At lunch break Sharkey sat alone or with Blaine, eating the sandwich his mother had made for him. He finished quickly and went outside to the playground and sat on the hot cement bench in the far corner that he had found his first day, avoided by the other students because it was hot, in full sunshine. There he watched the other students fooling with each other, and hated them. Blaine sometimes came over—often limping, because of the money in his shoe—and tried to start a conversation, looking to Sharkey for protection.

“Haole!”

They were usually yelling it at Blaine, who was weak, and whimpered, and cowered. Sharkey’s scar seemed to make them wary, and he was resigned to the shouts. But out of desperate pride, if one of them snatched at his lunch bag he snatched back, and it was like a challenge. But he also saw that they were poor, and they roamed like a pack because they were hungry.

One of those days on the playground, Wilfred accosted him with his little gang, saying, “Where you panty friend?”

Sharkey nodded slowly but said nothing. There was no way to win against five of them.

“He never tell us where he hiding his money,” Wilfred said, as always staring at his scar. “You his fucken haole friend. You know.”

Sharkey said, “If I knew, maybe I’d take it off him myself.”

They left him alone then, and pestered Blaine, and Sharkey understood that because Blaine was a haole they believed his parents were wealthy, but Sharkey had seen the little house on Ventura Street, the peeling paint and the old car, and his dog had looked starved too. It seemed crueler that they wanted what little money the weedy boy had.

But they continued to follow Blaine and flick his ear, and they encouraged the girls—Vai and Leena—to slap him. Nothing was worse than to be roughed up by a girl. But because of this concentration on Blaine, the taunts, the demands, Sharkey was mostly left alone. And when after a few weeks some other boys came after Sharkey, trying to corner him as he was hurrying through the playground after school, Wilfred stepped in.

“Haole,” he said. “You know kokua?”

Sharkey frowned at the Punahou word.

“It mean help. Help us get the panty money,” Wilfred said. “He hiding it in his stuffs.”

Sharkey said, “Why don’t you leave him alone?”

That was defiance, but the mention of Blaine made them glance around, and they saw that he was at the far side of the playground. So by the time Wilfred recovered, saying, “Elvis, you want dirty lickings?” and “Where you going, haole?” Sharkey had slipped through the gate in the fence and was hurrying across the school lawn. When he looked back he saw the gang of boys advancing on Blaine, and Blaine—white-faced and small and piteous—lifting his skinny hands and pleading.