He saved his sister’s life.

I had more than one bully, but Matt was the worst. I don’t know exactly why he singled me out, but I suspect he saw me as an easy target, a short kid who posed no threat & could serve as a quick path to popularity. Boys think like that in middle school.

Even by those standards, Matt was an asshole. It was his reputation before, during, & after the day he beat the shit out of me: a spoiled rich kid whose daddy handed him everything he wanted.

The fight stemmed from a lame joke I’d told on the school bus a few weeks earlier. He’d laughed along at the time, but on this particular day he decided it would be fun to turn it around on me & humiliate me in front of the closest thing I had to friends.

He got in my face during the first few minutes of homeroom, while our teacher was still sucking down his morning coffee in the faculty lounge. Matt taunted me, called me a pussy, begged me to throw a punch. We both knew what would happen if I did.

But we were surrounded by a classroom full of pubescent sharks who smelled blood. Their money was obviously on him, but I knew they’d never let me live it down if I walked away. By the rules of junior high, I had no choice.

So I punched him in the stomach. It didn’t land. He pinned me to the floor in less than 10 seconds & pummeled me with a smile on his face. It was a look that haunted me for years afterward: the vacant stare of a young sociopath.

A decade later, a close friend confirmed exactly what I thought I’d seen that day. Matt, he said, had “dead eyes” when he laid me out in front of two dozen classmates. There was something missing in him, some part of a soul that clearly wasn’t there.

I made it through the rest of the day without crying, a nightmare scenario that would’ve done even more damage than a one-sided beating. But I also considered suicide for the first time (not the last).

A few weeks later, Matt cornered me in the hallway & quietly reminded me he could kick my ass again anytime he felt like it. He had the same empty look in his eyes, & I knew I was in the presence of evil.

Or so I told myself.

It’s hard to forget the names of our childhood tormentors, & it’s downright impossible not to Google them. When I finally worked up the nerve to plug his name into my laptop a few years ago, the very first hit was an article from a small-town newspaper. It knocked the wind out of me.

Matt, my bully, the monster who had forever deflated my self-esteem & wrecked my sense of self-worth, had just donated a kidney to his younger sister. She would’ve died without it.

I’ve known more than my share of narcissists, sociopaths, & soulless cretins, but I have yet to meet one who would willingly surrender a vital organ to another human being — stranger, friend, or family. Matt did just that. And he told the newspaper it was the happiest day of his life.

So you never can tell.