145th Street by Walter Dean Myers Page A

money and I can’t pop her when she’s running her weak girl game.
    “What happened to you?” she said when she came home. “I heard somebody was chasing you down the street?”
    “Nothing,” I said.
    “Why don’t you tell me who was chasing you so I can go tell them you’re here?” she said.
    “Why don’t you shut up?” I answered.
    “What happened to your leg?”
    “Nothing.”
    She went to the refrigerator and took out the eggs. She took one egg out and handed it to me.
    “Here,” she said. “If nothing happened to your ankle you must have an egg under your skin it’s sticking up so much. Here’s another egg for your other leg.”
    Man, I just wanted to punch her right smack in her wire braces. She went waltzing out the kitchen and had the nerve to stick out her tongue at me. That’s when I lost it. I tossed that egg toward the sink and started to get up but then the pain started throbbing in my leg and I sat back down real quick. I saw this movie once where this guy got shot in the leg and they had to cut it off. They gave him a drink of whiskey and a bullet to bite on. There was some soda in the fridge and I eased my leg down real slow and went for that. That’s when I saw it.
    Okay, wrap your brain around this. I got one hand on the refrigerator door when my mind hit the sink. I looked at the sink and there wasn’t any egg in it. Then I looked at the carton of eggs on the counter and there were twelve eggs in the carton.
    “Yo! Ellen! Come in here, quick!”
    Ellen took her sweet time getting to the kitchen. Then she stood in the doorway with her hand on her skinny little hip. “What?”
    “Did you hand me an egg a little while ago?” I asked.
    “Jamie, are you using something you shouldn’t be using?” she asked. “Like crack cocaine?”
    “Did you hand me an egg or did you not hand me an egg?” I asked again.
    “Yeah, you had an egg,” she said. “Just don’t get violent on me. You seeing any purple rabbits running around or things like that?”
    “Check this out,” I said. I knew I was excited. “I threw the egg over here and it landed in the egg carton!”
    “Isn’t that sweet.”
    “No, you don’t understand,” I said. “First the telephone was ringing and then I hit my leg on the dumbbell and then I failed English, see?”
    “You really enjoy yourself when you’re alone, huh?”
    Okay, so the girl was seriously stupid. But I knew who would understand and I called Froggy back and told him what happened.
    “How many bad things happened to you?” Froggy asked.
    “A thousand,” I said.
    “No, exactly how many bad things happened to you?” he said. “We need the exact number.”
    I started counting. I missed the shot in the basketball game, that was the first thing. Then I broke the bottle in the locker room. The third thing was when I broke the slide in biology.
    “Then you dumped milk on Maurice DuPre,” Froggy said. “He’s still looking for you.”
    “Right, then I left my wallet in school and couldn’t pay for my potato wedgies. Then when I got home I banged up my ankle and found out that I flunked my English test.”
    “Seven things,” Froggy said. “Now you have seven pieces of good luck coming your way.”
    “Wait a minute,” I said. “I just found out that I failed the English test. I didn’t actually fail it at that time.”
    “When did you take it?”
    “Just before the . . . just before the basketball game,” I said.
    “Okay, now you just had one piece of good luck because you threw the egg toward the sink and it landed in the carton,” Froggy said. “You have six to go.”
    “I’m going for the top right away,” I said. “I’m asking Celia to the dance.”
    “Hey, go for it.”
    I figured I’d see Celia in school and pop the question. The whole scene was in my mind. Celia would be coming down the hall with one of those short little skirts she wears, looking tan and sweet and with those fine legs of hers strutting like she