Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

by Moshe Kasher

When it was time to go home, I said good-bye to Ray and got back on the fucking yellow bus. I slumped into my seat as a severely disabled wheelchair-bound passenger screamed in impotent agony at her broken body, her broken brain. Here was my new school life, prison bookended by horrors. All I had wanted was to feel okay. I felt anything but. I convinced my driver to drop me off a half block from my house, lest the neighborhood boys see me getting out of the short bus. I went home and smoked a joint and reassessed. I needed to get the FUCK out of that school, and the way I would do that was to be an absolute angel every second of every day. I’d never make a peep, I’d never say anything smart-assed. Be invisible. I never made a sound. I stayed in Ray’s pocket. Months passed. My severe emotional disturbance was arrested for the time being. Every day at Seneca I had the realization that if there was a Hell, this was where the young people who lived there went to school.