Summary

The narrator opens Heads Against Concrete by explaining to the reader that he really was not “a violent kid” (137). During recess, he waited in the classroom and drew pictures. One day, a boy named Fredo stole one of his pictures and ripped it into pieces, causing the narrator to “pound his head against the ground” (138). In high school, the behavior continued when one day a boy made fun of Cecilia by pouring red paint into her pencil case and yelling that she was a whore. The narrator began to hit the boy’s head against the floor until it bled. This caused him to be suspended from school for two days, and, though his mother was mad, she insisted that “all he wanted to do was protect that poor girl” (140). From that day, the narrator says, Cecilia tried to be his friend...