I went to the hotel and crashed.
A beam of sunlight woke me up.
I looked at the clock. 10:30.
I called Jane. No answer.
I got dressed and went down and had breakfast.
"Hurry up Mike." My mother said holding the door open. "You don't want to be late for school."
I sat on my bed, ever so slowly tying my shoes. I didn't care if I was late. It was report card day and I didnāt want to go school at all.
I was having trouble in math. My teacher Mrs. Mc Fadden had called my parents in for a conference earlier in the semester and my Pop was mad when he got home. "What are you? Some kind of retard? One plus one is two. Two plus two is four. It's easy, damn it."
From then on my mother spent the half hour between when she got home and before Dad arrived helping me with my homework.
She'd sit next to me as I tried to get my multiplication tables down. "You just need a little help."
I clutched the report card in my hand and ran down the street as fast as I could.
Mr. Thompson, the grocer, was hosing down the side walk in front of his store. I hit the wet pavement and fell flat on my ass.
"You all right Mikey?" Mr. Thompson asked, picking me up off the ground.
I bent over to pick up my report card. It was floating in a puddle of soapy water. I just got my first A in math and I watched it turn a darker shade of blue as it soaked up the water. "My pop is going to kill me."
I wasn't going to cry.
Mr. Thompson picked it up and looked at it. "Let's see if we can't dry this off?"
It clumped up in his hand and that was when what I later called "The Great Report Card Race" began.
Mr. Thompson picked up the phone and called Mrs. Antenelli, who, kind woman that she was, had her son Mario run down to the school to get Mrs. McFadden and tell her what had happened.
Word had gotten out about what had happened and soon the whole block was milling about the store waiting for my teacher to pull up.
I sat on the counter sucking on an orange soda. Waiting, waiting, thinking of my father when Mrs. Mc Faddenās car suddenly pulled up. She came in the store, gave me my new report card, and kissed me on the cheek.
The Neighborhood let out a cheer.
When pop got home and saw the A, he gave me five bucks.
