Read The Last Chance Texaco for Free Online

Leon said to me, "He's an asshole."
     
    "Yeah, well, he's also the principal," I said.
     
    "You want me to pick you up after school?" he said.
     
    "No," I said. "I'll figure out the bus."
     
    Leon left after that. The bookstore was closed, but the receptionist in the principal's office had given me a locker number, so I made my way there. I still didn't have any textbooks, and I didn't have anything to do in the five minutes before my first class. So I just stood there at my locker rearranging the stuff in my backpack. I also thought about that stupid little cabin in the mountains, the one from
Heidi
. I wasn't an idiot--I knew it wasn't real and that I wouldn't ever actually live anywhere like it. But sometimes it made me feel better just to think about it.
     
    Suddenly, I noticed this girl staring at me from a couple of lockers over. It wasn't the new-kid stare. It was the group home stare. Classes hadn't even started yet, and somehow word had already gotten out about me. That had to be some kind of record. I figured it was the rich-kid factor.
     
    "What are you lookin at?" I said to the girl.
     
    "Nothing," she said, turning away. But as I was watching her, I spotted Joy and Melanie pointing at me from way down the hallway. They were talking to a couple of other kids and laughing. So they were the ones spreading the news about me. Yeah, it was perverse that Joy was from a group home, and here she was trying to single me out for the very same thing. But it was that whole pecking-order thing going on, with Joy trying to establish that she was top-of-the- coop.
     
    I did my best to turn my back on Joy and Melanie in disgust, but as I did, I bumped into this girl--one of the rich gold-jewelry types with a perfect tan and hair that had been dyed a very expensive red. She smelled like chocolate-flavored bidis.
     
    Hey!" she said. "Watch it!"
     
    But I'd jostled her, and the books in her arms spilled to the ground.
     
    "Oh," I said. "Sorry." I bent down to help her pick up her books, but that seemed to make things worse.
     
    "Jesus!" she said. "Don't touch me!"
     
    I hadn't touched her, I'd touched her books, and just barely at that, but I backed off anyway.
     
    "You okay, Alicia?" said another voice, from a guy with windblown hair and a mouthful of snow-white teeth. He had to be her boyfriend, ordered directly from the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.
     
    "The groupie deliberately hit my books!" the girl--Alicia--said. So they called us "groupies" at this school too. Couldn't anyone ever think up a more original name? "Grouper," maybe--like the fish?
     
    "It was an accident," I said to the guy with the hair and the teeth.
     
    "Well, I think you should apologize," he said.
     
    I'd already apologized once. Suddenly, it seemed like I was being asked to apologize for living in a damn group home.
     
    "I already said I was sorry."
     
    The guy looked at me with a stare that would have frozen antifreeze. "You the new groupie, huh?"
     
    "Yeah," I said. "So?"
     
    "So no one wants you here. Why don't you go back where you came from?"
     
    I can't go back, I wanted to say. That was the thing about living in a group home. There was nowhere for me to go but forward.
     
    "He took a tiny step closer, just barely noticeable, but suddenly I could smell his aftershave--no doubt something like Domination for Men by Calvin Klein. I'd smelled that scent before.
     
    "Just stay out of my way," he whispered, black ice for eyes. "You don't want me for an enemy."
     
    I didn't say anything. I'd long since learned there wasn't anything you could say to a threat. But I wasn't about to look away either.
     
    "Nate, look at this!" Alicia said to the guy, holding up one of her books. "She bent my
To Kill a Mockingbird
!"
     
    He turned to her. "Let's just get out of here," he said, and I watched them go. They were the perfect couple, I thought to myself. Fire and Ice.
     
    They disappeared into the crowded hallway, but even after they were