Burn Read Online Free Page B

how much he hates this school. His hate is a steady roar that fills his ears. He can’t think beyond it, and so he just moves with everyone else.
    “Hey! Grady!”
    Cameron feels his name tug at his consciousness and turns toward it. And looks down. Pinon, the only guy smaller than Cameron at Madison High. The only guy lower on the food chain. Even Cameron doesn’t like him — stands as far away from him as possible in PE class, hoping they won’t be paired up for play. Same thing in Spanish class. Even when the teacher does group them together, Cameron refuses to move his desk, to look at Pinon, or even speak to him. And it’s not just because Pinon is a crybaby, tearing up every time the Red Coats pick on him. It’s because Pinon is the real boy-girl on campus. Or maybe all girl.
    “What did they do to you?” Pinon asks.
    The little guy is bouncing on his toes, like one of those yippy lap dogs.
    “Did they hit you?” he asks.
    Cameron wants to swat him. He gets a picture in his mind of Pinon, smashed against the wall, oozing blood and guts, and smiles. He used to feel bad for the guy, with the two of them being the favorite targets of the jock squad. But that’s all they have in common. Pinon tucks himself into a tight little ball when the Red Coats fall on him. They bat him around a little bit and he cries.
    Cameron stops and looks at Pinon, his thin face, his white-white skin and nervous fingers picking at his shirt buttons. He digs around inside himself for a little compassion and comes up empty.
    “I was just the warm-up. You’re the real show, Pinon.”
    Cameron pushes away from him and starts looking at room numbers. Another tardy will lower his grade; he can’t afford that.

MONDAY
    9:05AM
    The only part of history Cameron likes is the battles. Not just the ones on the pages of their textbook, but the daily scrimmages Mr. Hart, their teacher, has with Eddie Fain. The boy is disturbed and is in a special room for the rest of the school day. Cameron takes his chair, two rows over from Eddie, and watches him drill a straightened paperclip into the desktop. Mr. Hart is watching, too. When the bell rings, he asks, “Mr. Fain, do you plan to pay for that desk?”
    “My father could. He could buy and sell you, too.”
    He keeps drilling. Last week, Eddie tore the pages out of his textbook, one at a time, for about ten minutes before Mr. Hart asked him if he was going to buy that, too. You have to pace yourself with Eddie. Let him burn off some steam before you pounce on him. Otherwise, he’s scary.
    Cameron watched him pin a senior to a wall and keep him there with his elbow pressed over the guy’s throat while he turned red, then blue, and squirmed like a mouse in the mouth of a cat. And that was Eddie’s reaction to being told he didn’t belong in senior hall — to get out before they moved him out. Eddie wasn’t ready to move.
    Mr. Hart is still working on his timing. He doesn’t have it down yet, just how long Eddie needs before he can be approached. Hart pulls out the tab he keeps on Eddie. He reads it aloud.
    “One plastic student chair — make sure your father gets that in blue; a dry eraser; two dozen dry erase markers; the window we replaced in October; two textbooks; a yardstick; and now a desktop. That brings your total to about four hundred dollars.”
    While Mr. Hart is reading the list, Eddie blows the mound of sawdust from his desktop and begins twisting the piece of metal into the palm of his hand. He draws blood quickly and lets it pool on the desk.
    “You’ll own this school before long,” Mr. Hart says and looks up from his list. “Damn.”
    Cameron thinks,
What did Hart expect?
Eddie’s father is in prison and any time anyone mentions him Eddie self-destructs. But this is the first time Cameron sees Eddie inflict physical pain on himself.
    “You’re going to the nurse, young man, and then straight to the vice principal.”
    Mr. Hart pulls a pass out of a desk drawer and