A Cut Too Far Read online

  Text copyright © 2015 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

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  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

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  Front cover: © Charles Knox Photo Inc./Dreamstime.com (teen guy); Cover and interior: © iStockphoto.com/Sorapop (ripped paper).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.5.

  Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brown, Herman, 1971–

  A cut too far / Herman Brown.

  pages cm. — (Suspended)

  Summary: Chace has been bullied for years by Ivan, first for his facial deformity and then for his mother’s Iranian-American boyfriend, but when he decides to pay back Ivan’s Internet attacks with a cyberthreat of his own, he faces suspension from school—and worse.

  ISBN 978-1-4677-5709-6 (lb : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4677-8096-4 (pb : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4677-8824-3 (eb pdf)

  [1. Bullying—Fiction. 2. Racism—Fiction. 3. Abnormalities, Human—Fiction. 4. Cyberbullying—Fiction. 5. Conduct of life—Fiction. 6. High schools—Fiction. 7. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B81383Cut 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014040602

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – SB – 7/15/15

  eISBN: 978-1-46778-824-3 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-46779-029-1 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-46779-027-7 (mobi)

  CHAPTER ONE

  I leaned all my weight on the handle of the shovel and pried a blue, football-sized rock out of the dirt. With my gloved hands, I hoisted it into the back of the pickup truck. It banged and tumbled in the bed with the others.

  That’s when the cough of a chain saw started to travel down the slope about fifty feet away. Tahir pulled the throttle cord three times in quick succession, and the engine caught. The saw added to all the other rattling sounds: the rocks I dropped, the brush cutter Mom was running through the sumac, and the Stooges wailing on my earbuds. All that and the buzz of anger in my head.

  Besides the Stooges song, which I was not about to turn off, there was nothing I could do about any of it. I’d made my bed, as Mom said. I wished I was in bed. As for the anger, that had been roaring through my brain like a dive-bombing Stuka for weeks.

  I felt a little dizzy.

  Tahir pulled his goggles down and drove the chain saw into the tree on the lakeside. Wood chips flew all over, and sawdust spat back onto his face. He pulled the saw out and started another cut at a downward angle. After a few seconds, he kicked a wedge out of the trunk.

  He walked around to the uphill side of the tree and pushed the chain saw into the trunk on the side opposite the wedge. In a few seconds, the two-story pine tree made a splitting sound and leaned toward the water. It tilted slowly at first, then faster, landing with its tip in the lake.

  Tahir went right away to the next tree. This one was an aspen, a really nice-looking one. I sat down in the shade of the truck and shut my eyes. At least I had the Stooges to keep out the real world.

  I dare you to try to take a break with my mom around. You can’t do it. After about ten seconds, she noticed I wasn’t picking up rocks. So she cut the motor on the brush cutter and came over from the other side of the driveway. I could feel her standing in front of me, but I kept my eyes shut and the music going.

  Finally, she plucked out one of my earbuds.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “I have a headache.”

  She looked down at me for a few seconds, trying to figure out if I was lying. All my life I’ve gotten these terrible headaches. It has to do with my deformity. Mom doesn’t call it that, a deformity. Neither does Dad, for that matter. But plenty of people use the word. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, depending on how it’s making me feel at the time.

  The deformity of which I speak is my jaw. It’s huge. It sits on the bottom of my face like the prow of a canoe. I have a gross underbite and very crooked bottom teeth, creating intense pressure that runs through my jaw and skull. I’ve been wearing some serious industrial-strength braces for a few years now, which doesn’t do anything to relieve the pressure, let me tell you. Sometimes it’s unbearable.

  I guess Mom decided I was full of it, because she said, “Get up. It’s work time, not lounging time. You can have a headache later.”

  I opened my eyes. Sweat dampened her temples and the collar of her green T-shirt. Her mouth formed a hard line. Behind her, the sky was pure blue. The sun ignited the treetops so they glowed green. If I hadn’t been so angry and didn’t have such a headache, I might have thought it was a beautiful day.

  Since I got called to the principal’s office last week, I’d had a hard time appreciating nice things like great weather or tasty food. I’d been angry at the world, and Mom had been nonstop angry at me. That’s why I was up north in Otter Tail County clearing land for Tahir instead of being back at school in Minneapolis.

  Ms. Robb had suspended me for the week. Mom had flipped her lid. She said there was no way I was going to sit around the house listening to music and playing strategy games online, so she made me come up here to work for Tahir. He was going to build a lake home this summer, but first, he had to get all the sumac, poison ivy, trees, and rocks out of the way. The tractors would come in next week and dig the hole for the foundation.

  In a way, it was actually Mom’s fault that all this happened in the first place. Her and Tahir’s. I say in a way because I know I am responsible for my actions. And I didn’t tell Mom it was her fault. No way. She wouldn’t buy it, for one thing—I made my bed, etc. And plus, I’d never tell her what was at the root of my actions. I’m just saying, I could argue that I’d been defending her and Tahir.

  Not that I was a big supporter of Tahir. I’d rather that Mom had stayed with Dad, that nothing had changed at home, and that Ella and I still had a regular set of parents. But if your mom has to have a boyfriend, Tahir was fine. Or he should have been fine. Except as soon as he came into my life, things pretty much went to hell.

  For the vast majority of my school life, this kid Ivan has teased me for the obvious reason: my jaw. He called me Chace the Face, which is just pitiful. I mean, that’s all he could come up with? You’ve got the world’s largest jaw to make fun of, and you come up with Chace the Face? This was one bully who wasn’t truly devoted to his craft. An embarrassment to bullykind. I got pretty good at ignoring him and his sidekick, Toua, and I even kind of felt sorry for them sometimes. Kind of. In another year, I’d be out of high school and never have to see them again—except when they changed my oil at the Quick Lube or something. But when Ivan found out my mom was dating an Iranian American, it was like he found his bullying bonus points. All he’d been missing all these years was a little racism! In his tiny little mind, anyone from the Middle East was a Muslim terrorist. Eventually, I snapped.

  Well, I didn’t “snap,” exactly. But I got back at him, and it felt good. Even after getting suspended, I didn’t regret it. Even after prying rocks out of the hard-packed earth, I didn’t regret it. He deserved what he got, even if I was paying for it with a week of forest removal. Stomping around in the mud and, because it was Minnesota, the first mosq
uitoes of the year too. Swatting bugs and breaking my back to clear land for somebody else’s lake house.

  Anyway, it looked like Mom was going to make me work through the pain, so I got up. The chain saw was making a different noise now. I looked over, and Tahir was walking through a bunch of saplings. He sliced through them like whiskers. Rrrrt, rrrrt, rrrrt.

  I must have looked unsteady on my feet, because Mom sighed. “Take a break, I guess.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Just don’t laze around too long. You’re not out here to enjoy the scenery.”

  Believe me, I thought. I’m not enjoying anything.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dad moved out of the house near the end of last summer. He and Mom said they agreed to separate, but from what I’ve read online, it’s almost always one member of the couple who drives the separation. This was Dad’s idea, I was sure. He’d been cranky for, like, a year, always barking at Mom and me and my little sister, Ella. He started finding ways to stay out of the house. Going to happy hour after work or going to Twins games with friends without even stopping home. He started taking weekend trips alone.

  Or maybe he wasn’t alone. He might already have been seeing this woman, Meg. Pretty much as soon as he moved out, he began to talk about her when Ella and I visited. And it was only a few weeks before he wanted us to meet her. She came over to his apartment and made us all a spaghetti dinner. She was nice, but I didn’t feel good about her being with Dad. It felt like one of my headaches had settled in my stomach. Dad wanted us to like her so bad, but all I could do was think about Mom and how she’d been dropped for this lady.

  Mom didn’t date anyone. We spent a lot of time together, me and her and Ella. All of a sudden we were the ones going to Twins games, taking bike rides, seeing free concerts at the lake, and finding all kinds of other stuff to do together. I guess we needed things to talk about and think about that weren’t the divorce. Or maybe Mom just wanted us to be happy. I started to think of her as a victim, like the divorce had happened to her, not with her.

  Then she brought Tahir home. This was a day in March. When I got home from school, he was sitting on the couch, talking with Ella. She was in middle school and got home about twenty minutes before me. Tahir had given her a really nice catcher’s mitt, which she needed because her old one was too small and she was planning to try out for the high school team. Ella was a really great catcher, and I knew she’d at least make JV. But she looked really uncomfortable sitting there with that mitt and Tahir smiling all goofy.

  When I got my boots off and hung up my jacket and scarf, Mom introduced us. “Chace, I want you to meet Tahir.” As we shook hands, I watched to see if he’d flinch when he saw my jaw, but he didn’t so much as glance at it. He just smiled with that goofy expression.

  He had a gift for me too: an owner’s manual for Supermarine Spitfires, the legendary fighter planes used by the British during World War II. Since I’m a World War II nut and an aspiring engineer, my heart may have fluttered a little at that moment.

  But only for a moment, because I slowly realized that Mom was introducing me to her boyfriend. I got that headache-in-my-stomach feeling.

  Tahir made dinner for us that night. It must be written down in some divorced-parent’s guidebook. When introducing your kids to a new boyfriend or girlfriend, have the new partner cook dinner.

  Tahir prepared this Iranian food that was very different from any food Ella or I had ever eaten before. There was some weird-tasting lamb stew on rice, and on the side he served some flatbread called naan. I actually liked everything and cleared my whole plate, but Ella had about one-and-a-half bites of stew and then just ate the bread. Tahir tried to get her to talk about softball. She just nodded or shook her head or gave the shortest possible answers: yes, no, I don’t know.

  “Chace,” Mom said. “Tell Tahir about your engineering club trip.”

  “We’re going to the university for a geothermal energy presentation,” I said. “Then we’re going to the lock and dam.”

  “Oh?” said Tahir. He had a bushy black mustache that scrunched up like an inchworm when he chewed his food.

  “Yep,” I said.

  “Tell him about it,” Mom said.

  “What do you want to know?” I said. “This professor is going to give a presentation, and then we go to St. Anthony Falls. That’s about it.”

  “Sounds amazing,” Tahir said. Somehow I’d never thought of the trip as “amazing.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “They’re going to learn the history of the area and all about the Army Corp of Engineers,” she said to Tahir.

  “Oh!” he said, sitting up straighter. “That sounds amazing!”

  “I need to do homework,” I said. “Can I be excused?”

  Mom looked a little deflated, but she let me go.

  “Me too?” Ella said.

  “Of course,” Mom said. “Just clear your dishes, okay?”

  We brought our dishes to the dishwasher and got out of there as fast as we could. When I took a last glance at Mom and Tahir, their expressions were changing quickly. The frustration about us kids left their eyes, like they were pleased to suddenly find themselves alone together.

  That was a lot to think about, but I forgot all about them in about ten seconds once I started reading my new vintage owner’s manual.

  •••

  A few weeks later, Mom brought Tahir to my basketball game. I’m a fairly big kid, so I play center, but I’m not very athletic, so I’ve been a second stringer for all of high school. That meant I was on the sideline most of the game and there wasn’t much for Tahir to see. I got some minutes toward the end, though, since we were up big.

  At one point I blocked a shot, came up with the ball in the scrum that followed, and passed it downcourt to our point guard, a guy named Ollie Sadusky. Ollie passed it off quick to Ivan, the shooting guard, and he scored. I don’t mind saying I felt pretty good about setting up that play, even though the other team mostly had their second stringers in by that time too.

  After the game, Mom and Tahir came over to congratulate me on the win. Mom hugged me, and Tahir raised his hand to high-five. I obliged him, but we sort of missed and just brushed fingertips. Standing nearby, Ivan, my lifelong personal bully, guffawed as he took off his headband. Like, super funny, right? It was just one more uncomfortable moment with my mom’s boyfriend, the guy who desperately wanted me to like him. But Ivan apparently thought it was the most hilarious thing ever.

  “Great game,” Tahir said to me. “You denied that guy!” He meant my blocked shot, which suddenly seemed embarrassing instead of awesome. It’s not like I didn’t like Tahir or I didn’t want him to say nice things about me. It’s just that it seemed weird, this guy coming around all of a sudden and acting like we were buddies. My mom’s boyfriend.

  To make things even more awkward, Ivan laughed again, as if Tahir was this huge dork who knew nothing about basketball. Which is actually untrue. Tahir knows quite a bit about the sport. He had been asking for weeks to come to a game. It was a goofy comment for him to make, sure, but he was looking for anything to say to make me like him. Anyway, after Ivan basically laughed in his face, we all sort of stood there in silence like we were waiting for him to apologize.

  Maybe I should have said something, like, “Take a hike, Ivan.” But I didn’t. Finally, Tahir just smiled at Ivan and said, “Good game,” and we left. But the next day at school, Ivan sat next to me in health class.

  “So that’s your mom’s new boyfriend?”

  Ivan was a tall, skinny kid with oily hair who wore button-down Oxford shirts all the time. He looked like a Wall Street inside trader, complete with the dark eyes that suggested he was up every night completing sleazy deals. He was rangy and quick, which made him pretty good at basketball as well as flicking me on the ear from across the aisle in class.

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “Abdul, at the game last night. I’m surprised
he came—aren’t sports against their religion or something?”

  “You’re an idiot,” I said.

  “If she marries him, do you have to convert to terrorism?” he said.

  His buddy Toua set his books down on the desk next to Ivan. “What’s up?” he said to Ivan.

  “Just talking to the Face. His mom’s in love with an Arab.”

  “He’s Iranian,” I said.

  “He’s Iranian,” Ivan replied.

  Toua laughed. He was Hmong, so I thought he might be more sensitive about racist jokes. We had a lot of Hmong kids and Somalian kids at our school, and they took a lot of bullying. It got pretty bad sometimes. But apparently Ivan’s comments didn’t bother Toua. “Don’t get on any airplanes with him,” he said.

  Just then Mr. Giovanni walked in, and I yelled out, “Ow!” and rubbed my arm.

  “What’s going on here?” Mr. Giovanni asked.

  “Nothing,” Ivan said, acting confused.

  “Nothing except you punched me in the arm,” I said. Ivan had been tossed from class a couple times in the past few weeks, and I knew he was on a short leash. I figured it wouldn’t take much to get him kicked out of class.

  I was right.

  “Ivan, go see Ms. Robb,” Mr. Giovanni said. Ivan glared at me, but he picked up his stuff without saying anything and left the room. I just smiled at him.

  “Now then,” Mr. Giovanni said. “Any other interruptions or can we get started?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Two days after I got Ivan booted from health class, I received an e-mail welcoming me to my new membership at a Middle East-themed adult site. It was graphic. I deleted it, but that night, I got two more e-mails. I tried to log into the site so I could discontinue the membership. After contacting the webmaster and getting a password reminder sent my way, I succeeded, but it was too late. I was on all kinds of spam lists. I started getting nasty e-mails constantly.

  I suspected that Ivan had signed me up, but I wasn’t sure until the next week in health class. He and Toua sat behind me and giggled for the whole class. When I glanced back, Ivan showed me a drawing of a naked guy with a turban. I was pretty shocked, and I must have looked it, because they started cracking up.