The Jumping Tree by Rene Saldana Jr

Author:Rene Saldana, Jr. [Saldaña, René]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-55721-6
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2001-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

11

King of the

Mountain

Even though Chuy had been back for a few months, I didn't see him much around school. He was put in a new class called Resource. I'd never heard of it before, but he said it was fun. He got to listen to music on the headphones all day and draw pictures. “Every so often, ” he said, “I get on a computer and take a spelling and reading test. Oh, and I do math on there, too. ‘Ta bien fácil, vato. You should find out if you can change to it. The teacher says I 'll be caught up in no time.”

I was in Mr. Zepeda's class with Bell, Roxanne, Ana, Joe, and Cindy, who lived in other little towns in the school district. I knew them from elementary school, but not too well. They were the smarties. They got to go to the library almost every day, and they always took part in the Cinco de Mayo celebrations. Chuy and I made fun of them all the time: “What a bunch of wieners. It's better to be out on the playground than in that stupid old library, ” Chuy would say, and run off to play ball. “Are you coming? ” I'd think about it. Why can't I go to read books with them? They're always laughing and telling each other about what they 've read. I'd shrug and say, “Yeah, who needs them anyway? ” I was only too happy to goof around.

But now Mr. Zepeda gave us tons of work. He was strict and had a good aim. I remember him taking off his shoe once or twice and throwing it across the room, from his desk clear to the back wall, just missing Robert's ear by millimeters. Apparently, he didn't like it when his students talked out of turn. “Don't think I missed you by accident, ” he yelled. He was mean, but he never threw a shoe at me, and he always wrote “Good work, Rey! ” at the top of all of my papers. Y cada vez en cuando, he ‘d ask if I wanted to read aloud, which I liked.

When I got home from school, we ‘d gather at Chuy's house, or sometimes at Carlos's. Carlos was two years behind me and lived on the next street, a stone's throw from the canalito.

One day, a group of us went over to the canalito, where the water had almost run dry. Watering time was over, so we had to find other things to do besides wading thigh deep in the dirty water. Now it reached only up to our ankles. When one of us suggested playing King of the Mountain in the ditch on the other side of the canalito, we said, “Great, but first let's look for our swords.” So we went looking. I found a slat of wood, maybe a quarter inch thick by an inch and a half wide.

The objective was simple: One of us would be the king to start off, and the rest of us would do battle to try to get up the minihill of the ditch.

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