Purple Daze
Age 13
When I met Beebub Beaumont on the day my dad and I moved to town, I’d just come out of a tiny grocery store, change in one hand, and two plastic bags with sandwich stuff in the other. I remember it had been a ridiculously hot summer’s day, and my thin T-shirt had been sticking to my bony chest in sweat, since the air-conditioning was on the fritz in the truck and it was just plain sweltering everywhere.
My dad had remained in the vehicle, checking the map to make sure he knew how to get us to our new home. He’d sent me into the store to get some food to last a day or two while we got settled.
As I walked toward the vehicle, I heard some shouts and looked up, just in time to see about six boys push a kid twice their size into the street, and he almost got hit by a car
