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her heart-shaped face (he looked online to see what that
meant, and it was a dead-on description), her muscular legs and athletic body,
crafted by so many years of soccer, her cute button nose, and her lips, thin on
top and full on the bottom. It all added up to his perfect girl, enhanced
ten-fold by her wonderful personality. He held back a chuckle. Thinking like
that made him feel like a stalker.
    Luci was as pretty
as Mandy, but he never thought of her as anything other than an old friend he
never talked to anymore. She stood about the same height as Mandy, probably five-five
or five-six, and had a chiseled body from years of Taekwondo. She wore her dark
brown, almost black, hair in a ponytail. Even as far back as elementary school
he couldn't remember a time she didn't prefer that style. The thing he enjoyed
most about her appearance was her smile. When she let it loose, she lit up everything
around her. Even though she could kick mega-butt, her smile (and his past
friendship with her) meant he'd never be afraid of her.
    "Hey, it's
Pizza Face and the Hindu Terrorist," someone shouted. Wyatt put his head
down and kept walking, and Kareem did the same. It was Duncan Thomas, one of
the Pigs. While all three of them — Holden Greenfield and Tyler Navarro rounded
out the trio — could certainly be called pigs because of their boorish behavior
and slovenly appearances, they earned the name on the football field and wore
it with pride. They got down and dirty in the mud blocking for Alex and the
running backs. Neither Wyatt nor Kareem meant it as a compliment when they said
the nickname, though.
    The three yelled
more horribly racist things to Kareem and more unflattering words to Wyatt, but
both kept going, ignoring it all. Only when the words stopped and the laughter
faded did they relax, though they kept up their double-time pace all the way to
the math building. Once they reached their destination, both burst out
laughing.
    "What a bunch
of idiots," Kareem said. "I don't think they actually know what Pizza
Face means. Your face has been clear for a long time. I wonder if they think
you actually got pizza on your face once."
    "Probably,
but I didn't get the Hindu thing. That was new."
    "I think they
meant Muslim." Kareem looked about ready to lose himself to a fresh batch
of laughter.
    "That makes
sense. Sort of." Now Wyatt couldn't control himself, and more giggles
poured out, getting Kareem started again. What made it funnier was that Kareem
wasn't just a Christian, but one of the leaders of the teen group at his
church. Pretty much the whole school knew that — he'd been named after his
dad's favorite  old-time basketball star, Kareem Abdul Jabar, not for religious
reasons — but it was too much to hope for the Pigs to have picked up on it.
    Other than his
religion — or what the Pigs perceived it to be — they also picked on Kareem
because of his appearance. Not because he was black (though their taunts and
insults more often than not went there), but because he was as skinny and
scrawny as Wyatt. Both shared an awful lot of qualities with pre-spider bite
Peter Parker. Kareem was the same height as Wyatt, both five feet, eleven
inches — they'd measured each other two weeks ago so they could put their precise
stats into character creations for a video game — and kept his hair short,
almost buzzed off. 
    If the Pigs
weren't so big and mean, their stupidity might deserve some pity. He had no
idea how they kept their grades up enough to remain on the football team.
Though, now that he thought about it, all three had been held back twice, once
in junior high, and once as freshmen.
    "We ought to
see if Alex, Mandy, and Luci will let us hang out with them," Kareem said.
"I doubt the Pigs would bother us then."
    "Yeah,"
Wyatt said with a grin, but butterflies swarmed his stomach. There was no way
he'd survive that much time so close to Mandy. They'd never had a class
together, so he wasn't sure how he was going to