Checkmate

by Walter Dean Myers

  “The paper will be the bomb,” Kambui said. “It’ll be the four of us keeping it real and speaking truth to power.”

  Mr. Culpepper smiled. It was the kind of look that an alligator gets just before he pounces. The grades of all the kids in the room were floating around the C+ area, and he couldn’t get us on that. But if we messed up with the newspaper idea, and you could tell he thought we would, he would have us.

  “Well, it sounds like a plan, doesn’t it?” he said. “But we will see, won’t we?”

  Mrs. Florenz Maxwell, our principal, is a saint. Where Mr. Culpepper is loud, she’s quiet. When he gets excited, she is calm. Sometimes I think they work together, but I hope she really doesn’t like him. I know she likes the Cruisers because she told me. So when Mr. Culpepper called the Cruisers into his office the day after he had called me at home and I saw her sitting there I felt good.

  Okay, we were in the office. Mr. Culpepper shuffled through the papers he keeps around just to shuffle, then he cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Sidney has been arrested for attempting to buy drugs from an undercover policeman,” Mr. Culpepper said. He looked around at us carefully before going on. “He was down in Alphabet City.”

  Da Vinci Academy is in Harlem. Alphabet City is what they call the section where the avenues are Avenue A, Avenue B, and Avenue C. I don’t know if they ran out of names or what, but everybody knew there was some drug dealing going on down there. Also, a bunch of good poetry and some great music.

  “I think that since he only inquired as to the availability of drugs, and the particular amount involved is not classified as dangerous, there won’t be further prosecution,” Mr. Culpepper said. “What we were hoping was that some of his peers, you people, could talk to Sidney and see if there are problems that need handling. He won’t tell us anything.”

  “We want to do everything we can for Sidney,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “But sometimes we don’t know what to do. If he has a problem at home, perhaps we can point him in the right direction before he gets into further trouble.”

  “What do you think, Bobbi?” Mr. Culpepper looked toward her. “You’re both on the chess team, aren’t you?”

  “Beats me,” Bobbi said. “I’m really surprised. Zander’s his friend.”

  “Mr. Scott?” Culpepper looked in my direction.

  “Sidney’s okay,” I said. “We’ll talk to him.”

  “Our concern is that there is a slippery slope that has to be avoided when any drugs are involved,” Mr. C. went on. “Sidney’s a major asset to this school and we don’t want him incapacitated.”

  “Or be by himself if he has a real problem,” Mrs. Maxwell added quickly.

  “And this won’t excuse you from the IL program,” Mr. Culpepper said. “Independent Learning will be the wave of the future, and Da Vinci will lead it in the city of New York.”

  “If I were being burned at the stake would it excuse me from any of your programs, Mr. Culpepper?” Bobbi asked.

  “If you were burning yourself on school property you would be completely responsible for any damage you caused, Miss McCall,” Mr. Culpepper said. “Away from school property would give you more leeway, of course, but would not offer an excuse to be delinquent in your assignments.”

  “I thought so,” Bobbi said.

  Outside of Mr. Culpepper’s office we decided to call a meeting with Sidney to talk over his problems. Everyone except LaShonda thought that was a good idea.

  “It won’t work,” she said. “Sidney ain’t stupid. He knows drugs are wack. So what are we going to say to him?”

  “If we tell him how much we care about him it could make a difference,” I said.

  “And how much we need him on the chess team,” Bobbi said. “I heard that Hunter is hiring a professional chess coach to work with their team.”

  “We can’t do anything until we scope the problem,” I said. “Let’s talk to Sidney and see what’s happening.”

  Everybody agreed to that and I was feeling good about it. Then Bobbi and LaShonda got into it again.

  Me and Kambui usually take things pretty easy. The two girls, LaShonda and Bobbi, get excited about everything. LaShonda is always excited to begin with, and Bobbi, who is always smiling and always giving out her squinchy-eyed look, is not excited until you disagree with her. Then she gets mad. So when Bobbi announced that she had entered a project for the Cruisers in the Independent Learning Project and LaShonda didn’t like it, the sparks began to fly.

  “Yo, girl, who are you to tell all of the Cruisers what we’re going to be doing?” LaShonda asked.

  “Yo, girl, if you want to be into some project away from the Cruisers, just go for it,” Bobbi said. “You probably can’t handle the theme I put out anyway.”

  “I can snatch all the hair off your little round head!” LaShonda said. “And then beat your butt until you turn red, white, and blue.”

  “How intelligent!” Bobbi was getting up into LaShonda’s face.

  Kambui separated the two girls by stepping in between them.

  “What is your project?” he asked Bobbi.

  “Well, we have to learn one subject all on our own and prove it to a teacher,” Bobbi said. “So I thought we could learn the statistical basis of basketball. I call it In-Your-Face Probability Theory.”

  “You can’t learn no …” LaShonda tilted her head to one side. “You mean like what percentage of shots they make and stuff like that?”

  “There are a lot of basketball stats we can use,” Bobbi said. “And since the final result is numerical, there has to be some angle we can work.”

  “If we can get a math teacher to approve it,” Kambui said.

  I liked the idea of getting basketball involved in an academic program. I was also thinking it would make the Cruisers seem even cooler.

  “I’m not sure, but I’ll go along with it,” LaShonda said.

  “You know, Sidney is good in math, too,” I said.

  “And that can be our way of getting to talk to him without looking too stupid!” LaShonda said. “Zander, you are smart.”

  I knew that.

  Kambui and I had History together and headed toward class. On the way he started talking about Sidney. He said nothing was going to work because people who used drugs wanted to be drug addicts.

  “We don’t know he’s using drugs, Kambui,” I said. “All we know is that he asked about how to get some.”

  “Zander, who doesn’t know drugs are bad?” Kambui asked. “Everybody knows that. You see crackheads lying around in the street, leaning against buildings, running around looking desperate. They know they’re messed up and they all look miserable. You can’t talk to them because they know everything you know already. And how’s he going to play chess with his head messed up?”

  He had a point.

  THE CRUISER

  A MODEST PROPOSAL

  By Zander Scott

  Most young kids don’t smoke, don’t like greasy food, don’t drink, and don’t like to sit around watching television 15 hours a day. But when they get into high school they get curious about these things and go out and try them because they think it’s either cool to do them or because their friends are doing something stupid. Okay, so I propose that we make all little kids between the ages of 2 and 10 smoke at least 10 cigarettes a day, eat greasy fast food from a brown paper bag, watch television 15 hours a day no matter what’s on, and maybe commit a few armed robberies. Then, when they get to be 11 and have all their bad habits perfected, we can tell them that they have a choice of what they do. By this time all the big kids will have been beating up the little kids on a regular basis. A 3-year-old who smokes all day won’t be too tough to take in a fight! Then if we tell them to stop smoking, stop watching television, and take their grimy little hands out of the fast food bag they might even listen.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Circle of Lame

  I don’t believe it,” LaShonda said. “Sidney is too straight to be running
around trying to cop no dope.”

  “Culpepper wouldn’t make it up,” Kambui said.

  “Sidney plays chess down on Henry Street,” Bobbi said. “I think the settlement house has a team. So that’s near enough to Avenue A to make it seem real.”

  “I don’t know why Mr. Culpepper thinks we can help him,” I said. “But if the rest of you guys are down with it, I’d sure like to try.”

  “He’s probably thinking that you should know something about drugs because you’re black,” Bobbi said. “I mean, he can’t simply walk up to people and say, ‘Hey, I notice you’re black, can you deal with a drug problem?’ ”

  “You’re sick, Bobbi,” I said.

  “But she’s probably right,” LaShonda said. “But maybe, just maybe, he’s not using drugs. Could be he was trying to get them for somebody else.”

  “You ask me and I’m thinking that what I see don’t smell right,” Kambui said. “Something’s funny here and it’s not about ha-ha!”

  “We can have an intervention, like they do on television,” LaShonda said. “You ever see those programs where they get somebody in a room and tell them they got to stop doing whatever and everybody is screaming and stuff? That’s what we need to do.”

  That seemed like a good idea and we contacted Miss LoBretto and asked if we could use the media center. She said we could and Bobbi said she could get Sidney to come to a meeting during lunch.

  “Maybe everybody shouldn’t come,” I said. “Sidney did me a solid when I needed it most. If I can do him one, then I got to be on time. If you want to show, then that’s cool. If you don’t want to show it’s still cool.”

  “It’s not that, Zander,” Kambui said, shaking his head. “I got some druggies in the fam, man, and it don’t go down smooth no matter how much heart you got in it. You know what I mean?”

  “If it was the druggies in your fam would you be at the media center?” I asked Kambui.

  “I’d be there,” he said.

  After school I walked home by myself. I had Sidney’s phone number and thought I would call his house before he got home. His grandfather was a cool old Russian dude and he loved to talk. Maybe he would say something that would give me a clue to what was going down with Sidney. But when I called it was Sidney who answered.

  “Hey, Big Sid, how you doing?”

  “I’ve done better,” was the answer.

  “I heard you had a little trouble,” I said.

  “Zander … Zander … the cops said I was facing Juvenile and then State,” he said. I could hear him crying.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I could go to juvenile jail until I’m eighteen and then get switched to a regular prison,” he said. “God, man, I’m really scared. I’m really scared. I didn’t think any of this would happen. I really didn’t.”

  “Sidney, you have friends, dude. I know a lot of times they drop the cases,” I said. “Guys around my way don’t even worry if they’re caught with drugs. They just have to go downtown, stay a few hours while they get written up, and then they’re back on the street again.”

  “You think I can get off?” I could hardly hear him.

  “Yeah, look, the Cruisers are having a meeting and we’d like to invite you.”

  “Other people know about this?”

  “Sort of … but that’s good,” I said, thinking as fast as I could. “The important thing is to get you out of trouble. Do your parents know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.”

  “They want to send me to Europe or Siberia or wherever.”

  He agreed to come to the meeting in the media center, but I had a funny feeling about it. In my life things don’t work out that easy. I thought he would be upset when he found out that the other Cruisers knew about his problem. I wondered if he was more involved in drugs than we knew and was desperate for help.

  When I got home I asked Mom if she knew anything about drugs.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Just wondered.”

  “Did anyone offer you drugs in school?”

  “Not unless you think that education is the opiate of the people,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t say nothing to me,” Mom said. “I’m your mother!”

  “Karl Marx said religion is the opiate of the people because he felt that religious people wouldn’t rebel against the government,” I said. “I just substituted education because it sounded cool.”

  “Go back to nothing,” Mom said. “Anyway, what did you want to know about drugs?”

  “A kid in my school was caught trying to buy some prescription drugs,” I said. “But this is a real good kid and I don’t think he would use drugs.”

  “Who?”

  “Just a kid.”

  “Kambui?”

  “Why does it have to be a black kid?” I asked.

  “Did he offer you any drugs?”

  “I’m sorry I asked,” I said.

  “That’s how it starts,” Mom said. “You turn away from your parents and go out on your own. The next thing you know you’re experimenting with drugs.”

  “I’m not experimenting with drugs,” I said.

  “Should I call your father?”

  “What would he say that you wouldn’t say?” I asked.

  “He’s a scientist!” Mom said.

  “He’s a weatherman!” I said. “He doesn’t even figure out what the weather is going to be. He just reads it off a screen.”

  “You sure?”

  “That he doesn’t figure out the weather? He told me he didn’t.”

  “I mean about the drugs,” she said, lowering her voice.

  I knew what was going to happen next. A mama hug, then a mama kiss on the forehead, and then me saying I would never do drugs.

  It all happened.

  But it took the rest of the night to convince her not to call my father in Seattle, not to call the police, and not to take me to a rehabilitation center.

  I dig the way I look but the thing about me is that I always look too young. I was wishing I was older or at least looked older when Sidney got to the media center. LaShonda and Bobbi had arranged the chairs in a circle, and Sidney sat in the chair that Bobbi indicated. Something bothered me again. It was a little too easy.

  I had thought the whole thing out and had decided to start off by telling Sidney that we were on his side. But before I could get my mouth open LaShonda got her thing off.

  “Sidney, I have figured out what is wrong with your dumb-butt self,” LaShonda said. “You’re just stupid. Why do you want to mess with drugs?”

  Sidney looked down at his hands and shook his head slowly. “I just can’t help myself,” he said. “At first I just wanted to experiment a little —”

  “And then you got hooked!” LaShonda said.

  “I’m not hooked!” Sidney said, looking around at the Cruisers sitting in a semicircle. “Really, I’m not. I just enjoy the feeling so much.”

  “What feeling?” Kambui asked. “Like you’re probably going to jail for the rest of your life? Is that the feeling you get?”

  “It’s like I’m — I’m floating away from all my troubles,” Sidney said.

  “You have a lot of potential,” Kambui went on. “People who have lots of potential can kill it off just like that!”

  He made a circular motion with his hand and snapped his fingers.

  “I know what you’re saying is true,” Sidney said. “Everything you’re running down is right, and I do want to stay away from drugs, but …”

  Sidney had his head down, his hands clasped in front of him. I really felt sorry for him.

  “I think everybody should say why they don’t think Sidney should use las drogas,” LaShonda said.

  “Why don’t you start?” I said to LaShonda.

  “It messes up your skin,” LaShonda said.

  Sidney nodded.

  “It’ll be messing up
your whole life,” LaShonda said. “You ever see those people nodding out on the corner? That’s, like, a pitiful sight. Or maybe you like sleeping in hallways or on somebody’s roof. Drugs are, like, the worst things in the world.”

  Sidney nodded.

  “Here’s a good reason to stay away from drugs,” Bobbi said. She opened her notebook and took out a newspaper clipping. It was from The Village Voice.

  SIDNEY ARONOFSKY NAMED CHESS MASTER

  The 14-year-old student from the Da Vinci Academy for the Gifted and Talented was named one of only two school-age masters in New York City. Adrian Culpepper, assistant principal at Da Vinci, said that he expected the youth to be a grand master by the time he was 16. The youngster said that he loved chess “more than life.”

  Sidney put his hands over his face and I thought he was going to cry.

  Kambui said that it would mess Sidney’s family up as well as him. “If you’re using drugs it gets to everybody you know,” he said. “Just like we’re here thinking about you and wanting to deal with you. People in your family are going to be hurt.”

  “You know what I’m thinking?” I asked Sidney. “I’m thinking you could have told us all these reasons yourself. So what we need to do is to see how sincere you are. I know you’re strong because you stood up for me when I needed it. I know you’re smart. You don’t become a chess champion by being stupid. What’s happening, man?”

  “I was just wrong … just wrong.” We were hearing Sidney but he had his head down and we couldn’t see his face. “I feel like I let everybody down. The whole school.”

  “It’s not even like you to be using drugs,” LaShonda said. “If you don’t die from an overdose you could get AIDS or something and die slow like those guys on the Public Broadcasting station. They looked terrible!”

  “The important thing is what can we do to help you?” Bobbi said. “The same way that you would help us if one of us was using drugs.”

  “What drugs are you using?” I asked.

  “I got busted looking for any kind of head medicine I could find,” Sidney said. Slowly, he began to lift his head and I saw he was crying. Sidney is whiter than most white people but when he gets excited or upset he gets redder than anybody is supposed to get. “I guess I just kind of drifted into drugs and didn’t realize what was happening until I was in too deep to back out.”