A Christmas Memory by Richard Paul Evans

Author:Richard Paul Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2022-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

I read until I fell asleep with the book next to me.

Three things changed for me that night. For the first time I discovered the joy of reading. Evan and his cronies never bullied me again. And I never felt so alone again.

CHAPTER 18

The next morning, I was in the bathroom examining my black eye in the mirror when my mother called from the dining room. “Ricky, where did this food come from?”

I was hoping that she wouldn’t get out of bed this morning. I knew she would respond angrily when she saw my black eye. I walked out to her. She didn’t disappoint. She looked over my swollen eye, then asked, “What happened?”

“Some boys beat me up.”

“What boys?”

“Some boys in my class.”

Her face flushed with anger. “Okay, I’m driving you to school. I’m going to have a talk with your principal.”

I didn’t want to go through the embarrassment of that. Besides, I was more afraid of the principal than I was of Evan. I’d seen him bully students and teachers. He had a thing about kids not finishing their school lunches. Sometimes he’d come into the lunchroom and stand by the tray return to make sure the kids had eaten everything on their tray. Once, a boy didn’t like some of the food, so he thought he could sneak it by the principal by stuffing it all together into his milk carton. The principal caught him. He made him dump it out and eat it.

“It won’t help,” I said. “At this school they give extra credit for bullying.”

She wasn’t amused. “That’s not going to happen on my watch.”

“They’re not going to beat me up again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Mr. Foster told them if they ever bully me again, he would go after them. He told me to tell you we’ve got this covered.”

She looked perplexed. “Mr. Foster next door?”

I nodded.

“Is that where all this food came from?”

“He gave it to us. He said the bread is a gift for you. If you like it, he’ll bake us some more.”

She still looked perplexed. “How did all this come about?”

“The boys were beating me up in Mr. Foster’s front yard and he came out and stopped them.”

She looked at me for a moment, then sighed. “If that’s what you want. I guess we’ll just see what happens.”

“Can I have toast with jam for breakfast?”

“Of course.” She took the loaf of bread into the kitchen.

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