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That ended the fight. He knew I didn’t want to go back to foster care.
4
The very next day my math teacher informed me I was flunking. That was bad enough, but not as bad as being assigned a tutor to save my grade, because my tutor turned out to be Amy Pouchard.
We met for thirty minutes after school, just me—Alfred Kropp—and Amy Pouchard, she of the long golden hair and dark eyes. Sitting right next to her I could smell her perfume.
“Where are you from?” she asked me in that twangy east Tennessee accent. “You talk funny.”
“Ohio,” I said.
“Are you a resource student?” Resource students were either mentally challenged or from a really bad background, or both. I guess some people would say I was both.
“No, I just suck at math.”
“Hey,” she said. “Kropp! You’re the guy who had his IQ tested!”
“Something like that.”
“And you broke Barry Lancaster’s wrist.”
“It isn’t broken and I didn’t actually do it. Somebody else did, but it was my fault, which I guess is practically the same thing.”
“I hate tutoring,” she said.
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because I get extra credit.”
“Well,” I said, “I really appreciate it. It’s hard for me— math, I mean—and it’s been hard too getting used to a new place, a new school, and things like that.”
She put a piece of gum in her mouth and the spearmint warred with the musk of her perfume.
“I’m going to a shrink,” I admitted, at the same time not really sure why I was admitting it. “Not that I want to go, but my uncle is making me. She’s about a thousand years old and she wanted to know if I had a girlfriend.”
She smacked her gum and stared at me. She couldn’t have cared less. She was tapping the end of her pencil on the desktop, and her whole being was in a state of couldn’t-care-less-ness.
“So I told her I didn’t . . . have a girlfriend. Because a new school is hard, um, in terms of meeting them. Girls. Plus the fact that I’m shy and I’m pretty self-conscious of my size.”
“You are pretty big,” she said around her wad of gum. “Maybe we better work on some problems.”
“Like, I was wondering,” I said, my mouth now so bonedry, I would have mugged her for a stick of her gum. “About your ideas on dating somebody my size.”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“I was just searching out your ideas, really.”
“Barry Lancaster.”
“Barry Lancaster is your boyfriend?”
She flipped her hair over her right shoulder and nodded, and the gum went click-click-click in her mouth.
“Some guys have all the luck,” I said, meaning Barry Lancaster and in a funny way, me too.
Uncle Farrell had to pick me up that afternoon, since I missed the bus. We drove straight to the driver’s license place and I took my test for the third time. This time I passed, missing four questions, one less than the maximum allowable. To celebrate, I drove us to IHOP for dinner. I ordered the Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity. Uncle Farrell had the patty melt. He was wearing his black uniform and wetting his lips more than usual.
“So, what have you decided, Alfred?”
