“Justin obviously hasn’t had time to start on his part yet,” Corrie said. “What have you got, Lee?”
Lee opened a folder on his desk and passed some pictures to Justin. Horror washed over him as he looked at people who were living skeletons, trenches heaped with bodies thrown haphazardly one atop another, and dead babies tossed in a ditch.
My part is about the death camps and concentration camps in Poland,” Lee said. “Concentration camps used the Jews as slave labor while slowly starving them to death. Death camps exterminated prisoners as soon as they arrived...”
Lee’s notes were filled with horrifying facts about what happened to the Jews in the camps. He seemed to have made an effort to emphasize the most gruesome details. As the pictures were passed around the group, a pall formed over them. Lee avoided looking at anyone as he read from his notes, and Justin wondered if he knew the effect his awful summary was having on the rest of them. His research was thorough, and he went on filling in details much longer than the others had. Before he finished, the bell rang. Students stood up and noisily shoved their desks back to the original locations.
“Lee, I need to talk to you,” Justin said. “Can I call you at home or meet you somewhere?”
“Just leave me alone,” Lee said without looking at Justin. “You’ll be better off.”
He shoved the folder inside his backpack, swung it to his shoulder, and walked away.
“Wait...” Justin called after him, but Lee was out the door and lost in the crowd.
Corrie picked up Justin’s backpack for him.
“You know, he wanted that topic,” she said. “It seems like he’s fascinated by horrible things like that. Maybe he gets some of his weird ideas from studying people like the Nazis.”
Chapter Nine
Justin wasn’t sure he was going to make it through his last class. His arm ached, and his chest and shoulder were sore from sitting up all day. It took all his concentration to sit still. Even his left hand hurt from trying to write with it. His handwriting looked like the marks his two-year-old cousin made when she was “writing” a letter. He shifted around in his desk trying to find a comfortable position, but there wasn’t one anymore. At last he raised his hand and asked his algebra teacher for a pass to the restroom.
Lingering as long as he dared in the quiet of the smelly room, he wondered why things had changed so much with Lee. It was hard to deny that before the incident in the river, Justin had ignored Lee. He hadn’t made any effort to make him feel welcome when he enrolled at Travis, and Justin didn’t think anyone else had, either. But Lee hadn’t seemed to want any friends. Before the trip to the YO Ranch, Justin hadn’t even bothered to learn Lee’s name. He vowed to change that now. Somehow he was going to make it clear to Lee that he wanted to be friends, whether it was the popular thing to do or not. In the haze of the awful events at the river, Justin had seen something admirable in Lee, a kind of toughness and determination that he wasn’t sure he could have duplicated if he had been in Lee’s place.
Alone in the quiet bathroom, he shook his head, disgusted with himself. He had to admit that for a moment, when he launched Pesadilla down the game trail in pursuit of Charlotte’s runaway mare, he had pictured himself as a hero. Charlotte claimed he had saved her life, but Justin knew better. Instead he had found heroism where he least expected to find it.
Walking wearily out the front door of the school that afternoon with Joel, Justin scanned the street in front for his mom’s car. He noticed a group of kids running across the lawn. In one corner of the schoolyard, a noisy crowd gathered.
“Fight...Fight...” someone yelled.
Justin couldn’t see who was in the middle of the crowd, but the teachers on duty in front of the building were hurrying in that direction. Coach Cox loped from the gym toward the scuffle.
“Wonder what’s going on?” Joel said.
“No telling. There’s my mom.” Justin started down the steps for the car.
Now the crowd was seething, and Coach Cox pushed his way through the circle of onlookers, scattering kids in his wake.
“What’s going on over there?” Justin’s mom asked as he lowered himself gently into the front seat.
“It’s a fight,” Joel answered for him. “Coach Cox went over there to break it up.”
Justin’s mom backed out into the street and crept along slowly beside the buses and waiting cars. As they neared the scene of the fight, Justin saw Coach Cox marching a dark-haired boy toward the office. It was Lee. Blood poured from his nose, and bits of grass and leaves stuck to his shirt.
“Wait, Mom, that’s Lee,” Justin said.
“I can’t stop here. There is a whole line of cars behind me.”
“Can you turn around and go back?”
Justin’s mom drove around the block, but by the time they reached the front of the school, Lee and Coach Cox were inside.
“Do you think I should go in and see what’s going on?” Justin asked. There was an edge of desperation in his voice.
“Do you know what the fight was about?” his mom asked.
“No. But everybody hates him. He gets blamed for everything bad that happens.”
Justin’s mom pulled over to the curb.
“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Justin said. “I’ve just got to try.”
“Okay, I’ll wait right here.”
Justin made his way to the office. The principal’s door was closed and he could hear voices inside. He could not hear Lee.
“Can I help you, dear?” the secretary asked.
“That’s my friend in there. Lee Boyd. Someone beat him up. I just wanted to see if I could help.”
“Did you see who beat him up?” the secretary asked.
“No, ma’am,” Justin admitted.
“Why don’t I just write your name down and give it to Coach Cox when he comes out? That way, if he wants to ask you any questions tomorrow he can call you in.”
Justin looked apprehensively at the closed office door.
“Uh...okay,” he said.
****
After supper, Justin waited until his parents were glued to the network news. Then he went into their bedroom and called Charlotte on the phone beside their bed.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Somebody beat Lee up after school today,” Justin told her. “I saw Coach Cox taking him to the office. His nose was bleeding, and they’d had him down on the ground.”
“Oh, man. I was afraid of that,” she said. “Do you know who did it?’
“No. I went back in, but by then they had him in the principal’s office with the door closed. The secretary wouldn’t let me go in there.”
“That bites,” Charlotte said. “Last week I kept hearing rumors that some boys from the YO Ranch trip were going to get him. They were mad because they had to ride home on the bus with the busted-out window. It rained and some of them got wet. I think they were mad because he didn’t get punished, too. I guess they thought they would be his judge and jury.”
“Charlotte, you’ve got to tell somebody about seeing Casey get off the bus right before it started to roll. Lee’s getting the blame for everything, and it’s not fair.”
Silence on the other end told Justin that she was thinking about it.
“You’re right,” she said finally. “I’ve known I would have to do it all along. I’ll tell Mrs. Farr before school tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Charlotte,” Justin said. “Maybe she won’t tell Casey who told her.”
“It won’t matter. Casey saw me watching her get off the bus. You haven’t been at school to notice, but Casey hasn’t said one nasty thing to me since that day. It’s been like an unwritten pact, I don’t tell, and she doesn’t torment me. Guess that will all end tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry, Charlotte. I hate to ask you to do this. Would you rather I told Mrs. Farr?”
“No way,” Charlotte said. “I need to do it.�
��
* * * *
Justin scanned the bleachers in the gym the next morning, but Lee wasn’t in his usual place. He couldn’t spot Charlotte either. Maybe she had gone straight to Mrs. Farr’s room. For the hundredth time he wished Charlotte didn’t have to say anything about seeing Casey on the bus. Casey would be sure to find a way to get even. Mrs. Farr might even be upset with Charlotte for keeping the information to herself for so long. He didn’t think so, though. Mrs. Farr was usually pretty fair-minded and would understand that it was a social death knell for kids in the ninth grade to rat on each other.
Lee was absent when Justin got to Mrs. Farr’s class later in the day. He imagined all kinds of horrifying scenarios—a broken nose or other injuries, suspension from school, the police getting involved. The principal sometimes called the police when a fight happened in their high school. The fighters were taken down to the police station, and their parents had to pick them up there. Justin knew that if his parents had to be called to pick him up at the police station, he would be in a world of trouble. And it might be worse if that happened to Lee and his parents were out of town, as Charlotte claimed they were most of the time. If that was true, someone might call Family Services, which could mean real trouble for Lee.
Justin had a hard time focusing on what the teacher was saying for the rest of the day. He kept picturing Lee’s face with the rain pouring off the bill of his baseball cap, as he helped Justin up the riverbank. His arm ached with remembered agony. Students shouldered past each other in the hall after the last bell rang, but Justin took his time heading for the front door. Through the crowd, he saw Charlotte hurrying ahead of him.
“Charlotte, wait,” he called.
She turned, searching the milling students for the voice that had called her name. When she spotted Justin, a momentary smile brightened her face. It left as quickly as it had appeared, and she moved to the side of the hall to wait for Justin to catch up.
“How’d it go with Mrs. Farr this morning?” Justin asked.
“I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. There was a parent in her room having a conference with her before school. She asked me what I wanted, but I couldn’t bring it up in front of anyone else. Now she has after-school duty by the buses, so I guess I’ll just try again tomorrow.”
“Where’s Lee? He was absent today. Have you heard anything about what happened?” Justin asked.
“Corrie told me that three of the boys from the YO Ranch trip followed him out of school. They were calling him names, ‘Buddha Boy’ and ‘Bamboo Coon’. He just kept walking, so they ran around and got in front of him. He didn’t have any choice but to fight.”
“Is he suspended?”
“Yeah. For three days. His parents have to bring him back after the suspension is over.”
“Didn’t anyone tell Coach Cox and the principal about the name-calling?”
“I don’t know. I think everyone who gets in a fight is suspended whether they started it or not.”
“I’m going over to his house and talk to him,” Justin said. “Which house does he live in?”
“It’s the third house on the right on Oakdale in the 1400 block, just past the Stop sign. You’ll know which one it is. The grass never gets mowed.”
* * * *
Justin’s mom dropped him in front of Lee’s house on her way to the grocery store. It was the only neglected house on the block in a neighborhood of neatly manicured lawns and colorful flower beds.
“I’ll wait until you find out if someone’s home,” his mom said. “It looks like they’re on vacation or something.”
The blinds on the windows were closed tightly, but when Justin got to the door he could hear the sound of a television in one of the back rooms. He rang the bell and waited, glancing back at his mom parked in the street. A couple of awkward minutes passed. Justin rang the bell again, longer this time, and then knocked on the door loudly.
“Lee,” he called. “It’s me, Justin. I need to talk to you.”
The sound of the television went off, and Justin thought he could sense movement inside. Finally he heard the click of locks turning and the door opened a few inches. Lee peered out from the shadows.
“What do you want?”
Justin turned and waved at his mom. She returned his wave and drove off.
“I just want to talk to you,” Justin said. “I heard that you were in a fight and got suspended.”
“It was more like a massacre. Three guys on one.” Lee opened the door a little wider, and Justin saw that one eye was turning black and there were cuts on his face beside his nose and on his upper lip. The lip was swollen and raw.
“Can I come in?” Justin asked. “I just want to talk. You saved my life, man. I hate it that those guys are giving you grief.”
“You’d be better off if you just went home,” Lee said.
“I can’t. My mom left me here and went to the grocery store. She’ll be back to pick me up in half an hour or so.”
Lee seemed to be mulling it over. He opened the door a little wider.
“Come into my palace,” he said, waving his arm toward the inside of the house.
Justin passed through an entry and into a large room with sliding glass doors that led onto a patio. The room had a large leather couch and a television, but no other furniture. A TV tray held a used paper plate and an empty glass.
“My parents are out of town.” Lee said, following Justin into the room.
“Are you here by yourself?” Justin asked.
“Yeah. I live by myself mostly. My parents travel a lot.”
“Aren’t you scared to be here alone?”
“No. I’ve been staying by myself for years. Hired sitters snoop into things that aren’t their business.”
“That’s cool...I guess. What do you eat? Does your mom leave stuff for you?”
Lee led the way toward a dark kitchen. No pots and pans or appliances littered the work surface. There was none of the clutter of cookie boxes and bags of chips that were an ever-changing part of the kitchen counter at Justin’s house. Opening the freezer door, Lee gestured toward a stack of frozen dinners.
“She leaves me some real banquets,” he said, bitterness creeping into his voice. “Want something?”
“No, thanks. I already ate,” Justin lied, sitting down on a bar stool at the kitchen counter.
An uneasy silence descended as Justin tried to figure out what to say. Lee watched him from beneath his uncombed black hair. Finally, to break the silence, he opened the refrigerator and handed Justin a can of soda. The refrigerator held two boxes of sodas and a half-empty gallon jug of chocolate milk.
“Maybe you could come and eat dinner at my house,” Justin offered. “My mom always cooks too much.”
“I have to stay here except for school,” Lee said. “They call to check on me.”
“That stinks,” Justin said. “You can’t even go anywhere with your friends?” The words were out before he could stop them.
A small puff of air escaped Lee’s lips. “What friends?” he said.
“Like me,” Justin said.
“Yeah? Well, we won’t be friends for long. We’re leaving this weekend.”
“Leaving? Like in moving away?”
“Yep. We never stay anyplace very long.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s how it is. My parents don’t have regular jobs like most people. They work with computers, and after they’ve been in one place awhile, they have to move on. It works better if I don’t have friends.”
“Oh,” Justin said, although he really didn’t understand. “Since they have to travel anyway, couldn’t they just leave you here?”
“Nope. They tried that before. After a while the neighbors get nosy.”
“Nosy about what?”
“Look,” Lee said. “I’m not supposed to talk about what my parents do. I don’t really know what they do myself. At least not for sure. It has something to do with computer scams. I
think they get credit card numbers or something and buy stuff with them. They work out of hotel rooms to make it hard to trace them. It’s okay for a while, but then someone gets too curious, and they have to start again somewhere else. That’s just how it is.” He looked pensive for a moment. “I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. If you tell anyone, they’ll get arrested.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Justin said.
“You can’t tell. If they get arrested, I’ll be sent to a foster home, or back to Korea to live with my grandfather.”
“You don’t want to go back to Korea?”
“No. My grandfather lives in North Korea. It’s a Communist country. Nobody has any freedom. Besides, he’s so poor he can hardly take care of himself.”
“Can’t your parents help him? Maybe he could come over here,” Justin said. “Then he could stay with you while your parents are out of town.”
“I tried to get them to do that once. I love my grandfather. I stayed with him one summer when I was five or six. But I don’t think my parents want him to come over here. He might ask too many questions. And the part of Korea where he lives is, like, really primitive. He wouldn’t know the first thing about how to get along in America.”
“He could learn. You could teach him,” Justin said.
“I don’t think my parents would be doing him a favor by bringing him here. He’s a little, wrinkled old man who speaks no English. And he looks funny...even more Korean than I do. People would make fun of him, just like they make fun of me. I couldn’t stand hearing somebody call him ‘Bamboo Coon.’”
Justin thought he saw hurt surface in Lee’s eyes.
“Yeah. People can be pretty nasty,” Justin agreed.
“At least here I can do stuff I want to do. My parents make good money, and they buy stuff for me. I have a horse at the stable north of town. Whenever we move, my dad hires somebody to move her, too. That’s how I learned to ride.”
“Can I see your horse?”
“When? By next weekend, we’ll be gone.”
“Well, just tell me about her then.”
For the first time, Lee’s eyes looked warm as he described the black mare his parents bought him for his eighth birthday. Justin told Lee about his father’s two horses, Twister and Camaro. The conversation flowed easily as long as they kept to the subject of horses.
Speak of the Tiger Page 9