Free Response by Paul Volponi

hadn’t felt about myself in a long time.
    I got an 85 in math, and Hendricks gave me an “S” for “satisfactory” in both of my PE classes. I had a GPA of 90, nearly fifteen points higher that it had ever been before.
    On my first open period, I met with my guidance counselor, to fill out the paperwork to enroll in a city college next semester. I even checked off “engineering” as the major that I was most interested in.
    When I was in the fifth grade, some kid’s uncle who was an engineer came in to talk to us for career day. He was black, acted supercool, and wore the sharpest alligator shoes I’d ever seen. I remember how he walked over to our classroom bulletin board and pointed to our math tests hanging up there.
    â€œAll of these students with the one hundred percents on their math papers—they’re heading in right direction to become engineers,” he said before he called out six or seven names off the tops of those tests, including mine.
    Then he showed us a tape of skyscrapers and big bridges swaying in the wind, and explained to us how an engineer designed them so they wouldn’t crack or buckle from the strain.
    Anytime after that, whenever somebody asked me what I wanted to be and wouldn’t settle for answers like a millionaire or a pro football player, I’d say, “An engineer.”
    â€œAn engineer on a train maybe,” Dad would rag on me whenever I talked about college during my junior and first senior year. “Every father wants something better for his son, Noah. But a degree in engineering is just crazy talk, unless you’re finally ready to get serious about school.”
    It hurt my pride every time Dad poked at me like that. But I never really argued back too hard, because I knew he was right.
    All that afternoon at Mickey D’s I could feel my chest pumped up, standing at my station in front of the deep fryer. It didn’t matter what kind of shit Munch threw my way. None of it could touch me. I kept pulling that report card out of my back pocket, reading Dowling’s comment to myself over and over. And I left there for home thinking, Destiny Love’s daddy is going to be somebody.
    For a change, nearly every part of me was feeling whole. The patch of hair the doctors cut out of my scalp had grown completely back in, and the headaches I was having had mostly disappeared.
    I bounced through the front door ready to show off my report card, but nobody there was in a mood to celebrate.
    They were all raging over the TV news, and I felt like I’d just been sucker punched walking into my own house.
    â€œTwo years!” Mom hollered. “Two miserable years! That’s what they think taking a bat to my boy’s head is worth!”
    Every nerve inside of me pulled tight.
    â€œOutrageous! That’s no justice at all,” shrieked Grandma.
    At first, I thought they were screaming about Charlie Scat.
    But they weren’t.
    It was Spenelli.
    He’d come clean, copping a plea bargain with the city.
    â€œWhy didn’t the prosecutors call here first and ask Noah if that was enough time?” ranted my father, pointing his finger at me.
    He was looking for an answer. But I didn’t have one.
    â€œYou can’t trust any of ’em!” Dad steamed. “Even them black lawyers are just carrying their white bosses’ bags. They got no real power!”
    That wasn’t all the news.
    The prosecutors officially decided to let Rao walk in exchange for testifying.
    The face of that white detective who talked to me in the hospital—the one who swore it would never happen—burned inside my brain. And except for Charlie Scat, I started to hate him the most, blaming him for everything I felt cheated out of that night.
    Â 
    The next day, in a hallway at school, I heard a mob of voices shouting, “Guilty!”
    A girl wearing a FREE SPENELLI! T-shirt was walking as fast as she could,