“Is Tyler running track too?” Julia teases.
“You are so not funny. I can’t stand him and you know it.”
“I know. I’m sorry! I was just messing around,” Julia says. “You know me.” She grabs my arm and gives me a roller whip.
It’s hard to stay mad when you’re spinning around, and all I can do is laugh.
“Text me later!” Julia says, as we go our separate ways.
“I’ll text you after I go shopping,” I call after her, and smile. I can be funny too.
6
Tuna & Metal
I never knew metal had a smell, but it does. It’s sharp and stings my nose as soon as I walk into sixth period.
I’m glad I have shop at the end of the day. After fifth period, my head is swimming with numbers and equations, and getting to make something pushes that all away.
I didn’t really know what to expect when I signed up for shop. I’ve always liked making things, and when Daddy was a kid, he took wood shop and made a little bench we still use. I figured it would be fun. But I sure didn’t think it would be almost all boys. On the first day, when I walked in and saw all those boys staring at me like I was a piece of hair in their soup, it sure felt good to see Yolanda’s upside-down-Y smile. Since we’re the only girls in the class, we cling together like staticky socks.
Shop is like taking a class at Home Depot. Instead of desks we have worktables and stools. One whole wall is lined with big power tools. I’m afraid of the table saw because there’s a rumor a kid sawed the tips of his fingers off one year, but the rest of the equipment seems less scary. One machine can drill right through metal.
“Get your trays and get to work,” Mr. Klosner says, his big fuzzy mustache waggling at us.
Yolanda and I grin at each other. We both think Mr. Klosner’s mustache is hilarious. Especially the way when he’s thinking about something, he’ll twist the ends like he’s trying to unscrew them.
I pull on the heavy work gloves Mr. Klosner likes us to wear. I feel ready to do serious business as soon as I put them on.
Even though Mr. Klosner said trays, my project doesn’t look like much of anything yet. It’s a small rectangle of metal, and I have to hit it over and over again with a riveting hammer until it is completely covered with little round divots. This will make the metal look more decorative—according to Mr. Klosner. Once I finish that step, I’ll get to use a big machine with clamps so I can fold up the four edges of the metal rectangle. And then I’ll have a tray. I don’t know what I’ll do with it when it’s done. Probably give it to Momma so she can put her bracelets on it or something.
Each time my hammer hits the metal, a tingling vibration flashes up my arm.
Tyler leans over, and I can smell the tuna he had for lunch. “So, yeah, uh, your tray looks really good.” Tyler has tiny teeth and a huge smile.
“Thanks,” I say, without making eye contact, and I shift away, hoping he can take a hint.
Tyler always gets too close whenever he talks to me, like he wants to share some great secret. I sure wish he’d stop.
I also wish he would breathe his tuna breath on someone else.
Tyler drums his fingers on our worktable. His nails are bitten to the quick. “You have, a, uh, pretty name and all.”
Smoooooth.
Yolanda giggles and I want to kick her, but instead I just whack my project harder, making the metal bounce.
“I hear folks call you Shay sometimes. That’s like me. Hardly nobody calls me Tyler. I go by Ty.”
I keep pounding away. Zing, zing, up my arm.
Tyler puts his very sweaty hand on my arm. “Hey, girl, you don’t have to kill the thing.”
I jerk my arm away. “I’m not.” I wish I could say what I’m thinking which is: Bye, Ty. “You’re supposed to have your work gloves on.”
He doesn’t say anything to that, but he doesn’t stop smiling at me either. Talk about annoying. Tomorrow I’m switching seats with Yolanda.
People with sweaty hands should keep them to themselves.
7
Sirens
Momma likes to pick me up after the long line of cars in the drop-off/pick-up zone has cleared out so she can just whisk to the curb. But I don’t like sitting next to the flagpole by myself looking like I was forgotten.
Only a tiny group of kids is left by the time I finally see Momma’s white SUV.
“Why are you so late?” I ask.
“Excuse me, did my child just ask me why I was taking time out of my busy day to come pick her up when she could catch a bus home?”
I know Momma isn’t asking me a real question, and I decide to change the subject before I get into trouble. I tell her about Coach West asking me to come out for track and how I am going to do it. Momma starts laughing.
“Thanks,” I say, and cross my arms tight. Momma tells me and Hana all the time how she will always encourage us, but she’s not going to lie to us either. She has never told me I am athletic like she tells Hana.
“Oh, I’m s-s-s-sorry,” she says, seeing the look on my face. “But you? Running?” A whole fresh batch of laughter steams up the windows. She even has tears spouting.
“It’s not funny,” I say, but a small smile is trying to steal over my face. When Momma laughs like this, it’s really hard not to laugh too, even when she’s laughing at you. Her whole body gets into it. I try biting my lips from the inside, but before I know it, I’m laughing right along with her.
“I can’t wait to come to one of your track meets,” she says, getting herself together.
“No way,” I say. My seat belt feels like it’s pressing hard against my chest, and I have to pull it away from me. “You and Daddy can’t come. I’d never be able to get down the track knowing you were busting a gut in the stands.”
“Okay, baby, whatever you say,” she says. “Now leave that seat belt alone.”
I let it slap back and stare out the window. We pass a house that looks like Hansel and Gretel might live there.
“How come you’re not taking Wilshire?” I ask. Momma always takes the same route home, but today she’s going a different way.
“There’s some protesting going on. Causing a mess of traffic.” Momma’s fingers grip the steering wheel tighter.
“Protesting what?”
“That trial started today.” Momma’s voice is low and serious, and I wish we could go back to joking about track. “People are acting like they already know what the verdict’s going to be.”
“What do you think is going to happen?” I’ve heard my parents talking about what might happen if the police officer who shot that man isn’t found guilty. They talk about it when they think I’m asleep.
“I don’t know, sugar. I try to keep an open mind, but all these trials seem to end the same way. Doesn’t seem like Black folks can get any justice.”
“Is it Black Lives Matter doing the protest?”
“No,” Momma says. “But people are squawking on the news anyway how it’s Black Lives Matter causing the problem.” She sighs and looks over her shoulder to change lanes.
I look behind me too and see a whole bunch of police cars. And then, just like me turning around flipped a switch or something, their lights start flashing and their sirens go on, and you bet I start thinking they’re after us. “Pull over, Momma!”
“Don’t worry, baby,” Momma says, but her voice is tight. She pulls over and we watch the line of police cars whiz past us, their sirens shrieking.
After a second, Momma pulls back into traffic.
“Momma?” I chew on my lip for a minute, watching the blue and red lights get farther away. “Do the police hate us? Hate Black people?”
“Oh, no, honey, don’t start thinking that.” Momma gives my knee a little squeeze. “It’s like . . .” She taps her nails on the steering wheel, thinking. “Okay, like if you eat unhealthy food a long time, you’re going to be unhealthy, right? Well, for too long people have been fed a diet about Black folks. A
bout folks with brown skin. Making them think we’re scary. And that’s how the police have been trained to act. It’s going to take a long time to change people’s minds.”
“Maybe after the trial is over, people will know we’re not scary. They’ll know we matter.”
“Oh, baby . . .” Momma shakes her head.
I reach over and pat her hand. “It’ll be okay, Momma. There’s a video this time. No way could anyone say that officer was innocent.”
Momma doesn’t say anything.
8
Pictures & Pits
When we get home, I go straight to my room without even stopping to get a snack like I normally do. I kick my shoes off and fall onto my bed.
My favorite thing in my room is my bulletin board, full of pictures of the United Nations—me, Julia, and Isabella in silly poses. Almost all of them are from those photo booths they have at malls and amusement parks. A line of four pictures that’s almost always in black and white because that’s the cheapest. I have loads of them. The pictures go all the way back to when we were little, and we’re making goofy faces in most of them.
We’ll probably take a ton of great ones this year. Too bad they don’t have a photo booth at school.
Maybe someone will take a picture of me at a track meet. I imagine myself crossing the finish line first with everyone cheering and confetti shooting into the sky. That would be a great picture.
I flop over onto my belly and snuggle into my blankets. Momma must’ve just done laundry, because my sheets smell like Tide. I should start homework, but I’m too comfortable to move.
Then Hana walks in. My sister barges into my room whenever she feels like it, but if I go into her room without knocking, she cuts my head off.
“What’s up?” she asks, as if I asked to talk to her. She takes a seat on my beanbag chair, and little bits of stuffing spill out from the seam.
Daddy says we look alike, but I’m still waiting for that to be true. We’re both tall, but since Hana has always played basketball, for her it’s a bonus. (Dad made me try and play basketball last year, but after getting an elbow in my eye, and me crying about it all over the court, we both decided the sport was not for me.)
We have the same hair (thick and sort of bushy) but she has hers figured out, while mine is usually a mess. She plucks her eyebrows into neat little arches, and her ears are pierced at the top, where it looks totally cool. She probably has a tattoo like most of her friends, but if she does, she keeps it hidden.
Hana always seems a little bit bored, as if there’s something better going on and if you would just stop bugging her, she could get back to it. I hope by the time I’m a senior in high school, I will have mastered that look.
“I’m probably going to get killed in science,” I say. I know I’m being a little dramatic, but it’s nice having her attention. “I got partnered with Bernard. I told you about him. He’s mean? Today he knocked his whole desk over.”
“Why?”
“I think he didn’t like getting yelled at.”
“Mmm.”
“It was scary, Hana!”
Hana sighs in that way that means she’s just about done with me. “Bernard’s that big kid, right?”
“Yes! He’s huge!”
“And Black, right?”
“I don’t think he’s scary because he’s Black, Hana. I think he’s scary because he acts mean all the time.”
Hana taps the black armband she’s wearing and smirks at me. Hana and all her friends wear black armbands to show their support for the Black people who’ve died when dealing with the police.
“It’s not about that,” I argue.
Hana shrugs, and then her phone buzzes and she pulls it out. I can tell by the smile on her face that it’s her friend Regina texting her. Hana gets all silly when she and Regina are together, or texting each other, or pretty much if you just say Regina’s name.
Seeing that goofy smile on Hana’s face is pretty funny. She looks completely un-Hana-ish.
“How’s Regina?” I ask.
Hana’s smile gets wide, but then she looks at me like I caught her rifling through Momma’s purse, and she frowns at me. Yeah, that’s the Hana face I know.
She shakes her head like I’m so exasperating. “Are you still sitting in the lunch pit? Or have you gone over by the basketball courts yet?”
When I first started at Emerson, Hana told me the Black kids sit by the basketball courts. Hana is really weird about race stuff. Not only does she tease me about not having Black friends, she only has Black friends.
“I sit at the lunch tables.” I’m not going to call where we sit a pit. And I’m sure not going to tell Hana what table I sat at today. It would take more explaining than I know how to do to tell her how I sat with an Asian group, when she’s so annoyed I don’t sit with the Black group. The whole thing seems pretty weird to me. In elementary school, we sat by grade, next to whoever our friends were. “I sit with my friends, Hana.”
Hana goes back to her phone and types something in quick. I’m certain she and Regina are talking about me. “Eventually folks are gonna say you think you’re too good. You know that, right?”
“What? I’m supposed to just sit with people I don’t know? Jules and Is are my best friends.” I point at my bulletin board. “We’re the United Nations. Why would anybody have a problem with that?”
“Because,” she says, like that is a real answer. “Anyway, don’t be surprised if you and your little group don’t end up . . .” Hana puts her hands together, and then splits them apart.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Hana.” I’m almost yelling, and trust me, you don’t want to yell at my sister.
“Okay, fine, Miss Thang,” Hana says, getting up. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. And be nice to Bernard.” She walks out of my room and leaves my door wide open.
I get up and stop myself from slamming it, and just shut it quietly. Hana acts like she knows so much more than me about everything.
I grab the spiral notebook off of my desk. It seems like I finally have interesting stuff to write in my observation journal.
I can’t believe Hana wants me to be nice to a bully.
I do not sit in a pit, and Hana is wrong about me and my friends. We are the UNITED NATIONS. Even with that trial going on, I still think Hana makes way too big of a deal over race. Isabella, Julia, and I know that for us, race doesn’t even matter.
And what matters is us; Hana is being ridiculous if she thinks that me and my friends are going to split up.
9
Eyeballs
When we sit down for dinner that night, I wait until Daddy has a mouthful of steak before I ask my question. “Did I tell you guys I’m supposed to be an eyeball?”
Just like I thought, his cheeks go extra puffy because he’s trying not to laugh and swallow at the same time.
“What, now?” Momma says.
“Like Ralph Waldo Emerson? Ms. Jacobs says he was really into observing, so that’s what I’ve been doing. Observing. Like I’m an eyeball. And writing what I observe in my eyeball journal.”
Daddy smirks at Momma. (He’s a big smirker.) “They’re teaching the dead white men a lot earlier these days, huh?” he says.
“Don’t start, Richard,” Momma says, but her voice is smiling.
“What? What do you mean?” I ask.
Before Daddy can answer, Momma cuts him off. “There’s nothing wrong with learning about Emerson.” She throws a look at Daddy. No one can toss a look like Momma. “Your father just means a lot—”
“Most,” Daddy interjects.
“A lot,” Momma repeats, “of the things you’ll be taught at school are from . . . a certain perspective.”
“Dead white men’s perspective?” I ask.
“Bingo!” Hana says, grinning like she won something.
“But my school is named after him. That’s why Ms. Jacobs said we should learn about him,” I try to explain. “And he was an abolitioni
st!”
“Mm-hmm,” Daddy says.
“Richard,” Momma warns. “Shayla, it’s great you’re learning about Emerson. Especially at your age. I don’t think I’d even heard of him until I met your father, who used to quote him all the time.”
My eyes fly to Daddy. He has his bad-puppy-dog look going strong.
“‘Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you,’” Daddy says. “That’s one of my favorites.” He sees the way I’m looking at him. “Hey, I never said I didn’t like what the cat had to say. But they sure do need to expand what you all are exposed to. There’s a whole lot of great thinkers who are people of color.”
“I know, Daddy,” I say. Sometimes my family acts like I don’t know a thing about being Black.
“‘Not everything that is faced can be changed,’” Daddy says, and then Hana cuts in and says, “‘But nothing can be changed until it is faced.’”
“Is that an Emerson quote too?” I ask, and Hana elbows me hard in the arm. “Ow, quit, Hana!”
“That’s James Baldwin,” Daddy says.
“A Black man,” Hana says.
I stare down at my plate, embarrassed I didn’t know that.
10
Caterpillars
The next day in science, Mr. Levy gives us some free time at the end of class, and after rubbing my hands together really hard, I make my way up to his desk. I’m trying to force myself to ask him if I can switch partners, but Bernard is staring at me like he knows just what I’m going to say.
Mr. Levy’s eyes are huge behind his glasses. “Yes?” he says to me.
“Are butterflies arthropods?” I ask. It was the first question to pop out, and I feel dumb because I know the answer.
A Good Kind of Trouble Page 3