Taking Sides: Chapters 1–2

Lincoln was a star basketball player, tall but not thin. When he made a fist, his forearm tightened with muscles. His stomach was muscle, his legs muscle. His face was brown, like coffee laced with cream, and his hair black as a chunk of asphalt.

He had moved from the Mission District of San Francisco, an urban barrio, to Sycamore, a pleasant suburban town with tree-lined streets.

He had moved from the Mission District of San Francisco, an urban barrio, to Sycamore, a pleasant suburban town with tree-lined streets.

Tired of the Number 43 bus leaving shreds of black smoke hovering in the dank city air.

Tired of the Number 43 bus leaving shreds of black smoke hovering in the dank city air.

It was time to get out, she said one day when she came home from work and found her planter box tipped over, her snapdragons stomped, and her small Victorian flat ransacked.

So they had moved to a small two-bedroom house with a yard and a mulberry tree whose fruit left purple splotches on the sidewalk.

Lincoln hung up and poured a small pile of dog food onto the floor, prompting Flaco to drag himself to his crunchies.

He admired the Sphinx, basking forever under the hot sun, and marveled at the Nile, a dark river that seemed to oppose gravity by flowing north.

He liked the hedges where jays built scrawny nests and bickered when cats slithered too close.

He liked the hedges where jays built scrawny nests and bickered when cats slithered too close.

He missed his old school and its mural of brown, black, and yellow kids linking arms in friendship.

The trash cans were buckled, but no candy wrappers or potato-chip bags scuttled across the campus.

A statue of Christopher Columbus with a telescope to his eye stood in front of the school, where the principal, Mr. Kimball, often waited at first bell with fistfuls of tardy slips.

The kids dressed stylishly. When they smiled, their teeth gleamed with braces. It would never enter their minds to shop at K-mart or tote a bologna sandwich in a twice-used paper bag.

Lincoln opted to live a simple life. His bologna sandwich, along with an apple and some chips, sat in his backpack, crushed between his geography and math books.

His mother harangued him about his clothes, but he wore jeans, busted at the knees, and his coat was a hand-me-down from an uncle.

“If you figure y is equal to 2x, then you can see that x is obviously smaller than the value of y,” Mr. Green rambled.

“And if you recall, we worked out 2x plus 2xy minus 3y,” Mr. Green droned on.

Lincoln and James looked at each other. “Where?” they asked in unison.