Free Back by Norah McClintock Page A

Then he pissed off Jojo. I didn’t see it, but I heard what happened.
    Jojo used to go with a girl named Shana, right up until he got Shana pregnant. He wanted Shana to get rid of the baby. Shanarefused. She told Jojo she was going to have it and raise it and if he didn’t like it, that was his problem. Jojo didn’t like that. He didn’t like anyone making a decision about
his
kid, never mind that he didn’t want the kid in the first place. He didn’t like Shana, or anyone else for that matter, telling him no when he wanted to hear yes. He particularly didn’t like Shana telling him that what she did with her body was none of his business.
    So Jojo did what he always did when he didn’t care for someone’s attitude—he made life hard for Shana. He called her names— slut and whore and worse—whenever he saw her. He talked about her to his friends. He told them personal stuff about what he and Shana used to do when they were together. He muscled her and, one time, grabbed her breast right out there in the street. When Shana slapped his face for that, he slapped her back five times harder.
    Then, one day, while Shana was on the way down the street past his house to get to her own house half a block away, Jojo and his friends surrounded her. There must havebeen six or seven of them. They boxed her in, and Jojo started calling her names and saying how miserable the baby’s life was going to be with her for its mother. The whole time, Shana didn’t say a word. That only made Jojo angrier. Finally he shoved her off the curb. Shana had a big belly by then. The baby was only one month away from being born.
    Shana would have fallen and hurt herself, and maybe the baby, if it hadn’t been for Eden Withrow. Eden was watching Jojo from across the street. When he saw Jojo and his friends circle Shana, he started to cross the street. He got there just in time to grab Shana’s arm so that she didn’t get knocked to the ground.
    Jojo didn’t like that either. He jumped Eden in an alley that night and beat him good with a crowbar. Eden was rushed by ambulance to the hospital emergency room. Then he was rushed into an operating room. From there he went to intensive care. He’s still in the hospital—a different one now, one where they look after people who are never going to be able to make it on their own.
    My mother, who knows Ardell’s mother, says that people used to talk to Ardell’s mother about Eden all the time. Then, when they found out that he would probably never wake up from the coma he was in, everyone stopped talking about him. But they’re talking about him again now, and they all say the same thing. They all say that it’s not right that Jojo only got five years, out in two, for taking away from Eden everything that makes a life worth living.
    Ardell has been saying the same thing a lot, ever since we got word that Jojo was coming back. Another thing Ardell has been saying a lot: he’s not afraid of Jojo. And I bet he isn’t. First of all, Ardell has hate in his heart, and hate takes the fear out of people and replaces it with a thirst for vengeance. Second, Ardell hasn’t been wasting his time. While everyone else has been breathing easier and probably hoping never to set eyes on Jojo again, Ardell has been applying himself to the study of martial arts. He’s been bulking up too. His muscles are bigger than Jojo’s.
    It’s almost as if Ardell has been wishing the opposite of everyone else. Everyone else wants peace and quiet, which means no Jojo. Ardell, though, he’s hungry. He wants Jojo. He wants him bad, and now that he’s back, Ardell is watching him. Everyone else is steering clear. They’re wondering who Jojo will go after. They keep their eyes down, the way people do when they come across a big dog they don’t know. They won’t look that dog in the eye because they know the dog will