The Soda Bottle Kid

Rodney awoke early monday morning, went done to the
kitchen. His mom hadn't left yet for work and was sitting
hands folded on a cup of coffee at the table. "Hey mom",
 Rodney greeted. "Good morning honey", she said in a
hushed voice. "You want breakfast?", "I got time for eggs
and toast if you want, when was the last time we had eggs?"
  Rodney said sure and looked at his mom a little closer,
"Mom you been crying?" She turned quickly and said,
 "how do you want those eggs"? "I guess I'm just tired, is all."
The job at the cafe is wearing on me, and my temp office job
 is coming to an end. I'll have to find something else to do this
summer, I guess. "Scrambled is ok mom don't fuss too much",
Rodney knew something was up, the job, maybe something else.
Either way, He didn't want to trouble her. "I gotta go or I'll be late"
Rodney gulped his milk and folded egg in his last piece of toast,
and was out the door with a quick kiss from his mom.
   No time for bottle hunting this morning. This was the last full
week of school, alot of final tests and papers were due in.
The last three days next week were end of school olympics
and clean out your lockers an stuff. But now was cram for tests
and take care of missing assignments, and extra credit too if you
needed it, And Rodney needed it!! Rodney was a smart kid but,
school never held his attention. It wasn't long before his mind was
wandering and he found himself looking out the window or
doodling in his note book.
  "Hey Hot Rod", Travis called after him at lunch, " Wait up,
I got 2 guys interested in the gang, you know them Brent and Josh."
  Brent was cool but Josh was kind of a loner and got caught stealing
last year from the feed store. Just some candy and a coffee can full
of change, but he had to do a bunch of chores for breakin' in, and
had to pay back all the stuff he stole.
  " I don't know about Josh, Trav" Rodney said " he's a thief".
" He learned his lesson, he said he knew it was a stupid thing to do."
Travis defended, and added " think about it". 
  Rodney returned to class, current events, " take out a pencil",
Coach Harris said " we are going to see if you did your assignment
over the weekend".
 The blood ran from his face, the assignment? what assignment?
Crap, Walter Kronkite, The President, Crap Crap Crap!!!
Rodney went down through the true/ false and guessed which
one sounded right. Then he started on the multiple choice,
Rodney might as well have called them multiple guess.
Then he turned it over and there on the other side was,
In 25 words or more discribe the circumstances around
President Nixon's empeachment.  ( this will count for 1/2
of your semester test grade).
  Holy crap he was screwed, his mind flashed back to Lenny
and what he had said last night. He couldn't remember all
of it but wrote down the story as best he could.
   The rest of the day he was so worried about the test
it messed with his concentation, Am I even going to pass
this year? It was a long bike ride home. He turned in the drive,
called Clipper and went to the barn.
  "Clipper am I a screw up?" Man I know I messed up today
on one test, and some of my other papers. I wish I could just
run my own gang and get out of school".
 Clipper looked at him as if to understand and licked his face.
"You got it easy bein' a dog, life sucks when you're 12 years old."
Rodney always felt better after talkin to the dog.
He threw a stick on the way back to the house for the dog to fetch.
  He came up to the back door he could hear his mom yelling inside,
As he reached for the door, Ed came out, mad and said,
"Get the hell outta the way you punk." He jumped in the truck and
threw gravel all the way out of the drive. Rodney ran inside.

   Tune in next time will school ever end?
        What's up with Ed and mom?