Coach Caputo looked very upset. But not with Jenny or me.
“You can put him down now,” he said to Amado. “And you don’t have to worry about playing with my son. He’s off the team.”
“Da-a-ad!” Cody screamed.
To Jenny and me, Coach Caputo said, “I apologize for any difficulties my son might have caused either of you. I can assure you they’ll be dealt with appropriately and won’t be happening again in the future.”
Amado put Cody down. His shirt collar was immediately seized by his father, who started dragging him toward the school and Dr. Bushey’s office.
“No, Dad,” Cody was crying. “You’ve got it all wrong. Let me explain!”
But Coach Caputo looked as if he’d heard all the explanations he cared to for one morning.
Amado, Jenny, and I all looked at one another.
“Well,” Jenny said, taking her bent gold medal from her pocket and dropping it back around her neck. “I’m glad that’s finally settled. Bye.”
Then she turned around and walked over to join a big group of girls who’d stopped on their way into school to watch what was happening. As soon as Jenny reached them, they all let out excited little screams, grabbing Jenny’s arms and hurrying her into school. They all kept looking back over their shoulders at Amado and grinning.
All except for Jenny. She kept her gaze glued on the school doors as she walked, her ponytail bobbing behind her.
Her face had been very red as she’d said the word Bye, though, for some reason.
“You’d better take that bike into the office and ask them to keep it in there for the day since you don’t have a lock,” Amado advised me, ignoring the girls. “Otherwise someone else will steal it.”
I felt overwhelmed. With happiness. With relief. But mostly with gratitude toward him.
“I . . . ,” I said. “You . . . That was . . . That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
“It was nothing,” Amado said with a shrug. “Like you said, ‘Dudes should always help another dude in need.’ You don’t have to repay me.”
“But I do,” I said. “History shows that gift economies don’t work. We have to have an exchange of goods or services. I don’t know what service I can perform for you, and you already said you won’t let me pay you—” I looked down at my bike, and it was like a small grenade going off in my head. I knew. I knew exactly how I could repay him. “Here,” I said, thrusting it toward him. “Take the bike!”
Amado stared at me in astonishment. “What?”
“The Yeti Shok Jok,” I said. “Take it. You deserve it for what you did. You can get those spokes fixed. You’ll never know—I mean, really—you’ll never know how grateful I am for what you did. Aaron Weinstein would want you to have it. And so do I.”
Amado sighed. Considering the enormity of my sacrifice—which I utterly and completely meant, from the bottom of my soul, because friends do these kinds of things for one another, I’m told—he didn’t seem very grateful.
“I don’t want your bike, Dave,” he said. “I have my own Yeti Shok Jok at home. I saved up for months mowing lawns last summer so I could afford it.” When I looked shocked, he nodded. “Yeah. I’m just not stupid enough to ride mine to school, because I wouldn’t want some idiot like Cody Caputo to steal it.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling dumb.
Amado shook his head. “Wow,” he said. “You really do need a protectionist. You know that?”
As Amado and I walked toward the administrative office, with me rolling the bike between us, I reanalyzed what Jenny had said last night about friends and how getting them wasn’t something you could wish for, it was something you had to work at, like having a job. Maybe she hadn’t meant a job like an actual labor economy exchange of goods and services. Maybe she’d meant something else.
I tried to remember the conversation I’d frequently overheard Jen having with her girlfriends.
“So,” I said, “do you want to get together this weekend? Maybe we could . . . ride bikes? There’s this park by my house that has some really sweet jumps.”
Amado shrugged. “Okay. If I don’t have basketball practice.”
“And maybe afterward,” I said, “you can come over to my house and we can play Aaron Weinstein: Extreme BMX Dirt Trax online. I have the latest version.”
“Will your sister be there?” Amado asked.
“Jenny? Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “But I don’t know why we’d want to play with her. She’s terrible. Mostly during the weekend she just hangs around and practices her jumps in the backyard.”
“I’ll be there,” Amado said.
“Sometimes she makes cookies, but she usually burns them,” I warned him, because I thought it was only fair he knew what he was getting himself into. “Then the smoke detectors go off. And sometimes if she gets to the console first, she wants to play this really stupid game where you have to get these ponies ready for this horse show—”
“Hey, Dave,” Amado said. He stopped, pushed up his sunglasses, then gave me a smile. “I said I’ll be there, okay?”
I stared at him. It was hard to contain my grin. “Why? Are you . . . are you going to be my protectionist?”
“No,” he said. “I’m going to be your friend. Save me a seat in the cafeteria at lunch today, okay?”
Then he turned around and went off to class.
I couldn’t believe it. It seemed impossible—like a dream come true. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t a dream.
I had a friend. A real friend.
I wondered if Amado had read The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. If not, I would be more than happy to lend him my copy.
Twelve-year-old refugee Beina cooks for her family.
Women and children wait for water. Photo Credit (both): UNHCR / H. Caux
SOFIA QUINTERO
THE GREAT WALL
It started last summer with Lexi’s crush on Pete, although we didn’t know that was his name yet.
Anyway, first clue: Lexi was “feeling like Chinese” practically every day. It took me years to get her to taste pork fried rice, and when she finally did, Lexi just wrinkled her nose and said, “It’s a’ight.” Now, not only did she love fried rice, she dragged me to Great Wall three, four times a week. I’m surprised I didn’t get sick of it!
Second clue: Great Wall is on the corner of Randall Avenue and White Plains Road—three long blocks away from our building. Meanwhile, there are four other Chinese takeout places along the way. But Lexi complained that China Pavilion wasn’t as good, Golden Palace charged a quarter more for a pint of rice, Mandarin Wok just opened and she didn’t want to take a chance on a new place, and Five Star was on JJ’s block.
And that was the biggest clue of all. For the entire school year, Lexi made me take the long way to and from school just to pass by JJ’s building. Lexi’s mother is mad strict and forbids her from leaving our stoop, while my mom is cool, giving me permission to go to the playground and movies. But I’m too scared to go alone, so Lexi sneaks along, but you know what that means, right? It’s what the lawyers that work with Lexi’s mom call quid pro quo. Lexi risked punishment by coming with me to the movies, and I returned the favor by following her while she chased her crush of the month all over Castle Hill.
So I finally figured out that JJ was out and Pete was in when Lexi hounded me to come with her to Great Wall one Wednesday. Mind you, she didn’t have enough money for a pint of pork fried rice. “How much you got?” she asked me.
“I’m not blowing it on another pint of pork fried rice for the third time this week,” I said. On Mondays before going to work, Mami would leave me ten dollars on the kitchen table that was supposed to last me the whole week. Thanks to Lexi’s new obsession, I was down to two bucks and change only halfway through the week. I had already decided to spend my last two dollars on Mr. Softee, but even though he comes every day, I was trying to hold out till Friday.
&n
bsp; “Just give me the change, then,” Lexi said. “That gives me enough for a pint.”
“Fine,” I said as I funneled the coins into her palm. “Let’s just go to China Pavilion. It’s too hot to be walking all the way over to Great Wall.” But I shouldn’t have forked over the change before saying that, because Lexi was already walking in the opposite direction.
Maybe it was the heat that made me realize what Lexi was up to. I mean, we had been making these runs to Great Wall for weeks before I noticed that she wasn’t acting the way we do when we go to the pizzeria or the deli. What do you do at any store? You go in, maybe look at the menu, place your order, and then go sit down. If there are lots of people and no place to sit, you wait for your order outside. After walking three blocks in the nasty humidity, I couldn’t wait to sit down once we got to Great Wall because it isn’t just a takeout place with a giant fan blowing around hot air. It’s a small but nice restaurant with air-conditioning. When we got there, I immediately dropped into a booth, but instead of joining me after placing her order, Lexi stayed at the counter, craning her neck and twisting her curls around her finger. Only then did I realize that all summer Lexi had been actually looking at someone behind the window.
I got up and peered over her shoulder. She was staring at the delivery boy as he ate his lo mein lunch. No wonder that first time she wanted Chinese food Lexi suggested we have it delivered.
“Why?” I said at the time, pointing to the corner. “China Pavilion is right there.” And that’s when Lexi first complained that their pork fried rice was bland. “Well, we’re only getting a pint of rice, and that’s only three seventy-five,” I said. “The minimum for delivery is eight dollars, and I’m not blowing all my money this week on one order.”
Lexi finally talked me into going to Great Wall, practically skipping the entire way, only to be so grumpy on the walk back to our building. At first I thought she was unhappy with the food. Now I got it; the delivery boy wasn’t there.
I grabbed Lexi by the arm and dragged her outside. “Oh, my God, Lexi, you’re, like, all crushed out on the Chinese delivery boy?”
Lexi yanked her arm away from me. “Tell the whole world, Nicole!”
“Sorry!” I didn’t think I was that loud, but whatever. I lowered my voice. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“ ’ Cause . . .” But she didn’t finish. Instead, she smiled and said, “He’s cute, right?”
I shrugged, and Lexi pouted at me. “What?” It wasn’t like I’d been studying him the way she had. I needed to take another look.
Now Lexi’s the one grabbing my arm and pulling me back. “Nicole, no!”
“I’m not gonna do nothing.” I walked to the fish tank and pretended to be fascinated with them, which is not hard to do. I watched the tetras hover near the surface while the catfish grazed the pebbles at the bottom. There was a single black fish who swam back and forth across the middle of the tank by herself. Soon Lexi was beside me, nudging me to sneak a glance into the kitchen at the delivery boy.
He seemed about sixteen, and his jet-black hair was cut in random layers all around his head with the longest piece dangling over his eye and dyed candy apple red. He also had a metal stud in his earlobe.
“See his tat?” Lexi hissed in my ear. “It’s hot, right?” I’d seen the symbol on his wrist before. It looked like the letters F and T got dressed up and met at a square table. But I couldn’t remember what it meant.
“What is it?”
Lexi just shrugged. The girl at the register said something to the boy in Chinese, and he looked up straight at us. She burst out laughing before returning to the kitchen. The boy rolled his eyes at her, muttered something back and continued eating like nothing happened.
Lexi huffed. “She better not be talking about us.”
“Oh, she definitely said something about us.”
“What she say?”
“I don’t know, Lexi! Do I look Chinese to you?”
The girl came back to the register with a brown paper bag, smiling sweetly. “Small pork fried rice,” she called out in her thick accent. I hope she didn’t think she was fooling anybody. We were the only ones there, so who else’s order could it be? I waited outside while Lexi went to the counter and paid. Here I was embarrassed when I wasn’t even checking for this guy.
As we walked back to our building, Lexi had what I call a Wonder Moment—when she is full of questions that we can’t answer. Every third question or so, she asks me something I can answer, but she’s on to the next wonder before I can get in a word.
“I wonder what his name is. I wonder what his tattoo means. I wonder why he wears his hair like that. It’s kind of cute, right, Nicole? I wonder what that stupid girl said to him. I wonder if that’s his sister. You don’t think that’s, like, his girlfriend or anything like that, do you, Nic? I wonder where he goes to school.”
The thing about Lexi’s Wonder Moments is that they don’t end until she hits a question that we just might be able to answer. Once she has an answerable question, there’s no stopping Lexi, and of course, being her BFF since kindergarten, I get dragged into her quests for the Answer. Sometimes the quests are harmless and fun, like when we were eight and tried to stay up all night on Christmas Eve because Lexi wanted to know how Santa Claus got the presents into our apartments when our building didn’t have a chimney. Last summer, though, a quest got us put on punishment for two weeks because Lexi decided to ask some guys selling drugs on the corner if they were the ones who hung sneakers on the telephone wires to advertise their “wares” like she read on the Internet. Somebody told her mother she was talking to those guys. Probably the lady who owns the cleaners across the street. She can see everything from there and has known Lexi’s mom since she was our age.
When we got to my apartment and Lexi said, “I wonder where the Chinese people go after they close their restaurants,” I knew we were headed for one of those quests that could get us into trouble, and I didn’t want to lose another two weeks of summer like last year.
“You want lemonade or iced tea?” I said, holding up both pitchers in front of the refrigerator.
“I mean, haven’t you noticed, Nicole?” Lexi reached for the lemonade and poured it into the glasses she had set on our kitchen table. “They have all these businesses in Castle Hill—whole Bronx, really—like takeout joints, that place where we got our backpacks and those cute barrettes, the nail salons . . .”
I should’ve kept my mouth shut or changed the subject, but I couldn’t help myself. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think those people are Chinese,” I said. “Probably Korean.”
In Lexiville, that’s the same as saying So what kind of trouble do you want to get into this week? There was no turning back to ask her if she wanted to watch TV while we ate, take our plates to the fire escape, or otherwise change the subject. “Still, I don’t think any of ’em live around here. Have you seen them? I don’t see any of them in school or at the library or nothing.”
I thought about it, and she was right. “I guess it’s kind of like our moms,” I said. “They live here in the Bronx but work in Manhattan. Like a lot of people who live in one place but work in another.”
“No, it’s different,” Lexi said as she scooped pork fried rice onto each of our plates. “My mom works for the City, and your mom works at that college. They’re one of thousands of people who work for somebody else. But the Chinese are like the Dominicans that own the bodega on our street. Or the Mexicans on JJ’s block. Or the Jamaicans selling real beef patties across the street from the pizzeria . . .”
I started to see what she was saying. “Or like the Indian family that owns the video store,” I said as I took a bite of rice. All the different people who have businesses in Castle Hill also live here. We weren’t just their customers. We were also their neighbors. Then I remembered. “But the video owner’s son doesn’t go to our school.”
“No, but he goes to Blessed Sacrament, which is right there,” Lexi sai
d. “And they ain’t even Catholic.”
“How do you know these things?” Then I remembered. JJ is Indian. In her quest to know anything and everything about him, Lexi must have collected a lot of information about other Indians in our neighborhood.
“The difference, though, is that the Chinese have stores in Castle Hill, but they don’t live here like the Dominicans and the Indians and everybody else who have stores here do. It’s weird.”
I sipped my lemonade and gave it some more thought. “Maybe not. ’Cause if you think about it, as different as they seem, everybody else is from the same part of the world. Even us Jamaicans and the Indians.”
“No, the Indians come from the same area as the Chinese,” Lexi said.
“Uh-uh. I mean, originally, yeah. Like a million years ago,” I said. “But the ones in this neighborhood are specifically from Guyana. That’s like a hop, skip and jump from Jamaica.”
“No, it’s not!” Lexi said. “It’s on the complete opposite side of the sea.”
“Still.” Geography was the one class where Lexi outdid me . . . by a lot. “Guyana’s a whole lot closer to Puerto Rico and DR and Jamaica and all those places than it is to India or China.”
“True.” We stopped to eat for a few minutes. Then Lexi said, “You know what? One night we should wait for Great Wall to close, and then we should follow them home.”
It was useless to argue with Lexi, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t try. Even though I always caved in at the end, I had to put up a fight so if we got caught I could at least tell our moms that I tried to talk her out of it and not be lying.
And the truth was that when I went to bed at night, I kept thinking about the aquarium at the Great Wall. All the different kinds of fish seemed to get along, yet they stuck to their own schools. The tetras stayed together at the top of the tank while the catfish closed ranks near the gravel. Their world in the tank was a lot like my neighborhood. Everyone was friendly when we crossed paths in public, but for the most part, we stuck to our own kind. Not everyone in our neighborhood was like Lexi, who crushed out on guys of all kinds. I wished more people here were like Lexi, especially me. I guess that was why I eventually agreed to her crazy plan.
What You Wish For Page 7