I shook my head and closed my eyes. I raised the tile about shoulder high, brought it down on his head and felt a little shimmy run up my arm. Sparky was still standing with his eyes squinched shut.

He looked at me. "That's it?" He brought his hand up, rubbed at the spot where I'd hit him and said, "Man, you gotta be kidding, don't forget this thing's supposed to have blowed off a roof, you really gotta knock the snot outta me, bruh."

I dropped the tile. "This ain't me, you gotta get someone else."

Sparky looked hurt. "What? You supposed to be my boy, who else can I trust?"

He picked the tile back up and reached it toward me again. "Remember what we used to say, ‘We'll have each other's backs from womb to tomb, you'll be my boy from birth to earth.'"

What could I say? He was right, we had said that. I took the tile again. It must've weighed ten pounds.

The wind was really starting to get serious. The stop sign had stopped shaking and was now whistling and going back and forth like one of those piano metronome things. Two more tiles jumped off the roof and exploded in the parking lot.

"All right, fool, bend your head over."

I closed my eyes, raised the tile over my head and let it drop on Sparky's skull. Again my arm shimmied. When I opened my eyes Sparky was looking at me the way you'd look at a kid who brought home all Ds on his report card.

He said, "Man, all you're doing is giving me a headache! Swing that tile, brother! I bet if I went and got your crusty old mother she wouldn't have no troubles lighting me up."

If only he knew. The Sarge would've paid big cash to take my place right now. Sparky isn't one of her favorite people. She would've hit him so hard it would've knocked his head clean off. I laughed. "Leave my mother out of this."

Excerpted from Bucking the Sarge by Christopher Paul Curtis Copyright© 2004 by Christopher Paul Curtis. Excerpted by permission of Wendy Lamb Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.