http://reachmorenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/th-61.jpg
Left Behind – The Kids, Book 1 Chapter 3: Lionel Washington’s parents had moved him out of the inner city of Chicago when he was six years old. His mother, Lucinda, had been a reporter for the Chicago office of Global Weekly magazine. When she was promoted to bureau chief, the family could afford to move to the suburbs. They were among the first blacks to live in their Mount Prospect neighborhood.
Now, seven years later, thirteen-year-old Lionel was having trouble deciding where he fit. When he visited his relatives in Chicago, or when his other relatives visited him from the South, his cousins criticized him for “losing your blackness. It’s like you’re white now.”
Book 1: The Vanishings – Lionel, the liar
It was nice to live in a neighborhood where he didn’t have to be afraid to ride his bike anywhere or run with his friends, even after dark. And Lionel enjoyed having more things than he was used to having when he was smaller. His cousins, probably to cover their jealousy of his nicer clothes and shoes and the fact that his parents had two cars, called him “rich boy” and “whitey” and said he might as well not even be black.
Lucinda Washington was a no nonsense woman. She had become a well-paid executive with a leading news magazine in the country, despite her being black and a woman. She laughed when her nieces and nephews teased Lionel. “He’s as black as you and always will be,” she said. “Now you just go on and leave him alone.”
Still, Lionel didn’t like it. No way did he want to give up what he thought was a better and safer life than he had known. But neither did he want to be different from his relatives. There were a few other black kids in his junior high, and none of them went to his church. His older sister, Clarice, went to Prospect High School, and his younger brother and sister, Ronnie and Talia, were still in elementary school. That made him feel all the more alone at his school.
Chapter 3: The Vanishings – Lionel, the liar