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other to survive,” said Delores Scaturro.
    After successful surgery on his fractured skull, Noah Jackson, a senior at Carver High School, which Charles Scaturro also once attended, is now recuperating at home.
    Jackson, who has a pair of juvenile arrests on his record, admittedly was in Hillsboro with his companions to steal a car.

Chapter FOUR
    I’D MISSED A LITTLE MORE THAN TWO WEEKS of work at Mickey D’s. Then I found out from Deshawna that my father had given her a C-note to help take care of Destiny Love while I was in the hospital. He never said anything to me about it. And that was the first time he hadn’t flattened me with his mouth over helping out with money.
    â€œI wasn’t the one who had any of that bedroom fun , but I’m the one who’s got to pay,” Dad would say. “I’d have been happier to give you the money for condoms, son. It would have been cheaper.”
    But mad as my father would get, it all melted away any time he bounced Destiny Love on his lap.
    Deshawna went to Carver High, too. Only she’d dropped out of regular classes just before she had our baby, and was taking a GED class in the school’s basement, along with Asa. We weren’t planning on getting married or anything. At least I wasn’t.
    I still wasn’t 100 percent sold that I was in love with her, and other shorties were always catching my eye. But I knew for certain I was in love with my daughter, and that she’d always be a part of my life, no matter what.
    I’d been dating Deshawna for six months when she got pregnant.
    She never had a thought that she wouldn’t keep the baby. So there was nothing I could really say on the subject.
    Deshawna was scared to death to tell her dad and wanted me to be there with her.
    â€œI’ll break the news,” I said, acting confident. “I can handle it.”
    I even had the words laid out in my head from practicing them over and over— It’s not something Deshawna and me were planning, but it happened. She’s pregnant, and I’m the baby’s father. So I’m going to do what’s right—what a man’s gotta do.
    But when I looked Deshawna’s dad in the eye, I turned paralyzed with fear and couldn’t say a thing.
    Deshawna finally burst into tears, screaming, “I’m pregnant, Daddy! I’m sorry, but I’m pregnant!”
    Then she jumped into his arms. He was hugging her tight, grilling the shit out of me with his high beams tattooed onto mine. And I felt like less than half a man standing there alone.
    We didn’t even have to tell my family when we got to my place. Deshawna had been crying all day. So when they saw her red, swollen eyes and the two of us holding hands, they figured it out straight off.
    Mom and Grandma both blamed Deshawna, like she should have been ten times smarter about it than me.
    â€œGirl, don’t you know these boys only got one thing on their minds?” bristled Mom. “ You need to have the brains that they don’t!”
    I wanted to stick up for myself, but I didn’t.
    â€œA lesson too late for the learning, child,” Grandma told her, plain.
    But Dad was pissed at me , and knocked on my head with his knuckles like it was hollow inside.
    Â 
    My first Friday back at Mickey D’s, kids who worked there crowded around me, asking how I was. Maybe it was my imagination, but there were two white kids on the outside of that circle who looked like they couldn’t care less if I’d come back a cripple. Then the manager, a white dude named Gavin Munch, barked at everybody to get back to their stations.
    Munch was always a crab, acting like we were in the army, instead of serving up fast food. That’s because he was almost thirty years old, and this was his real job.
    â€œCan’t you cover that?” said Munch, pointing at the patch of stitches in my skull. “It’s the customers that are supposed