He’s mocked for his name and nerdy interests at Chapel Hill High School in Portland, Oregon, and doesn’t speak enough Farsi to communicate with his Iranian relatives either. Iranian on his mother’s side and white American on his father’s side, Darius never quite fits in. When Darius’ grandfather becomes terminally ill, Darius, along with his parents and younger sister, travels to Iran for the first time in his life. Sound base, authentic surface-like Tippy, a winner.ĭarius Kellner suffers from depression, bullying by high school jocks, and a father who seems to always be disappointed in him. And instead of the broad-stroke characterization of the orphan books, Myers gives us people-you'll even come to feel for the hopelessly no-good Lonny before he ends up in jail. Roland's convenient presence in the wings constitutes perhaps an easy out for Tippy and for Myers, but it doesn't undermine Myers' demonstration that however the cards are stacked, the choice is there to be made. How can he break away when he has nowhere to go? (Though this isn't a humorous story like Myers' Fast Sam, Cool Clyde and Stuff and Mojo and the Russians, there's a funny scene in the bus station where "a white guy in a yellow robe" and a black guy in a white robe get to pounding on each other over whether Tippy needs Krishna or Allah.) But at last, with one of the gang critically shot and untended after their big stick-up, Tippy does go to a sympathetic neighbor who notifies the police and later takes him in. Torn and miserable about going along with them, Tippy too starts to drink. Worse, Lonny and his friends engage in robberies and force Tippy to participate. Lonny hangs around with his buddies, drinks, smokes weed, and alternately beats on Tippy, tries ineptly to be companionable, or presses money on him. When motherless Tippy's grandmother ends up in the hospital, Tippy, twelve, is sent on to Lonny, who happens to be his father but is neither inclined toward nor equipped for the role. As both Branscum and Rabe come out with grit-and-hardship dramas of 1930s orphans, Myers gives us a contemporary Harlem kid whose problems seem more real and more serious even though he has a father and, thanks to welfare, knows he will eat.
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