The following is chapter one of Celtic Tiger, a mystery novel for young adult readers. In it, seventeen-year-old Johnny O'Shea finds himself alone in the world when his mother is found murdered. Celtic Tiger takes readers through his journey to Ireland to find himself and eventually, his mother's killer.

Detention

Day after day, I’m trapped in this hell hole of a room with a woman named Flora who looks like brittle wire. She occasionally lifts her head from her romance novel to shoot me these death looks. It’s like she hates me for just being in the room. I’m not even being my usual pain-in-the-ass. I think I’m even kind of nice, not saying a thing to her, not putting my feet up on the desk. I feel like saying, “I deserve a medal, lady, not your nasty face.”

The room has got to be about the size of a prison cell; most days the place has about five students, usually boys, two regulars and three first-timers. The colorless fluorescent lights cast a sickly green glow over everything, everyone’s face, even the desks. Scattered around the room, taped to pale blue cinder blocks, are these inspirational posters: Be Your Best: Be Yourself, and There is No ‘I’ in ‘Team.’ After reading them, day in, day out, I have decided to come up with new posters: If You’re Reading This Poster, You Screwed Up and Too Bad, Life Sucks. The mind numbs with the possibilities.

I blame Miss Kennedy for this mess. She’s my English teacher and since I need English to graduate this year, she came up with this alternative plan for me. I’m supposed to sit in In-School Suspension every day and write in a journal. Kennedy’s been teaching for two years and still wants to save the world. Whatever. But all I know is that ever since my mother died, or should I say, was found all dead and mangled, everyone has been out to save me.

They look at me with these worried faces and ask, “Are you OK? Do you need to talk?” And I’m like, hell no, because once I start talking, no one will be able to shut me up.

Then everyone at school got freaked out that my usual ‘D’ average dropped even lower. In fact, I was failing every one of my my classes. They thought sitting in this cell block room would focus me more. That, and I had taken to lighting my test papers on fire in class. But all this concern about me is a real joke because they had an insane amount of drop-outs last year and they’re afraid everyone in Queens will get suspicious, like what are you doing in that school which makes the students want to leave?

It’s a good question, you know, but when I asked Mr. Graham, the school counselor point blank, “Why don’t you want me to drop out?”, he came up with some prepackaged speech about me being seventeen and having my whole life ahead of me.

That’s when Miss Kennedy got her blonde head involved and hatched this plan to get me to pass English. Write a journal and read one book. Then she hands me a red book, a marble notebook, and a pen. I didn’t even agree to it.

The thing that Miss Kennedy and Mr. Graham don’t realize is that I would have done just enough to get a ‘D’ in English. I would have pulled it out in the end, but since I’m a senior and my mom’s dead, I’m on the “at-risk” list for dropping out.

Fact is, I’m home alone, doing everything I want. Total freedom. Not to mention how I get total sympathy now at school. I know that most of it’s phony, since everybody’s full of it, but it’s better than people pissing in your locker. Not that I’ve used my locker since freshman year, but you get the point.

Anyway, each of the quality girls now come around, standing there, looking mighty sweet, saying, “Oh Johnny, I can see how sad you are. I can see it in your eyes.” That’s my signal to lay it on thick, looking pitifully up through my eyelashes, blinking my baby blues. They fall for that lost puppy look every time. If only I could cry on the spot, I know I’d score. As it is, I get all sorts of comfort, if you know what I mean.

So life since my mom died has been just fine by me.