Streams of Babel by Carol Plum-Ucci

Author:Carol Plum-Ucci [Plum-Ucci, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK

TWENTY-FIVE

TYLER PING

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2002

12:35 P.M.

IN THE CAFETERIA fifth period, I watched this new kid ahead of me in the garbage line. He looked pretty typical. Dark, foreign, confused. We get new kids a lot in a school this size that's one tunnel away from Manhattan. Migrating families generally come whenever they can get entrance visas. They can't usually plan around things like "the school year starts in September."

I came from South Korea in late November of sixth grade, and it took me a couple of months to realize that "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" wasn't the national anthem. But you'd think this particular new kid had never been in school before. For one thing, he was trying to special order his public school lunch.

"So ... excuse me. Um ... Do you have please a baggle ?" He was smiling politely, which meant he was probably from India. It's hard to tell the difference between certain types of new arrivals, but the Hindus have a reputation as being a pleasant lot.

"Baggle?" the lady server with the fat arms asked him. "You mean a Baggie? You want a sandwich Baggie?"

"No ... no sandwich ... um.." He was smiling again.

"This isn't ESL class," somebody grumbled from behind me.

"Shahzad! No, no." Some girl in front of him grabbed his arm. Inas Hamdani. Nice enough girl. Honors geek like me, who told our illustrious jocks and beauty queens nicely to go kiss off when they wanted to copy her math and science homework. "That's a breakfast food! You don't ask for a bagel in the lunch line!"

"He wants a bagel? I can get him a bagel."

Miss Fat Arms looked troubled but waddled off to get him his bagel. The other server had already disappeared back there for something else.

"Sorry, Tyler! Sorry, guys." Inas smiled at whoever was behind me. What could you say? Inas Hamdani blushes in such beautiful Pakistani maroon. "My cousin Shahzad is obsessed with food right now."

Whatever that meant. And okay, so the new guy is Pakistani. Even I can get things wrong.

I could hear the jocks going off behind me in the garbage line. "Ping, is that you holding up the works?...It's gotta be Ping ... asshole ... druggie ... geek ... asshole..."

I turned to look, and I saw a smoldering mound of whiteness. Dark - haired, blond - haired, red - haired whiteness. I was annoyed at Inas Hamdani's cousin, but suddenly he was slightly closer to me in life experiences than they were. Like me, he probably was thrown into this civilization overnight via JFK Airport.

I singled out Todd Coffey, because I'd heard he got benched for Saturday's wrestling match over nailing my face last week. He wouldn't risk getting benched again, whereupon the White Mound of Girls couldn't gaze at his bulging physique.

I flipped him the bird. "Quit thinking about sucking on this, Coffey."

"Oh my god" reverberated from the White Mound, and possibly from Inas, but in another language.

I could have made it worse.

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