Read Online Black Boy White School by Brian F. Walker - Free Book Online

talk about it. Mr. Hawley breezed in and dropped his briefcase on his desk, pulled the cap off a dry-erase marker, and wrote WHY? across the whiteboard.
    Immediately a dozen hands flew up. And although they each expressed it in a dozen different ways, every kid agreed that racism had made the man kill.
    â€œInteresting . . .” Mr. Hawley stopped behind Brody and put a hand on his shoulder. “Is that what you think, too?”
    Brody shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
    Mr. Hawley glared. “You guess?”
    â€œI mean, yes,” Brody said, straightening up. “If you think about the time period, the place of African Americans on the social ladder, the way the white people mistreated and disrespected him in the story, it makes perfect sense that he would get fed up and go postal.”
    â€œImpressive,” Hawley said, and moved on. Anthony agreed and stared at his roommate, who sat in a sudden patch of sunlight that came in through the window.
    â€œAnyone disagree?” Hawley asked. No one raised a hand.
    â€œWhat about the Bible?” Hawley continued, and started moving again. This time he stopped directly behind Anthony. “Why did the author make the Bible so significant to the killer?”
    The hands on his shoulders made Anthony jump. Hawley was looking down at him and benevolently smiling. “What about you, Mr. Jones? Anything to add?”
    Everyone turned to look at him, and Anthony suddenly felt hot. “I don’t go to church,” he said, and stared at the table. Then he thought about something else from the story that had bothered him. It didn’t have anything to do with the Bible, but it did poke holes in everyone’s theory. Slowly, he raised his hand. “One thing,” Anthony said. “If he was mad at white people for mistreating him, then why did he kill black people, too?”
    Trouble came to the freshman floor on Friday, in the form of a sopping kid named Chris. Upperclassmen had pushed him around and thrown him into a brook, leaving him soaked and smelling awful. It was the latest run-in with the kids from Welch that had Anthony concerned. So far, he had managed not to get in any fights, but he was afraid that someone would test him.
    Later, after Mr. Hawley had checked them all in for the night, Anthony and a few other ninth graders snuck out of their bunks and to Chris’s room, to hear more about what had happened. “They called it Freshman Brook,” Chris explained, not looking at anyone. “Told me not to fight, that it’s sorta like school tradition to throw in the freshman boys . . . At least, that’s what they told me.”
    One of the kids called it hazing, and a lot of them looked relieved. It was an acceptable and expected abuse, part of the prep-school world not mentioned in the catalogs. For Anthony and a few others, though, it didn’t make any sense. He could never just let somebody punk him.
    â€œI don’t know about that one,” Anthony said, more to himself than anyone else. “Somebody put their hands on me . . . I don’t know.”
    â€œRight?” Paul added. “That’s some craziness, son.”
    One boy suggested that they go talk to Zach, but Chris shook his head. “Zach was there when it happened,” Chris said. “He didn’t throw me in, but he didn’t stop them, either.”
    At first it was silent but then Nate hissed, “We should go upstairs and put shaving cream on Zach’s face!”
    Brody laughed. “You guys gotta relax. . . . Take a chill pill, on the ill will, while you still . . . feel . . . Shit.” He laughed again, and everyone looked at him.
    â€œNate’s right, though,” said a kid named Alex. “We should retaliate, but how? They’re bigger than us, and they have us outnumbered. . . . We need a plan. . . .”
    The boys looked at