In my small city there was only one high school. This had the unfortunate result of forcing together the rival groups of the city, the rich bastards from Bedford Hill and the poor bastards from the Olde English Village.
Bedford Hill was actually an area of four or five streets where the doctors, lawyers, ect lived with their noxious offspring.
The Olde English Village, usually just called the Village, was a complex of apartment buildings that were subsidized and people with low incomes or welfare lived there.
I lived there. We were low income, the working poor. My sister Diane worked about a million jobs to pick up the slack since my dad left. She should be in college but we just didn't have the money for her to go.
On a typical school morning I'll head to my best friend's apartment and we'll walk to school together. The Bedford Hill bastards get dropped off in their shiny cars or they drive cars of their own, mustangs and cadillacs and corvettes.
My best friend Jake comes from a bad home. His parents drink like fish, his dad hits him a lot, his apartment is always trashed. I'm better off than him, I know it. My sister takes care of things, money and cleaning and the like. Jake had no one. He had to take care of himself.
On this morning that's what I did. Jake lives in the same building as me. I can always hear the fighting coming from his apartment, so I have a pretty good idea what type of night he had. But I'm still apprehensive about knocking on his door. His parents make me nervous.
"Hi, Jake,"
"Hey, Paul,"
We headed to school. Jake was a year ahead of me but he was two years older, he was 15 and I was 13. But I got moved up a grade in grammer school. He might stay back. He didn't like school anyway, but with all the trauma of his parents' fights it was no wonder he couldn't concentrate on it.
"Lookit that car, shit," Jake said as we neared school. It was a brand new cadillac the color of butter, and it glided into the parking lot as smooth and easy as you please.
"Rich bastards," I said in a low voice. Jake nodded and brushed his long bangs out of his eyes. I don't know why he bothered. They'd just fall back again.
"Hey, where's Shawn?" Jake said. Shawn was my 15 year old brother. Diane was 19.
"He's working," Since my dad left and my mom fell apart he'd been working extra at the convenience store, gas station he worked at. They didn't care that he was supposed to be in school.
Jake kind of shrugged. He was real quiet. He hardly talked to anyone, just me and my sister and brother, Shawn's best friend Seth, and some other friends of ours who lived at the Village.
"Hey you white trash welfare bastards!" Jake and I looked over at the shout. A Bedford Hill rich ass bastard, as usual, in his designer clothes and stupid cell phone and 200 dollar sneakers.
"Fuck you!" I shouted, not good at witty comebacks on such short notice. Jake was staring at the ground. I was glaring at the rich kid. I wanted to kill them sometimes. They had nice clothes, nice houses, nice cars, and they still had to pick on us. It wasn't our fault we were poor. It wasn't Jake's fault his parents were no good violent drunks. It wasn't my fault my dad up and left. Why did those rich bastards hate us so much?
