Who's 'Bout to Bounce? Read Free Page A

United Nations. There’s Arba for one, and Topwe for another. Then there’s my four-year-old brother, Corky, who is part Mexican and part Bajin. (Bajin is what you call people from Barbados, which is in the British West Indies.)
    Corky is really cute, and he has the most beautiful greenish-gray eyes you’ve ever seen. His father is fighting with Child Welfare, trying to get him back. I hope he doesn’t. I don’t want Corky to leave.
    I know kids are supposed to live with their families, but I feel like Corky’s
my
family, too—I mean, he’s been here practically his whole life! What’s his father know about him, anyway?
    See, sometimes the kids in our house go back to their real parents. Once in a blue moon, they even get adopted by new families, who are looking for a child to love. Nobody has ever tried to adopt
me
, though.
    Sometimes I cry about that—nobody wanting me. See, most parents who adopt want little kids, and by the time I got to Mrs. Bosco’s, I was already too old—almost five. So yeah, it hurts when one of my brothers or sisters gets adopted and I don’t. But I feel glad to have a place to live anyway. It could be worse—I could be out on the street, like a lot of other people. Like Can Man …
    Besides, we may not have much, but life is pretty good here. We all stick up for each other when the chips are down. And Mrs. Bosco loves us all—she just doesn’t let herself show it very often. I guess it’s because that way, it won’t hurt so much when the caseworkers take one of her kids away.
    Even in the lobby, I can tell that somebody upstairs is cooking fried chicken. I
love
fried chicken—with collard greens, potato salad, and corn bread. That’s the bomb meal.
    We call where we live the “Corn Bread Projects” since, when you walk down the hallway, you can smell all the different kinds of food people are cooking in their apartments.
    That’s actually better than the elevators, which sometimes smell like
eau de pee pee
. When the elevator door closes now, I get a whiff of some nasty smell. I hold my breath the whole ride up.
    Everybody says the Cornwall Projects are dangerous, but nobody bothers us around here. That’s because my foster father, Mr. Bosco, is
really
big, and he wears a uniform to work—plus he has a nightstick he says is for “clubbing knuckleheads.”
    He is a security guard who works the night shift, so he sleeps during the day. Most of us kids don’t see him much, but he is really nice. He laughs like a big grizzly bear. Both times I got skipped in school, he gave me five dollars and said, “I’ll- give you five dollars every time you get skipped again!”

Chapter
3
    As soon as I open the front door of the apartment, Twinkie jumps out from the corner. That’s the game we play every day.
    “Hey, Twinkie!” I say to my favorite sister, who is nine years old. Her real name is Rita, but we call her Twinkie, because she has blond fuzzy hair, and fat, yummy cheeks.
    “Don’t call me Twinkie anymore!” she announces to me, shuffling the deck of Pokémon cards she has in her hands. Twinkie grabs my hand, and pulls me down the hallway to the kitchen. Everybody else has eaten already, but Mrs. Bosco always puts my food in the oven, covered in a piece of tinfoil. All the kids know they’d better not touch it, either.
    “I have to whisper something in your ear,” Twinkie says, pulling me down so she can reach.
    “Okay,” I say, hugging her real tight. Twinkie has lived with us for nineteen months, and we are really close—she will always be my sister forever, no matter what.
    “You have to call me Butterfly now,” Twinkie tells me, and her blue eyes get very big, like saucers.
    “Okay, Cheetah Rita Butterfly!” I giggle, then tickle her stomach, which I know sends her into hysterics.
    “Stop!” she screams. “You big Cheetah monkey!”
    “What’s a Cheetah monkey, Cheetah Rita Butterfly?” I ask, poking her stomach some more. “Tell me, tell me, or