Read Brutal Youth for Free Online Page A

boy,” The Big Texan said. “Too long, by half.”
    Moments later, the Porsche was roaring away into the sunset. Hi-yo, silver sportscar, away.
    “Who the hell was that?” the boy demanded.
    Davidek’s father walked out of the room, while Davidek’s mother explained, “That man was from the parish over at St. Michael’s. He thinks you’d be a good student there.”
    Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He’s been calling for weeks, ” she said. “He’s friends with your father.”
    “We’re not friends, ” Bill Davidek said, storming back into the room.
    The boy narrowed his eyes, not understanding. “But … I’m already signed up at Valley.” He looked back and forth between his mother and father. Neither one looked back at him.
    *   *   *
    That’s how, on the first day of his first year of high school, Peter Davidek found himself in the rain outside St. Michael the Archangel.
    He and his mother were fighting as she drove him into the parking lot. Not only was Davidek unhappy to be there, but his mother had also failed to buy him a standard uniform-regulation red tie. Instead, June had given him a hand-me-down clip-on from when Charlie was in grade school. “It’s basically the same,” she said.
    It was not the same. It was too short, and too fat, and the little silver clip stuck out at the top, poking into Davidek’s throat. It also hung crooked on his collar, no matter how much he fussed with it. “Please don’t make me wear this,” he said.
    “Everybody at St. Mike’s wears a tie,” she answered, checking her lipstick in the rearview mirror. Behind them, a yellow school bus pulled into the lot, and a cluster of similarly uniformed kids shuffled out, scurrying to the school as they opened umbrellas or held book bags over their heads. “See!” June said. “Those boys have red ties.”
    “Mom, this isn’t like those.”
    His mother pushed a button, unlocking the minivan doors. “Well, if you want a grown-up tie, start acting like a grown-up and we’ll see.”
    “Mom … pl—,” he said.
    “Do I have to repeat that for you? Do I?” This was what she always said to end an argument. If he kept fighting, she’d just keep saying it. She’d keep repeating it—not her original point, but that phrase: Do I need to repeat it for you? Do I need to repeat it for you?
    Davidek stepped out into the rainstorm. He reached up to his collar, clipped on the tie, and faced the school as his mother drove off, and prepared for the worst. The worst, however, was already prepared for him.

 
    TWO
     
    Lorelei Paskal awoke before her alarm on that same first day of the new school year. Her eyes opened wide in the dim light, and she listened to the rain hammering an irregular rhythm in the silence. She had seven minutes before the buzzer went off—a good omen. Lorelei sprang out of bed.
    The past two years had been deeply unhappy ones for the fifteen-year-old. They were supposed to be uncomplicated times, seventh and eighth grade—silly, even. Carefree. Hers had been filled with broken friendships, loneliess, loss, ridicule.… Lorelei knew it all sounded melodramatic and petty, which was why she never talked about it. Not that she had any friends to confide in anymore, and adults never wanted to hear about the heartaches of children. They tended to doubt there was any such thing.
    Across the shadowy room was a bulletin board, loaded with pictures of her old classmates from Burrell Middle School. They were smiling at her, many with funny little phrases written over their heads in word balloons painted with Wite-Out. Most of those girls had quit speaking to her long ago, but Lorelei never took their pictures down.
    Lorelei walked barefoot over to the bulletin board without turning on the light. Gray bands of dawn peeked through the blinds of her water-streaked bedroom window, casting bars on the pictures. On the floor beside her dresser was a metal wastebasket with a dent on one side and a