“I’m going to leave you with Kaz and Turin,” Mom says. “There’s so much I want to tell you. But the race is starting soon and we have a lead on your dad’s location.” She signals to Ms. Wallace. “We think the Metalloids took your dad. They have the most to lose if he wins the race.”
“Mom,” I say as she turns to go, “you can’t leave. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“I’m sorry we don’t have more time,” she says. “I know you’ll figure it out. It’s just like any of the equations we work on at home.” She and Ms. Wallace jump into one of the wheelless cars. It hovers above the ground and speeds off.
“So you’ve really never used the jet pack before?” Kaz asks. “Your mom designed this one.”
“Well, you gotta be good,” Turin says. “Your dad is one of the top Sundashers in Sector 309.”
“The story about how your dad saved the Trilark ambassador from Preems moon internment camp is legendary.”
It seems that everyone knows about my parents but me. Kaz and Turin usher me over to the starting line. But the pressure—of my parents’ achievements, of saving some part of the universe I didn’t even know existed—is getting to me.
I watch the crowd build. All types of space beings are present. Most are humanoid like the Trilarkians. The Felids look like a mix of panther and tiger. Then there are the Shylites; you don’t see them so much as you feel them. They’re like walking music notes, speaking through the rhythms of their movements. Finally, there are the Metalloids, robotic creatures with wiry bodies, purple orbs for eyes, and tiny bolts of lightning trickling along their joints. Mom said they might be the ones responsible for taking my dad.
Some are using hovercrafts like the one my mom and Ms. Wallace have, just not as cool. Others have motorcycles with wings. The Metalloids can merge with their ships that look like floating swords with laser-like engines. I’m the only one with a jet pack that looks like a book bag. What an L.
The judge starts scanning everyone to make sure they are who they say they are. “So, you’re Action’s offspring?”
“Who?” I ask.
“That’s right,” Kaz jumps in. “This is Action Clarke’s son, top Sundasher on Earth, second only to Action. Metalloids got nothing on him.”
People call my dad Action in space? Great. Dad used to DJ under the name Action Clarke. I guess that’s his racing name too. And Kaz is big’n me up like we about to jump into a freestyle battle or get into a one-on-one game on the court. Could someone just give me an instruction manual on how to use this jet pack already?
“What do they call you?” the judge asks.
“Halfway Tree,” I reply. They’re my middle names and the place in Jamaica where my parents first met. Cats at the barbershop always called me Halfway Tree, so I figured if my dad’s got a tag name, why not me?
Everyone steps up to the starting line.
“Earth is ours,” the Metalloid crunches, side-eyeing me with those purple orbs.
If they were trying to make me nervous, it worked. I wanna break out. Head back to Brooklyn. But my mom, dad, Earth. Everyone is counting on me.
“Remember,” Turin says, “the jet pack works on thought. You just have to will it to do what you need.”
“The more you push your limits,” Kaz adds, “the farther it will go. We’ll be able to communicate with you through your hoodie comm to give you any tips.”
“And don’t worry if you crash,” Turin says. “The hoodie covers that too. Well, it should.” Turin makes a sound like a laugh, and I wonder if that was sarcasm.
The judge signals for everyone to take their mark. My heartbeat kicks up. My throat is dry. I feel like I can’t breathe, but I know the hoodie is giving me oxygen. Am I really doing this?
A screeching sound goes off, and the race is on.
Well, everyone else is off. I’m still standing here, looking around like a fool. So I start running. When I play soccer, I’m either the midfielder or winger. I take on the defenders and I attack the goal.
The minute I think of goal, my hoodie generates a digital image of the goal line in front of my face. Now I have a target. I start running toward it, seeing the map of my opponents, tiny moving dots in the distance. It’s like the heads-up display in a video game.
But this isn’t soccer. No team. Just me and the field. So I push myself. I feel my feet getting lighter and lighter.
And I’m running on air.
“What the—”
I trip over red dust clouds, tumbling back to the ground. Turin was right. I didn’t feel anything. This hoodie is awesome. I start again, running, now flying. This must be what a bird feels like.
I can see the other racers light up in my display. I gotta catch up. So I do what anyone who’s watched a superhero movie does, I reach forward and try to fly faster. No luck. It’s more like I’m hang gliding. The dots on the display are getting smaller and smaller. If this were a soccer field, my opponents would be almost at the midfield line. I have to go faster, attack the goal.
Why didn’t anyone ever teach me how to do this? And will these Metalloids really invade Earth if I lose? I push the thought aside. That’s how you get scored on in a soccer match.
“Dude,” I hear Kaz’s voice in my head. “You’re dead last.”
“I know,” I scream.
“Aggh,” Turin says. “No need to scream. We can hear you.”
What did Mom say? It’s just like one of the equations we work on at home. In algebra, you solve for a missing variable. The only thing missing now is speed. I just want to GO!
BOOOOM.
An explosion channels me forward. The jet pack is ignited. I feel my entire body on fire with excitement.
“GO!”
I yell it again—free of all limits. This isn’t like the alley on Cortelyou. The whole world is my field! I charge ahead as if this is the World Cup and I’m going for the game-winning goal, ripping through webbed trenches and caverns, the defenders who can’t stop my flight. My fist is forward. I’m representing for my entire family, friends, Brooklyn, Earth—racing to save the world. Gone are the nerves. My chest is pounding, my body is on fire from the speed and exhilaration. I gotta get a jet pack for everyone on the block!
The dots on my HUD are getting bigger; I’m rapidly gaining on my opponents. I whip past one racer, then another. I can see the faint outline of the Metalloid. I’m not far off. I gotta hustle, push myself to fly even faster.
Zzzzt. Zzzzt.
What is that sound?
KRAKOOM.
I glance around my HUD. Two racers disappear from the field. Did something happen?
I sense an alert go off, like a defender is charging me from the right. I quickly shift my body, just in time to hear another explosion. On my left, I see smoke. There is a Metalloid racer on my right firing at me. This one isn’t officially in the race so it’s not showing up on the HUD. But my hoodie is alerting me to the movements, like radar interacting with my skin. I adjust quickly, dribbling down the soccer field, dodging laser fire from all angles, flying through a lightning storm of attacks.
“Beat dem!” My father’s voice rings in my head.
“Dad!” I yell, my heart bursting with joy and an ear-to-ear grin on my face.
“We found your dad,” Mom says on my hoodie comm. “Now win the race!”
Mom did it. She saved him. That’s all I needed to hear. A surge of energy gushes through my veins that I’ve never felt before. It’s up to me now. I’m Action Clarke’s son. My mom designed a jet pack and rescued him! I got to show them what I can do. I keep my head down and push forward. There are only two racers between the goal and me. I fly past the Shylite racer. All that’s left is the Metalloid.
No.
There’s just the finish line. I’m racing forward to my parents, the goal, liste
ning to every sense in my body, dodging laser fire, until—
I cross the line.
“And the winner is…Halfway Tree of Sector 309!”
“Woo-hoo!” I scream, hearing the announcement, doing aerial somersaults. I wipe my eye, laughing through a mist of happiness. My parents, Ms. Wallace, Turin, Kaz, and other Trilarkians are waving up at me. I savor this moment in the sky, taking in the eucalyptus-scented air, letting the thrill wash over me as I wave to everyone. Then I descend into their embrace.
Flying became second nature; landing, however, is a different story. I tumble to the ground. The crowd picks me up. Everyone is clapping me on my back, shaking my hand, cheering. I’m in a daze. I’ve never felt like this before. I can’t lie. It feels great.
“Yuh didn’t juss save Earth,” my dad says, holding me in the biggest bear hug. “Yuh save di whole galaxy.”
“I guess I’m a Sundasher now too,” I say, smiling.
And that’s how a Saturday-morning soccer game in BK ended. Who knew jumping a fence could start a whole adventure? Everybody should have a jet pack.
EXTINCT
BY DEAN ATTA
TODAY
I wake up with a picture
in my mind of a Nodosaurus,
a heavily armored dinosaur
with bony plates across its back.
I found out about it when
I was looking up extinct animals
when we got home yesterday.
I only got to spend an hour
on my tablet before bedtime.
If I was allowed, I would have
stayed up all night reading
about all the extinct animals.
The very first thing I plan to do
when I get to school today
is tell my best friend, Javier,
and my teacher, Mr. Nasir,
everything I learned yesterday
at the Natural History Museum.
Mr. Nasir always says to our class:
“You teach me as much as I teach you.”
I’m sure he doesn’t know about this.
When I get out of bed,
I check my backpack
to make sure the postcard is still there.
I run to the kitchen, where my big sister,
Tabitha, has a bowl of cereal waiting,
and the milk carton next to the bowl.
She knows I like to pour my milk
because I like my cereal crunchy.
Everyone calls Tabitha “T.”
My name is Dylan, but my family
sometimes calls me “Dilly,”
which sometimes annoys me
because it sounds like “silly.”
“Good morning, Dilly,”
says T, putting on eyeliner
using her little pink mirror
with the gold bumblebee.
I’m not even annoyed
because I’m so excited.
T wears a lot of makeup.
She’s pretty without it,
but she says it’s like her armor.
Like a Nodosaurus
or a Stegosaurus.
Stegosaurus armor
was flame-shaped spikes
shooting out of its back.
They were to keep it safe
from other dinosaurs
that would try to eat it.
Stegosaurus and Nodosaurus
were both herbivores,
which means they ate plants.
Another similarity with T:
she has a “plant-based diet.”
She doesn’t even drink cow’s milk;
she has oat milk on her cereal.
After breakfast,
I double-check my backpack
to make sure the postcard is still there.
It has a picture of a dodo on the front,
and on the back, I’ve written
important facts I want to tell everyone.
The important facts are:
“Dodos were flightless birds, like penguins,
but their closest living relatives are pigeons
and doves. Dodos are extinct, which means
there are no more of them alive, anywhere.
The last confirmed sighting of a dodo was
in 1662, which is three hundred and fifty-nine
years ago. According to the United Nations—”
“Hurry up, Dylan,” shouts T.
When I’m washed and dressed,
I triple-check my backpack
to make sure the postcard is still there.
“Let’s ride our bikes,” says T.
“I think we’ll be late otherwise.
Promise me you’ll stay close.”
“I promise,” I say, and I mean it.
When we ride together, T always
goes in front, which means she trusts
me to follow her and stay close.
I take it seriously because roads
can be dangerous. T always waits
for me, if we’re going across traffic,
but in bike lanes, T goes fast,
and I pedal like lightning to keep up with her.
When there’s a bump in the road,
you go up in the air for a moment,
you get that feeling in your stomach
like it doesn’t know up from down.
You could be flying, you could be
free-falling. It’s like a roller coaster.
Even better, because you don’t have
to line up like at a theme park
and riding it is free.
YESTERDAY
The Natural History Museum was free.
T and her girlfriend, Laila, took me.
As we were walking around the museum,
a lot of people were looking at them.
Mom used to tell me it was rude to stare.
I wished Mom was there
to tell those rude strangers to stop staring.
T and Laila didn’t seem to be bothered.
Laila wore jeans, a white T-shirt,
and a baseball cap, like me.
Laila doesn’t wear much makeup.
She wears lip gloss and eyeshadow
sometimes, but not yesterday.
T was wearing a yellow dress
and hoop earrings so big,
I could put my arm through them.
I actually did it, once.
Luckily, T found it funny because
I didn’t damage them.
I see T and Laila all the time,
so I was way more interested in the dinosaurs.
Even though the bones don’t give
the complete picture. It’s amazing
that they are millions of years old.
But the most exciting thing ever
was the moving T. rex.
Its full name, as you probably know,
is the Tyrannosaurus rex.
Even though I knew it wasn’t real—
it’s animatronic, a mechanical puppet—
I still felt a teeny tiny bit afraid.
I read the writing on the wall
and learned that “rex” means “king” in Latin.
I don’t speak Latin; I speak some Spanish.
In Spanish “rey” means “king.”
Javi’s abuela calls us both
“pequeños reyes.”
In English it means
“little kings.
”
I remember when T made me watch
a long music video by Beyoncé
called Black Is King.
It had lots of people from Africa,
singing, rapping, and dancing,
and audio clips from The Lion King.
The whole time I was thinking:
Why can’t we just watch The Lion King?
A T. rex’s roar is more
frightening than a lion’s roar,
but maybe just because it’s less familiar.
It makes a low rumble
and a high screeching at the same time.
I don’t think T or Laila noticed
that I was afraid. They didn’t notice
when I kept walking. I thought they were
following me, but they weren’t.
That’s when I stumbled across
the dodo in its glass case.
It was like a small, feathery T. rex,
but it wasn’t animatronic,
it was completely still, but something
in its eyes looked almost alive.
But there are no more dodos,
just like there are no more dinosaurs.
I don’t know why this was so hard
for me to get my head around, at first.
It looked like it should be alive
in the wild, or at least in a zoo.
Not in a case. Not just a memory.
When Laila found me, she asked:
“Why did you wander off?”
I didn’t answer. I was staring at the dodo.
It reminded me of something.
I heard Laila, on the phone:
“I found him, he’s by the dodo.
Okay, we’ll wait for you here.”
Laila kneeled next to me,
I could see her reflection in the glass
of the dodo case, and Laila’s face
became her face.
I don’t know why but
I decided the dodo was a she.
Suddenly, T’s voice boomed:
“Dylan, you scared me!
Don’t run off like that ever again.
We don’t have to take you out with us,
not if you can’t behave yourself.”
Then T spun me to face her:
“You’re nine years old. You know
not to wander off like that.”
Black Boy Joy Page 7