He wheeled around, tightened his right fist, then, with a whump, he planted a direct blow to the center of Zac’s gut. “Your mama twice the man you are,” Zac sneered. Justin was not in a mood to play the dozens. “Your mama so stupid, she tried to put her M&M’s in alphabetical order!” Bones sniped, still standing safely behind Zac. His mother had died less than a year before, and it felt like yesterday. A surge of rage and sorrow coursed through him. “Don’t you talk about my mother!” he hissed. He tossed his backpack on the ground and spun around. “Your mama wears a tutu too!” Zac and Bones hooted with laughter. “Got your shiny pink toe shoes stuffed in that bag? Who braids your hair-yo mama?” Bones asked, laughing loudly with Zac. Justin wondered, amused, why Zac was so interested in his butt. “Look how he twitches those hips!” Zac jeered. And none of them knew how much he loved it. But most guys seemed clueless about the athletic skills required for the leaps and lifts he had mastered. He was as tall as Zac, more muscled than Bones. Guys had been teasing him for years, ever since he started taking dance lessons. Justin tried to ignore the idiots behind him. Justin knew Bones would be hovering just a few steps behind Zac, safe like a shadow. Zac Patterson, the wrestling team’s “sultan of the slam,” was known to brandish both his biceps and equally massive ego. “You heard me, dancing queen! Don’t be tiptoeing away, now.” He did not turn around-he knew who trailed behind him. Sixteen-year-old Justin Braddock, wearing his favorite Timberland boots, tromped down the rain-slicked sidewalk, book bag slung over his left shoulder, heading to the bus stop. “ ‘Dark and sinister man,’ Peter answered, ‘have at thee.’ ” “ ‘Proud and insolent youth,’ said Hook, ‘prepare to meet thy doom.’

Panic book by sharon m draper