All Chapters of THE DEVIL WORE POVERTY: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

"I said MOVE that damn log boy! What is wrong with you, are you deaf or just plain stupid?! Move it to the LEFT pile before I dock every single cent from your pay today!"Mr. Briggs was so close that Leo could smell the coffee and cigarettes on his breath, a combination that somehow perfectly matched the man's personality. Short, fat, red-faced and angry at everything that breathed, Briggs had the unique ability to make every single word that came out of his mouth feel like a slap. He was standing with his thick arms crossed and his small mean eyes locked onto Leo like Leo had personally offended him by existing.Leo picked up the log without a word and moved it to the left pile.His jaw was tight. His hands were tighter. The log was heavier than it looked and his arms were already burning from three hours of lifting but none of that was what made his chest feel like something was pressing down on it from the inside. It was the way Briggs spoke to him. In front of everyone. Like Leo w

Three weeks was not a lot of time when you were four hundred dollars short and the only person standing between you and failure was yourself.Leo had spent those three weeks doing everything he could think of. Extra shifts at the yard even on days when his body was begging him to stop. Helping his neighbor Mrs. Paulson carry groceries and furniture for whatever small change she could offer. Selling the one decent jacket he owned to the second hand shop on Miller Street for fifteen dollars, fifteen dollars that had hurt more than he expected because that jacket had taken him four months to save up for. He had eaten once a day on some days and on two nights had not eaten at all, just drank water and went to sleep early so he wouldn't have to lie there and feel the emptiness so deeply.By the morning of the first day of school he had six hundred and sixty three dollars in the small tin under his mattress.Thirteen dollars more than he needed.He held the money in both hands before puttin

Leo had spent his first week at Galveston High school doing everything right. He came in early, sat at the back, kept his head down, did his work and left without lingering. He didn't involve himself in hallway conversations or lunchtime social politics. He didn't react to the comments about his uniform, and there had been several, some subtle and some not subtle at all. He ate his small lunch alone on the bench by the east wall where foot traffic was lightest and spent whatever minutes remained reading or writing in his notebook.He was a just acting like a ghost, Deliberate and practiced.And it was working for him, mostly.The three boys from the hallway had not approached him again directly. But he felt Elvano's presence the way you feel weather changing, not seeing it exactly but knowing it was there, knowing something was building. Elvano never spoke to him directly. He didn't need to. It was in the way his eyes tracked Leo whenever they were in the same space. A surveillance th

"I said WHO gave you permission to fix that machine?!"Mr. Briggs exploded, standing in the middle of the yard with his face the color of an overripe tomato,Leo straightened up slowly from the machine and turned around. "It was jammed. It's been jammed for three days. I fixed it.""I did NOT ask you if it was jammed boy! I asked who gave you PERMISSION!""Nobody," Leo said calmly. "I did it because it needed to be done.""Oh you did it because it needed to be done," Briggs repeated, his voice dropping into that dangerous mock-pleasant register that meant he was about to say something designed to draw blood. He took a step closer. "You think this is YOUR yard? You think because you can fiddle with a machine you have the right to touch things without being told to?"Leo held his gaze steadily. "The machine wasn't working. Now it is. That's good for the yard.""What's good for THIS yard is what I DECIDE is good for it!" Briggs jabbed a thick finger in Leo's direction. "You work when I t