Once again, I’m the new kid in town. I’m the Californian. The teenager from the Golden State, where California Raisins danced, the Noid delivered pizza, and everyone either rode a Tony Hawk skateboard or surfed where they filmed The Lost Boys, at the Santa Cruz boardwalk. Everyone wanted to get to know me. The girls were fawning over the new skinny kid from the coast. Some of the guys wanted some of that California charm I brought from the shore. The rest of them wanted me gone, scared I might steal their girlfriends. I had lost weight from the Hong Kong trip, thinned out, and looked good for 16, almost 17. In Idaho, I passed for a pseudo pop star, even wearing jeans and a t-shirt. It wasn’t a stretch when you considered their fashion sense was two years old. Not that I knew fashion.

This California implant didn’t know what the heck rural meant. Rural meant cows, right? The only cows I ever saw were on my way to the Manteca water slides. Until that moment. One high school? Maybe 400 kids. K-12, all in the same building? Woah. Teenage culture shock. Again. On top of all the trauma. My emotional dysfunction and inability to cope with hard stuff multiplied to a new level. Like an eleven. So now I would have to deal with something else. New peer pressure in a new school. And pressure from the locals to not act like I spent the last ten years in California. Not act like a Californian? Fantastic.

We lived twenty-six miles north of Priest River Lamanna High School, up Highway 57, then two miles off the two-lane highway on Luby Bay Road, less than a mile from Hills Resort. Dad met the Hills somehow, the owners of the resort, who rented their guest house to us for a year. We moved just before Thanksgiving. And in 1988, northern Idaho got snow before Thanksgiving. Six inches the first day. Three feet before the end of the week. No one could remember the last time it snowed before Thanksgiving. Not exactly what a California teenager in button-fly Levi’s, an Ocean Pacific t-shirt, and a blue Levi’s jean jacket was ready for.

James and I had the routine down pat. Ride the bus? Not us. We were from California. We had Lori, Mom, take us whenever possible. We rode the bus a handful of times before this, watching Ray kick everyone out of his self-assigned rear seat. We didn’t have bullies like that at Valleyview Christian High School. Some of the kids on the bus were mean and cruel. So was the bus driver. She had a particular hatred for James, almost as much as my biological mother, Beverly, hated me. As for me, I had lost all patience with bullies. My trauma experiences had run their course. I was over it. All of it. If anyone tried anything? I was going to fight back.

His name was Ray. Big. Farm bred. He didn’t lift weights. He didn’t need to. He worked hard, like a good rural farm kid should. You could smell the timber and pulp mills in that part of Idaho. I’d bet Ray’s daddy worked at one of the mills, or drove a logging truck. That sounded like Ray’s world. He chewed tobacco. Pushed people around, including his girlfriend. Standing six foot three, he hovered over everyone, including his older brother. I never could remember his name.

His brother was stocky and built like Ray. Only smaller. He barely reached my shoulder. My guess is he could’ve taken out Ray. Easily. But I learned later that he didn’t like to fight. Jon, my baby brother, was almost as tall as Ray’s brother.

When we did ride the bus, Mom or Dad would pick us up at Highway 57. But this was the day they took a trip to Seattle for the weekend. We would have to walk home. But we didn’t know it was going to snow. Like blizzard type snow. I mean it was winter in the northern tip of Idaho, a few hours drive to Canada. And we didn’t have winter coats yet. Jon was the baby brother. The one forgotten. In Idaho, he was for sure. He hadn’t thought about what a real winter meant. Neither had James and I. That day we’d learn.

I was fed up with school. Failing Algebra II. My history teacher looked like a smaller Andre the Giant. Glasses. Receding hairline. Tubby in the way of a man who used to be an athlete. He was also the wrestling and football coach. Hadn’t won a game in four years. I had had enough. All I needed was one more kid to try to tell me what to do and I’d be ready to fight.

So Ray did what he always did at the bus. Stuck his arm out so he and his girlfriend could board first and take the back seat. That was it. I wasn’t going to let him push me around. I knocked his arm out of the way and yelled something at him. Not profanity. Not in public. Not in front of the bus driver who hated James. And I waited.

Ray’s older brother stepped between us.

“It’s not worth it,” he said, looking me in the eyes. His eyes said more than the words. He was watching out for me, a total stranger from California. His arm, thick and muscled, pressed into my chest. Ray got on. So did his girl. And his brother kept an eye on me, making sure I didn’t do anything stupid.

I fumed the whole way. James didn’t know. Or didn’t care. I wasn’t sure. He was angry and bitter too. Given half a chance, he’d probably take out the bus driver. Like it or not our trauma was taking its toll on us both.

They got off ten miles past our stop. It wasn’t until we stepped off the bus that I understood what northern Idaho cold actually meant. Wind chill. Snow blowing from every direction. An ice-covered gravel road stretching two miles toward home. Two hills, not small ones. Up and down, up and down. Hands, noses, and faces beet red. Ears going numb.

I used to joke about walking uphill both ways in the snow. James, Jon, and I actually did it.

But before any of that, a kid whose name I never learned pressed his arm into my chest and kept me from making the worst decision of my day.

I never thanked him.