Fire from the Rock by Sharon Draper Page A

upset.”
    â€œDid he sound scared?”
    â€œNo. Surprisingly, Daddy was angry. I’ve never seen him like that—mad enough to do something!”
    â€œTell your daddy to call me if he ever decides to get up off his knees and get out into the streets where the real action is,” Reggie said with feeling.
    â€œReggie!” Sylvia replied, a little surprised at his outburst.
    â€œI’m sorry. I don’t mean no disrespect to your daddy, but everybody in his generation wants to sit around and wait for things to get better—my folks included. It’s time to get up and do something.”
    â€œYou sound like Gary.”
    â€œGary’s cool. He understands. You know, if men like Martin Luther King, or even girls like you, are going to try to change the world, it’s not going to happen quietly,” Reggie told Sylvia.
    â€œI know. I bet Dr. King was terrified when that bomb woke him up. He has little kids,” Sylvia added. Her right ear was getting sweaty, so she switched to the left.
    â€œI wonder if something like that could happen here in Little Rock,” Reggie mused. “People are getting awfully riled up about the school integration.”
    â€œI sure hope not,” Sylvia replied, imagining what it would be like to have a bomb detonate on her porch. She shuddered.
    â€œIf somebody ever tried to mess with you, Sylvie, I’d hurt ’em bad. Real bad,” Reggie said boldly.
    â€œThat’s probably the sweetest thing anybody has ever said to me,” Sylvia said softly. “Also the dumbest. You’re not Superman, Reggie.”
    â€œNeither are you.” He paused. “You know, Sylvie, I know I have no right to tell you what to do, but I’ve thought about this quite a bit, and I don’t want you to go to Central. I want you to go to high school and just be normal, not some kind of hero.”
    â€œOh, Reggie! I don’t know what to say.” Sylvia felt tears welling up.
    â€œI just want you to be with me. Is that too much to ask?”
    Sylvia sighed. “Please don’t make this harder than it is. This whole thing is bigger than both of us, Reggie.” The phone lines were silent as neither of them spoke for a moment. “Do you think white folks imagine the same world we do?” she asked quietly.
    â€œProbably not.”
    â€œDo you think they’re scared like we are?” Sylvia asked thoughtfully.
    â€œI ain’t scared of nobody!”
    â€œHey, my mother is calling me. I have to get off the phone now.”
    Just as he had the last few times they’d talked on the telephone, Reggie said softly, “See you later, alligator.”
    Sylvia tried to cover the excitement she felt, and she knew it was corny, but she loved the fact that she had a stupid little custom that involved a boy. She said calmly in reply, “After while, crocodile.” She hung up the phone, a slight smile on her face, a faint frown behind it.
    Â 
    Â 
    Wednesday January 30, 1957
    My father is no Martin Luther King . He’s old and set in his ways, or in ways that have been set for him. I’m pretty sure a bomb on our front porch would send him running to Alaska, not to the NAACP office to become a freedom fighter.
    Daddy has met Rev. King a couple of times at church-related activities. I know he admires Dr. King for the work he’s doing in Alabama, but I’m glad my father comes home every night and we don’t get bombs tossed on our porch. It’s bad enough I get brothers tossed at our front door.
    When Miss Rosa Parks got arrested a couple of years ago because she refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman, it was Dr. King who helped the Negroes in Montgomery organize a boycott. For a whole year they walked everywhere they had to go until they won the right to sit anywhere they wanted to on the public buses.
    I was a little surprised when Life magazine ran a story on the boy-cotters