Free The Patriots Club by Christopher Reich Page A

without a reason.
    He wasn’t just thinking about his present circumstance, but about the past.
     
    It was ten o’clock and the bell for second period had already rung, but Tommy Bolden, fifteen, a tenth grader at Oliver Wendell Holmes High, was nowhere near school. Sitting at a table in Burger King, he took a bite of his double-cheese extra onions and chased it down with a gulp of Coke. It was Thursday, and he was serving the second day of a three-day suspension.
    One by one, he counted the cigarette burns decorating the tabletop. The knuckles of his right hand were covered with scabs, his lower lip swollen from where he’d gotten hit. Next time, he’d go for the knees earlier, he decided. It was stupid to trade punches with a guy who outweighed you by fifty pounds.
    “Dude, you’re sitting on our bench. Move it!”
    This time it had been a bench. Last time it was a locker. Everyone had their turf, and the new kid had to learn a lesson.
Screw ’em all,
he thought. He would sit where he wanted. He would use the locker assigned to him. If they wanted to fight about it, that was their problem. The thought of Kuziak, lying there on the ground with his jelly belly and his jarhead’s crew cut, wimpering about his busted knee, made Bolden even angrier. Served the Polack right. Yet, it was Bolden who had been suspended because he wouldn’t walk away from a fight.
    He slammed his fist on the table, and when the manager came over, he stared at him until he went away.
    A kid could learn to count going through all the schools he’d attended. River Trails. Aurora Elementary. Jackson Middle School. Frazier Heights. Birmingham. Eighteen schools between second and ninth grade.
    Prior to second grade, he’d been homeschooled by his mother. Every morning he’d sit at the kitchen table and do his reading, writing, and arithmetic, his mother coming in every half hour to check on him. It was just the two of them, and he liked it that way. Liked the attention. Being the man of the house. He also liked how she tickled his feet when they lay together on the couch watching TV. He didn’t want to share her with anyone.
    They moved constantly, not from county to county, which is what happened when you were in foster care, but from state to state. California, Arkansas, Missouri, New York. Often, they’d leave in a rush, packing quickly and driving off in the middle of the night. Once they didn’t even have time to gather up his toys, not even his Green Beret GI Joe.
    The thought of his mother left him unsettled. It was her energy he remembered most. She was always on the move, constantly in motion. He wasn’t even sure what she looked like anymore, other than that she had long auburn hair and pale skin that was soft to the touch. He’d lost all his pictures of her, along with his clothes, his comic books, and his hockey cards, during a messy escape from one of his foster dads. Mike, the auto mechanic, who liked to wrestle a little too intensely for a ten-year-old’s taste. He couldn’t remember the color of her eyes, or how she smiled, or even the sound of her laugh. The years had left her hardly more than a blur, a shadow dashing out of arm’s reach.
    Scarfing the rest of his burger, Bolden left his wrapper and what remained of his drink on the table and went outside. He was finished with school. Finished with foster care, too, for that matter. He’d had enough of the quarreling and the fights. He was sick of 250-pound men who got hard-ons when they played tackle football.
    Tiny Phil Grabowski was waiting at the corner. “Hey, Tommy!” he called.
    Bolden gave him a high five, then wrapped his arm around his neck and brought his head to his chest. “Noogie, dude. Noogie,” he said, razzing his hair.
    “Cut it out, man,” said Philly, fighting his way loose. “You’re embarrassing me.”
    Phil Grabowski was a sad kid, way short and skinny, and always in some kind of funk. He didn’t look old enough to have such a terrible