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“You have to print your name and then sign right next to it. If you put anything else down or don’t sign in the right place or anything, you won’t count. It won’t be genuine.”
When he said “genuine” it was like this rushing noise started in my head. I looked up and T-Ho was leaning against a wall, not far away, grinning at me like he had every time he said “jen-yoo-wine.” He’d been banned from the school but it wasn’t like he couldn’t get in there if he really wanted to. I guess he figured this was too good to miss.
The rushing noise was getting louder inside my head. And I was seeing all these images: The look on Mr. R’s face when he’d said, “The fall of the Alamo” … Rebel being all curious that day at the ruins of the Bidwell Plant … Uncle Herm, his face red from drinking or being pissed off or maybe both, practically yelling at me, “There’s a few of those guys around — Holocaust deniers is what they’re called — and they’re all full of shit” … Mr. R covered with blood lying on the street by that bus … Patti looking so intense in social studies … my burned out Biscayne … an old lady standing on a falling-down porch late at night with the sleeve of her housecoat pulled up and asking in the softest voice, “Why do you hate me?”
I’ve thought about it a thousand times since and I can’t explain why. Why it was that with all those images flashing around like a video on fast forward and the rushing noise getting louder in my head and T-Ho grinning at me and Darrell Whitchell pointing at where I should sign, that I picked up the pen and wrote in the space right next to Darrell Whitchell’s finger —
8-5-2-3-9
Copyright © David A. Poulsen, 2015
First published in 2008
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Poulsen, David A., 1946–, author Numbers / David A. Poulsen.
Originally published by Key Porter Books, 2008.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-3248-3 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-4597-3255-1 (pdf).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3256-8 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8581.O848N85 2015 jC813’.54 C2015-901309-7 C2015-901310-0
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