Muchacho Read Online Free Page B

Rosablanca High called Harvey’s parents and told them that they should be so proud of their son for being number two. Now he’s the studitorian or some lame title like that. Even though everybody knows Harvey is
número uno
and he has the highest GPA, it doesn’t count because he was in ESL for a year and ESL credits don’t count the same as regular classes. So they took away being the valedictorian. Harvey’s mothercalled up my mother and told her all about it and I thought,
Híjole! Watch out!
because now Harvey is going to let them have it—but the next day he just walked around the neighborhood like normal. He didn’t even act like he was pissed.
    Henry Dominguez asked Harvey was he going to sue the school and Harvey just laughed and said, “It’s just high school. It doesn’t really matter.”
    That’s the real difference between Harvey and me. Things don’t matter to him like they do to me. I would of burned down the school or at least tore a toilet off the wall in the bathroom. But that’s why I’m in the alt school and Harvey Castro isn’t even though I used to get straight A’s before I started being a juvenile delinquent. Harvey’s parents are poor just like mine, and he’s the oldest kid just like me, and he’s Catholic and his father kicks his ass just like Papi does mine, so how come Harvey’s so cool and I’m so hot? How come he just walks away from fights and does his homework and gets a college scholarship and I flunk biology and attract fights like mosquitoes on a summer night? Is it in my genes? Or did my parents do something wrong? Or am I just who I am by accident?
    I used to think I was messed up because of being a sex offender in the second grade. I wasn’t really a sex offender but that’s what the school labeled me after I kicked my teacher in the crotch. I didn’t mean to kick her in the crotch, neither. I was just trying to get her to let go of my ear. She was this real mean little teacher who used to twist the boys’ ears all thetime, anytime we did even the littlest thing wrong, and sometimes when we didn’t even do nothing. She would just grab your ear and twist it until it felt like she was ripping it right off your head and we would all cry, even T.J. Ritchie, because it hurt real bad. And this one day, I had a ear infection and I even had a note from my mother saying I shouldn’t have to take gym class and that teacher knew I had a ear infection but she twisted my ear anyway. I yelled at her to stop but she wouldn’t. And I tried to hit her but my arms were too short. She just held her arm out straight and practically picked me up off the floor by my ear. So I kicked her. I wasn’t aiming at any special place. I just kicked and my foot went right between her legs.
    It was a total accident. I didn’t even know where I kicked her. I was just glad she finally let go of my ear. But the next thing you know, they had the security guards and the police and the psychologist and the nurse and everybody all interrogating me and asking me questions. I can’t even remember what they asked me because my ear hurt so much that mostly I just nodded my head because I didn’t want to say anything because then I would start crying like a little baby in front of all those people.
    They put me out of school for a week and when I came back all the kids acted like I was Rambo or something. T.J. Ritchie said I was a real badass and I thought that was so cool, so I pretended like I meant to kick that teacher. And I said I would kick her again if she came near me, so they put me inanother teacher’s room and I could tell right away that she was afraid of me and I thought, How cool is that, a teacher being afraid of you when you’re only seven years old. So every time she looked at me, I messed up my face and tried to look like a real mean badass.
    After that, they started sending me to talk to this lady in a suit every Friday when we were supposed to have recess and she asked me to draw