The Long Ride

by Marina Budhos

  And then I see them again: the boys. They’ve followed us and are watching us from a few tables away.

  “Let’s go,” I whisper to John.

  “Where?”

  “Out.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s late.”

  “But we just got here!”

  There’s no logic to my feelings. Under those eyes, I tighten my hold on John’s jacket sleeve, feel the muscle beneath.

  Francesca loops her hands through Darren’s and Josie’s arms, passes right by those boys, oblivious as Patrick’s eyes follow her. She stops at some multicolored scarves. Bored, Darren shifts to a nearby table displaying antique silver, turning over the spoons, idly running his finger on the patterns.

  A woman leans over. “Put that back!”

  He looks up. “What’d you say?”

  “I said put it back.”

  “I didn’t take nothin’,” he mutters.

  The woman wriggles out from behind the table. She’s wearing a big sweater with a triangle pattern across the chest. “Let’s see.”

  “I told you. I didn’t take nothin’.” Darren rolls back on his heels, elbows drawn in tight to his body. I’ve seen that in him before—in the halls or with Mrs. Johnson—readying for a fight.

  In the background the boys advance, as if one person, with Patrick in the lead. I feel that heat pulsing. Don’t you remember us? I want to ask. Of course they do. Francesca especially.

  Patrick’s eyes. The set of his mouth. They want to smash this picture. “You better leave.”

  It hits me that the woman in the sweater is related to him. She calls out, “Patrick, let it go.”

  “You gotta leave,” he repeats.

  “No I don’t.”

  “Now.” His legs are in a wide stance.

  “Patrick, that’s enough now—”

  “I got this, Aunt Jean.”

  Don’t, don’t, I think, watching Darren, the anger that’s ticking inside him. He kicks a leg. The table caves in, silverware sliding off the top, knives and forks and teaspoons twirling with a clatter to the floor.

  “That’s it!”

  Patrick goes flying toward him and starts pushing him hard. The other boys follow.

  “Stop!” the woman cries.

  I turn to her, furious. “Then you shouldn’t have started it!”

  John unlatches from me and joins in too, which only makes it worse. Patrick and his friends pull them both down the aisle, through the back door, and out into the parking lot, where the boys—three, four, five of them—swing and kick at John and Darren. Francesca is weeping. Josie is so stunned she can’t move. I go blank with fear, and even though I hear myself shouting to stop, it’s as if no one hears.

  “Hey!”

  “Hey, cut that out!”

  I swerve to see Karim running toward me. Manuel is right behind, leather jacket flying. They tackle the boys hard, wrench Patrick away by the shoulders. A few more fists fly but the other boys start to stagger away. Manuel and Karim are older by a couple of years.

  When the boys finally leave, hiking their jeans and wiping their mouths, there is John, crumpled against the wall. He has a bloody nick on one side of his mouth and his jacket is pulled off his shoulder. Karim reaches over to straighten him up. I see something I’ve never seen before in Karim: The fights he was in all these years. His own scar over his eye.

  Darren lies on the ground, not even moving. And then I notice the nub of his ankle bone, bare skin. He has no socks.

  I don’t think I ever was so glad to see my father.

  He takes one look at John and Darren and knows exactly what happened. His face goes ashen and drawn, older. He takes them upstairs and blots their cuts with disinfectant and puts on Band-Aids. Francesca sits sobbing on a chair. “I hate them. I hate living here,” she keeps saying.

  The boys trudge downstairs, freshly washed, and sit in the living room, hushed. “Yes, sir” and “no, sir” is all they manage to say. My dad has given Darren a pair of socks that droop off his feet. John keeps biting his lip, staring at the floor. It gives me a sharp pain, seeing the Band-Aid slanted across one cheek. I feel dirty, a girl who lives in a neighborhood that does this.

  “You all right?” my dad asks Karim, who has remained, hovering.

  He nods. “Yes, sir.” It’s the first time Karim has called Daddy that in a long time.

  Daddy adds, “I remember that time I had to pull some boys off you too.”

  A scowl flickers across Karim’s face and then his gaze goes a little hurt.

  “You did a good thing, son. Manuel did too.”

  Then my father turns back to Darren and John and asks a lot of questions. Standing, he says, “My wife, Penny, will talk to the girls later. Maybe we can track down the boys. Speak to the church.”

  “Leave it alone,” Darren mumbles.

  “We can’t,” Josie says.

  Josie crosses the room, puts her arm around Darren. He’s breathing, fast. His fists are clenched on his knees. She doesn’t say anything. She just keeps her arm on his shoulders, and his breathing slows.

  * * *

  * * *

  We drive John and Darren back in the same pained silence. My father had fed everyone grilled cheese sandwiches and then sent Francesca and Josie home.

  I sit quiet beside my father, the two boys in the back.

  It’s all my fault.

  We turn down one narrow street after another until we arrive at Darren’s, the gloomiest one, with so many busted streetlights. He tells us to stop in front of a worn house, its porch sprouting old junk, a refrigerator. Only one dim light shines in a window, behind a sheet tacked to the panes.

  “You want me to speak to your mother?” my father asks.

  “Nah, she’s not home.”

  “Anyone home?”

  “It’s okay.”

  Before we can say anything, he’s angled out of the car and slipped down the narrow alley.

  * * *

  * * *

  At John’s house the two fathers match each other in some way: my father leaning forward, rail-thin, hands pressed on the table. Mr. Wayne, broad-faced, with tufts of grayish hair at his temples. His voice rumbles, low and gravely, with a Southern drawl. He also wears cardigans with leather buttons.

  “We are so very sorry,” my father repeats. “If we had known—”

  “Can’t never know in cases like that.”

  “Yes, but your son was our guest. We should have protected him.”

  John’s father shakes his head and sets his hand on John’s waist. “Son, you go and rest. Don’t need to be listening to this.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “Go on.”

  I ache for John to look at me one more time before he leaves. But he keeps his eyes lowered, whispering, “Yes, sir,” and is gone.

  Nana shuffles into the room. “We tell them all the time to be careful going to other neighborhoods. ’Specially these days.”

  My head hangs. So it is our fault. Living in a place that doesn’t want them. Or us.

  “You teach your children to mind themselves,” Mr. Wayne comments. “To turn a cheek. I say this to the young ones who preach all that radical talk and fighting back.”

  My father agrees. “I say that to my son too.”

  Mr. Wayne shakes his head. “I don’t like to say this. But sometimes turning away isn’t enough.”

  “No.” My father sighs. “Sometimes it isn’t.”

  * * *

  * * *

  That night, I hear my parents talking softly at the table. I creep down the stairs and sit leaned up against the banister, listening.

  “That boy,” he murmurs.

  “John?”

  “No, the other one.”

&nbs
p; “Darren.”

  “I had a friend like that. Melvin. Melvin lived in everyone’s houses. Everyone knew his mother was crazy. We took care of him.”

  I go motionless. My father almost never talks about his childhood in Barbados. Everything with him is moving forward, here, now—whatever can be organized, planned, traced out with a mechanical pencil.

  “Where is he now?” my mother asks.

  “He didn’t wind up anywhere good.” My father sounds wistful. “You know, someone like me shows up at a construction site. You think those guys like it when I tell them all they did wrong? Those boys at the church. That’s their fathers.” He shakes his head. “Why do we let our children into this? It’s one thing if I choose—”

  She sets her hand on his. “What else can we do?”

  “Maybe we should move to the suburbs. Not Long Island. Maybe Connecticut, like Ellie. You know I wouldn’t mind a little workshop to tinker in.”

  “You want to live in a place where you have to explain yourself all the time?”

  “We do that now. We can be firsts.”

  “I’m tired of being first.”

  “But the schools—”

  “I know.”

  They go quiet. I see Mom’s pale, heart-shaped face under the lamp, her thin fingers twined in his. I love them so much right then.

  * * *

  * * *

  It’s a glum Monday. The gray outside presses through our windows like washed-out rags.

  After third period, turning a corner, I spot John. I feel shaky. Maybe he isn’t mad. Maybe from now on, I can stay just an hour in his neighborhood and my father will pick me up. Or we can spend time on Jamaica Avenue strolling past the stores. I want to squeeze my arms around his neck, whisper all this in his ear. Be brave together. He stops several inches away, guarded.

  Chilled metal is pressed into my palm. “Sorry,” he says.

  This time I know to keep my mouth shut. I look down. The “J” of his bracelet glimmers up at me.

  There’s hot grit in my eyes and I can’t stop blinking. “What—why?”

  I see the tears swimming up in his gaze. I love John’s eyes.

  “It’s too hard.” He’s searching and he swallows.

  “But we can talk! And I can come see you and—”

  “Stop.”

  I burst out, “You’re a coward, John Wayne! Nothing like the cowboy!”

  He shakes his head, takes a step away. He’s surprised by the bite in my voice.

  “No. I—I just can’t go over your place, that’s all.”

  I feel awful. He’s the one who can’t blend. Who got beat up. A Band-Aid across his cheek. “I know! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that—” I try not to cry.

  He’s taken a few more steps back. “You can keep yours.”

  Then he’s gone, into the swell of kids. Something folds shut in me.

  I don’t want to do anything. Not work for Mrs. Johnson, not help Johanna with the election. I write John notes over and over again and crumple them up. I am so sorry. I’ve got a temper. You are brave. You are strong. I stare at the phone. I lie in bed at night, close my eyes and imagine it’s fall again and we’re in the schoolyard and he’s sliding that bandana from my neck as the sky blazes yellow with leaves. Or I’m watching how his lashes sweep down when we squeeze in a few words on the front school steps. I don’t want time to stand still at the top of that Ferris wheel. I want to circle back.

  On Saturday, Josie and I have a sleepover at Francesca’s and they try to make me feel better. We paint each other’s toenails and do our Cheez Doodles and cream cheese routine. “Oh my god.” Francesca sighs. “It’s our first breakup!”

  “My first breakup,” I remind her.

  “Do you miss kissing him?”

  “I only kissed him once.” It isn’t the kissing I miss. It’s the being together. The phone calls.

  The next Monday and Wednesday, Darren doesn’t show for study club. At first we think he’s sick, but then Josie and I see him at lunch, hanging on the benches with some girls. They give us the cut-eye look, but they don’t come over. My heart seizes up. Josie says nothing. We do our study club, just the two of us, but it’s not the same. That happens twice more. Josie spends the time working her way through some stapled sheets Mrs. Johnson gave her for applying to the summer program.

  “What is wrong with you?” Johanna asks me one day outside school when she notices I haven’t handed out any of the flyers she’d given me. I don’t know how she does it, but Johanna looks even taller than before. “You were supposed to put them up at lunch.”

  “Sorry.”

  She peers a little closer. “Are you sick or something?”

  I try to move toward the lineup of buses. “Can we just not talk about it?”

  “Are you my campaign manager or what?” she calls after me.

  I whirl around. “I don’t know!”

  On the bus I sit next to Josie, my books gathered on my lap, mouth shut. The sand-colored school shrinks and flattens as we pull away.

  * * *

  * * *

  “Enough.”

  Josie presses her palms on the table and stands. The cafeteria roars as everyone chucks their trays and heads outside. We have our free period and are supposed to go to study club next.

  Josie swerves down the aisles of tables and outside. I follow as she marches up to Darren and the girls.

  Darren’s got his legs stretched out, one arm draped on the back of the bench. “Whassup, Josie?”

  “You can’t,” she says.

  “Can’t what?”

  “Give up.”

  A couple of girls giggle. I’m so nervous I stay a little behind. I’m not used to Josie like this. Definitely not in front of other kids.

  “Aw, come on. It’s not such a big deal.”

  “It is. We’ve got a test to take.”

  “Summer school’s stupid.”

  “And you’re smart.”

  He lets out a slow smile. “You want to spend it in some hot old classroom?”

  Her eyebrows knot. “You made a promise.”

  “Yeah I did. But what’s it matter? Y’all know what they think of me anyway.” He turns a little, facing one of the girls.

  Josie steps closer. Her hands in fists on her hips. “You get yourself to our study club now, you hear?”

  “Oooh, Darren. Looks like your girl is bossing you.”

  “She’s not his girl,” I pipe in.

  “Sure sounds like it.”

  Josie blushes, hard. But she doesn’t move.

  Slowly, his long legs unfolding, Darren stands. “All right,” he mumbles. “Don’t have to make such a fuss.”

  * * *

  * * *

  There’s a different light in Francesca’s house. None of the lamps are turned on. The sheer curtains are shut across the patio doors. Francesca is sitting on the velvet couch, feet tucked beneath her.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. She called us both up the minute we got home. Usually she comes home from school much later.

  “I didn’t go to school today.”

  “You sick?”

  She shakes her head. “No.” She pats the sofa. Josie and I sit on either side.

  “So I’m not going back to Aldrich.”

  “That’s good!” I say. “We can be together!”

  “I guess.”

  I’m already thinking. Next year: eighth grade. Josie in SP, Francesca too. It has to be better.

  “It’s because…” She turns her head away.

  “Francesca?” Josie asks.

  “My mom and dad. They’re separating.” She looks at us, stricken.

  That can’t be. Our moms and dads can’t split up. It’s always been three families, the firsts.
Sitting on the patio here, the dads joking. Mr. George with a beautiful vase he wants to show them, Mrs. George’s legs crossed, her cigarette smoke twisting into the air. Sure, the Georges fought a lot. But not this.

  “I guess my mom’s mad at him. Says he spends money like there’s no tomorrow.” She sighs. “They may even sell the house.” Her voice is small.

  “They can’t!”

  “Anyway, there’s no money for private school. My mom says we have to change how things are done.”

  “Wow,” we both say, and hug her.

  We sit on the couch, holding hands. Quiet. I don’t know what else to say. This year, twelve to thirteen, has so much hard change.

  This change hurts the most.

  “Get up, sleepyhead.”

  Daddy jiggles my ankle. I thrust my foot deeper into the warm quilt.

  “Up and at ’em. We’re taking a drive.”

  I groan. Usually that means some boring visit to somewhere in the city where we stare at an empty lot and he explains the building his company will put there.

  I drag myself out of bed and dress. I have to admit, as we get into the car, it’s a pretty day. Pink blossoms are blooming on the two craggy trees outside our courtyard. The ground is soft and fresh-smelling. To my surprise, this time Daddy drives across the George Washington Bridge, sun glancing off the spires, and then up a winding road on the Jersey side. The Palisades are to our right—great cliffs that drop to the Hudson River.

  I’ve been here before with my father, and sure enough, he parks. Keys cupped in his palm, coat unbuttoned, he leads me to the bench by the lookout, and we sit there awhile, not speaking. Bushes and trees are dusted with light green. The Hudson slips past like a moving sheet of glass.

  “You have a long face these days, Jamila. What’s been happening with you?”

  I push my fists into my jacket pockets. The last thing I want to do is tell my father anything about my life. Then I blurt, “John broke up with me.”

  He nods. “I see. That’s too bad. He’s a nice boy.”

  “We can’t hang out. We can’t do anything.” I add, “He hates me after what happened.”