Necessary Roughness
Page 15
I lean the trophy next to it. MINNESOTA STATE HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS. The gilded guy on the top is a kicker, just like me.
“I was going to burn it, Sis, but I thought it might melt. So here it is.”
Some bits of white land on the back of my hand. Then more and more and more.
It is snowing. At least that’s what I assume it is. I start to laugh, high-five the headstone.
“You see, Young?” I say as the falling snow blurs my vision. “It’s your first snow! It’s your first snow and your oppa is here to share it with you.” I spread out my palms to catch the wafting flakes and am surprised to find they feel warm.
When I look up at the sky, it is gray and seems incredibly close, with a multitude of fat flakes whirling down. I want to spread my arms and go up to that place where the snow is coming from, but my feet stay planted, firmly, on the ground.
acknowledgments
This book took a lot longer than I thought it would. Thank you, thank you, thank you to family and friends who helped me see it through.
Thanks, Mom and Dad, for everything. Thank you, Ginee Seo, for being a wonderful editor and friend; Wendy Schmalz, same, for being my agent. And to Cylin Busby for her insightful comments. Thank you, Sheila Hamanaka, for taking my cat to the “dentist.”
Thanks to the Hibbing High School football team (especially Craig Massich) for letting me watch.
Thanks for the literary advice about football to Tom, Dean, Karl, Ken, and especially Paul Choi.
And thanks. You know who you are.
About the Author
MARIE G. LEE has published in a number of magazines and newspapers and has written three acclaimed children’s novels: FINDING MY VOICE, an ALA Recommended Book for Reluctant Young Readers and winner of the Friends of American Writers Award; IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR YOON JUN; and SAYING GOODBYE. NECESSARY ROUGHNESS is her fourth book.
She is a founder and president of the Asian-American Writers Workshop, an organization devoted to encouraging other Asian-American writers to develop their talents. She is married and lives with her cat, Arthur, and her husband, Karl, in Ohio.
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Copyright
Harper Trophy® is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Necessary Roughness
Copyright © 1996 by Marie G. Lee
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JANUARY 2011 ISBN: 978-0-062-04459-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lee. Marie C.
p. cm.
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Korean-American Chan moves from Los Angeles to a small town in Minnesota, where he must cope not only with racism on the football team but also with the tensions in his relationship with his strict father
ISBN 0-06-025124-7 — ISBN 0-06-025130-1 (lib. bdg.)
ISBN 0-06-447169-1 (pbk.)
1 Korean Americans—juvenile Fiction [I Korean Americans—Fiction. 2 Prejudices—Fiction. 3. Football— Fiction. 4. Fathers and sons—Fiction 5. Minnesota— Fiction.] I Title.
PZ7.L5138Ne 1996
96-J41H5
[Fic]-dc20
CIP
AC
FIRST HARPER TROPHY EDITION. 1998
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