Borrowed Boy

by Gene Gant

  “It’s okay, Dwayne.” Mr. Copeland—my father, I had to get used to thinking of him as my father—lowered the magazine he’d been reading and looked at me with such tender affection it made me feel even guiltier. “You’re still adjusting to all this. Stop beating yourself up every time you slip.”

  “Yeah. So… Dad, is it okay if I go out for a while?” I had my skateboard, the one I’d brought from Memphis, tucked under one arm.

  This was day three in Chicago for me. I’d spent the last two cooped up in the condo with the Copelands—my family. Right, my family, my folks, my kin. Mr. and Mrs. Copeland had taken a few days off from their jobs for some “bonding time,” as they called it. BJ wasn’t exactly happy to bond with me, probably because his parents insisted that he hang around the condo instead of hanging with his friends. The four of us played board games. Lots and lots of board games. Clue. Sorry! Life. And Monopoly.

  Did you know Monopoly is the vampire of board games? Once you start that sucker, it takes on an unnatural life that never ends. After our first dinner together, we kicked off a round of Monopoly on a card table BJ reluctantly set up in the living room. That freaking game was still going on. After dinner today, we were supposed to pick up where we left off last night. I was seeing little red plastic hotels and little green plastic houses in my sleep now.

  As luxurious as the Copelands’ place was, I couldn’t take another day stuck inside with them. That was mostly because of BJ. BJ flat hated me. His hatred was like smoke, filling the air and making it hard for me to breathe. I couldn’t understand why he was so soured on me, maybe because I’d never personally hated anyone. And I still missed my Memphis mom and dad, missed them so much. I needed to be out in the great wide world somewhere, feeling the sun and the wind in my face. Maybe that would take the sting of loneliness out of me for a while.

  “You want to explore the neighborhood, huh?” Mr. Copeland said. “Meet some of the other kids, make some friends….” He nodded as if he understood me completely. “That’s a very good idea, son. It’s about time your brother showed you around.”

  “Oh, wait. I didn’t mean for—”

  “BJ, put on your shoes,” Mr. Copeland called out. “Dwayne wants to see the neighborhood.”

  In blue jeans and a black tank top, BJ was sprawled on the sofa across from the recliner where his dad sat. He was doing something on his phone. Without looking up, he said quietly, “Oh, so now it’s okay for me to go out?”

  The look BJ got from his dad then was neither tender nor affectionate.

  BJ stood up without another word. “Give me a second to grab my shoes, Dwayne,” he said, looking not at me but at his dad. He marched from the room.

  Not good. This was not good at all.

  I turned to Mr. Copeland. “BJ doesn’t have to come with me. Seriously. I was just gonna go out and ride my skateboard.”

  My birth dad smiled, looking regretful. “I’m sorry, but you can’t ride a skateboard in this part of the city. There are too many pedestrians here, and the law doesn’t allow bikes, skates, or skateboards on the sidewalk. You’ll have to go to the park or the beach for that. BJ will show you.”

  For an instant, my mind focused on “beach,” and I got confused because Chicago isn’t anywhere near an ocean. Quickly, I put down my skateboard. “I don’t have to do the skateboard. I’ll just go out and walk around some, see the neighborhood. BJ doesn’t have to come.”

  “We’re in the heart of the Gold Coast, son,” Mr. Copeland said, and for the first time—at least with me—his voice took on a stern tone. “It would be all too easy for you to get lost in a busy place like this. Humor me for now, please, and let your brother show you around.”

  What? It’s not like I’m a two-year-old. But the man’s your biological father, Zay, and he’s probably still freaked about the whole kidnapping thing. Remember that. Just go with it. “Okay. Sure… uhm, Dad.”

  His face relaxed with gratitude. “Thanks for that. You just made your old man’s day. And speaking of days, you have any ideas what you want to do on your special day?”

  “Special day?”

  Mr. Copeland laughed. “Your birthday is next week. Did you forget?”

  Uhhh…. “My birthday is August thirtieth.”

  Suddenly Mr. Copeland looked as awkward as I felt. “Ah. August thirtieth must be the date listed on your fake birth certificate. I’m afraid that’s wrong, Dwayne. You were actually born on July seventeenth.”

  Wait. Hold on. Is nothing about the life I’ve lived real? “Oh. Okay.”

  I must’ve had a weird expression on my face or something. Mr. Copeland suddenly gave off this vibe like he wanted to hug me. “Look at it this way,” he said a little too cheerfully. “You get to celebrate a whole month earlier now, huh. That’s a good thing. Right?”

  “Right. I’ll be back in a sec, Dad.”

  I took my skateboard back to my room and tucked it under my bed. My stuff from Memphis was delivered yesterday; the boxes were still stacked against the wall next to my closet. Mrs. Copeland—Mom—had said she would help me unpack after she returned from her doctor’s appointment today. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that, seeing the things from my old life mixed in with this new life, especially after learning my birthday had been wrong all these years. But I didn’t want to tell Mrs. Copeland that we could just wait on the unpacking because she seemed so eager to get me all moved in.

  When I got back to the living room, BJ was there with his shoes on and earbuds plugged in place, listening to music over his phone and waiting for me by the front door. Obviously hearing my footsteps, he raised his head and rolled his eyes at me in a way that let me know he didn’t like to be kept waiting. “Sorry,” I muttered as I slid past him and opened the door.

  “Have fun, guys,” Mr. Copeland called after us. Yeah, like that was actually going to happen.

  In the corridor, BJ took the lead. I followed him to the elevator, where he pressed the Down call button. As we stood there waiting, he checked out something on the screen of his phone as if I didn’t exist or something. The silent treatment, if that’s what he was giving, was cool with me. Being brothers didn’t mean we had a whole lot to talk about. With a ding, the elevator arrived and the smooth, reflective doors slid quietly open. BJ stepped aside and gestured for me to go first.

  When I walked past him, he shoved me in the back so hard I stumbled smack into the rear wall of the elevator and lost my balance, sliding down to my knees. Looking back, I saw BJ casually reach in and press the button for the third floor. “When the elevator stops,” he said, eyeing me flatly, “step out and go to your left. You’ll find the kiddie playroom at the end of the hall.” He waved his fingers at me. “Buh-bye.”

  By the time I made it to my feet, the doors had closed and the elevator was on its way down. My knees stung. I was wearing basketball shorts that were long but not long enough to completely cover my knobby knee joints. Luckily I hadn’t fallen hard enough to scrape off skin. Oh, wait. There were thin trails of blood trickling down my shins now. I did pick up some scrapes; no wonder my knees stung so badly.

  Yeah, I officially hated BJ now. He was stank. And he sucked. And I hoped a giant bird would fly over and drop a crap bomb so massive it would punch straight down through the building and crash right on his head.

  When the doors opened to the third floor, my first impulse was to press button six, go back up, confront my brother, and cuss him into the middle of next week. But he was probably already halfway up the stairs to the ninth floor where one of his friends lived. There was also the very real possibility that, instead of cussing back, he’d kick my butt. I’ve had my butt kicked before, by this big guy named Ronny Benson when I was in sixth grade. Not an experience I want to repeat, thank you very much. So I walked out of the elevator instead.

  Following BJ’s directions brought me to a bright yellow door with inlaid red panels. A plaque at the top of the door read, “Community Room.” There didn’t seem to be any reaso
n to knock. I grabbed the knob and pulled the door open.

  A wall of sound blasted out, the collective voices of about a million kids. A blur shot past me at the speed of light, close enough that I’d swear my T-shirt and shorts actually fluttered in the breezy backwash. Staring after the blur, I discovered it was actually a boy of about eight, running so hard it looked like he was going to leave his clothes behind. He wasn’t chasing or being chased. From the big, goofy grin on his face, he was just running for the heck of it. The room was sprawling and bright, with sunlight streaming in through a long row of large windows, and there was so much activity inside the whole place seemed to be writhing (another word from my summer vocabulary list.)

  A group of boys and girls stood in a circle, tossing beanbags from one to the other in some weird kind of game or something. Others climbed and slid and swung on a big red-and-blue play set that appeared to be made out of heavy-duty molded plastic. A bunch of boys and one girl were having a Nerf gun battle, screaming and yelling as they bounced spongy yellow projectiles off each other. Another bunch of kids were sitting on the floor playing a card game.

  The sounds of all that rowdiness pounded at me, burrowing into my head like a million screwdrivers. The walls here must have been soundproofed. That was the only reasonable explanation as to why the residents on this floor hadn’t bombed the place. I wanted to cover my ears, afraid they would start bleeding. Looking around the room, I thought, Real funny, BJ, sending me here. There isn’t a kid over ten—

  Oops. Hold that thought. I’d just spotted a guy who appeared to be keeping watch over that zoo. He was a lot older than ten, probably even older than BJ, like maybe seventeen. He sort of reminded me of Marquis Loeffler, my next-door neighbor in Memphis—tall, muscular, but leaner, with a trim black mustache and goatee. He was African American, his hair faded on the sides and back with thin, stubby dreads sprouting on top. He wore blue jeans with a set of keys dangling from a silver chain hooked to one of the belt loops and a sleeveless yellow T-shirt. His feet were bare, and as he stood at the back of the room, a little white girl of about eight was painting his toenails neon green.

  That was all I saw of him in the moment. He yelled at the running boy, “Jonah, slow down before you hurt yourself.” And then, as if it was the most natural thing for him to do next, he looked right at me and said, “Hey.”

  His eyes, big and tan, were so sincere they seemed to beam right through me. It was like he was seeing every secret, everything about myself I ever tried to hide. Suddenly, I felt completely rattled.

  The guy smiled, raised a hand, and waved me on. “Come in.”

  I backed out of the room fast and shut the door.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I HATED Chicago.

  Yeah, I know, I mentioned that before. But saying it once can’t possibly convey just how much the entire city sucked. Imagine a giant hole opening up in the earth and gulping down the Pacific Ocean in one thundering, humongous slurp, followed by a planet-shaking burp. That’s how Chicago sucked.

  Waiting for the elevator would slow me down, giving the Marquis Loeffler look-alike a chance to catch me—and I wasn’t even sure why I felt such an urgent need to get away. After exiting the Community Room, I ran down the hall and straight to the stairwell, where I rumbled down three flights of steps. On the main floor, I dashed past the guy at the front desk and across the swanky lobby, which was mostly empty, thank God. The doorman, wearing a flawless gray uniform, saw me coming. Even with me booking his way like a maniac, he smiled in his usual friendliness, pushed the door open and held it for me. “Good morning, Dwayne,” he sang at me.

  “Good morning!” I snapped as I shot by him, so anxious I couldn’t remember his name, which he’d told me probably a dozen times since I moved in.

  When I walked out of my house on a summer morning in Memphis, I stepped into a neighborhood of quiet streets, green lawns, treetops swaying with the breezes, and the sweet music of actual birdsong. Adults on vacation or whatever worked in their yards. Kids rode bikes and skateboards or just hung out with each other, all in peace. When I walked out of my home on a summer morning in Chicago, all I saw was concrete-and-steel towers, a sidewalk clogged with pedestrians, and a street filled with honking, screeching, fuming traffic. You couldn’t ride a skateboard out there; heck, you couldn’t even stand on the sidewalk to take a breath without getting jostled to death by all the people passing by. True, going outside midday in a Memphis summer was like stepping into an oven set on broil, and the summer temps in Chicago had been in the low eighties since my arrival, which was almost chilly by comparison. But I’d have given anything to be back in the broil now.

  I bolted through the main doors of the condo building straight into the side of a tall, big-bellied man in a tan suit. He grunted and did this sort of weird side step, pushing me away with a sweep of his arm. “Hey! Watch it, kid.”

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered after him as he continued on his way. People bustled around me, and I got swept up in the torrent, trundling along the street with them. Some of the people wore business wear, while others were dressed in summer casual. I wasn’t exactly knowledgeable about fashion, but the clothes those people were wearing didn’t look anything like the stuff for sale at Walmart. Their clothes looked a lot like the ones on display in the windows of the fancy stores that lined the street. The Gold Coast was one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the whole country. That meant my new family, longtime residents of this ritzy area, definitely had money to burn.

  Still, I’d go back to my unrich, unfancy Memphis mom and dad in a heartbeat if I could. And I felt guilty for wanting something that would deeply hurt my Chicago parents.

  I drifted in a daze down the crazy crowded sidewalk, like fog pushed along by a strong breeze. Those eyes… I couldn’t stop thinking about the dude in the Community Room with those awesome tan eyes. Eyes that were nice and kind but rascally at the same time. Eyes that seemed to be watching me still, a feeling so strong I kept looking back to see if the dude was following me. For some reason, I was disappointed at not finding him there.

  After fifteen minutes of walking, passing nothing but expensive boutiques and shops, I felt totally lost, even though the Copelands’ condo was only three blocks back. Most of the kids I saw around my age were either with adults or in clique-like groups, and I didn’t have the nerve to try talking to any of them. None of the stores caught my interest, and now I had no idea what to do with myself. Maybe I’d just keep walking until my feet fell off.

  The smell of sizzling meat and warm bread caught my attention. I followed my nose down another half a block and found myself in front of an eatery tucked in the first-floor front corner of a towering steel-and-glass building. The name sprawled in fancy white lettering across the window was Doger’s. It was a burger joint—a high-end one, judging by the white linen tablecloths and the foo-fancy flower centerpieces, but definitely a burger joint. The scent coming from the place told me that, along with all the teenagers hanging around inside.

  It was just about lunchtime, and I was kind of hungry. Or maybe I just wanted to kill some time. Either way, I pushed through the spotless glass door into the joint. A woman, somewhere in her twenties, stepped right up to me. She had on black slacks, a white blouse, and a big smile. “Hello there,” she said earnestly. “Welcome to Doger’s. Will this be dine-in or carryout?”

  The idea of eating alone in a restaurant seemed awfully pitiful to me. “Carryout.”

  The hostess flashed more of her perfectly white teeth at me. “Right this way, then.”

  She led me over to a black metal stand where a menu lay open and waiting. It turned out Doger’s was all about hot dogs, not burgers. Who knew there were a million ways to serve a hot dog? Doger’s offered whole gardens as toppings, combinations of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, olives, mushrooms, spinach, carrot shavings, pickled beets, Mexican corn, diced celery, and even pineapple.

  I frowned as I looked over the menu again. “You al
l don’t have, you know, like, just a plain hot dog?”

  Somewhere at a table off to the right, snorts broke out. The edge came off the hostess’s smile. “Plain hot dog?” she repeated as if the words were from some language that had been dead for centuries.

  “Yeah, you know, just a hot dog on a bun. With maybe a little mustard.”

  “A hot dog with mustard,” the hostess said skeptically.

  “And topped with coleslaw.”

  Loud cackles exploded from the snorters’ table.

  “Coleslaw?” The hostess looked absolutely horrified. “Who on earth would put coleslaw on a hot dog?”

  The snort gang was now pounding fists on their table as they brayed. My whole face burned, but I was also genuinely puzzled. I mean, according to the menu, hot dogs served up like mini salad bars was perfectly normal, so why not coleslaw? Hot dogs got served up with coleslaw at Memphis cookouts all the time.

  “Hey, country boy,” some guy called from that suddenly rowdy table off to the right. He paused for a couple of seconds, waiting for me to look his way, but I kept staring straight ahead. “Listen, yawl ain’t in Miss-uh-sip-puh now,” he slurred in an exaggerated southern drawl. “We-uns don’t do hillbilly crap like eat hotdawgs covered with slaw in this-here city.”

  For sure my face was going to melt any second now from the heat in my cheeks. I studied the tile surrounding the base of the metal hostess stand like I was getting ready for a final exam.

  “Tubby, that ain’t no Mississippi country boy,” said one of the other guys at the table in his own improvised drawl. “Get it straight, man. That’s a gen-u-wine Tennessee country boy.”

  And now I looked at the snort boys’ table, because I recognized that last voice. Sure enough, my big brother, BJ, was sitting there with a tall, skinny black guy and a tall, even skinnier white guy. All three of them broke out in hyena laughs, as if the hostess had just pantsed me right there at the front of the restaurant.