“I wish you could have seen the look on Donovan’s face,” I say. “Vijay should have gotten that on camera. Talk about Talkin Trash!”
I don’t have the shoes on, but they’re in my backpack. I didn’t have them Monday, and I wonder if I would have done something different when those spitballs started flying if I’d had the shoes on. I know it’s silly, but they’re kind of like my talisman. I’ve been on a quest for the new me, and I think these shoes got me a few steps closer.
A bunch of kids from school come into the park. Some high school guys are there, and Justin. And Donovan. He’s holding a basketball. My first instinct is to hide, and I hope it doesn’t show. Donovan’s not looking this way, though; he’s dribbling the ball between his legs and concentrating like he’s trying out for the NBA.
“Speak of the devil …” Joe C. says.
“… and the devil appears,” I finish. “He didn’t see us; he’s too busy trying to be a baller.”
“You want to go?”
Yes, I think. “No,” I say. “Let’s hang out for a little while longer.” If I can hold it down for five minutes, I’ll win. What I’ll win, I don’t know, but it’s important enough to risk public playground humiliation.
Joe C. shrugs, and we watch the basketball game start. Donovan’s good. He’s always been good at basketball; he used to beg Monica to play with him all of the time. It’s weird watching him like this. I’m expecting a lot of trash-talking and clowning, but he’s serious and smooth. He plays fair, and doesn’t complain when he gets fouled hard. And he does, a lot. He gives up a lot of shots to Justin, who plays lazy and shoots confidently. Justin doesn’t miss a shot, and neither does Donovan when he takes them. Supposedly Donovan’s dad was almost in the NBA. That’s what Donovan used to say all the time, but he could have been lying. He also told us that his dad was a spy and a sniper. His dad left when he was two, so he was never around for us to see if the stories checked out.
“So are you going to the shelter again soon?” asks Joe C. after a while. “How’s that wish list thing going?”
“It’s all good. I’m going to be there a lot,” I say. “You can’t go there and then forget about it. It’s exactly what,” I swallow, “what the Clarke Pledge is talking about.” Joe C. is one of the only people that I can even mention the Pledge to now.
“You’ve really gotten into this thing,” he says slowly. “You’re all serious about it.”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Does it make you feel better?” he asks. “Holier or something?”
“I don’t know about all that. It’s just … I have a good time, I’m more myself there. The Listening Ears Project is almost done, but a lot of us from the youth group are planning to stick around. We’re going to clean up the place, paint it and everything. George, my partner, he wants to have a whole after-school program. And it’s not all about projects. I can do my thing there, talk to George, hang out with Charlie, not worry about … stupid stuff.”
We sit for a minute.
“I thought this was some Ruthie thing,” says Joe C., “but it’s all you, isn’t it?” He pauses. “I want to check it out. I want to help. But …” He stops.
“But what?” I ask, looking up.
“It freaks me out a little.”
“Try anyway,” I say after a pause. “I still do.”
Some pigeons move toward us, and they look so mean I’m expecting them to take out their knives and snatch Joe C.'s MP3 player.
“Listen,” I say, taking a deep breath. Joe C. looks at me.
“Night Man …” I stop again. “I think it’s done.”
Neither one of us speaks for a while.
“I know,” he says. “It was fun, though.” He shrugs. “I could never come up with something like that. Thanks for letting me work on it.”
I watch the pigeons fight over a bagel. “It was kind of an X-Men rip-off anyway. But yeah, it was fun. And, uh, I couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks.”
He nods and adds, “So …” Another pause. I wait.
“Nothing,” he says, looking away. “It’s cool.”
“Huh?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” he says again. Then he looks at me. “I’m just saying. Man up and tell me if you don’t want to hang out with me anymore.”
“Whoa, Castiglione,” I say. “What are you talking about?” But we both know, and it’s complicated, and I don’t know what to say. I hope I don’t have to go on that hip-hop tour to prove my friendship.
Joe C. looks at me for a moment, then shrugs. “Sorry. Just seems like things are changing.”
“Got a lot on my mind,” I say. “But it’s not about you.” And then I do know what to say. “It gets messy sometimes. But we will always be boys. Just don’t say ‘man up’ anymore.”
“Always,” he says. “I got your back.”
Looks like it’s getting heated on the basketball court. Some guys are arguing, and Justin and one of the older guys are trying to break it up. At the other end of the court, Donovan’s got the ball, and he’s not even watching the argument, he’s just shooting baskets. He looks like he’s in a bubble, just shooting and shooting and not paying attention to anything else. His mouth is a little open, almost like he’s praying. He looks like someone I might be friends with.
“I think there’s going to be a fight,” says Joe C.
“Yeah,” I say. Pretty soon, without the game going on, Donovan will sniff me out. I look at Joe C.'s Juiced!. “This might be a record. I can’t believe you haven’t told me about some three-legged midget with no toes.”
“Ha ha,” Joe C. shrugs. “I’ll tell Ruthie you said ‘midget.’ “ He cracks it open and then looks at the bottle cap. “Anthony Duda officially changed his first name to Zipardi in 2002.”
“That’s it?” I ask. “What’s the punch line?”
“Zipardi,” Joe C. says. “Get it? Zipardi Duda?”
It takes me a minute. “Oh!” I say. “That’s not disgusting, that’s just stupid. And weird.”
“Admit it,” he says. “You would miss it if I stopped.”
“Um, no,” I reply. “Really, don’t keep it up on my account. I just tolerate it because you’re like a brother to me.”
He smiles.
“And before we actually turn into girls by talking like this, I’ve got a surprise for you.” I unzip the second backpack and show him the old records that I had to pry out of Pops’s hands. There are names like Sugarhill Gang, Kool Herc, and Eric B. & Rakim on them — I promised Pops I’d get a full scholarship to Cornell in order to get him to give these up. “These are for you,” I say. “From Pops’s collection of vintage hip-hop — or ‘old-school JAMZ,’ as he likes to say.” I draw out the Z and Joe C. laughs. “There’s some dancehall in there too. Since DJ-ing is your thing … I got your back too.”
“Thanks!” he says, like I just gave him a car. “Wow!”
“My pleasure,” I say. He takes the second backpack, and I pick up mine. “Do you think the Goon guy is around now?”
“Gunnar,” Joe C. says. “Probably. He wakes up around lunchtime and he doesn’t go into the club until later. Why?”
“Let’s go over to your dad’s,” I say. “We can start working on the sound track for Night Man: The Movie.”
Joe C. grins again as we stand up. And I don’t even glance at Donovan as we leave.
7:28 P.M.
The Goon guy was pretty cool, and I liked fooling around with all of that DJ equipment. I’m a little late for dinner, but it’s pizza, so Mom’s cool. Still, the dinner table atmosphere is downright cold. Pipitone gave us a pizza with anchovies by mistake, and even though we’re sitting there with a nasty sea-worm pie on the table, Mom and Pops don’t want to bother to send it back.
It doesn’t help that the Wicked Witch Who Didn’t Get into Clarke sings “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out” under her breath when we open the box. She also starts talking about how “those cheerle
aders are stuck-up” and Mom tells her to shut up. Mom actually uses those words. I expect a pig to fly in through the living room window, or Satan to walk through the door wearing a fur coat and shaking off the snow. Nobody says anything else. Then Mom and Pops don’t even eat with us — they go into their bedroom and talk in those annoying low voices that are impossible to hear, even with a glass against the door.
I grab a slice and start picking off the anchovies. Monica stares at the pizza for a long time, then gets a bag of baby carrots from the fridge and starts crunching. She whips out a copy of American Cheerleader and ignores me. I feel bad for her about the “shut up” from Mom, so I decide to give conversation a try.
“You’ve been eating rabbit food forever. Is there a new diet in the Land of Evil? Is that how you ogres keep up your strength?”
“Whatever, Biscuitbrain. If you really need to know, I am on a new diet. I’m trying out for the school play. It’s A Raisin in the Sun. I’m going for Ruth.”
We saw that on Broadway a few years ago; real dramatic. Wait, isn’t Ruth the pretty wife? I start laughing. Then I’m laugh/choking. Then it’s a full-on choke thing and I’m rolling on the floor, gasping for air. Monica gets up and leaves, brings back a glass of water, then drinks it right over me.
“What is so funny, geek?”
“You … in a school play? Playing a woman? Dr. Evil in a dress!” I start laughing again and she pours some water on me.
“You don’t know anything about it,” she says. “Mrs. McMahon encouraged me to try out; she thinks I have talent.” She finishes pouring the water on me and looks like she might get more.
I decide to get up before it gets worse. Monica sits down and goes back to her magazine. I watch her for a minute. Cheerleading? School plays? What is up with her?
“Are the Black Barbies — I mean, Tatia and Renee trying out?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Monica mumbles. “They made cheerleading, so maybe not.”
“Wait, how come you didn’t try out? After all that drama you started …”
“I did,” she says, not looking at me.
Oh.
“I heard Diane Anderson might drop out; rumor has it she’s pregnant. They’re going to have tryouts for her spot.”
“Are you gonna try again? Mom will kill you,” I warn.
“She wouldn’t even notice,” says Monica. “She’ll be too busy trying to keep Pops together if he doesn’t get a new job soon.”
She’s probably right. The murmur-y discussions they used to have only late at night aren’t always so murmur-y or so late anymore.
“I don’t care anyway,” says Monica. “I’m so over cheerleading.”
What’s the magazine for, then? I can almost relate to my sister at this moment. Will rejection make her a better person?
Monica looks up at me. “Can you move? I don’t want to get loser dust on me.”
I guess that answers my question. “Why are you reading that magazine? One of Joe C.'s dogs would make a better cheerleader than you. A cuter one, anyway.”
“I’m going to come to your school and tell everyone what a punk you are,” she says. “I’ll bring pictures.”
“Why don’t you get off my back,” I say. “This time I’m gonna tell.”
“ ‘This time I’m gonna tell,’ “ she repeats. “You would. You don’t have the guts to do anything else.”
I go upstairs and take the Dora shoes out for school tomorrow. School’s been okay for the last week — at least, no one’s been calling me Pukey lately. It looks like the LARPing kid with his bow ties and penny loafers is next in the line of fire. Mialonie talked to me, and Charlie thinks I wear a cape for real. I got what I wanted, I guess. But it’s not the total zero-to-hero transformation I thought it would be. Do I need to put the shoes back on? Will I have to wear them every day for the rest of my life?
NOVEMBER 20
10:30 A.M.
Joe C. makes good on his promise to come with me to Olive Branch, even though I can tell he’s freaking out as soon as we step through the doors. I don’t see George or Charlie, but Gabriella is watching TV with some of the hard-core basketball fans, and she stops what seems like a sort of friendly debate to wave at me.
After I introduce Joe C. to Wilma and a few of the residents, and Mr. James challenges him to a game of dominoes right away, a girl walks over carrying a box of books. She looks like she could be my age. I meet her halfway so that I can help with the box.
“Thanks,” she says. “There’s another box outside,” she says, looking at Joe C. He goes to get it.
“I’m Carmen,” she says. “You’re Reggie, right?”
“Yes,” I say, surprised that she knows my name. “I didn’t realize other schools were volunteering. Did you come with a group?”
“Come with what group?” she asks. “I’ve been here. I live here.”
“Oh! Great! I mean … um, what are the books for?” Nice going, Reggie.
But she doesn’t seem to mind. “I’ve been trying to get a lending library going for the last few months, and people are finally coming on board. Old Crump built some bookshelves from scrap wood, and we got a few more donated. And Dare Books just gave me a bunch of brand-new textbooks for free. I’m going to set up over there,” she says, pointing to a corner next to Wilma’s office. As Joe C. returns with the box, she looks at me again. “I heard you’ve been making things happen. Maybe you can get some other people to help me collect donations. Spread the word.” She hands me a piece of paper. “Here’s a list of places that I still need to hit up.”
“Uh, sure,” I say. “But I don’t want to be all up in your project. I mean, I’d feel kind of funny, like I was taking credit for your work.”
She rolls her eyes. “Okay, you can stand around and feel funny, or you can help me get this done.”
“Good point,” I say. I take the list.
“Thanks a lot,” she says. “I’d been kind of discouraged about this whole thing, but there’s been some new positive energy around here lately. I’m ready to make things happen.” We make plans to talk again in a couple of days, and she heads to Wilma’s office.
“She was cool,” says Joe C. “And cute. If it weren’t for Maria …”
Yeah, yeah. “So, you see what I was saying?” I ask. “Not what you were expecting.”
“Yeah,” he nods. “Even after we came in, I kept thinking about what a dump this is. But when I take a second look …” He points to the kids’ town. “Cool. Is that the town you were telling me about?”
“Yeah,” I say. “And this guy Jeff is painting a mural to go with it, and if you knew Jeff, you’d never expect him to do anything like that. Hey! You should talk to him; I bet he could use your drawing skills. I’ll give you his e-mail address.”
“No wonder you’ve been so busy,” he says. “Sounds like you’ve been getting a lot done here.”
“We all have,” I say. “It’s the community thing that makes it work. I wanted Vicky to get behind that for the election.”
“Well, one of the candidates was listening,” says Joe C., looking at the door. I follow his eyes; Justin Walker is coming in and walking toward us.
“Hey,” he says. “Mialonie told me you had something going on here. I came to check it out.”
“Uh, yeah, thanks,” I say. “Um, are you alone?”
“Uh-huh,” he says. “I want to do something to help. Who should I talk to? Her?” He points to Wilma, and I nod. “Thanks. See you,” he says. Justin walks over to Wilma and Carmen, and within seconds they’re all smiling together like old friends.
As Joe C. and I are leaving, I notice that Justin has gone over to the basketball-watching crew and he’s telling some story that makes everyone laugh. Gabriella comes over. “Wow, Reggie,” she says. “Before now, I wouldn’t have thought a guy could pull off something like this.”
“Thanks,” I say as I take Carmen’s list out of my back pocket. “Here. See that girl over there?” Gabriella n
ods. “She needs some help with a project, and I think you’d be perfect.”
She takes the list and smiles. “I’m glad I came back,” she says. “Thanks for making it happen.”
“The Man Who Makes It Happen,” says Joe C. when we’re on the sidewalk. “Sounds like the start of another graphic novel.” When I roll my eyes, he adds, “And it sounds like my boy Reggie.”
NOVEMBER 22
6:30 A.M.
When the doorbell rings, I wonder if the Jehovah’s Witnesses are on some early-morning overdrive kick. I open the door; it’s Ruthie. She looks surprised, and that annoys me. Who does she expect to see?
“Hey,” I say. Her hat and scarf almost cover her whole head, except for her eyes, which are bright and shiny. They look like they’re what’s really keeping her warm.
“Oh — hi!” she says. “I’m supposed to meet Monica to go over some lines.” She walks in without an invitation. “I’m freezing!” She hugs me hard.
Whoa! I could use a binder right now. Coach Conners wasn’t kidding when he said unexpected.
“What?” I say, turning away to hide my body’s betrayal. I hope it doesn’t show on my face. “Why Monica and what lines?”
Ruthie sighs. “You heard she’s trying out for Raisin in the Sun? She called me and asked if I would help her practice.”
There’s an amusement park ride called the Pirate Ship, and it swings back and forth in the air until you’re certain that you’re going to fall out no matter how strapped in you are. First Joe C. is breaking beats, and now Ruthie is … I don’t know what Ruthie is. Consorting with the enemy.
“Oh yeah. Dr. Evil in a dress … I can’t believe she asked you to help her.”
“Well, she knows how much I like it, and she knows that I,” she stops and gives me a look, “have a flair for the dramatic.”
“No kidding,” I say, and it’s almost like old times. “You?” We stand there grinning at each other for a minute, and then Monica appears at the top of the stairs.
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