“I saw the way you shoved him into the ditch. You could have really hurt him. Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” the boy replied calmly, not the least intimidated by Bernard.
At that point, a metallic-gold Mercedes limousine pulled up to the driveway outside the school. Bernard glanced at the car briefly, and then turned back to Nick. “This isn’t over. Get ready for part two tomorrow—I’m really going to hun tumb you!” He got into the backseat of the car, slammed the door, and was driven away.
The boy who had come to Nick’s rescue looked at him and said, “You okay? Your elbow’s bleeding.”
Nick looked down and noticed the bloody scrape on his right elbow. He wasn’t sure what to do about it. At any moment, one of his parents could arrive to pick him up, and if it happened to be his mother, he knew she would get all gan cheongc if she saw him bleeding like this. The boy took a white, perfectly folded handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to Nick. “Here, use this,” he said.
Nick took the handkerchief from his rescuer and held it to his elbow. He had seen this boy around. Colin Khoo. He had transferred in this semester, and he was hard to miss, with his deep-caramel skin and wavy hair with the strange light brown streak in the front. They weren’t in the same class, but Nick had noticed during PE that the boy had swim practice alone with Coach Lee.
“What did you do to piss off Bernard so much?” Colin asked.
Nick had never heard someone use the term “piss off” before, but he knew what it meant. “I caught him trying to cheat off my maths test, so I told Miss Ng. He got in trouble and was sent to Vice Principal Chia’s office, so now he wants to pick a fight.”
“Bernard tries to pick a fight with everyone,” Colin said.
“Are you good friends with him?” Nick asked carefully.
“Not really. His father does business with my family, so I’m told I have to be nice to him,” Colin said. “But to tell you the truth, I can’t really stand him.”
Nick smiled. “Whew! For a second I thought Bernard actually had one friend!”
Colin laughed.
“Is it true you’re from America?” Nick asked.
“I was born here, but I moved to Los Angeles when I was two.”
“What’s LA like? Did you live in Hollywood?” Nick asked. He had never met anyone his age who had lived in America.
“Not Hollywood. But we weren’t very far—we lived in Bel Air.”
“I’d like to visit Universal Studios. Did you ever see famous movie stars?”
“All the time. It’s no big deal when you live there.” Colin looked at Nick, as if assessing him for a moment, before continuing. “I’m going to tell you something, but first you have to swear not to tell anyone.”
“Okay. Sure,” Nick replied earnestly.
“Say, ‘I swear.’ ”
“I swear.”
“Have you heard of Sylvester Stallone?”
“Of course!”
“He was my neighbor,” Colin said, almost in a whisper.
“Come on, that’s bullshit,” Nick said.
“I’m not bullshitting you. It’s the truth. I have a signed photo from Stallone in my bedroom,” Colin said.
Nick jumped up onto the metal guardrail in front
of the ditch, balancing himself nimbly on the thin railing as he moved back and forth like a tightrope walker.
“Why are you here so late?” Colin inquired.
“I’m always here late. My parents are so busy, sometimes they forget to pick me up. Why are you here?”