She started the Maxima. And naturally, it didn’t start.

Lynn wanted to scream again but just waited in the cold quiet.

The car started after three tries.

As she pulled out of the parking lot, she felt too weary and dried up to shed a tear.

A Hero

Thanks to Vic, most of the students suddenly knew Thomas. Not only knew him, but wanted to make sure he knew that they knew. It wasn’t just the kids bringing gifts to school for a noble cause, launched thanks to a Facebook page. But it was him walking down the hallway, getting looks of recognition and even an occasional “Hey Thomas” from people he didn’t know.

Meanwhile, somewhere around Greer was a kid named Vic West who was probably devising another way to get back at Thomas.

Kids have guns around here, and every now and then some kid does something stupid.

Thomas knew he had to be careful.

But it was Friday, the last day before school got out. When the principal asked to see him right before lunch, Thomas thought that he might be in trouble. Instead, he discovered that Mr. Thornton had some surprising news for him.

“There’s a camera crew from WYFF Channel 4 News to see you.”

Mr. Thornton’s thick eyebrows wiggled in a funny way that almost made Thomas laugh. He had more hair on his eyebrows than he had on his head.

“They want to talk to you about your Salvation Army project.”

Thomas thought for a moment, surprised that the principal knew about it.

He gave it a name. The “Salvation Army Project.”

Mr. Thornton guided Thomas to the front of the school, where for the next half hour he felt like he was a celebrity as the reporter asked him questions. It was around lunchtime, so a lot of students were looking at him. But for the first time in—well, maybe the first time ever—Thomas didn’t mind the students looking. Maybe they knew that he was wearing the same ugly jeans and a two-dollar sweatshirt he’d gotten from the thrift store, but he didn’t really care about that. Because they were probably also thinking how cool it was that he’d come up with an idea to do something good from something so bad.

“Where did the idea come from?” the pretty news lady named Jill asked.

“I don’t know,” he told her initially. Thankfully he wasn’t being filmed yet. That’s probably why she was asking him questions beforehand. So he could come up with decent answers.

But I really don’t know why I did it.

“I guess I thought it’d be fun to see if some kids in the school would want to donate items to the needy,” Thomas said.

The woman from the NBC news channel kept bringing up the terms bullying and Facebook bullying. But Thomas didn’t want to go there. He didn’t want to talk about Vic or about being a victim of bullying.