Kung Fu High School Read Free

to worthless. You were in or you were out. If you were in, expect some early morning dope runs before hockey practice. If you were out, you were fair game at all times. If you didn't know how to defend yourself, either leave or find someone who could watch your back 24-7. Impossible, right? Those were just a few unwritten regulations.
    Teachers there to protect you? Yeah, right. Nobody cared about the teachers. Either they were passionate believers in the power of teaching to change the disenchanted youth, who got in nice cars at the end of the day and went back to cookie-cutter houses in the suburbs, or they were deadbeats, ex-cons who slipped through the cracks without a background check. And all of 'em were on Ridley's payroll. Except for Mr. Wilkes, the chemistry teacher. He'd been there longer than anyone's oldest brothers and sisters can even remember.
    The Administration? That's a joke too. From what I hear, Principal Dermoody was the one who masterminded the restructured school lunch program so that Ridley could run his drugs out of the shipping trucks. In: frozen pizza, freeze-dried potatoes, and horseburger. Out: Champa, Spillback, Razorhead, Warped, Mixit, Agrenophene, Smoke, EX-O, Tapwap, and Giggledust.
    The cops didn't count either. Well, they counted, but different than you think. They caught a thick kickback on every shipment that went by the precincts. I'm talking percentages here. Probably in the realm of 12% and trust me when I say that they knew about every single shipment and how much it carried; they made sure to get their 12% on every ounce.
    Lawyers, judges, media? You aren't getting it yet, are you? Everyone was in on it. Everyone. It's no coincidence that old white dudes that used to be driving Cadillacs and Mercurys started driving Benzes and Beemers, and the rich fools that were driving Benzes and Beemers upgraded to Porsches and whatever else the next level was. If none of that connects the dots for you, believe this: Ridley even had regular dinners at the mayor's house as a welcome and invited guest. The poached salmon with garlic and herb sauce, that was his most favorite meal there.
    So, how could something so rock solid, so positively fuckin' entrenched go wrong? A complex, well-supported system like that couldn't possibly be wiped out in one day, could it? In a word, yes. But really, I can sum it up in two: Jimmy Chang. He was the rebel (if refusing to fight in a cauldron of fighters can be called that) when he came to Kung Fu HS halfway through my sophomore year and he wasn't any hero then. He was just my cousin.

UNINVITED GUEST
    The day Jimmy came, me and Dad were in the kitchen. He didn't knock. He just walked right in through the front door. It really was our fault that it wasn't locked. Didn't matter though. Jimmy didn't have time to say hello because Kyuzo caught him by the throat and slammed him against the near wall in the entryway, putting an imprint into the dirty old deco wallpaper. Dad and I didn't see it, but we heard it. More like we heard the breaking of the wooden wall-hanging my parents got in Germany all those years ago when they lived there. It was a carved likeness of some tiny city with a river through it, can't remember which, but in two pieces it was just a city on one side and a bridge and river on the other.
    Dad used to be in the Air Force and they were stationed there in Deutschland. Believe it or not, Kyuzo was born at Spangdahlem Air Base. I still call him a fuckin' nazi if I get mad enough, just to get under his skin. He's named after the swordsman character in
The Seven Samurai
because Dad loved that movie so much, but I just call him by his nickname, Cue. Because Kyu = Cue, or Cue Ball, on account of his shiny bald head. Dad loved Japan always. He used to be stationed there too, once.
    It's generally rare for any business to follow us home from Kung Fu, but it's happened before. I got up slow and brought two knives with me into the hallway but they were