They called him Snaggle. No one ever wondered why. It was one of those nicknames that explained itself. All they had to do to arrive at the name was look at the awkward child. When he didn’t smile, it was barely noticeable, unless of course you knew to look for it. But when he did feel brave enough to show the pearly whites, which for him were obviously misnamed, that one front tooth protruded out in a way that made it seem as if the tooth were trying to escape the boy’s mouth. That lone tooth was a peninsula, jutting away from the otherwise smoothly constructed stained border into the sea of mockery that constantly surrounded him. All because of a tooth.

When they wanted to save a breath, they simply called him Snags. The name seemed almost affectionate, or at least it would have been had he been a canine. But he had not been that lucky in birth. The boy they called Snaggle was unfortunately born a boy, and the boy had grown up with two names; the one, Stephen, was given to him by his parents because they thought he had looked like a Stephen when he emerged from the womb, but that name was seldom used. Perhaps he had just grown out of it. In fact, many of his classmates knew not that he actually went by something other than Snaggle or some variation.

Snaggle, who called himself Steve, did not fully acknowledge himself as Snaggle. As with most nicknames of the insulting variety, the bearer of the name had no real knowledge that it was his name because the name was simply not used in front of his pale and freckled face, which the children would have made fun of had it not been for the tooth. He certainly was aware of the unusual protrusion in his mouth that none of his friends or peers possessed. But people find ways to overlook even their most unsightly flaws. Years of being told by his parents that his special tooth was a valuable asset, a gift from God, allowed him to look at his smile as something it wasn’t. The special tooth made his face look more prominent, they had always told him, and since he had never known his parents to lie, he grew into his clumsy stature always believing his face to be a prominent one.

Snaggle’s classmates found the tooth special as well, seeing it as a good device for opening bottles and cracking nuts. Rarely did they actually ask him to do these things, and when they did, it seemed as if Snags thought they were doing it because they thought he possessed special talents that they lacked. Thus illustrates the amazing nature found in the ignorance of positive thinking.

But alas, no matter the veneer, one always knows deep inside the truth of a situation, and it only takes so much before that buried feeling surfaces. For Snaggle one day in his final year of high school, that feeling rushed up to the surface so quickly that he had to grasp frantically for his breath to save himself from suffocating.

It all started with a simple joke. Gym class, where many crimes of mockery occur, was the setting. Basketball was the sport, a sport at which the clumsy lad did not excel. When the overweight walrus let the ball slip through his hands for the third time during the game, the ball’s passer cried out at him, “Hey, try snagging the ball for once.” This cry, which had put a special emphasis on that one word snagging, was followed by an explosion of laughter by all of the straight-toothed participants on the court.

It did not occur at first to Snags that a pun had been used. Stephen felt as if only his ball skills were being criticized, and so the now beat red blusher clapped his hands together and sought to better focus himself in order to prove that he could play this game. But the boy could not.

Steve failed to snag the next ball that came his way as well, this time bouncing off the backboard before bouncing off his clumsily oversized hands. Again, his teammate cried out to him, this time in a sneer, “C’mon now. You of all people should be able to snag the damn ball.”

Again laughter erupted through the gym, this time echoing loudly off the wooden floors and bleachers. When the echo bounced off the floors and bleachers back to Steve from all directions, something suddenly clicked in his mind. It was as if the echo were his friend and finally wanted to reveal the truth to the boy who had been mocked behind his tooth for years. The echo may have sounded like laughter to the other players, but to Steve it said, They’re making fun of your tooth.

The click did not put Steve at ease; rather, it started a chain reaction that turned him from Snaggle to Snapple. It was a gut instinct. He did the very first thing he could think of. He flung the ball he had retrieved to the floor and sprinted toward the cocky bastard that had sent the echo into motion. Without a word but merely a grunt, he lunged forward, falling to the floor right at the feet of his insulter. In a final desperate move, he lurched onward his head and grasped the boy’s leg with that lone protrusion, creating a vicious bite that would make any breed of snake envious. The boy tried to shake free through violent jerks, but Steve would not let go of the boy he had finally snagged, his special mark now left forever.

BIO: Nathaniel Tower, chief editor of Bartleby Snopes, is a writer of fiction and teacher of English. He has stories published or forthcoming in Inscribed~A Magazine for Writes, Cantaraville, Darkest Before Dawn, Pens on Fire, and Cynic Magazine. He lives in St. Louis, MO with his wife.