My Initiation
Excerpt #2, from Chapter 9

  SETTING: "That" summer, 1976, at the age of fourteen, my buddy Tom and I had been driven by Father Foley's sidekicks to the South Bronx where we were told we would be participating in a church parade. Instead, we found ourselves in a run-down tenement building with a bunch of other kids. They sent Tom and me out to get a pizza, with a scary dog to protect us on the mean streets.

      It was a cool night, an early dose of fall near the end of the summer. I was shivering as much from fear as from the cool air. When the pizzas were finally done, we started back. A car going by honked and the dog lunged. I tried to grab the leash to help Kenny and one of the pizza boxes fell, dumping the pizza upside down on the sidewalk.

     We got the thing back in the box and tried to fix it up so it looked okay, then double-timed back to the front door. All the kids jumped up as soon as we got inside, and suddenly a million hands were grabbing slices.

     “Hey, what’s up with this one,” somebody shouted. “It looks all messed up!”

     “Oh, I…uh…had to carry it under my arm, sideways. It got a little scrunched is all.”

     Tom and I each got a slice of the undamaged pie, and a cup of soda, and found a corner to sit in, close together. I had no clue what to think about what was going on. There was a tension in the room, a feeling of danger that I had no words for. Tom and I ate in watchful silence.

     When the pizza was gone, Father Foley, Mike, Frank, and the guy with the gold tooth told all the kids to get together in the middle of the room. “Tony. Tom. You, too.” They shooed everybody toward the center. Then they backed off, standing against the walls.

     In an instant, like somebody had flipped a switch, the room erupted in a frenzy.