The Children and the Wolves Read Free Page A

Sometimes people invite us in and feed us. Like grilled cheeses and microwave burritos. If that happens I take their salt and pepper shakers. I keep them in a pillowcase in my room at home.
    You’re a good thief, Bounce will say.
    I’m in love with her. We don’t do nothing yet but sometimes she lets me put my hand on her beautiful round stomach.
    Let me have some, I’ll plead.
You beg like a dog, she’ll say.
    She don’t care that Lyde does me.
    It’s for the greater good, she’ll say. You’re taking one for the team. You’re crewing for the crew.

I know the good people of Dumas think I’m peculiar because my crew consists of a pair of poor, dirty, irresponsible, scholastically retarded, pubescently challenged seventh-grade loner chuckleheads. Tom Toomer Junior High School is made up of rich kids and poor kids. There’s not much in between. I happen to have been brought into this world by a set of parents who are supernaturally wealthy thanks to their accelerated ascent up the pharmaceutical conglomerate they both work for and now actually own shares of. I’m not supposed to take interest in the unlucky or the disposable members of my peer group. Then again, I’m not supposed to be doing most of the things I do.
    We watched this film in advanced natural sciences featuring a herd of migrating wildebeests attempting to cross a river in the Sudan. A congregation of crocodiles came heaving up out of the water and slaughtered a third of the herd. You could see the bodies of several wildebeests being severed in half by the deadly crocodile jaws. It was impressive to say the least. The biomechanics of it. Mr. Flint was teaching us about the brutality of natural selection and the instinct to survive.
    I see Wiggins and Orange as two lost wildebeests — two of the unlucky ones — and I’m just trying to help them get to the other side of the river.
    I’m their river guard.
    Big momma River Guard.
    I met the chuckleheads in detention.
    The detention supervisor, Mrs. Slakeberry, had to use the washroom and put me in charge of the room because she was aware of my startlingly high grade-point average. Wiggins, Orange, and I were the only ones in detention that day. Wiggins was pretending to be studying his language arts textbook and Orange was slumped so low in his desk chair it was like he lost his ass in a car accident.
    I’m in charge, I told them.
    They didn’t say anything in response because my commanding reputation obviously preceded me.
    After a minute, I asked them, Do you know each other?
Orange said, I don’t know that fag.
    Wiggins wouldn’t say anything, the stubborn little beauty. He was wearing a Chicago Bulls T-shirt and his big hazel eyes looked heavenly.
    Why are you in detention? I asked him.
’Cause I missed the bus, Wiggins replied.
    I asked him how he got to school and he told me he walked.
    How far? I asked.
I don’t know, he said. Far.
Where do you live?
He said, In a apartment.
I said,
An
apartment. Why’d you miss the bus?
He replied, ’Cause my mom forgot to wake me up.
Don’t you have an alarm clock?
No, he said.
Here, I said, come here.
    He walked over to me and I gave him my Timex Ironman Global Trainer GPS watch.
    He took it and looked at it like it was the heart of a lion cub beating in his hand.
    Don’t be late anymore, I said.
    He didn’t even say thanks because he was too amazed.
    Wiggins still wears the watch. He hates to get it dirty. I don’t think he’s ever taken it off.
    Then I asked Orange why he was in detention and he said how he punched Sarah Margin after she narked on him for trying to copy her multiple-choice pop quiz about the French Revolution.
    Let them eat cake, I said.
He had no idea what I was referring to and made a face like he’d swallowed a fork.
Eighteenth-century bullshit, I added. Where’d you punch her? I asked.
In the stomach, he replied.
In class?
At the water fountain.
You like punching girls? I asked.
He said, I don’t give a four-legged