JULIAN COMPTON

CHAPTER 2

"Julian, how is school going?" My dad asked me one morning in spring.

"It's going quite well, actually. Why do you ask all of a sudden?" I inquired or at least I attempted to.

He just shook his head and sighed.

"What about this town, how do you feel about it?"

I was starting to become puzzled and worried. Asking a ten year old boy these kind of questions in my time usually had that effect.

"It's good. No it's great. It's my home. I was born here, no town could be better." I replied.

He sighed once again.

"What do you think about moving into town?"

It took me a few moments to process this question. He was no doubt thinking about moving. With the serious look on his face, it was quite obvious. Well, I could be wrong. He always had a serious look on his face.

He smiled briefly and had this warm look on his face, the type he always had whenever he had bad news for me.

He opened his mouth to speak but I stopped him.

"We're moving aren't we?" I asked him.

He smiled and gave a sigh of relief l, like I had just taken a boulder off his shoulders. He nodded.

"Why? But here is just fine. I'm doing well at school, everyone here likes us and ..."

I looked at my mom's face. Normally when I did that she'd back me up on whatever issue I was arguing about, but not today. She just averted her gaze and wore a frown. I had no back up. She looked at my siblings. I'm not sure they fully understood what we were talking about but they were beaming with joy as they always did whenever we went into town. They thought of town as paradise. With all it's tall buildings, supermarkets, malls, parks and so on. So unlike our town.

But they being young failed to see how people looked at us. With disgust and contempt, like we were causing a nuisance but at the same time, couldn't be eradicated.

I looked at my dad's face once more. There was no debate, it was already decided.

"Ok. So when are we moving?" I asked finally, resting my case.

Everyone started smiling, like they were waiting for my approval for the plan to be in motion. Not like my thoughts matter though, I thought.

"Tomorrow. We move tomorrow morning." my dad stated.

"Wait..wha.. what." I managed to stammer "Don't you think it's so soon. What's the rush? Tomorrow? Come on dad, we haven't even had time to say our goodbyes or .. or ..."

"We can do that later, Julian. Another day." My dad replied.

I had no other argument. it has been decided.

The drive to town was two hours long but when we finally arrived at the house, our new home, I began to wonder: how could two hours separate two places so dissimilar. My town and this town felt like two different worlds entirely. The buildings, the people, the activity, not seeing boys smoking c***k on various streets and so on.

I was starting to be happy or seem happy until I saw the look on the faces of the residents. It read something like "Oh God, another pest!"

I began to realize what had happened. I had stepped into enemy territory and those enemies weren't just gonna let it slide.

I was more than amazed when we arrived at our new apartment. It was no doubt expensive and luxurious when compared to my former house. It made it look like a hut.

As we got down from the cab, I thought I was going mad. The fare my dad paid the driver was like a tenth of my dad's former salary. Whatever new job my dad has that made us move here was surely a big one, I thought.

My first day of school was terrible. It was like living in hell. In every class I was being stared at like I was an animal in the zoo or a mad man walking amongst them. I got bullied about four times on my first day, which was a new record for me. And that went on like forever, day after day of horrible schooling.

I still didn't know what my dad's new job was but I was kinda happy he got it. Even though he only went out at night and on weekends and went on long trips, meaning he wasn't around much, I got to wear good clothes and attend a good school, or at least that was what it seemed. It looked good and would have actually been perfect if the students there didn't treat me like an ape.

Everything was fine until like about six months after my dad got his new job. He was supposed to return from a three day trip but the day of his expected return he was a no show. We were worried a bit then we just stopped it thinking that maybe something unexpected came up. Oh how we were wrong.

I remember going to school the next day with my mom just to find the cops and a fairly large crowd at the junction of our street. 'Bet it's something interesting' I thought as I beckoned on my mom to go in that direction.

I was too stunned to move or say anything. At the centre of the commotion was a body of a dead man lying helplessly in a gutter. The man was dark, bearded, tall and pale. He had obviously died a lot of hours earlier. The dead man lying there was my dad, Mr John Compton.

Days after his death, we received no word from the police about any investigation or probe into his murder, they just acted like it never happened. It was then I understood the height of racial discrimination in America and I started to hate the country every passing day.

When I thought that nothing could make the situation of me and my family worse at that time came something unexpected. A very horrible news. The police claimed to have investigated his murder and claimed that he was an armed robber and was shot by his last victim on his way escaping.

My dad was an armed robber.