Free The Cruisers by Walter Dean Myers Page A

news and they call me if anything big breaks in the city. That’s the way we …”
    I didn’t get to hear the rest of what Ashley had to saybecause Mr. Culpepper was dragging me down the hall. All the time he was muttering in my ear that I had better stop whatever it was that I was doing or he would personally execute me.
    By the time he let me go, we were down near the watercooler outside the recording lab. Mr. Culpepper had me against the wall, his nose a quarter of an inch away from mine, and telling me how much I was going to enjoy the great beyond.
    I think he really wanted to do something dramatic, like give me the evil eye and turn me into a frog or something, but in the end he just breathed some really hot breath in my face and walked away.
    “Hey, Zander!”
    I turned to see Alvin McCraney coming toward me.
    “What?”
    “I didn’t think this was about race, really,” he said. He looked uncomfortable. “We were just acting, brother.”
    “We’re just acting, too,” I said.
    “But guys are saying they don’t want to be like me and I didn’t mean it to be that way—you know, racist—in the first place,” Alvin said.
    “That’s not the way it seemed to the black kids,” I said.
    “And I guess most of the white kids saw it that way, too,” Alvin said. “Yo, man, I’m, like, sorry and everything.”
    “Whatever,” I said, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
    By the middle of the lunch period Mr. Culpepper had called an assembly of all the eighth-grade students. I asked Ashley when she thought the newspaper reporters would arrive.
    “They weren’t interested,” she said, behind her hand. “There was a fire in the State Office Building and the local reporters are covering that. But, as my grandfather used to say, sometimes even the threat of truth is useful.”
     

From the Poetry Corner of
The Palette
    What Does My Heart See?
           By LaShonda Powell
    What does my heart see
    When I close my eyes to the pain
    My sisters must feel?
    Does it have secret visions?
    Remembered dreamscapes
    That twist reality?
    What does my heart hear?
    When I close my ears to the words
    That thunder the air?
    Is there some elusive tune
    Pulsing through its valves
    Like a gone mad iPod
    Humming Swahili?
    What does my heart feel
    When I close my soul to the grief
    That stinks up the air?
    What sad list of excuses
    Can I give myself
    Pretending I don’t know
    How a stone heart breaks?

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Suddenly, Everybody Is a Hero
    M r. Culpepper showed a new talent as he stood on the stage in the auditorium talking to the eighth grade: the ability to turn very red from the top of his upper lip to his forehead while turning just a little red around his chin.
    “The entire project is canceled! You will go back to the usual way of dealing with the units on the Civil War. There will be no more Union and Confederate factions. There will be no discussions on slavery outside of the classrooms. There will be no broadsides posted on any bulletin board, student or otherwise, without my permission.
    “Anyone who disobeys my directive will face disciplinary action, detention, and possible dismissal from Da Vinci Academy.
    “All racial matters will be resolved by me in the privacy of my office! Is there anyone in this assembly who is not clear as to my instructions?”
    No one raised their hands.
    “To clear the air we can now have any
necessary
comments or observations. Keep your comments brief and to the point!”
    Kelly Bena started toward the stage and Mr. Culpepper said she could make her remarks from her seat. She still came to the stage, stood at the mic, and turned toward the kids.
    “I don’t like to be accused of anything ugly or be associated with anything like being disrespectful to people. Maybe I should have spoken out when I saw what the Sons of the Confederacy published in
The Palette,
but I was trying to be cool because it could have been a freedom of speech issue.