Free Lunch: List 4

When we came home, all the food was gone. Every last Cheerio, vanished. “Don’t bother looking for it in the dumpsters either,” Mom said with this real gloating smirk.

Mrs. Winstead squints her eyes at me, so I do it back at her.
I don’t back down when Mom or Sam glare at me. I’m not going to when some crotchety old Mrs. Winstead does it.

“Vagabond,” she repeats.
I’m so mad I want to throw my desk at her. I don’t though. I write down vagabond. I double-check to make sure I spell it exactly right.

She clears her throat, adding, “Loathe."

“Forsaken,” she says. She has to be doing this on purpose.

“I’m not a racist,” she says. “I am a devout Christian and attend church every Sunday. I have an open heart to all people, blacks, Asians, even Hispanics, like you—”

“I am a good person.” She pauses. “But you were right. I have shown...prejudice toward you. And I owe you an apology.”

There’s also a streetlamp just above, glaring off the windshield. I toss and turn all night, can’t sleep. When I finally get up, I have this horrible crick in my neck.

The apartment complex manager’s office looks like an abandoned church, and has the name Royce Court scrawled across in an old country-western font.

They pick up Ford and walk outside, nodding for me to follow as an afterthought.

The floodgates are open, and I can’t stop myself. It’s like I’m out of my body, and my body is screaming.

I can read her lips though. She’s saying she hates me too. She tells me to go to school, to get out of her sight. She looks like a rabid pit bull as she comes at me, barking and gnashing her teeth.

I can read her lips though. She’s saying she hates me too. She tells me to go to school, to get out of her sight. She looks like a rabid pit bull as she comes at me, barking and gnashing her teeth.

I get these all the time. But this time, she’s merciless and doesn’t let go.

These are the kinds of places where people buy gold watches and real paintings and jewelry and expensive clothes. One place sells these little crystal figurines for, like, hundreds of dollars apiece.

The old man writes an invoice, tears the yellow copy from the white-and-pink ones.

My brother loves chocolate milk. So do I. Especially the kind you have to make yourself. Mom won’t buy us the powder or the syrup, but Abuela does. Mom didn’t get it in the Thanksgiving purge. ’Cause I hid it behind a pipe. Today, I squirt the last of it into a glass.

“It’s not your fault,” I say on reflex. I’m not sure if I mean it, but I think it’s what she wants to hear.

“Liam told me you’re not playing football. Good for you. Ever since he started, his grades have been abysmal. I’m tempted to make him quit the team.”

Sam gets home an hour earlier than usual. He stinks of weed killer and fertilizer fumes, from the toxins he spent all day spraying on lawns. Thirty minutes later, he emerges from the bathroom a new man.

Inside, the restaurant feels even more authentic. Dragon murals are painted above on the ceilings.

I read my horoscope out loud, “Popular and attractive to the opposite sex. You are often ostentatious and impatient. You need people. Marry a Tiger or Dog early, but never a Rat.”

She grades my vocabulary quiz like everyone else. I make a 100. I missed one (aplomb, which means being cool when you’re actually stressed-out). But I got the bonus word (lexicon, which is another word for vocabulary).

She grades my vocabulary quiz like everyone else. I make a 100. I missed one (aplomb, which means being cool when you’re actually stressed-out). But I got the bonus word (lexicon, which is another word for vocabulary).

When the final bell of the day rings, I take my time. I always sorta linger in Mrs. McCallister’s art class.