Educational Experience

Chapter Six

6.

 We all got herded into this conference room next to the principal’s office where Danny’s mother was already seated behind this long table with some cops and other security standing by right next to her. She was too big to sit up against it the right way, so she’d turned to the side—she looked like Jabba the Hut in drag, I swear. Just this big, quivering mass of mean, fat meat.

And as soon as I sat down, she glowered at me like she was trying to kill me with super staring powers or something. Scary as hell.

And the black cop of the duo went, “Leo DiCaprio! Wuzzup, bruh?”

That was new. Made more sense than Johnny Depp, though—I’m blond, for one thing. And I have green eyes—of course, I have no idea what color DiCaprio’s are.

But he was just playing with me, the cop. To make Big Mama even madder, probably.

“The man of the hour,” the Mexican cop said, taking out his little notepad. “Colton James, right?”

“Yessir.”

“That’s a cowboy name right there,” he said with this little twinkle in it.

I could tell he was the charmer of the two. The one who got to do most of the “interrogations” because he could sound all personable and genuinely interested. So I decided to shoot the breeze, too. It might win me a few points to fall back on if things got weird. I mean even more weird.

 “Got a few in the family,” I told him. “Bronc and bull riders. Bad ones.”

That gave everybody but Big Mama something to chuckle about.

And the cop said, “Tough bastards, man—that explains a lot,” before getting down to, “So, let’s hear your version, pardner. For the record.”

“My boy ain’t here to give his side!” Big Mama said.

“Your boy’ll get his chance over there where we took ‘im.”

She puffed up like one of those little fish with the quills on it.

“And you had no business takin’ ‘im nowhere—he needs medical attention!”

“We’ve got a clinic over there, ma’am.”

She scowled and said, “You call that a clinic, what you got over there? They couldn’t even put a Band Aid on straight. My boy got injuries! Course you don’t give a damn…”

“If you don’t calm down’n’ let us do what we gotta do, we’ll come knockin’ on your door over the holidays,” the black cop said. And then he grinned and went, “Ho, ho, ho!”

Big Mama narrowed her eyes. And the black cop’s face went all stony, too—he had definitely perfected his “game over, bitch” glare. And if there is one thing my people respect, it’s someone they know they can’t bob and weave around. Or shouldn’t even try to. Since we don’t win often, the smartest of us know which battles to fight. The majority of us fight because we figure we’ve got nothing left to lose, though. I couldn’t quite tell which side she was actually on, but when she smirked and sat back with a big sigh, I figured maybe she had at least one foot on the smart side.

“Okay, tough guy, you’re on,” the note pad cop said. “From the top.”

“Nothin’ much to tell,” I said. “He hit her, I put him down, he went and got a toy gun from somewhere’n’…here we are.”

“What started it, though?”

“Just…trash talk. Between him and this girl. I think he has race issues.”