BING! BING! BING! It was about seven in the morning on December 29th. I walked into the office and was taken aback by the number of people waiting at the counter. First, I noticed the man with the badge. Then the absurdly fat man and woman. The tubby kid, Mitchell Cone, was someone I already knew. He had about two years and a hundred pounds on me, although we were in the same grade. Despite Mitchell’s rep as a bully, he was looking pale and weak now. Nothing close to skinny, though.

The man with the badge leaned his elbows on the counter.

“Are your parents around? Mommy and Daddy home?” he asked, looking down at me. I looked at his badge, which read, “SHERIFF.” I was wearing my gray sweatpants and my feet were bare. A tattered plaid shirt that I’d grown accustomed to wearing to bed hung on my shoulders.

“Do you need a room?” I asked, looking the sheriff in the eyes and sitting on the barstool. I placed my hands on my side of the counter and straightened up. It was obvious that I was familiar with working the desk. The sheriff coughed and hooked a thumb into his belt.

“These people have been evicted from their property. Do you have any efficiency rooms?”

“We have rooms with two burning hotplates and a small refrigerator. We don’t provide any cooking ware or utensils,” I said.

“They’ve got pots and pans, so that’s all right,” he said. “Now folks, let’s get your stuff out of my car.”

Mr. Cone filled out the registration card. He was wearing a grimy blue winter coat.

“How long will you be staying?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Could be a few months. Do you have a discount for month to month?”

“No, $60 a week is as low as I can go.” He grimaced, but paid for the first two weeks. I marked it down in the books.

Everything the Cone family owned fit into three plastic garbage bags. A high heel poked out of one of the bags. An electric plug tore a hole out of another. I gave Mr. Cone the key to Room 8 and watched the fatsos waddle out of the office. Room ate. Now that was funny. I smirked, and Mitchell turned his head and caught it.

“I guess we’ll be taking the bus together, Mitchell,” I said. Some color came back into his face as he flipped me off.

Mitchell and I found ourselves together by default; neither of us had any friends around. The kids I knew from school said their parents wouldn’t drive them over to the hotel, which was isolated from the good residential neighborhoods by the four-lane interstate. The concrete bunker and chain link fence on the divider made the interstate look like the Berlin Wall.

Mitchell didn’t have any friends because at one time or another, he’d beaten up half of the school — all the boys. He even hung out with the intermediate school burnouts.

I’d first met Mitchell at the start of the previous year when I was at the water fountain. He’d body-slammed into me, knocking my head around like a pinball stuck between rubber bumpers. Ready to kick some ass, I yanked my head out and shook off my hair. The first thing I saw was what looked like a teenager with a beer belly.

“Fucking Charlie Chan, don’t you even know how to get a drink? You need a pair of chopsticks or something?” Mitchell was a half foot taller and a foot wider than me. His dark brown hair drooped down in tangled strands over his eyes and ears. Two of his scabby fists were already raised to my face.

I kicked his shins, but that didn’t do anything, and I ended up on the hallway floor. He spat at my feet before turning and walking away. The school soccer trophies in the case next to me never looked taller.

Mitchell might have killed somebody if he’d attended school regularly, but he only showed up two or three times a week. When he was in school, he was constantly shuttled from classroom to guidance counselor to the principal’s office. More than a few times, he’d walk straight out the school’s front door, just to save a few steps.

After my first brush with him, I Krazy-Glued the combination dial of his locker, but I was never rewarded with seeing him pound away at the metal door. Maybe he didn’t even use his locker.

This year, Mitchell was supposed to be in my class, but he hadn’t made it in since school began. On the first day, Mr. Hendrickson flipped through the attendance cards, assigned seats, noted faces. When Mitchell’s name was called, feet shuffled nervously with the realization that he’d been left behind again, and that he would be sitting amongst us.

Mitchell had been marked absent, but he was assigned a desk at the end of a row. The boy seated to the left of Mitchell’s desk squirmed in his chair every morning, anticipating the imminent arrival of pain. But Mitchell didn’t come in late that day, or any other.

Eavesdropping from the living room into the hotel office and piecing together what my mother told me later, I managed to get the story. Mitchell’s father had told my mother all about his lousy luck and his lousy kid, trying to wrangle a lower room rate with his sob story. Of course he didn’t get one.

Mitchell’s father used to work for a home-building company further up the shore. His specialty was hammering deck planks together and waterproofing the wood. Business was good once, but had fallen off after medical waste had started washing up. The company told him they’d call when they had work. He wasn’t cut off completely, but the $25 a week the company paid him to stay home wasn’t going to cover the rent, much less the installments on the car he’d bought to commute to the job he no longer had.

He stayed at home with his wife, eating and watching TV and trying to stay off the phone. They wondered what Mitchell was learning in school, but were afraid to ask. Mitchell got grouchy whenever they brought it up.

The phone was the first thing that was cut off. Then the gas. They fell half a year behind in the rent. They never answered the door anymore. Then, just as summer began, they came home from a movie and found a notice from the bank saying that they were going to repossess the car. They threw everything into the trunk and drove their Duster south to his mother-in-law’s place in Nashville.

After a while, Mitchell’s father managed to find a job with another home builder. Mitchell was bored living in a town with nothing to do, so he begged his father to take him to work that first day. Mitchell stayed inside the new house as his father hammered out planks for the porch and pool deck. A vandal at heart, Mitchell was caught kicking out the spokes of a wooden staircase on the second floor by the couple visiting their future home. Both Mitchell and his father were thrown off the property that same first day of work. They hadn’t even made it to lunch break.

Mitchell’s grandmother eventually got fed up with the freeloaders on her living-room floor. She woke them up early one Friday morning and told them they had to go after breakfast. Then she made some pancakes. The Cones came back to Jersey and called up the sheriff to get their stuff back from the house. But the bank had already repossessed all the furniture and sold it off.

The school-bus stop was at the end of the hotel’s driveway, right at the edge of the interstate. Cars on both sides had to stop when the school bus flashed its lights and picked us up. That pissed the commuters off. I tried to board the bus as quickly as possible, because I didn’t want the drivers to gawk too long at the poor Chinese kid who lived at the shabby hotel. We owned the place, but standing out in front like that, I looked like I belonged in one of the rooms. Son of a whore. Poor Amerasian refugee. Little beggar boy by the highway.

I liked the winter better because I could pull down the hood of my winter jacket and tighten the drawstrings, making my face disappear. Only my nose would show.

On the first day back to school after Christmas, I was waiting at the stop, pulling my hood loose so I could make it tighter. My lips were bleeding where the skin had dried and cracked. I drew a layer of Chap Stick over my lips and smacked them.

A large lumpy figure in a denim jacket shuffled down to the bus stop. Mitchell wasn’t carrying anything. No book bag, no books, no lunch. He wasn’t even wearing mittens. His bare hands flexed at his sides as if he were squeezing the cold out of them. Mitchell’s hair hung in oily, shaggy layers. When he got close enough, he said, “Did I just see you put on some lipstick, you little faggot?”

“It was Chap Stick.”

“Yeah, I know that, chinkie. I was just joking. I’m trying to lighten up the mood around here. It’s embarrass

ing enough that I gotta wait here with you.”

“Don’t you need a notebook?”

“The fuck for? If it’s already in the book, why should I write it down again? Doesn’t make any fucking sense.” He unzipped his jacket, reached in, and pulled out a dented cigarette. Mitchell stuck it in his mouth and his hands dove into his coat pockets like fat gophers jumping back into their holes. “Fuff!” he groaned as the cigarette wiggled in his mouth.

Mitchell yanked out the cigarette. “You gotta match?” he asked me. I shook my head. “Course not, fucking chinkie,” he muttered, shoving the cigarette into his back pants pocket.

The bus stopped with a groan and the door swung open.

“Brainiacs first,” said Mitchell, sweeping his arms to the door. I was a brainiac because I hadn’t been left back. I stepped up and worked my way down the aisle over feet, book bags, and trombones. Boys hunched over their bleeping electronic sports games, and girls read Seventeen together. I wondered if Mitchell was going to sit with me behind the hump seat — the one just above the rear wheel. If you sat in the two rows behind it, you were cool. But you had to be tough. If there was someone sitting in my back seat, I’d pull them out by the neck of their coat. Maybe Mitchell would pull me out.

I heard the driver yelling. I stopped in the aisle and turned around.

“Get off my bus!” Mrs. Krackowski yelled at Mitchell. She knew Mitchell because he’d beaten up her son Matt, who was a year younger than me. She stood at the top of the boarding steps, arms jutting out in sharp angles from her rounded body.

“I’m going to school!” Mitchell yelled back.

“Is this your stop? Where’s your bus pass?”

“I don’t have a pass! I just moved back two days ago!”

“You don’t have a pass, you don’t get on my bus! Now get off!” She roared like a well-fed furnace, blowing Mitchell back onto the hotel’s driveway. She hopped back into the driver’s seat and slammed the doors shut.

“Fuck you, fat, ugly bitch!” Mitchell yelled. You could hear him with the doors and all the windows shut. He gave a double bird as we pulled away.

I felt a little bad for him. Mitchell was just trying to go to school. Granted, his record spoke for itself, but he never got a chance to set it straight. He’d already had a pretty shitty life. And now he was living at our hotel, something no kid deserved, no matter how bad they were.

The next day, Mitchell was back at the bus stop with a yellow bus pass that was already crumpled and creased like a brown paper bag over a whisky flask.

“That fucking bitch-fuck, the pass didn’t come in the mail until yesterday. I should sue her for keeping me outta school.” He lit up a cigarette and flicked the match away. It was even colder than the day before. My breath was as thick as his smoke in the air. We didn’t say anything for a while, just stood there watching my breath and his smoke.

“What grade are you going to be in?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t how many years they’re going to leave me back, now.” Mitchell’s shoulders rose up and down like ocean waves in a storm as he laughed. “I don’t even know what grade I’m supposed to be.”

“Where’s your lunch?” I asked.

“They sent me a slip for that, too. They give me lunch.” He was one of the kids taking the cheese and mustard sandwiches handed out by the janitor’s office. On Fridays, they got apples, too.

When the bus came, Mitchell held his arm out. “Let me get on first,” he said. He slipped the bus pass between his fingers so the middle one stuck out in front.

“Here’s my pass, Krackowski!” he shouted at her. Then he waved it to the rest of the kids on the bus. They roared with laughter. Mitchell Cone was back. Mrs. Krackowski stomped her foot and yelled for him to take a seat. She nearly took my leg off when she slammed the bus door shut.

I plopped down in the front seat next to Crispy.

“Hey!” Mitchell yelled from the back. “Hey, get over here! Sit here, man!” he was patting the next-to-last seat right in front of him. The boy sitting in it immediately scooted out. When I sat down, I knew I was Mitchell’s friend.

“I can’t believe I’m going back to this shitty school. I wish I could just drop out and work on houses like my dad. It’s easy. You could do it. I could be making tons of money, but I have to waste my whole day at school. I’m not learning shit, anyway.”

He spotted a boy with Mattel Electronics Football 2.

“Hey, lemme try that!” Mitchell pointed a finger at the game and nodded to me. That finger looked like three little linked sausages. I held my hand out and got the game and gave it to Mitchell. He gave it back later, but not until we pulled into the school.

The sea of kids parted before Mitchell and me. Boys and girls darted to the sides of the hallway, their eyes big like frightened fish on nature shows trying to get away from the camera. We parted ways when Mitchell went into the office to hammer out a schedule. Lee Anderson came up to me at my locker.

“Why are you hanging out with that asshole Mitchell?” she asked.

“I’m not. He lives at our hotel now. We wait at the bus stop together,” I said.

“I thought he moved away.”

“He’s back. His family lost their house. I think the government is giving them money to stay at our hotel.” She chewed on her lips, leaving a red lipstick stain on her teeth. She could probably give a damn good blow job.

“Why do you have to hang out with him? You’re such a smart guy.” I was wishing she wasn’t holding her books across her tits so I could feel them press against me. Instead, I had to settle for her thigh against mine. It felt soft and warm.

There was a slap at the back of my head. It was Mitchell.

“Hey, put your dick away! I’m in your class, so show me how to get to there,” he said.

As drawn as I was to Lee, I couldn’t help but look away to see what Mitchell was doing in class. Rapping other kids’ knuckles with his pencil. Folding a page in his textbook over and over so it looked like a Chinese fan. Well-timed facial expressions and exaggerated yawns. I knew Mitchell was a bad kid, but he was damned funny to watch.

Too bad it didn’t last the whole year. He never came back after that week. Instead, he stayed in the hotel room, watching TV.

One day, after a heavy snowfall, he waited for me to get off the bus and nailed me with a snowball right in the face when I was on the last step. It hit me so hard I heard a buzzing sound in my right ear. I picked up a hunk of brown slush stained with car exhaust and hurled it at him, but it went over his head.

I chased him up the drive, but giddiness and slipping on the ice slowed me down. This was my first snowball fight against another person. I used to throw snowballs at trailer trucks on the highway, but that wasn’t really a fight. I tossed my books by the swimming-pool fence.

Mitchell’s hands were bare, so he could pack snowballs tighter and harder than I could with the worn-out work gloves I wore as mittens. I picked up a trash-can lid and used it as a shield. Mitchell did the same. We charged each other. I was holding a chunk of ice that must have weighed 10 pounds. I crowned Mitchell with it before he had a chance to block it. Stunned, he stumbled back and fell. For a moment, a flap of blubber slipped out from under his t-shirt.

Suddenly, Mitchell was on his feet and in my face. I turned, but fell into a snow drift. Again and again, he smacked his trash-can lid into my head. Something sharp was gouging out my scalp, but it didn’t hurt because of the cold.

When he stopped he said, “Holy fuck, man, you’re bleeding!” I touched my glove to my forehead and it came away slick and dark. I looked at the lid, now frozen in Mitchell’s hand. The ends of the bolts that held the lid handle in place were bloody.

“Shit!” grunted Mitchell. He picked up handfuls of snow powder and rubbed it into my head. I sat up, looking at my bloody glove for a minute. My hands were empty…what was I carrying…school…

“My books…I need my books,” I said. Getting back on my feet felt like climbing a rubber ladder. Mitchell went back and hastily grabbed my books. I staggered back to the office, one hand on my head and the other in front of my face. The wound didn’t hurt at all, but I was feeling cold and dizzy. We got back into the office, and I let Mitchell come into our living quarters behind the front desk — the first customer ever to do so.

My mother was sitting on the couch, watching a soap opera.

“Blood! What happen! Blood!” she blurted.

“I fell down,” I said, sinking into a chair. Mitchell dumped my books onto the floor at my feet.

“He slipped and fell,” Mitchell said, looking around the living room. “Hey, you got Atari!” he said. My mother glared at him, and he shrugged and left.

“You so careless, play too rough,” she said. She went downstairs and came back with my father and a wet towel.

“Look what your son did,” she said, wrapping my head with the towel. “Look what he did.” My mother was talking like I’d broken a vase.

“You okay?” my father asked. “What happen?”

“He playing rough with fat boy!” my mother snapped.

Just then, someone charged into the office and rang the bell, BING! BING! BING! My mother abandoned me and popped into the office.

“I saw it all. That fat white kid just slammed your son into the ground,” I heard Roy growl.

“I know,” said my mother in a voice that sounded more shocked by the appearance of an angry black man in the office than by my bloody face.

“I’m going to talk to that fat kid’s parents,” said Roy. “They have to show that kid some direction. I suggest you do the same with yours.” The front door swung in what sounded like a wide arc before shutting.

“I fell,” I said softly. My father shook his head.

“Better calm down, or else you lose more blood,” he said. After about an hour, the bleeding stopped.

BING! BING! BING! went the office bell. My mother was taking a nap and my father was back in the workshop, so I closed my book and went into the office. It was Mitchell’s mother.

“I saw the blood in the snow, and Mitchell told me you fell down. Are you okay?” she asked. I nodded and waved my hand.

Something smelled meaty. Mitchell’s mother was holding our casserole dish. It was stuffed with pasta, sausage and cheese.

“And this is your dish back, thank you for lending it to us,” she said. “You tell your mother an American never returns a dish empty.” She was smiling, but the expression on her face was condescending, like she was granting us a favor instead of returning one.

The fact was, they were two weeks behind in the rent.

“Are you paying the rent?” I asked quietly, looking into her eyes. “It’s late.” She reddened a bit and gently pushed the dish across the counter.

“Jim’s still looking for a job. He’ll find one soon,” she said. “We’ve already talked to your mother about that.”

“Okay,” I said. Dodging lenders was one thing for Mrs. Cone, but dodging me was another matter. How embarrassing it must have been to have to answer to a 12-year-old kid. A 12-year-old chink.

They must have left in the night.

On my way to the school-bus stop the next day, I saw that their car was gone. I went up to their room and saw that the shades were thrown wide open. They’d stripped the pillows and sheets from the bed. The towels were probably also gone. I cupped my hands to the window and swept my eyes across the room.

They’d taken the television, too.

Mitchell’s family had hit the road, bound for some other place that would take them in for a while. The father was trained in building homes, but he couldn’t find one for his own family.