Boise Salvation, Page 2

  Chapter Two – Monday Morning

  Monday morning I get up early and take a shower and get all dressed for school. I’m not really sure what to wear my first day of school. Being at a new school is always hard since I have no idea what the local styles are and what other kids will be wearing. I decide my jeans and a Polo shirt should be okay, with my tennis shoes. My dad is up early too. We bought some breakfast cereal and orange juice the day before, so I grab something to eat while watching the morning news. Since we don’t have any furniture in the place yet, we both sit on the floor while we eat.

  “What time do you have to be at school this morning,” my dad asks.

  “The web site said registration begins at 7, so I figure if I get there by 6:45 I’ll be okay”, I reply.

  We sit quietly as the sun appears over the mountains in the distance outside the window.

  “I think after school today I’ll go to Chick-fil-A and fill out an application for a job”, I tell my dad, trying to break the silence.

  “That would be a good idea,” he offers, “but don’t stop there, apply at other places too.”

  “That’s the one place I really want to work,” I tell him. “I’m hoping I won’t have to apply anywhere else.”

  My dad looks a little puzzled, and then offers, “It usually doesn’t work that way. Sometimes you don’t always get what you want and you have to settle for something else.”

  My dad always was kind of a realistic person. Whenever I had some bright idea or wanted to do something new or different, he would bring me back to reality and tell me the truth about the situation. When I wanted to learn how to drive right after I turned 16, and take driver’s training at school, he told me how much car insurance would cost and suggested I get a job first to pay for car insurance. This is why I got a job stocking shelves at the local grocery store in Lowell, and why I want to get a job here too. I worked all last summer and this past summer and saved over $3000.

  “Do you think I can take drivers training this year?” I ask.

  “If they offer it at school, I think you should be able to take it now. Car insurance is a lot cheaper here in Idaho.” He tells me, with a little smile on his face. “If you get a job you will probably eventually need a car too.”

  “That would be great!” I exclaim, “But I probably won’t have enough saved for a car for probably another year.”

  “You know buying a good car will be a good investment, and to help you out for every dollar you save, I’ll match it,” my father offers.

  “Gee, that would be wonderful. Thank you so much,” I say. “Maybe I’ll be able to get a car now before Christmas,” I add.

  “Just don’t put the cart before the horse. First you need to get a job, then you’ll need to save enough for a car plus insurance,” my dad says, bringing me back to reality.

  “Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll have a job,” I say.

  “Hopefully by the end of the week we will have our furniture delivered and can get to living a more normal life,” my dad says changing the subject. “I’ll have to call to see when the movers can deliver our stuff later this morning.”

  “Well, I had best be on my way to school,” I say as I rinse off my bowl and put it in the dish washer, “I’ll give you a call to let you know about my job later.”

  “Thank God for cell phones,” my dad says as I step out the door.

  I go down the stairs and the morning sun blinds me as I step out the front door. The warmth of the sun feels good, but a cool breeze is blowing so it doesn’t feel too hot yet. I walk the ten or so blocks to Boise High, waiting for the traffic to cross at a few of the busier streets, and get to school in about 15 minutes. It isn’t quite 6:45 yet, so the school is fairly empty looking as I bound up the front steps and open the main door. Before the door closes behind me I’m greeted by a security guard who tells me I can’t come in the building until 7:30. The man is dressed like a police officer, but without a side arm he doesn’t carry much authority.

  “On the web site it said registration was to start at 7, is this the right place?” I ask.

  “If you haven’t registered yet you can come in and talk to one of the counselors, but normally no students are allowed in the main building until 7:30,” he tells me.

  The man shows me into the main office and announces, “I have a customer for you.”

  A woman standing behind a counter turns and says, “Thank you Ernie.”

  Then she turns to face me and asks, “Who do we have here?”

  “My name is Bill McDougal,” I answer. “I’m transferring from Lowell High School, in Lowell, Massachusetts.”

  “Terrific, we need some more diversity at this school,” the lady jokes.

  “What grade are you in?” she asks.

  “I’ll be a senior this year,” I answer proudly.

  “I’ll let you speak with one of the counselors, they can tell you what classes you will need to take to graduate.” She reaches down below the counter and brings up a piece of paper, and says, “This is a map of the school which you will probably need your first week or so. If you’ll go across the hall you will find Mr. Barton in the first office on the left.”

  I nod my head and say, “Thanks!”

  She smiles and says, “Welcome to Boise High!”

  I walk across the hall and find Mr. Barton’s office and knock on the closed door.

  “Who goes there?” a voice bellows out.

  I turn the door knob cracking the door open a few inches, and say, “I’m Bill McDougal. A transfer student, needing to register for school.”

  “Well come on in and have a seat,” the man behind the desk directs.

  Mr. Barton is a young looking guy, probably not yet 30, with thinning blond hair. He stands and reaches his hand across his desk, and I extend mine to shake his, and he says, “Nice to meet you Mr. McDougal.”

  “So you say you are a transfer student and need to register for school? I think I can help you with that,” he says with a chuckle. “Did you bring your transcripts from your old school?”

  I sit in the chair across from him and reach into my book bag and pull out a manila folder, and find the transcripts. “Here there are,” I say, as I extend the papers out and hand them to him.

  “Well let’s see what we have here.” Mr. Barton studies the paper and then takes out a pen and a form and starts checking off boxes on the form. After a few minutes, he looks up from the paper, and says, “It looks like you only need two more classes to graduate, American Government, and two semesters of English. You will also need to take one additional elective class to meet the minimum hours to register as a full time student. Is there anything you want to take?”

  “Well, I was hoping to take Driver’s Training, and maybe a college level class, if you offer those,” I respond, putting the folder back in my backpack.

  “You’re in luck Mr. McDougal, we do offer college level courses, and Driver’s Training,” he tells me, and then hesitates, “but we have to charge students for those classes.”

  “How much,” I ask.

  “The Driver’s Ed class will cost $100, and then you will have to pay a licensing fee of $25 to the state. The college level courses are $75 each. Which is a real bargain, since the local University charges $500 for the same course, plus the cost of the books.” He smiles, and takes another form out of his desk drawer.

  “That isn’t too bad,” I say. “How do I pay for them, by check or credit card?” I ask.

  “Take these forms, fill them out, and you can bring them back with a check tomorrow.” He hands me two forms, and then asks, “By the way, why did you happen to move to Boise?”

  “Well, my dad is a Coast Guard recruiter and was transferred to Boise,” I answer.

  “I’ve counseled several students who joined the Coast Guard after high school over the years. All of them have reported positive experiences. Several ev
en went to the Academy. Fine organization, you can be proud of your father’s service,” he says.

  “Thank you. I am very proud of my father,” I offer.

  “Well, lets get you assigned a locker before you’re late to your first class,” he says as he turns to face the computer sitting on the corner of his desk, and clicks a mouse and then types at the key board. “All of the senior’s lockers are on the main floor. I advise everyone to keep a lock on the locker. “ He reaches over and grabs a piece of paper off the printer and hands it to me with my locker number and class schedule.

  “Thank you for all your help,” I say.

  “Have a terrific senior year, and remember I’m always available if you ever need anything,” he offers.

  “I’m sure I’ll be needing your help later with college applications and guidance,” I joke. “By the way, do you know of any place where I could get a part time job?” I ask.

  “Well, now that school has started I’m sure you will be able to find something. Have you ever held a job before?”

  “Back in Lowell I stocked shelves at a local grocery store for two summers,” I answer.

  “In that case I know the manager at the Winco. I’ll call and see if he has any positions open,” he offers.

  “That would be fantastic,” I respond. “You can call my cell phone and let me know,” I continue, taking out a pen and looking for a piece of paper to write my number down.

  “Don’t worry about giving me your phone number, I already have it. It was part of your registration paperwork you gave me.”

  “Okay. Well thanks. I guess I better find my locker and find my way to class,” I answer as I hurry out the office and down the hall.

  The hallways are now filled with students hurrying to class. I glance at my watch and see I have only ten minutes to find my first class, so I decide to look for my locker later. The paper with my schedule shows Senior English is my first class, in room 209, with Mrs. Baker. I look at the other piece of paper with the map and find room 209 and the nearest stairway, and follow a crowd who appear to be going in the same direction. I climb the stairway to the second floor and walk down the hall to room 209, just as the first bell rings. The first bell indicates there is one minute until the second bell, after which students are deemed to be tardy. I read all about the bell system on the school’s web page last night. Although we don’t have Wi-Fi yet in the apartment I was able to use my iPhone’s Personal Hotspot feature and do some web surfing.

  Students are now rushing into the room and milling about looking for just the right desk before sitting down. The teacher is standing at the front of the room, and gives each student a sly smile as they make eye contact with her. She looks like she has done this for many years. Not that she looks old, but she looks experienced, like she knows what to expect from the first day of school.

  “Everyone find a seat and get settled. We don’t have any time to waste,” she directs. “Life is short but the days are long,” she says with a little laugh.

  I find a seat in the middle of the room, in the third row back, and sit down behind a cute girl, and next to a menacing looking guy. The girl wears her blond hair short and has on jeans with a blue top unbuttoned at the top just enough to show a hint of cleavage. The menacing looking guy has a couple of facial piercing, and his hair is long and unkempt. He has the look of someone who just woke up and dragged himself to school half asleep. The room is fairly small, and has only about twenty desks and nothing more than a white board at the front, and a small lectern behind which the teacher stands. On the white board is written the teacher’s name and the name of the class, probably so students will know they are in the right place. The other students talk quietly amongst themselves. The girl sitting in front of me leans over to the girl sitting at the desk in the next row over and I over hear her say something about how the teacher is pretty tough, saying her brother nearly flunked the class last year.

  The second bell rings and the class suddenly becomes silent. The teacher begins by announcing, “I’ll start by taking attendance.” She proceeds to read a number of names, each followed by a here or a yeah. Then she asks, “Is there anyone whose name I did not call?”

  I raise my hand, and the teacher asks, “What is your name?”

  I reply, “Bill McDougal”, and hear a few snickers from behind me.

  “Do I detect a Boston accent?” the teacher asks.

  “Yes,” I reply, “I just moved from Lowell.”

  “Lowell. Home of Jack Kerouac.” The teacher responds. “Unfortunately we will not have the pleasure of studying any of his work.”

  The teacher passes out a piece of paper with the word Syllabus, at the top and a list that fills the entire page, and continues on the back. She begins reading from the page, and tells us about all the books we will read, the tests we will take, and the papers we will have to write. She tells us about how she will only accept papers written using the correct font and font size, and printed double spaced on only white paper, with one inch margins all around. The syllabus gives us all the fine details on what she expects.

  The menacing guy raises his hand, and the teacher asks, “Do you have a question Karl?”

  The guy pauses a second before asking, “What if a student doesn’t own a computer?”

  The teacher looks at the ceiling briefly, and rolls her eyes, before saying, “In this day and age, we have certain expectations of our students. We set our standards high so that when a student graduates from Boise High and enters college they are well prepared to exceed. If a student does not have a computer of his or her own, we have many resources available to assist a student in obtaining one. Perhaps not the latest and greatest in technology, but sufficient to get the job done.”

  With this, the class is filled with laughter. I glance over at Karl and see him shrink into his chair. Briefly, I’m glad someone else is the center of attention and no one is laughing at me.

  Being the new kid at a new school is never any fun. Especially when the new kid is different from the other kids, and doesn’t really fit in. I experienced that when we first moved to Lowell. It was only four years ago when I started eighth grade at the middle school in Lowell. We lived in Topeka, Kansas before moving to Lowell. The Coast Guard has its Pay and Personnel Center in Topeka, so that’s why we were living there. Other than the weather, Topeka is a nice place. The school I went to was pretty nice, and I had quite a few friends since I’d been going to school there since the third grade. My mom and dad seemed to be a lot happier then. My sister is four years older than I, and she just graduated from high school the year we moved to Lowell.

  My sister, Mary is only my half-sister, since my mother was married to a different guy before she and my dad got together. It is a little complicated, but when my dad and my mom got married I was already in the picture, but not really, if you know what I mean. My dad wanted to do the right thing and marry my mom, so that’s how they ended up getting married. My dad was just starting out in the Coast Guard and was assigned to a ship in Duluth, Minnesota. He and my mom met at a bar and started seeing each other whenever the ship was in port, and one thing led to another. I was born in Duluth, but we didn’t live there too long after since my dad got transferred again. The Coast Guard likes transferring people just about every three to four years. Before living in Topeka we lived in Bellevue, Washington, since my dad worked in Seattle. I started first grade in Bellevue, and then after the second grade we moved to Topeka. I really don’t remember too much about living in Bellevue, other than it rained all the time, and my dad was home nearly every night after I came home from school.

  I was kind of used to having my dad home every night since that is what I always remembered from when I was a little kid. After we moved to Lowell my dad was gone for a long time, and then he would be home for a couple of weeks. My mom started going out in the evenings after we had dinner together. Sh
e worked at the VA Hospital in Bedford and left for work before I left for school. She would usually be home when I came home from school, and would fix dinner for herself, and me, and sometimes my sister Mary when she was around. Mary was taking classes at Middlesex Community College and worked at Wal-Mart as a cashier part time. Her schedule was not routine at all. Some days she had class in the mornings, other days she had class in the afternoons. She often worked all day on the weekends, and some days she worked just a few hours in the evening. I spent a lot of time at home alone after we moved to Lowell. That’s when I started to read all the time and mess around with my computer. For some reason I just was never interested in watching television. Maybe I have attention deficit disorder or something, but I just can’t watch a program longer than the first commercial.

  I would often check out a couple of books from the school library a week and read them constantly when I wasn’t sleeping, or working on homework. I really liked school and learning, and just wanted to do the best I could in whatever class I was taking, even if I didn’t particularly like the class. PE is probably the class I hated the most. All my other classes I liked all right, math, history, English, and science I really did great in. I think the thing I didn’t like about PE was having to change clothes in front of a bunch of other guys, and then after we sweated a lot the teacher made everyone take a shower. We had to get naked and see other guy’s naked with all their private parts out in the open. That was the worst part for me. One guy tried to take a shower in his underwear but the teacher caught him and told him he had to take it all off. Sometimes I wonder if the teacher liked seeing a bunch of naked boys, since he would usually stand and watch everyone in the shower.

  It was right after I first started eighth grade in Lowell when I started having problems with one kid who thought he was really tough. He liked to push around and bully the kids who didn’t put up a fight. Usually the smaller kids who weren’t athletic or really tough looking. The kid was a little bigger than normal, and he always looked angry. His name was Jerry McCoy, and he was in my English class. I really liked English and the teacher was really nice and made the class fun. The only time Jerry tried anything with me was when I was walking home from school one day and he ran into me with his bike. He made it seem like it was an accident and said he was sorry after knocking me over. I picked myself up and was wiping the dirt from my pants when he gave me a kick in the rear while I was leaning over to pick up my book bag, knocking me on the ground again. Without even thinking about it, I got up quickly and was on top of him, knocking him off his bike and pinned him to the ground and started to punch him in the face. After giving the kid a bloody nose I stopped punching him and he got up and rode off on his bike crying with blood streaming down his face. That was the last time Jerry McCoy ever bothered me. I think word must have gotten around too, because other kids left me alone too. Whenever I saw him in English class he would never make eye contact with me, but I could sense he was still mad at getting beat up. I used to say hi to him in the hall just to be friendly and try to get beyond the one incident, but Jerry wasn’t the forgiving kind, I guess.

  After this I never had any more problems with school. Even when I moved on to the high school for ninth grade I didn’t have any problems with being bullied. Other than having to take PE again, and see other guys naked, and letting other guys see me naked, everything went fine. I’m not sure what it was about being naked with a bunch of other guys naked that bothered me. Maybe it was because I was self-conscious about my body and didn’t want other people looking at me and making judgments about me because of the way I looked. I don’t have the perfect body like some of the other guys who play football and lift weights all the time.

  Life was pretty fine for me until the last summer we lived in Lowell. That was when my dad found out about my mom going out at nights when he was on the ship. I think a friend of my dad’s saw my mom at a bar with some guy, and told him about it. My mom and dad had a big fight one night, and my mom asked for a divorce, and my dad said fine, he was through with the marriage. I guess now my mom plans on getting married to this other guy, and they are living together. Turns out the other guy is Jerry McCoy’s father. At about the same time my parents went through the divorce my sister meets some guy she works with at Wal-Mart and they decide to get married. The guy is a pretty good guy, as far as things go. At least he is working and putting himself through college.

  I don’t know why, but it just seems my whole family changed when we moved to Lowell. Maybe it is just natural for people to change when they get older and they want to do something different with their life. My mom never worked before we moved to Lowell, but I think she wanted to do something else than spend all day at home taking care of me and my sister once my sister and I were older. My dad never was gone for weeks at a time before we moved to Lowell either, and maybe my mom just felt lonely without my dad being around more. I never really asked my mom what was going on during this time. She was pretty busy with work and I was busy with school, and we rarely saw each other except when I came home after school. She didn’t go out every night, but it was a couple of nights a week. She would say she just needed to get out and be with people her own age. The other nights when she stayed home she would sit in the living room and read a book or watch television. I can’t blame her for wanting to get out, but cheating on my dad is something else, and with someone like Jerry McCoy’s dad, that is even worse.

  The English class was pretty fun. After Mrs. Baker told us what the class was going to be like she gave us all an in class assignment to write a paper about what we did over the summer. Everyone got out a pen and paper and spent the rest of the class working on the paper. The assignment had to be typed and ready to be turned in the next day. It wasn’t all that tough of an assignment and I pretty much finished writing it out in long hand by the time the class was over. I’d have to go home and type it out and since I didn’t have a printer at the time, I’d have to get it printed at Kinko’s or somewhere else. I only brought my laptop with me on the trip out from Lowell, and the moving company was moving everything else.

  When the bell rang and everyone was getting up to go to the next class, the cute girl who sat in front of me stopped and introduced herself.

  “Hi, my name is Kelly,” she said.

  I said, “Hi, my name is Bill”.

  “How long have you lived in Boise,” she asked.

  “I just got her Saturday night,” I told her.

  “You wouldn’t know where room 311 is?” I asked. “My next class is American Government in room 311,” I explained.

  “Well isn’t that a coincidence,” she said. “That’s my next class too.”

  “Do you mind if I walk with you then?” I ask.

  “Why of course not, we can talk and get to know each other better,” she responded giving me the sweetest smile I’d ever seen on a girl.

  “I’m not so sure about things yet. I haven’t even found my locker yet.” I explain.

  “That’s okay, it took me a few weeks to get used to things here when I first started here too,” she said. “I transferred here last year from Salt Lake City, and it was a big change for me too,” she ran her hand across her forehead pushing her hair from her eyes as we walk down the crowded hallway to our next class.

  “I think I’m going to like it here after I get used to things,” I tell her, feeling somewhat at a loss for words. I’ve never really talked to a cute girl before, and wasn’t really sure what else I could talk to her about.

  “Well, let me give you a little advice. What really helped me was getting involved in my church and not just being focused on school all the time. Have you found a church somewhere yet?” she asks.

  “No,” I tell her. “We just got here Saturday night, and besides we really aren’t the church going type of people,” I explain.

  “Well, if you want, you can come to my chu
rch sometime,” she offers.

  “I might like that sometime,” I tell her, not really quite believing the words came out of my mouth, since I was thinking just the opposite thing.

  “Why don’t you give me your number and I can call you sometime and we can talk some more,” she suggests.

  “That would be great, I’d really like to talk to you more too.” I tell her. As we arrive at room 311 and enter into the classroom, the first warning bell rings.

  The room is starting to fill with other students who are talking with each other as they find a chair. I follow Kelly until she sits down, and I sit at the desk behind her. I rip off a piece of paper from my notebook and write my phone number on it and hand it to her. She gives it a quick glance, and then stuffs it in her pocket.

  “Thanks, I’ll call you tonight,” she says, giving me one of her wicked nice smiles and a wink of her eye.

  I can’t believe what just happened to me. I have never had a cute girl introduce herself to me, and then ask me for my phone number. That just never happens to guys like me. I wonder if the girls here in Boise are all that forward, or is it just Kelly. She turns her attention to the girl sitting next to her and I focus my attention to the front of the room, and the name written on the white board. It says Mr. Bixby. I look around the room and don’t see any one who could be Mr. Bixby, just a bunch of kids like me. When the second bell goes off everyone sits down at a desk and some continue talking, while a few take out their notebooks and pens. A few minutes pass when a guy steps into the room, and announces he is Mr. Bixby. He is a rather short guy, probably in his early thirties, and wears a shirt and a tie with jeans and tennis shoes.

  Mr. Bixby apologies for being late and tells us he had to make copies of the syllabus. He asks for a volunteer to pass out the syllabus, and Kelly raises her hand. Kelly proceeds to pass out the syllabus while Mr. Bixby takes attendance, calling the names as students say here or yeah. Just like in the English class he finishes attendance and doesn’t call my name, and he asks if there is anyone whose name he didn’t call. Again, I raise my hand and tell him my name, but this time I’m careful to not say it with an accent. He writes down my name on the attendance sheet and then starts discussing the syllabus.

  The class goes by pretty quickly. Mr. Bixby talks and then about ten minutes before the bell rings, he gives the class a reading assignment, and then remembers we don’t have our books yet. He tells us to get a book from one of the boxes at the front of the classroom before we leave. A few people have questions about the syllabus, and whether he grades on a curve. The bell rings and everyone gets up and heads toward the boxes at the front of the room, and grab a book before they leave for their next class.

  I ask Kelly, “What class do you have next?”

  She looks at her class schedule, and tells me, “Seminary.”

  I tell her, “I have driver’s training next,” and ask, “What is Seminary?”

  She looks at me briefly, and says, “I really don’t have time to tell you about it now, I’ll call you later and tell you all about it.” She then hurries down the hall towards the stairs. I look at my schedule and find my way to driver’s training.

  In the driver’s training classroom I notice a guy who was in the English class -- the menacing looking guy with the facial piercings. The rest of the students in the class look a lot younger, like they must be juniors or sophomores.

  I turn to the menacing looking guy, and say, “You and I are in English together, I’m Bill.”

  He says, “I’m Karl. You’re the guy who just moved here from Lowell, right?”

  I answer, “Yeah that’s me.”

  He asks, “Why did you move to Boise, Idaho?”

  I tell him, “My dad got transferred to Boise with the Coast Guard.”

  “The Coast Guard. I didn’t know the Coast Guard was in Boise,” he says.

  “They only have a recruiting office here,” I explain, “but it covers quite a large area.”

  “That’s cool. I thought about going in the military next year, but haven’t considered the Coast Guard,” he tells me. “I never really heard anything about the Coast Guard before.”

  “I guess they really don’t have much of a presence here in Idaho, but it is the best military service,” I boast, “but I don’t think I’d want to join the military. I really want to do something different.” I explain, as the bell rings, and the teacher comes into the room. I take a seat near the front of the class, next to Karl. As the second bell rings everyone else finds a seat, and the teacher writes her name on the white board.

  Mrs. Jones, is the name she writes on the board. She is an older woman, probably in her late forties, with curly brown hair with specks of gray. She wears glasses, and a printed blouse, with jeans and tennis shoes.

  “This class is probably the most important class you will ever take,” she tells us. “This class can save your life and the lives of many others. Driving a car is a very serious activity.”

  She hands out the Idaho State Driver’s License Manual, and tell us, “This class will help you to pass the exam to get your driver’s license, and it will give you some time behind the wheel of a car so you can get your license, but it will not be able to give you the common sense to drive safely, and to take your right to drive a car seriously.”

  I thought this class would be a fun class, but she is making it way too serious. I guess when it comes to an activity that has the potential to kill you and other people, it has to be taken pretty seriously.

  “Can anyone tell me what is the most common cause of auto accidents in America,” she questions. A few people raise their hands, and she calls on a girl in the back.

  “Drinking and driving,” the girl answers.

  “That’s one reason, but it isn’t the top,” she responds.

  She calls on a guy with his hand raised. “Speeding,” the guy answers.

  “Again, that’s one of the causes, but not the most common. The correct answer is distracted drivers,” she tells us. “Think about that for a while.”

  She explains how the class will be divided and half will go out and drive the car, while the other part of the class will stay in the classroom. The class has about ten people in it, and it looks like Karl and I are the only seniors. She waits until the last few minutes of class to take attendance, like she forgot about it. Once again she calls the names of everyone in the class, except me, and asks if she missed anyone. I raise my hand and tell her my name, and she writes it on the paper. The bell rings and it’s time for lunch, and since I don’t have another class I’m free for the day.

  As we leave the classroom Karl asks, “Do you have another class today?”

  “No, I only have three this semester. What about you?” I reply.

  “I’m done for the day. I need to find a computer to type up the English assignment,“ he explains.

  I think for a minute, and then suggest, “Hey, would you like to come over to my place and use my PC?”

  “Yeah, that would be great! I really need to get one of my own soon.” He looks kind of embarrassed and then offers, “My mom is unemployed right now, and I really don’t want to bother her with it. I’ve been saving for a while, but most of the money I get from working goes to pay rent, utilities and food.

  “Boy, that sounds rough,” I offer. “I’m sure, you will be able to find a good used PC you can afford. Where do you work?” I ask.

  “I just started working at Chick-fil-A. They opened the store here last spring.” He tells me, sounding proud to have a job.

  “That’s where I’d like to work,” I tell him. “If you can help me get a job there I’ll help you find a good PC.” I offer.

  “That’s a deal,” Karl says, as he extends his hand and we shake on it.