Right when I was about to show Vega the video, I suddenly flew backward in my chair. At first, I thought I was going to fall flat on my back, but then I stopped and somehow jerked up into the air, right out of my seat. I spun around in the air and dangled upside down.
Somebody grabbed my phone out of my hands. I screamed. I couldn’t help it.
“Mr. Rachpaul!” I heard Mr. Ali shout out. “Is your homework stored on your phone?”
Still upside down, dangling from one of Mr. Ali’s arms, all I could do was yell. I could see everybody else in the room running toward me. I couldn’t see Ali’s face.
“That doesn’t sound like the answer of an intelligent young man,” Ali said. “Methinks you and I shall have another chat.” While Sunny, Daryl and even Vega laughed, Mr. Ali carried me upside down out of the room, down the hall and into a dark space.
I didn’t know where I was. I was getting woozy from hanging this way.
“Mr. Ali!” I yelled. “I’m sorry! Put me down! I’m dizzy!”
The lights flickered on. I could tell we were in the storage room. He let my head touch the floor, then folded the rest of my body on top of me until I was crumpled up on the tiles.
I laughed. “Hey, man!” I shouted. “This floor is unclean, man!”
“You calling me ‘man’ again, Wallace? I am not one of your playmates.”
“Are you cracking up?” I tried to act gangsta, but I was grinning and laughing too hard.
Ali watched me with his slanted face, like he was about to bust out laughing himself. He yelled, “Next time I catch you celebrating ‘hood fame’ and grimy gang threats in my after-school, I’m going to snatch that shiny phone your mama gave you and lock you up in this storage room here!”
I sucked my teeth at him. My teeth smacks was almost as loud as Ma’s.
“Lock you in here with all the cockroaches and cat-rats,” he went on.
I sat there in the dust on the floor and snorted again. “I wish you would!” I shouted at him. “If you did that, my moms would knock you— Hey!”
Mr. Ali had started to close the door. Behind him in the hall I could see Vega and the others gawking at me with smiles on their faces. I hopped up and tried to grab the door handle before he could shut it.
Ka-klick!
Too late.
I was locked inside the gigantic storage room by myself. I punched at the closed door and laughed some more. Ali was crazy-mazey!
“Oh, so this is fun?” I heard Ali say, muffled from the other side. “We shall all see how fun it is when those cat-rats creep out and start chasing you!” The others laughed at this.
“Don’t worry, Loll!” Vega shouted. “When the cat-rats come, just jog in circles!” More chuckles. “There’s enough space in there to play dodgeball!”
I folded my arms and stepped backward, away from the door. I listened to them all giggle at Vega’s cracks. But then something began to jiggle loose in my brain.
Was it from being held upside down too long?
Arms still folded, I gradually turned around and studied the large room I was standing in.
There was a lot of space here. The ceiling must’a been at least twenty feet high. The only furniture was a bunch of folding metal chairs and wooden ladders leaned up against the walls.
A loud sound began to rumble. I glanced up at the big heating vent on the wall. Warm air had started shooting out of it. It felt good, blowing on my face.
That thing in my brain started to jiggle loose a little bit more.
By the time Mr. Ali had opened the door and ordered me to come out, I was so deep-thinking that I barely noticed him standing behind me, speaking at the back of my head.
I was somewhere else, another world.
And I loved it.
Goofy Valentine’s.
And goofy Sunny was handing out chocolate-covered pecans to everybody at after-school.
Quintesha.
Daryl R.
Darrell B.
Me, she gave a whole bag.
Of course she gave a few to her “best girl” April Etokakpan. And Sunny even gave one to Vega, her archenemy. She gave one to Mr. Ali and the two other teachers on staff.
Like I said, she gave one to everybody in after-school.
Except Big Rose.
I didn’t care that Sunny had left Big Rose out. Well, I guess I did care, but in the wrong way. Somewhere deep inside of me, somewhere buried in my chest, it felt good to see Rosamund get left out.
If I wasn’t happy, then why should anybody else be?
I swallowed one of the candies. The chocolate was dark and bitter.
Sunny had said that her and her new boyfriend had made them by hand the day before. When Sunny said “boyfriend,” she gazed straight ahead. Her friend April E. glanced at her, then at me, then back at her. They both giggled.
Girls were weird.
I slung another chocolate pecan into my mouth and watched Big Rose sit by herself in the opposite corner of our study room. That Big Rose was a weird girl too, I thought.
Sunny said she had heard Big Rose was homeschooled by her grandmother and only came here for after-school. I let the last of my candy slide down my throat and thought about just how weird Big Rose was. She never once glanced up toward the rest of us when Sunnshyne was dancing around, handing out her candy.
Rose was in her own world.
Far away.
Outer solar system, man.
“These candies is delicious,” Quintesha said to Sunny. “You and your man need to make more. Just for me.”
April E. nodded. “My girl Sunny can cook!” she said.
“Oh, girl, that’s easy,” said Sunny. “One of my many talents.”
Vega rolled his eyes. “Average chocolate, Sunny,” he said. “I tasted better candy I found in our sofa.” He grinned and sat down next to me and started to unpack his violin from its case.
“You know something, Casimiro?” Sunny said to Vega. “You are really an offensive little boy. I just wanted to wish everybody a happy Valentine’s.” She glanced across the room at Big Rose, who was still so into whatever the hell it was that she was reading.
Vega sat his violin across his lap. He had named it ’Ye. He watched Sunny and ran his fingers over ’Ye’s strings.
Sunny opened her mouth again. “My best girl April E. and me have started a business.”
Everybody got quiet. Vega plucked a string on his violin. It sounded like a noise made by a cartoon character who was a idiot. Me and Quintesha snorted. Sunny didn’t approve.
“Huh?” Daryl R. said to Sunny. “Business? We gotta pay for these chocolates? You said they was free.”
“No, dummy! Not this. We are detectives,” April E. announced.
“EDK Investigators,” said Sunny. “We printed the name of our new business on the candy wrappers. See?”
“It was her boyfriend’s idea,” April said, and locked eyes with Sunnshyne.
Honestly, April E. was a pretty girl. And actually cool when she wasn’t around Sunny, getting contaminated by her best friend’s glow of evil.
And Sunny didn’t have no boyfriend. She was too young. I knew her moms wouldn’t allow that.
I unfolded my candy wrapper that I had crumpled up and flung on the table. Someone had written in neat letters: EDK INVESTIGATORS.
“You stupid,” Quintesha, laughing, told these two girls.
“You think you detectives now?” Vega asked them, like he couldn’t believe it. Daryl started to snicker too. This pissed Sunny off.
“Our first major mystery to solve,” she said all loud, like saying it loud made it sound more real, “is what Lolly’s been doing in that storage room all week.”
April smiled at me like only her smile could get me to confess.
These St. Nick girls…
“Ohhhhh,” Darrell said, leaning over Daryl’s shoulder. Darrell squinted closer at what Daryl was doodling on his new tablet. “Are those crew tags?” he asked.
; “Yep,” Daryl said. “I’m sketching up one for Mile High Money.”
Darrell scrunched his round face at him. “You MHM?”
Daryl shook his head. “My boy one. I’m doing they crew a favor, coming up with this new logo for them.”
“You shouldn’t be messing around with them gangs, Daryl,” Quintesha said. “They get boys big into trouble. You know?”
Daryl R. shrugged and kept drawing on his tablet with his index finger. His crew design was a fist and another hand holding up two fingers, with a Glock and a dove in the background.
The other kids liked it, so he started showing them more screens of his other stuff, along with some really dope drawings his cousin in Missouri had emailed him.
It got me thinking that I should do more with the tablet Benny Rachpaul got me for Late Christmas. Maybe I could make some designs like Daryl’s.
“Here’s another one of my cousin Jayden’s grafs,” he said, showing us the graffiti scribbles.
Sunnshyne scrunched her face at it. “It’s okay, but what’s with all them loop-de-loops in his drawings?”
“That’s his sign,” Daryl told us. “And it ain’t a loop-de-loop. It’s a infinity symbol. It means ‘forever.’ ”
“Nobody lives forever,” Sunny said real swift, and we dove back into our homework.
But Vega began to play this thing called Cello Suite no. 1, by that old musician Bach. That’s all he’d been playing on his violin for the past couple of months.
The song was pretty, but I was nauseous from hearing it over and over.
Sunny must’a been having trouble concentrating too, because she glanced up from her book and across the area at Big Rose. Frankenstein Girl was still reading her book when Sunny plopped a chocolate-covered candy down on the table in front of her.
As soon as Sunny had sat back down across from me at the table, we both watched Big Rose unwrap the candy and fling it in her mouth. I was surprised at Sunny for being nice like that, finally giving her a candy.
Was it Valentine’s Day that had made Sunnshyne do it?
The evil way I was feeling, I’d’a preferred if she hadn’t given one to Big Rose.
Just then, Big Rose hopped up from her seat and started moaning. She ran by our table with tears in her eyes, using her fingers to grab at and scrub her tongue.
She wasn’t skipping this time, but running straight as a bullet.
We all watched her sprint out into the hallway toward the water fountain. All except Sunny, whose eyes stayed stuck to her math book.
“Our chocolates come pecan-flavored,” she whispered without looking up, “and jalapeño-flavored.”
We all croaked.
Sunny drilled deeper into her math book and smirked.
Toting my orange backpack over one shoulder, I crept down the hall in the community center. I hated to do this—interrupt Mr. Ali’s Sunnshyne roast—but I had wrapped up my homework half an hour ago and I was ready to get busy.
“Well, me and Ray made all different types of flavors,” I could hear Sunny say. “I guess one of the hot ones got mixed in with the sweet by accident.”
Mr. Ali had been hollering at her. She wore a fake-sad face. Suddenly Mr. Ali whipped around toward me.
“Wallace?” he said. “What you doing out here? Did you know about this chocolate-covered jalapeño?”
I shook my head. “Not until it was all over,” I said.
“Good,” he said, spinning back on Sunny.
“Mr. Ali?” I said.
“Get back in there and finish your homework,” he snapped at me. Then, before I could say anything: “While I conversate with Ms. Dixon-Knight here.”
“I did!” I said.
“What?”
“I did my homework, Mr. Ali. Early. I want you to let me in. It’s time for me to go inside the storage room.”
Sunnshyne squinted her eyes at me when she heard me say this.
“Oh,” said Mr. Ali. “That’s right. Tell Lady Bug to let you in. Tell her I said it’s okay. Now, Ms. Sunnshyne, did you stop to think what could’ve happened if Big Rose had been allergic to jalapeños? We could’ve had to rush her to the ER.”
I rushed off to get Ms. Jen, hoping she wouldn’t give me no problems. For real, if I had to wait any longer, I’d die.
It was that serious.
“My bibi told me that if you do it with a girl before you’re old enough, your thing will shrivel away like a twig in a fire.”
We all paused a minute to recognize what Mohammed had just said, then we busted up laughing. All five of us.
Except for Mohammed.
It felt good to laugh.
At night me and some of my friends sat on the cold stone steps, deep inside St. Nicholas Park. It was pretty big, but not as big as Central Park. St. Nicholas Park was more long than wide, and a big hill.
Tons of trees sloped all around us. Stairs rose up the hill to where Hamilton Heights and City College were. We had to look out for police because the park had shut for the night, and we also had a lit loosey.
None of us was older than fourteen.
“Yo, Mohammed,” Daryl Reynolds said, giggling. “Your grandma told you that for reals?”
Mohammed nodded. You could tell he didn’t understand why we had all laughed at him. Kofi took a drag from the cigarette they was passing around and tried to share it with Mohammed, who waved it away, pouting.
“Mo, what made you believe that?” Kofi asked him.
Mohammed didn’t answer. He crunched one of the French fries he gripped in a greasy bag on his lap.
“You dumbass African,” Cyril said in the dark.
“Hey! Cyril, don’t crack on Africans,” Kofi said. “I am African and I wouldn’t believe what Mohammed’s bibi told him. Besides, you coconuts are far more dumb than us Africans.”
“Oh snap,” Freddy said, trying to instigate a throwdown.
“Lolly, man, you gonna let him get away with calling you and Cyril coconuts?” Daryl R. asked me, laughing. “You two are the only West Indians sitting on these steps.”
Every now and then I had heard the term “coconut.” It was how some people dogged out families from the Caribbean. The word usually made me mad, but I knew that Kofi was only acting up.
Kofi sucked his teeth and grabbed my shoulder. “I wasn’t talking about Lolly,” he said. “He and his mother have had a rough time. Lolly is the good sort of coconut.” We all laughed. “Not like my man Cyril up there.”
Cyril tossed an empty bag onto Kofi’s head. Kofi threw it back at him.
“Yo, Mo!” Freddy yelled. “Pass me some French fries!”
“Yo, Loll,” Daryl said to me. “April E. got a fat booty, don’t she?”
I nodded, grinning.
“Not as big as Tisha’s!” Freddy called out, munching on fries.
“Shut up, Freddy!” Daryl said. “But April talk too much.” He took a drag on the cigarette and passed it around. “All them girls talk too much,” Daryl complained.
“I heard her and Sunny are acting like detectives now!” Freddy called down. Daryl blew out air, disgusted. “My man Butteray Jones caught them snooping,” Freddy said.
“Butteray Jones?” Daryl asked.
“Butteray Jones!” Freddy shouted.
“Man, what kind of name is that?” Cyril asked.
“He from down South. They named him that because when he was a baby, he used to eat sticks’a butter rolled in sugar,” Freddy said.
“Eww!” Cyril said.
“They nasty down South,” said Daryl.
“His parents own that new restaurant on Sugar Hill,” Freddy went on. “Anyway, Butteray Jones caught Sunny and her girl investigating around here. Up in this park. Like they was police or something searching for somebody.”
“I wouldn’t mind being a cop,” Cyril added.
Daryl raised a eyebrow. “You would, Cyril.”
Kofi laughed and said, “I’m gonna code.” He handed me the loosey. “What about y
ou, Loll?” Kofi asked. “What you wanna be?”
Holding our cigarette in my hand, I thought on this question for a long while. “I don’t know,” I said. I shrugged. “I don’t really know, Kof.”
I had never smoked before, but took a quick puff on the cigarette and tried to pass it away.
“That’s not how you do it!” Daryl said. “You gotta inhale!”
They were all watching.
I tried again, inhaling deep. The smoke flew down my throat and a bunch of coughing came back up. I was hacking so hard, I felt like I was about to throw up. Daryl and Kofi patted my back.
Smoking cigarettes was like sucking on the exhaust pipe of a car with a running motor. I could hear everybody laughing. I felt so queasy.
Why did people smoke, anyhow?
I leaned over the steps and stuck my head between my legs. I finished coughing and spat out something.
“Oh my goodness,” I heard Freddy say.
“Jesus,” I heard Cyril say.
“Ohhhh,” I heard Daryl say.
I lifted my head to see what was going on. I hoped it wasn’t no cop, out patrolling the park. That was the last thing I needed now.
But I was staring at a pair of glowing yellow eyes, floating in the dark. They were hovering about fifteen feet away, down the steps from us. We all sat still as statues as the shining eyes slowly came closer, up the hill.
We heard a click-clack on the stone steps.
The eyes were attached to what looked like a dog. But no way was this a dog. This thing was more like a wolf.
It stood about three feet high and was gray with a white belly and long tail. The hair was pretty lengthy and silky. On top of its head were these two pointy ears. Its nose and legs were black and way longer than any dog’s.
It had long claws on its feet too. They made that click-clack sound.
The wolf-thing came a few feet away from us and just stood there.
“What is it?” Cyril whispered.
It glared right at us. I hoped it wasn’t going to eat us. If it had wanted to, we wouldn’t have stood a chance. It licked its mouth. I could see its breath in the cold night air.
The Stars Beneath Our Feet Page 6