resist peeking