Burn by Suzanne Phillips Read Free Book Online

the tires.”
    “And paint it,” Cameron agrees. “Hey, a deal is a deal. You’re definitely amusing.”
    “And I’m going to pass this class.”
    Friendships are built on less,
Cameron thinks.

TUESDAY
    3:05PM
    “Cameron?
¿Puedes venir a mi escritorio, por favor?
”
    Cameron sits motionless, trying to figure out exactly what Mrs. Marino just said to him. He knows she’s asking for something; her voice lifted at the end the way questions do. He tries to remember if there was homework the night before and decides that by now she should know better than to expect him to have it. He looks at the other kids in his group, hoping one of them will translate for him. Nope. He doesn’t blame them. He’s given them exactly nothing in the forty minutes they’ve been working on the travel brochure they were assigned.
    “I didn’t do the homework,” he offers and makes sure it sounds like an apology.
    Some of the kids laugh. The girl sitting closest to him says, “We didn’t have homework last night.”
    “Cameron, come up to my desk, please.”
    Cameron is slow to get out of his seat. He doesn’t like being called out in front of his classmates. As he moves to the front of the room he feels their eyes on him, knows they’re going to be listening. His shoulders get tense, work up until they’re at his ears.
    “Yeah?”
    “You’re not working with your group,” she says.
    “I know. I’ll try harder.” Cameron is turning away from her when she continues.
    “It’s not just today. You’ve turned in two assignments in the last three weeks, which has been pretty much the norm for you this semester. You’re failing this class.”
    This is not news to him. He has a hard enough time in English class, getting by with a D; Spanish is more work and he just doesn’t have it in him. His mind drifts in class. Sometimes he thinks about what it would be like if he had never left Syracuse, but then he’d still be living with his dad and that was no good.
    “What can I do?”
    “Participate. Turn in some work.” Her face gets soft. “You had a B the end of the first marking period. A C for your fall semester grade. You’ve been going downhill. What’s up?”
    “I’m not good with languages,” he offers.
    “Stay after school,” she says. “I’ll help you.”
    Cameron nods, knowing he won’t make it. Even if he wanted to, he doesn’t hang around after school. The place is crawling with jocks, with Patterson and his posse.
    Mrs. Marino picks up a piece of paper. “This is your progress report. I want you to have your mom or dad look at it and sign it.” She folds it and tucks it into an envelope. “I want it back tomorrow,” she warns. “Signed. Or I’ll have to ask for a parent conference.”
    “Okay.” Cameron folds the envelope and stuffs it into his back pocket. He waits, just in case she has more to say.
    “You can go back to your group now.”
    Cameron turns and notices that just about everyone is so absorbed in their work that they didn’t hear Mrs. Marino’s broadcast of his grade. Everyone but Steve. He’s looking at Cameron with a big frown creasing his forehead. The whole room is between them and Cameron doesn’t know what to do. This is the first time since the bathroom wall incident that Steve’s let on he knows Cameron is alive. Probably a mistake. Probably someone is standing behind Cameron, someone Steve can see.
    Cameron resists the urge to turn and look and just shuffles back to his seat. He leans toward the others in his group, gets the page number they’re on, and opens his book.
    “Here. You can work on the captions.” The girl next to him offers Cameron a folded sheet of construction paper. There are sketches on it of the ocean, a bull fight, a city with tall buildings. “One sentence describing each picture. Write it in pencil, though, okay? I’ll check the translation.”
    She smiles at him and Cameron feels his face burn. He’s starting to think he likes it a lot