“So, Barbie’s doing this for Sandra,” Riley says. “Sandra, what are you doing for Barbie?”
“Nothing,” Barbie says. “Can’t a girl do something for another girl without it being for prof it?”
“She’s being my miracle,” Sandra says.
“That’s right. I’m being Sandra’s miracle.”
“I’d be hers, too, if I knew how,” Sandra says. Then she sinks back behind her knees.
“Maybe you can be someone else’s miracle,” Riley says.
“Whose?”
“You can be mine.”
“Okay. How?”
“Um . . .” Riley’s eyes roll up to the ceiling. “I’ll get back to you.”
“So, who gonna be my miracle?” Wayne asks.
“Not me,” Barbie says. “I’m tapped out. What about you, Javier?”
Javier nods. “You know I’m there for you, man.”
“Sure,” Wayne says. “You there and all, but how’s that supposed to be a miracle? I’m talking results, man. Like Barbie delivering for Sandra.”
“Well, what you need?” Javier asks.
After that, they all start arguing about the difference between miracles versus just “helping out.” I have my doubts about the whole thing. Maybe Barbie will be able to track that guy down and warn his new wife. But who’s to say she’ll even listen. Barbie’s a criminal. We all are.
Just then I have an idea.
“Javier,” I whisper because I don’t want the others in on it. “You really want to get your poem published?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Make me a copy. Right now.”
Javier stares at me for a second, then takes out his pen and copies his poem. “What you up to?”
“Just trying to be someone’s miracle.”
When he hands it over, I can tell he half believes me.
Chapter 23
For the record, I don’t actually believe in miracles. The idea of some supernatural force working outside the usual f lip-f lop of good and bad luck is for other people—people who can afford Sunday clothes, people whose relatives give them gold crosses to wear around their necks, like the pretty Italian girls at Holy Name Girls Academy. I just want to do something for Javier. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing that would qualify as a miracle would be if my mom gets out of rehab and stays sober for more than three weeks. If that happens, I’ll believe in anything.
Deon’s late to the computer room. Barbie’s there, working with Huang. So I hold on to Javier’s poem and get to work on a spreadsheet tutorial that Huang has set up for me. It’s my eleventh day in computer class, and I’m getting the hang of it. The computer’s not a stupid box trying to mess with me anymore. It’s a tool. It works for me. I don’t even need Huang anymore. Whatever I need to know, I can f ind it in one of those help menus or search windows. If only life were like that.
search: ways to get my mother off my sister’s case
search: ways to escape from juvie without winding up in jail.
My email inbox is constantly tugging at me, but I’ve worked out a system with Janelle. To avoid breaking the rule about reading emails before doing work, I told her to use long descriptions in the subject line. That way I can quickly scan my inbox to make sure she’s okay. Today there are three emails from her with the subject lines: I’m playing volleyball again!, Daniela’s baby brother is sooooo cute, and Everything’s cool but I still hate Mom. These I can leave until later, when I’ve mastered the all-important skill of spreadsheets.
What the hell am I going to do with spreadsheets?
Every day there are more and more emails from strangers. I know it’s all spam. Janelle’s the only one with my address. But I open every single one hoping (and believe me, I know how stupid this is) that one of them might be from my father. The only thing I know about him (besides how he walked out on us) is his name: Christopher West. I’ve already Googled that a million times over. Nothing. Once, my mother told me that West wasn’t even his real last name. She also told me once that my father was from Jamaica. Of course, she was wasted both times, so who knows? I Googled “Chris from Jamaica,” and you can guess how that went. Unless my dad really is the rapper Chris Brown who performed in Jamaica once, I’m not f inding the guy online. Just to be sure, I did the math on Chris Brown’s birth date to rule it out.
Most likely my father is also not Christopher Coke, the Jamaican drug lord and leader of the notorious Shower Posse. But he’s around the right age. I’ve spent a lot of time on Christopher Coke’s Wikipedia page, trying to see if there’s any resemblance. Yeah, I know how messed up it is to hope your dad is a Jamaican drug lord. It doesn’t stop me though.
When Deon f inally shows up, he practically throws himself into his chair. “I hate my lawyer.”
“Who doesn’t? Hey, I wanted to show you something.” I give him Javier’s poem.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a poem.”
“So?”
“So what about putting it in The Free ?”
Barbie looks over at the two of us.
“We don’t print poems,” Deon says. “It’s a newsletter. It’s got news in it.”
“I just thought, I don’t know. Maybe liven it up.”
“So you think my newsletter needs livening up?”
Smelling controversy, Barbie butts in. “Hey, you know what you should have in that thing? An advice column, where people can ask, like, what should I do if I’m talking to some dude and it’s all innocent but then my man sees it and thinks I’m messing around?”
“Yeah, and who’s gonna answer?” Deon asks. “You?”
“Why not. Girls asking me stuff all the time. It’s like Dear Abby in my cell sometimes.”
“I think that’s an awesome idea,” I say.
“Yeah, me too.” Huang. Sad. Trying to angle his way in on the conversation. When no one answers him, he shrinks back and rubs his nose. It’s a nervous habit that makes the thing shine like a ruby.
Deon sulks. Not only is his lawyer screwing him over, now everyone’s dogpiling on his newsletter.
“Or whatever,” I tell him. “It’s your thing. It’s just that I told this guy I’d help him get published, and I thought, you know, since his poem is all about what it’s like being stuck in juvie, maybe people would like it.”
“Yeah,” Barbie says. “And maybe folks’ll actually read the thing.”
“They read it,” Deon says.
“How many?” she asks. “Honestly, Deon, you working yourself sick on this thing and what two, three people even read it?”
“Flavio Pendon read it.”
“Okay that’s one.” Barbie sticks up her thumb. “All I’m saying is, it’s your newsletter sure, but in a for real newspaper there’s more than one guy writing stuff.”
“I’ve got other people. I’ve got Salim’s movie reviews. I’ve got Huang’s gaming reviews.”
“That’s all really great,” I say. “But we can’t even watch movies in here except the lame shit they show on Wednesday nights. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t know too many guys in here who have an Xbox. Maybe that’s just me and the projects where I live, but . . .”
“You should totally print Javier’s rap,” Barbie says.
“It’s a poem,” I remind her. “Not a rap.”
“Whatever. You should print it. It’s beautiful. Almost made me cry.”
Everyone within earshot looks up at this.
She looks around with a scowl. “What? You think I don’t got tears? You think I’m some heartless bitch?”
“Isn’t that what you want us to think?” Deon asks.
The conversation draws the attention of Mr. Klein. “Is there some work going on over there?”
“Yo, Mr. Klein,” Barbie says. “We were just having a di
scussion on how to make The Free more relevant to the folks supposed to be reading it. Isaac thinks we should print this awesome rap—I mean poem—by my boy Javier Muñoz. And I think we should have an advice column for girls.”
Mr. Klein nods politely. “What do you think, D?”
Deon looks miserable, but that probably has less to do with the newsletter than with his stupid lawyer. “All right,” he says. “But Barbie you got to step up on this. You got to actually answer the questions and type them out.”
She smirks. “I got no problem with that.”
“And you have to make sure girls actually see this thing.”
“I’ll pass it out at lunchtime. Make sure every girl gets one. And reads it too.”
“And you, Isaac, you’re typing up that poem and formatting it.”
“I can do that,” I lie. I don’t know anything about formatting.
“And you better use the spell-checker too,” Deon says. “’Coz you spell like a damn second grader.”
“I’m sure Stanley was just getting around to teaching me that.”
Huang rolls his eyes.
“All good?” Mr. Klein asks Deon.
“Yeah, we’re good.”
Deon’s still miserable, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. He wants to hate his lawyer in private. I leave him to it. Sometimes it’s easier to get the hate out on your own.
Chapter 24
I eat with the geeks now. They’re my posse. No one else has to worry about adopting me. I picture a huge sigh of relief from every black guy in the cafeteria. They’re not bad as far as geeks go. Smart. Weird. The Cecil Boone incident is behind me, so is that business with Flavio Pendon. Cardo and the Disciples are keeping their distance. I feel almost safe. As safe as you can feel in a place where a stabbing or riot can break out any second.
At the exit of the kitchen near the water dispenser is a cardboard box stuffed with copies of The Free. Not that you’d notice. That box has always been there, and I never even saw the thing.
“It needs pictures,” I tell Deon. “A big picture of something right on the front page.”
Everyone walking by the box ignores it, except for one guy who wipes a booger across the top copy.
“Aw, man,” Deon says.
“Well, how you supposed to know what it is? It’s just a box. Why don’t you at least have a sign on it that says ‘Free newsletter. Take one.’”
Huang shakes his head, his cheeks bursting with food. “That’s the last thing you’d want. Trust me.”
“Why?” I ask.
“They only have a newsletter to get extra funding for the computer room. It’s some journalism grant Klein found. Plus it’ll look good on your résumé.”
Résumé. Another stupid word. Thanks to Huang and the rules of the computer room, I’ll be leaving Haverland with a truckload of skills so pointless they might as well include lion taming and yodeling.
“It’s supposed to be available to everyone,” Huang says. “But seriously? The last thing you want is for these guys to read The Free.”
“Why?” Deon asks.
“You really have to ask?”
“Yeah, I have to ask. What the hell am I working on this thing for if nobody’s supposed to read it?”
Everyone tenses up. They’re all Huang worshippers. No one ever criticizes him.
“You saying there’s no point?” Deon asks. “Because everyone in here a bunch of illiterate negroes and spics?”
“No. I don’t think that. Do you?”
“So what am I wasting my time for?”
“Yeah,” I say. I’m mad for Deon’s sake, but for my own too. I took the time to type out Javier’s poem and format it. I had to learn how to use the spell-checker, for crying out loud. But now that I’ve joined Deon, the argument is breaking down along race lines, and that’s not good for anyone. Haverland is always on the lookout for an excuse to pit black against white or brown or yellow. Any bullshit reason will do, even a newsletter nobody reads. So I back off a little. “Seems like a waste of Deon’s talent, don’t you think? Did you read his article about programmers?”
I myself tried to read it the night before but failed. I’m not a great reader. If something is boring to me—and basically everything written down is boring to me—it feels like a thousand knives stabbing me in the face.
“Yeah, right,” Huang says. “You want them reading that ? An article about how geeks discriminate against blacks? We’ve already got the Disciples on our case, Deon. What do you want now? Bank Street?”
Bank Street’s Cecil Boone’s gang, an all-black outf it from Dorchester. They’re not as psychotic as the Disciples, but you don’t want to go pissing them off.
“It’s not about how geeks discriminate against blacks,” Deon says. “You obviously didn’t read it.”
“Yeah, I did,” Huang says. “But come on, Deon. You have to admit that the main theme—the one that’ll get scrawled in the bathroom before someone does a hit on one of us—is that geeks are keeping the black man down. How many people in here you think are gonna read the whole thing?”
Screw Huang for being right. I only got through the f irst few paragraphs of Deon’s article last night, something about how white and Asian programmers are helping each other get ahead while blacks are falling behind. Like, what else is new. It never occurred to me that there was more to it than plain old racism. I’d never start a race war over it, but a lot of guys would.
Now Deon’s pissed. He stands up and walks over to the cardboard box with his newsletters in it. Then he roams from table to table, leaving a stack of newsletters on each one. This does not go over well. Folks do not appreciate you coming around to their lunch table and giving them shit to read. They want to read something, they can go to the library on their own. Which they don’t.
Eventually, Deon sits down and starts carving up his slab of gray meat without looking at anyone. For better or worse now, everyone has a copy of The Free. Some guys are laughing about it, tearing the thing up. One guy on the other side of the cafeteria crumples it up real tight and f ires it at our table. Huang is furious and all the other geeks are scared. Fitzpatrick, the redhead, is actually shaking. He’s already paler than snow. Now he’s practically see-through.
It was self ish of Deon to act out like that, but I get why he did it. He worked hard on that newsletter. All those little pie charts and graphs. All the footnotes and citations. I don’t know what a citation is, but it seems like a lot of work. The Free isn’t some pointless hobby to Deon. And it isn’t just something to put on a résumé either. It probably boils Deon that Mr. Klein never told him it was all some scam to get more money for the computer room. It boils me too. Did he think we were both too thick to understand? Mr. Klein’s a racist. So’s Huang. I’m sure of it. And when the f ighting breaks out, no way am I standing with the geeks. I’m with Deon on this.
I look for the exits and map out a route that will avoid the most dangerous tables—the Disciples, Bank Street, Sol D. I wonder if Cardo will come after me when jungle law breaks out. The Disciples of Vice are not famous for avoiding violence.
As the seconds tick by, it gets real quiet. But when I look around, I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I elbow Deon, but Deon refuses to look up. He’s still f iling away at that meat, stuff ing it down like it’s punishment.
“They’re reading it,” I whisper.
That gets Deon’s attention.
Across the cafeteria, groups of guys are huddling around their copy or grabbing it from each other to read it themselves. Even Cardo and the Disciples are reading it. It gets so quiet in there, it’s almost like a library. The guards f igure that’s not right, so they come out of the kitchen to see what’s up.
“We’re dead,” Fitzpatrick mutters.
If he’s right, then death is coming our way in the form of a stumpy, cornrowed ha
rd case with his pants below his butt. One hand in the waistband, the other one plucking at the vee of his collar, he’s the kind of runty kid who actually bigs himself with his shortness, like he has something to prove to the world.
I scan for a weapon. Is it in the waistband? Taped to his stomach?
“Yo, Wilson,” the kid says, revealing not one, but three gold teeth.
Deon faces him, scared but cool.
“How come only the girls get to ax Barbie Santiago they questions?” The kid glances around the cafeteria, then raises both of his hands. “Says they getting a box to put they questions in to be anonymous. So where’s our box? ’Coz I got a question for Barbie Santiago.”
“Me too!” someone yells out.
Deon faces me, like I have the answer. Hard pass on that one, bro. I’m not answering shit. If you asked me right now who Isaac West was, I’d deny the existence of my own self. Isaac? Isaac who? Sorry, never heard of the guy.
Luckily, Deon has a gift for staying cool, even when he’s scared shitless. “No problem,” he says. Then he strolls over to that water dispenser and holds the empty box over his head. “Put your questions for Barbie Santiago in here,” he says to the whole cafeteria. Nuts the size of New England, this guy.
A guard comes over to hassle him, but when Deon explains what he’s doing and shows him a copy of The Free, the guard lets it go. He has a laugh about it with another guard. I guess the idea of a bunch of criminals writing stuff is comedy gold to them. Not to Deon, though. He takes his sweet time walking back to the geek table, drops some swagger into it, like he’s a star now and he’s going to lap that shit up while he can.
Huang is beside himself. He keeps scanning the room like he knows the hail of bullets is on its way. “If this goes wrong, it’s on you, Deon.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Deon tells him.
It gets loud again, back to its normal state. There’s a group of guys reading Javier’s poem, pointing it out to their friends, repeating lines out loud. Across the cafeteria, a group of Latinos fake-punch Javier. He looks embarrassed by their attention. When he spots me, he looks down. I can’t tell if he’s embarrassed or proud. It’s one thing to get mad personal in group. It’s something else to do it in front of these thugs. I hope I did the right thing. But even if I didn’t, it’s too late to take it back. That poem is out there. And if the lines bouncing around the cafeteria, backed by improvised mouth beats, are any indication, it’s the hit of The Free. Like it or not, Javier is a rap star. And I made it happen. Me. Isaac West.
The Free Page 12