Parts & Labor Read Online Free PDF Page B

punch you over the Internet?"
    Dee rolled his eyes. "That's the whole point, you dope. You can't."
    Vic
grabbed Dee in a headlock. "Who you calling a dope, dope?"
    "Take
a pill, man!" Dee said.
    Sunny
stood and cupped her mouth and yelled, "Mrs. Nelson! Vic is bullying
us!"
    "You
better shut up, slant-eye!" Vic said.
    " Slant-eye? That's an ethnic hate crime!"
    "It's
a crime you hang out with these dorks."
    She
pointed at us. "Hey, I'd rather hang out with these dorks than the best
kids in school." She turned to us and shrugged. "That didn't come
out right."
    Mrs.
Nelson broke away from her conversation with the other teacher and started
their way, but she was taking her own sweet time, so Vic released Dee and emptied his lunch box and smashed his stuff, too, then he and his boys retreated to
their table by the door. Sunny sat down.
    "I
wish someone would beat the snot out of him," she said.
    It
was a universal hope at the elementary school.
    "I
talked to a sixth-grader," Dee said. "He said he'd protect us for
five dollars a week."
    Eddie's
face brightened. "That's a dollar and a quarter a week for each of us,
forty-five for the school year. That's a good deal."
    "Five
dollars each," Dee said.
    " Each? How much does that come to?" I asked.
    "One
eighty."
    "A
hundred and eighty dollars? There's no way."
    "Cheaper
than six hundred for new Legends," Eddie said.
    "I
don't think his services are retroactive," Dee said.
    "What
does that mean?" I asked.
    "It
means he can't protect you against your prior run-ins with the bullies, only
your future ones."
    "Well,
that sucks."
    "Dee, ask him to give us a group rate."
    "That
is his group rate."
    "We
can't afford that."
    "Survival
doesn't come cheap."
    "Maybe
we could buy the bullies off cheaper."
    "We're
gonna pay Vic to leave us alone?" Sunny said. "That's what my
parents had to do in Seoul, pay the street gangs so they could keep their
business open. That's why we moved to America."
    Eddie
shrugged. "It's a global economy."
    We
ate our lunch and brainstormed other ways to ensure our survival that school
year, but nothing sounded promising. I glanced around. The noisy cafeteria looked
like an Apple store. Kids were listening to music on their iPods and playing
games on their iTouches and texting and talking on their iPhones—in English,
Spanish, Swahili, Croatian, Australian—twenty-seven different languages were
spoken at our elementary school.
    "Place
sounds like the General Assembly at the U.N.," Sunny said.
    She
had actually been to the United Nations.
    "You
gonna eat the rest of your muffin?" I asked Dee.
    He
tossed the muffin to me. We finished our lunches and got up right before the
other students became rambunctious, as they always did by this time at lunch.
Half-eaten apples and banana peels and empty milk cartons suddenly flew through
the air from one side of the cafeteria; retaliation from the other side was
swift—someone yelled, "Fire the artillery!"—and wadded-up lunch bags,
a barrage of grapes, and muffins rained down on the aggressors. Sunny shook
her head.
    "Public
school in America."
    While
Mrs. Nelson and the other teacher tried to restore order to the cafeteria, we carefully
maneuvered along the wall to avoid becoming collateral damage as well as being
spotted by the bullies. We were almost to the door when Vic swiveled around in
his chair. He was grinning.
    "See
you in PE, Max."
    Four
balls hit me simultaneously, one right on the side of my head. I went down to
the gym floor.
    "Medic!"
    Man,
I really hated dodge ball. For three reasons: A, all the girls got picked for
the teams before I did—even Sunny, and she couldn't throw the ball worth a
darn. Two, Coach Slimes—his real name was Grimes, but we called him Slimes—was
a big fat jerk who'd had a mad on since first grade when he got stuck teaching
PE at the elementary school when all he wanted to do was coach football at the
middle school where he was an assistant coach. Consequently,