Fire from the Rock by Sharon Draper Read Free Book Online Page B

simmer. He told her that one day he’d come to a boil. Mama looked a little scared and changed the subject.
    I bet Daddy would love to punch one of those kids right in the nose. Pow! Then watch him bleed. I think he’d feel better if he could act on what’s inside him. But I don’t think he’d ever forgive himself if he did. He’s been a preacher too long. Besides, they’d throw him in jail, he’d lose both his jobs, and Mama would die of shame.
    But if nobody cries out for change, nothing will happen. I don’t want to grow up and have to drive ten miles past the pretty school to take my kids to the ratty old building where the colored kids have to go. I don’t want my daughter to look at me with pity while some white shopkeeper insults me.
    Mama makes all her own clothes, and most of our clothes, too. She does this because it costs a lot less, but also because it’s often embarrassing to go to a store to buy things. I don’t think it’s fair that Negroes have to keep what they buy, while white folks get to try it on at the store, or at their house, then return it a couple of weeks later if they change their mind. Mama says there was a time when we couldn’t shop in the stores at all. I guess that’s progress, but it doesn’t seem like it to me.
    That’s it for tonight. I’m going to be a mess in school tomorrow if I don’t get some sleep.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 1957
    So, have you called Reggie yet?” Lou Ann asked as she stirred the gravy into her potatoes.
    Sylvia and Lou Ann Johnson, a skinny girl with a powerful laugh and a large gap between her front teeth, sat together most days at lunch. Lou Ann made low-to-average grades, always had boys following her around, and never seemed to have a bad day. She had been going steady with Otis Herman since the beginning of eighth grade. She wasn’t going to be asked to consider Central High, and Sylvia knew she wouldn’t have given it a second thought if she had.
    Lou Ann’s father, Zeke, owned the barbershop where most of the Negro men in town got their hair cut. She always had money in her purse, and never brought her lunch. She’d buy the Salisbury steak with gravy that the cafeteria offered, plus an ice-cream sandwich, which the students made themselves out of two freshly baked sugar cookies with a square of vanilla ice cream stuck between them.
    Lou Ann was always cheerful and carefree. Everything Otis said or did made her laugh, and she shared her laughter with her whole class. Sylvia knew Lou Ann was the right one to talk to.
    â€œOh, I couldn’t call him first!” Sylvia said, sounding slightly shocked. “I’m waiting for him to call me. My mother says only bad girls call boys.”
    Lou Ann laughed heartily. “Do you always do what your mother says?”
    Sylvia didn’t want to admit that she usually did, so she changed the subject. “I think Reggie is going to play football at Horace Mann next year. My brother told me.”
    â€œThere’s nothing more fun than a high school football game,” Lou Ann said wistfully, sipping her milk. “The band, the music, the cheers and the cheerleaders, the roar of the crowd, the boys in their uniforms with those pants tight on their rear ends—simply too cool.” She laughed again.
    Sylvia wished she could be more like Lou Ann. She always said exactly what was on her mind, and never seemed to be bothered by the rules and regulations. “Uh, I never noticed,” Sylvia said as she made her ice-cream sandwich. It was her custom to let the ice cream melt a little as she ate her lunch so that it would be soft enough to lick into a perfectly round, perfectly delicious treat.
    â€œWell, if you didn’t, you sure will when Reggie is playing!” Lou Ann replied with a laugh. She licked the mashed potatoes off her spoon. “If you don’t use him, you’ll lose him!”
    â€œHow