Book: Rule of the Bone Summary

            Bone, a punk living in upstate New York, had finally found a safe place to settle in after running away from his abusive stepfather and oblivious mother. He was living in an abandoned, immobile school bus with I-Man, an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, and Froggie, a little girl he"d rescued from the drug addict her mother had sold her to. Life with I-Man was good; he"d turned the school bus into a green house and they lived off of a vegetarian Jamaican diet and also acted as a mentor to them, teaching them the ways of the Rastifarian daily. The time came, though, when Bone and I-Man realized that Froggie needed her mother; a fifteen year old runaway and an aged Rastifarian would not suffice in helping her towards adulthood. .
             After saying goodbye to Froggie and sending her home by bus, Bone soon saw that he, too, needed his mother and left I-Man with the money that he had stolen from the drug addict so he could buy himself a plane ticket home as winter was coming and I-Man couldn't survive off of frozen vegetable plants. After saying his goodbyes to the man who had saved his life on several occasions---and who's teachings would probably save him in more then one to come-- he returned home to find that his mother had gone into rehab and his stepfather had lost his job, falling deeply into alcoholism, and ruined his mother's home. .
             Initially, Bone tried to mend fences with his stepfather, leaving aside the awful secret only the two of them knew, and offering to clean up the house and help Ken (his stepfather) find a job before his mother came home, and at first, Ken responded to this with civility. After a moment, though, Ken realized how Bone was seeing him; drunk, half dressed,jobless, unwashed and most of all, more pathetic then he had ever seen him. He couldn't let Bone, the boy he"d made to feel like nothing since the very beginning, see him in this state. Ken started to call him all the awful names, saying all of the awful things that he had always tortured his stepson with, chased him around the house, and threatened to rape him until Bone pulled the gun Ken didn't know he had out of his backpack.