Just Another Hero (4 page)

She glanced out through the pink dotted swiss curtains to see her mother drive away in the Mercedes that Chad had given her for Christmas, and wondered how long it would take Chad to decide her mom needed to account for every mile she drove.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7

EVERY MORNING BEFORE HE WENT TO
school, Kofi swallowed a pain pill. As he tapped an Oxy out of its bottle, he noticed it was almost empty.

“Gotta call Doc Stinson,” he muttered. Of course, he wasn't even sure anymore if the pain he was taking the pills for was real or just imagined.
I just know they make me feel smooth when everything else is lumpy.

He'd told his parents about the recurring pain from when he'd broken his arm last year, but he might as well have reported the problem to the players on his Elite Force video game, he thought as he headed toward the kitchen. After his accident with the Warriors of Distinction, his parents had really tried to change their lifestyle and devote more attention to him. But old habits die hard, and Kofi wasn't surprised when after a few months, his life and theirs sank back to the old reality.

“Dad, the man called about the rent yesterday,” Kofi said, seeing his father at the kitchen table. “I thought you paid it last week.”

People said he looked just like his father—tall and thin, with reddish, fuzzy hair and glasses. His dad poured frosted flakes into a plastic bowl.

Kofi picked up the carton of milk and sniffed it. Although it was past the expiration date, the milk didn't smell sour yet. He poured himself a little in a plastic McDonald's cup. He held the pill in his hand.

“Yeah, I meant to,” said his dad. “I gave him four hundred dollars and told him I'm good for the rest real soon.”

“So what happened to the rest of the rent money?” Kofi asked with a sigh. He rolled the pill between his fingertips.

“I figured I could double it over at the Argosy Casino. I was hot on the slots Saturday night.”

“How much did you lose, Dad?” Kofi asked, knowing the answer.

“Actually, I won, Kofi! Three thousand dollars! It's the biggest hit I've ever made.”

“But then…” Kofi tried to be patient.

“Yeah, well, I lost it. It wasn't my fault—that machine was bogus, man.”

“Why couldn't you leave when you were ahead, Dad?”

“I figured I could come home with six thousand and you and your mother would be so proud of me,” his father told him. “We woulda been set for several months.”

Kofi looked at the tiny white pill and wished he had a fistful of them. “But now we're gonna get evicted. Again.”

“Don't you have any money, Kofi?” his father asked
hopefully. “You've been putting in those extra hours at McDonald's for a while now.”

“Dad, it's still just a part-time job. It can't cover rent,” said Kofi. He didn't really say what he was thinking:
Paying rent is what
you
are supposed to do
.

“Every little bit helps,” his father said cheerfully, “and then one day that big ship comes in and we sail away to glory.”

“There are no oceans around here, Dad.”

“Why are you always so negative, Kofi? You gotta reach for dreams, boy, not stomp on 'em,” his father said, hurt in his voice.

Kofi just shook his head. He popped the pill into his mouth and washed it down with a gulp of the slightly sour milk. He exhaled slowly.

“Dad, I just want to pay the rent.”

“Can't you help your old man out this month?”

“I don't have much,” Kofi told him. “Don't you get paid on Monday?”

“Yep.”

“Can you bring your check home before you cash it?”

“Sure, son. I promise. But now I gotta get some shut-eye.” He pushed back from the table and headed to his bedroom.

“Aren't you due at work at nine, Dad?”

“I called in sick. Don't worry—I'll do overtime tomorrow.”

More and more, Kofi felt like he was the father raising two adult kids. His dad worked at a branch of the local post office—sorting mail and tossing packages—but it was Kofi's job to take his dad's paycheck and stretch it as
far as it would go. His mother did temp work as a secretary when she could, or would.

Kofi spent nearly every dime he made at his after-school job on paying the utility bills and buying a few groceries. He also made a little money from fixing the malfunctioning tech toys of a few friends at school. He had a knack for it, and students paid good cash to get their laptops or cell phones up and running. That kid Osrick was better than he was on computer tech projects, but everybody thought Osrick was way weird and came to Kofi for help instead.

He'd probably be able to help pay the rent this month, but what about next month, or the next? He'd had his eye on a new pair of Timberlands, and he hadn't taken his girl Dana out to the movies in weeks. She usually made lunch for both of them, and sometimes that was the only meal he had in a day.

Kofi heard a car door slam outside. His mother. She'd be still glowing with the fire and excitement of the party she'd just left. She was really pretty, and boy, did she love to have a good time. He'd seen pictures of when she was a teenager, and she could have had any guy at her school. But she'd ended up with his goofy-looking dad, and then him—their great mistake, as his ma had once called him.

By the time she breezed in the door a few minutes later, Kofi was feeling the Oxy. He felt mellow and relaxed—like he was floating on that ocean his dad dreamed of. His mother's nightly partying usually made him feel angry and helpless. Why couldn't she just be a regular mom? But the Oxy made it sort of okay.

Her presence in the kitchen was almost electric.

“Hey, Ma,” Kofi said. “Another great party?”

“It was the best! Music so loud my eardrums almost exploded.” She was dressed in a gold silk dress that hugged her slim body. She slid into a chair and kicked off her matching spiked heels.

“That's great,” he told her, but he didn't mean it.

“Where's your dad?” she asked, slurring her words.

“'Sleep.”

“He didn't go to work?” Her eyelids had noticeably drooped—the magic of the night had already started to wilt.

Kofi shook his head.

“Good—he and I can snuggle all day.” She stood up unsteadily, but flopped back down in the chair.

“I made some oatmeal. Want some?” Kofi offered, scooping a bit of the bland-looking stuff into a bowl for her.

“Maybe just a spoonful,” she mumbled.

“Hey, Ma—guess what? I got my first college acceptance letter yesterday,” he said with pride as he nudged the sugar bowl closer to her.

“No sugar for me, kid. I've gotta keep my girlish figure.” She pushed it away.

“Ma!” Kofi yelled in exasperation. “You're not a girl anymore! You're thirty-five years old!”

“Who peed in your cornflakes?” his mother asked, looking at her son in surprise.

“I just told you, Ma. I got accepted to a college. MIT! That's Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Do you know how hard it is to get into that school? I'm gonna major in aeronautics and astronautics, Mom. I'm going
to design the computer systems that take humans into space. It's one of the best colleges in the country!”

His mother blinked. “I'm not even sure I know what astronautics is, but I'm proud of you, Kofi. I really am. I don't know how me and your father produced such a smart kid. I'm gonna take a nap, then we'll talk about this college stuff, okay?” She stood up shakily and patted his cheek. “Really proud.”

“But how will I pay for it, Ma?” Kofi asked before she'd left the room. “It's very expensive.”

She turned and looked at her son with bleary, red-rimmed eyes. “Maybe your dad will get lucky at the track. We'll figure it out.” She disappeared into the bedroom and shut the door.

Kofi sat at the kitchen table, stirring his oatmeal until it was cold and lumpy. Disgusted, he dumped it in the trash and headed for the shower. As the Oxy kicked in full force, he felt warm and surrounded by the caresses of the water. He felt like he could float.

When he got out of the shower, however, the towel was still dingy, the bathroom tiles were still broken, and he shivered from the chill morning air.

In the bathroom he picked up his bottle of OxyContin.
Another?
He looked at himself in the mirror, then put the bottle down again.
Naw, I'm straight.

He waited until lunch before he took another pill.

He could feel the medication kicking in once more as he hurried into his English classroom after lunch. Best class of the day, as far as Kofi was concerned. Music boomed from one of the three CD players Mrs. Witherspoon had
hooked up around the room. The woman was into Sting today, Kofi noticed. Well, not everybody shared his taste in music, and teachers were into stuff nobody else liked.

Mrs. Witherspoon, a petite woman with curly blond hair, boundless energy, and really cool tech toys in her classroom, greeted everybody as they came in. She seemed to know something about the lives of every single student.

“What's up, Kofi? Did you get that letter from MIT yet?”

“Yep,” Kofi said, checking in on her attendance computer by the front door.

“So, you gonna keep me in suspense, or do I have to bop you on the head for information today?” Mrs. Witherspoon asked, excitement in her voice.

Kofi broke into a grin and looked at her. “I got accepted, Spoon. They let me in.” All the kids called the teacher Spoon. She even encouraged it.

Mrs. Witherspoon jumped up from her desk, grabbed Kofi's hands, and danced with him around the room to the beat of Sting, shouting, “Whoo-hoo” the whole time. When they slowed down, she announced to the class, “Kofi is going to MIT! You hear that? One of my puppies is going off to one of the best schools in the world! I am SOOO proud!” Then she did a little dance of her own all the way back to her desk.

As he watched his teacher, he couldn't help but think back to how his own mother had reacted. If she could have shown just a teeny tiny portion of Mrs. Witherspoon's excitement, it would have felt so much more right.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7

SLIGHTLY OUT OF BREATH, MRS. WITHERSPOON
went back to greeting the rest of her class as they entered the room.

Eric rolled in, his wheelchair whirring softly. “Hey, Eric!” the teacher called out.

“Do a wheelie for me, and check into my world of literary lunacy for an hour.”

Eric grinned, checked in, and spun his chair around in a circle. “Do I get extra credit for that?” he asked. He wore his dark brown hair tightly braided in straight, neat lines. Freckles dotted his ruddy cheeks.

“Not a chance,” Mrs. Witherspoon replied, “but I might let you take me to the prom with all those moves you've got!”

Kofi secretly marveled that Eric's puppy-dog grin managed to charm all the girls, in spite of the kid's disability. Although his legs dangled helplessly, his upper body was muscular and taut. Eric laughed. “I'm taking
applications for prom dates. I might let you apply.”

The teacher cracked up, and as Jericho walked into the room she called out, “Jericho, sign in, my splendid sportsman and brilliant musical genius. So, have you decided on Ohio State for football, or Juilliard for music?”

“Aw, Spoon, you ask me that every day,” Jericho replied, bending over the computer. “I can't help it if I'm super-talented in a multiplicity of fields.”

“All right, now! Ten extra points for using a big, long vocabulary word in regular context. Make it twenty!” Mrs. Witherspoon said with glee as she recorded Jericho's points on her personal laptop.

“Hey, Spoon. I had vegetarian vegetable soup for lunch. Two big words. Does that count for points?” Roscoe asked as he checked in behind Jericho.

“If you insist, Roscoe. But I think those do more for your digestive system than your SAT scores.” She typed in the points for him.

As Brandon Merriweather walked in, Kofi smirked as the girls suddenly started fixing their hair and glopping on lip gloss. Arielle was the only one who kept her head down. She and Brandon had been tight for a hot minute last year, but it hadn't worked out.

“When are you going to let me ride in that sweet little BMW of yours?” Mrs. Witherspoon asked the school's track star.

“Any time, Spoon.” Brandon nodded, tucking his lanky frame into his seat. “You let me pass this class and I'll let you keep it as my graduation present!”

“It's going to take more than that for you to pass my
class, big man. Doing homework every once in a while might help!” Brandon laughed and stretched his long legs into the aisle.

More students meandered in. Mrs. Witherspoon complimented Rosa on the great job she did on her book report and Lisa on her new earrings. She thanked Ram for shoveling the snow from around her car earlier, and tossed a fresh red apple to Susan Richards, the dancer.

Osrick Wardley came in next. He had the hood of his heavy winter coat up so it covered most of his face.

“Good afternoon, Sir Osrick the Great,” Mrs. Witherspoon said gently. “The room is warm, so take off your jacket and stay awhile.”

“Hi,” Osrick said shyly. He, too, seemed to like the outgoing teacher, although Kofi noticed Osrick never seemed to have nerve enough to call her Spoon. Hers was the only class he'd put his hood down in, however. He sat at a table near the back of the room with Susan and Ram.

“My loaner laptop for you all is acting up again, Osrick,” said Mrs. Witherspoon. “Take a look at it if you have time, and see if you can get the peanut butter and jelly out of the motherboard. There's no telling what these folks do to my stuff when they get it home. I couldn't survive without you, kid.”

“Okay,” Osrick agreed with a hint of a smile.

“And Kofi,” the teacher continued, “if you can unwrap those arms from around Dana for a couple of hours, I'd like for you to take a look at my DVD projector—I think it might need a heart and lung transplant. Or maybe just a chip.”

Feeling mellow from the Oxy, Kofi was about to make
a smart remark, but he just nodded instead. Spoon often paid her “tech geniuses” (as she called them) out of her own money, and he needed the cash.

Dana bounded into the classroom then, dressed in a red and gray Ohio State sweatshirt.

“How was the tour of Ohio State yesterday?” Mrs. Witherspoon asked her.

“Cool. But I think I want to go to Florida instead. I love warm weather, you know what I'm sayin'?”

“You need to stick around here and keep
me
warm!” Kofi yelled out. She blew him a kiss and signed in just ahead of Olivia and November.

“Hey, Spoon, November's back. Remember her?” said Dana as November gave Mrs. Witherspoon her enrollment papers.

“Of course I remember Miss November who took the helicopter adventure ride of the century! Almost gave us old folks heart attacks after that football game.”

“Yeah, that was a night to remember,” November said. “Plus, we almost beat Excelsior that day!”

“Don't be bringin' up that ‘Pink Panther' game, November,” said Jericho. “You be embarrassing me.”

“You all embarrassed yourselves,” she teased. “Running onto the football field in pink uniforms! That was just crazy!”

“Cheap uniforms. Not our fault,” Jericho reminded her.

“So, how's the baby?” asked the teacher.

“Well, she's got a few problems,” November admitted. “It's sure not as easy as it looks like in the movies.”

“And how's the baby's mama? Are you getting enough sleep?”

“Not really,” November told her, “but I'm managing.”

“Are you going to be able to handle this, November? School? Doctors? Baby emergencies?”

“I'm gonna try.”

“Well, let me enter you in my computer system,” the teacher said. “And here is everything we've done thus far, as well as all your assignments for the rest of the semester.” She handed November a green zip drive.

“Everything's in here? You're amazing,” said November.

“No, just technologically magnificent!” Mrs. Witherspoon said with a smirk.

“Hey, Spoon, give yourself a couple of points for those big words,” Jericho called from his desk.

“I shall do that!” the teacher replied, laughing. She turned on the whiteboard that was connected to a third computer—the one with Internet access.

The class were reading
Beowulf
, so Mrs. Witherspoon showed two video clips—one from the preview of the movie, and one from a cartoon about the monster named Grendel. Then she popped up a chart that talked about heroes and monsters and good versus evil, and brought up a website that told about Anglo-Saxon history—all in a twenty-minute span. Nobody ever went to sleep in Spoon's class. In addition, everything she did in class was saved on a zip drive that students could take home. She talked, she teased, she questioned, she sang, she twirled.

Finally, standing on a table in the front of the room, Mrs. Witherspoon put an old plastic crown over her curly blond hair and a purple cape over her shoulders.
Kofi figured they were probably left over from a million Halloweens back—they looked awful.

Spoon dimmed the lights and proceeded to recite the words from the ancient story as it might have been told hundreds of years ago beside a crackling fire. Her voice was strong and powerful as she quoted the words from memory:

In the middle of her presentation, the classroom door burst open and a cold wind whooshed through the room. A few kids jumped, half-expecting, perhaps, the fiend Grendel to appear.

Standing in the doorway, a toothpick hanging from the side of his lips, a sneer on his face, was not a monster, however. It was Eddie Mahoney, who had spent most of last year at a juvenile detention center. Dana stifled a scream.

Wearing an oversize black T-shirt and baggy jeans,
Eddie looked around the room as if daring someone to say something. But even Mrs. Witherspoon was speechless.

“It's been a while, Eddie,” she finally said, jumping off the table and removing the crown. To the rest of the class, she said, “You guys go ahead and work on your PowerPoint presentations on
Beowulf
. You know what to do.”

Kofi had no intention of doing any classwork. He slid over to Dana's table and sat down next to her. He took her right hand in his—it was shaking. He bent close. “Don't you worry, Dana. If Eddie Mahoney so much as looks at you the wrong way, I swear I'll kill him.”

“Don't talk like that, Kofi!” Dana whispered anxiously.

“I'll hurt him bad. I'm not gonna let him touch you. I promise,” Kofi swore.

“I got your back, too,” added Jericho, leaning across the table. “Big-time.”

“You think he blames me that he got sent away?” she whispered. “It was my testimony that convicted him.”

“He deserved all he got and more!” Kofi whispered fiercely. “He hurt you!”

November sat on the other side of Dana, squeezing her left hand.

Kofi leaned forward to hear what Eddie and the teacher were saying.

“So, Eddie,” Mrs. Witherspoon began, looking at the papers he had handed her. “It seems you had some good teachers up there at the center. I'm surprised they sent you back to this school, however. Usually a new school is preferable.” She typed some information into her computer. Kofi thought she looked nervous.

“I asked to come back here. I told them all my
friends
were here.” He laughed his gravelly laugh, but there was no humor in it.

“Well, as you can see, we're in the middle of
Beowulf
,” Mrs. Witherspoon told him, “and I—”

“I already read it while I was in lockup.
Macbeth
and
Hamlet
, too. I like those old stories. Everybody dies at the end.” His eyes never left the teacher's face.

“Well, I absolutely refuse to allow any trouble in my classroom, Eddie. Do you understand me?” Mrs. Witherspoon was short, and Eddie towered over her, but it was clear she meant business.

He nodded as if she amused him. “No sweat, Spoon. I just wanna get my credits so I can graduate.”

Kofi noticed that when most kids called her “Spoon,” it was a term of endearment for the teacher who would loan a kid lunch money or help a girl buy that prom dress she couldn't quite afford. But in Eddie's mouth the nickname sounded somehow disrespectful…dirty.

Eddie took a seat near Osrick, who looked like he was about to throw up. His coat was back on.

Eddie ignored him, took out two pencils from his book bag, and began to beat the erasers on the desk top in a soft, steady rhythm.
Bop-boppa-bop-bop. Rop-doppa-dop-dop. Bop-boppa-bop-bop. Rop-doppa-dop-dop.

He did it quietly, yet it was maddeningly annoying. Kofi felt like grabbing the pencils and shoving them down Eddie's throat.

As if he could sense Kofi's thoughts, Eddie turned and looked at him. Then he set his gaze on Dana.