by Sheela Chari
“Hey, junior, it was forty,” Jimmy said. “We all knew what happened to your daddy.”
“No, you guys made up that number forty when you called our ma. But Tops knew the right one because he was there.”
“Lots of people knew the floor number,” Tops said. “It was in the newspaper.”
“It wasn’t,” Randall said. “Petey’s right. I never told you the floor number. You didn’t come inside the building with me today. But you knew.”
“Don’t you think I visited the building before you did?” Tops asked. “Don’t you think I had the same questions, the same yearning to figure it all out? I must have realized it then.”
Randall pointed at him. “You’re lying. You were there. And you moved my pop’s body.”
There was a silence. Was it true? Were we looking at our pop’s murderer? But what proof did we have? What if Randall had gone out on a limb and now that limb was about to snap in half?
Meanwhile, Jimmy was looking from one face to the other. “What’s going on here? Tops, do we have a situation?”
But by now, Tops’s composure had finally cracked. “It was an accident,” he said hoarsely. “Omar said there was plenty of scaffolding inside that was perfect for PK. We went in thinking we were safe. But Omar didn’t have his chalk that night. Lots of people don’t use it, but Omar always did. So he was doing a jump, when he lost his grip and . . .” Tops ran his hand through his stringy hair. “My fingerprints were all over the place. I had a record. I freaked out and called Bernie.”
Jimmy was furious. “Tops, are you nuts? Shut up already. Don’t tell these punks anything.”
“Bernie’s the one who told you to move my pop outside,” Randall said. “What a scumbag.”
Jimmy said, “Listen, enough of this. We want those diamonds, Mighty. We know one of you has them. If you don’t cough them up, fine. We’ll ask your mother.” He reached in his pocket and flicked his knife open.
Tops gave Randall a hard look. “Time’s up, Mighty. Sorry, but my uncle’s been holding the gym and other stuff over me for years. The diamonds are the only way to pay him off and get my life back.”
“Stop explaining everything,” Jimmy huffed. “I say we cut them up and search the house.”
By now I was sweating bricks. Was this nightmare ever going to end? There was no way we could let this pyscho near Ma. But I didn’t know how Randall and I were getting ourselves out of this one either. And then suddenly downstairs, there was a loud rapping.
“Who’s that?” Jimmy demanded.
We saw flashing red lights shine through the window outside. Then we all knew who was at the door. Randall and I had the same idea. I dove for Jimmy’s legs as my brother went for Tops’s midsection. Together we had Tops and Jimmy on the floor. Neither of us was strong enough to last for more than a few seconds, but maybe that was all we needed. So long as I stayed away from Jimmy’s rings and his switchblade. Twice I dodged his flailing arm.
Downstairs, we heard Ma cry out, “WHAT’S GOING ON?” as voices met her at the door.
“Up here!” I shouted. Tops tried desperately to free himself, kicking his powerful legs at Randall, but my brother held on. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs, at least two pairs this time.
“You don’t have a thing on me,” Tops hissed. “It’s all hearsay. I won’t admit a thing.”
“I know we have burglars,” I said.
At that moment, two police officers appeared at our bedroom door. This time, it wasn’t Filnik, but a different guy and a lady.
“Officers,” I told them shakily, “these guys were breaking into our room.”
The woman cop stepped forward. “We know. The girl next door called it in,” she said as she led Tops and Jimmy in handcuffs from our room. That was the last time Randall and I saw them.
For several minutes the next morning, I lay in the sunlight, hardly daring to move. It seemed like a dream, Randall back where I could see him lying in his bed every time I looked. Outside I heard seagulls, and the sound of the early train our ma had just missed. My legs were getting cramped so I stretched, feeling the footboard with my feet. My legs had grown in the last month Randall was gone. Our shoulders were now coming to the same height.
“You awake?” came Randall’s voice from the other side of the room.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been up for the last hour. Damn, this bed is soft. Like sleeping on a pile of feathers.”
We went back and forth, whispering about stuff that had happened, and what was going down for Tops and the rest of the Fencers.
“Will Bernie get caught, too?” I asked.
“He should. He was blackmailing Tops. Then I guess Tops had enough. He figured he could pay his uncle off with those diamonds. But you know how these thugs work. No money will pay them off for good.”
“What do you think Bernie had on Tops?” I wondered.
“Something bad. Something that forced Tops’s hand.”
“So maybe Tops was caught in a hard place. Maybe he didn’t make Pop fall.”
Randall sneered. “Tops is a bucket of slime. He had a chance to go clean. He was ready for you and me to get cut up tonight. That makes him jail material in my book.”
Then Randall asked me what happened to the duffel bag, and I told him it was in the closet.
“Important we don’t lose it,” Randall said. “It’s Pop’s legacy. The last thing of his we own.”
I told him I’d gone through the whole bag while he was gone. “Even Myla helped,” I added cautiously. I wanted him to know she had seen the bag, too. But he didn’t seem bugged at all.
“Myla, that girl with the foot,” was all he said. “She sure does talk a lot.”
“She’s smart.” I thought for a moment. “Actually, it’s more than that. She saved you, Randall. She saved you and our family. And she doesn’t talk a lot. Only when she’s got something to say, and to somebody she likes.” I tried to think of all the things I could tell him so he’d understand. But that was the best I could do. Sometimes there just aren’t words. There’s only what you know. It was like Myla and me being two letters in the same word. Maybe that was what friendship was.
“She’s got guts,” Randall said agreeably. “You both looked through the bag?”
“Every last inch. Well, everything but the box of chalk. And then we—”
Randall sat up like a jack-in-the-box. “Quick, Petey, get me that box of chalk.”
I didn’t understand. “Why?”
He jumped out of bed. “Just give me the box, Petey.” He grabbed a piece of paper off my desk and laid it on the ground while I got the chalk box from the duffel bag.
“Right here,” Randall said. “Empty it on this paper.”
Out tumbled a jumble of different shaped white chalk, mostly big, chunky pieces, and some little ones, too, and a powdery mess across the paper. Randall sifted through and lifted a small round piece. “This,” he said.
“It’s chalk.”
“No, it’s heavier.”
It was beginning to dawn on me. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
We got a cup of water from the bathroom and washed off all the smaller pieces of chalk. Only they weren’t chalk. We sat back and looked at what we had: twelve dull, yellow pieces, each the size of my thumbnail. “Rocks?” I asked.
“Roughs,” Randall said triumphantly. “If I didn’t see them with my own eyes at Rosen & Smith, I wouldn’t have known. Don’t you get it, Petey? He covered them with chalk dust and hid them in this chalk box. Pop had the diamonds all along.”
I stared at the twelve yellow pieces. They didn’t even look like diamonds, but stones you’d find outside in the grass. I thought about everything I knew to be true, that diamonds were the hardest element in the world, that they came fully formed from somewhere deep inside the earth, that people spent their prized money just to own them. And my pop had spent time looking for them, too, these pieces of money left like a trail from Scot
tie to my grandma to him, and now us.
Truth is, I was excited and I was scared. I didn’t know what finding twelve diamonds in your pop’s duffel bag meant. Was the world going to swallow us whole, take us back to where the stones came from in the first place? Or would we rise, would we fly on the wave of all the money these jewels would bring us? How would our lives ever be the same again?
For Randall, it was uncomplicated. “Holy mother of God!” he yelled. “We’re the stuff, Petey. We solved the puzzle. Not Bernie, not Tops, not anyone but us.” He did a victory dance, then he hurried down the stairs yelling for Ma.
We told her the news, and once we did, I finally got what Randall was feeling, and I was swept up by the excitement of it all. Even Ma had a scared giddiness cross her face. How could anyone in the company of twelve diamonds be any different? We stood with stars in our eyes, we thought of all the things the diamonds could buy for us.
“Petey can go to college!” shouted Randall.
“No more painting in the streets,” Ma intoned. “You get yourself a high school degree and maybe art school for you, Randall.”
“A gallery,” I said. “That’s how the real artists do it. They get themselves seen for money.”
“I could get down with that,” Randall said, smiling. “And Ma, you could take a trip to India and see the Taj Mahal!”
But then as the hour wore on, the stars began to fade from our eyes, as we remembered where the stones had come from. “It’s okay to dream,” Ma said. “So long as we understand reality.”
Then each of us came down, little by little, till we were all sitting at the dining table, this time looking at each other with a kind of sadness, but with a kind of smartness we had been learning the last month. It was Randall who said it first. “We need our lives back. No money can do that.”
We knew the stones could buy us a lot. But returning them would give us more. And if they were real, maybe they could even give us the protection we’d never had so far.
In Ma’s room, Randall found an envelope. He carefully folded the stones inside a piece of paper and put it inside the envelope. “I know somebody who can help. She can tell us if they’re real. And I guess she’ll know what to do after that.”
“Ms. Smith?” I asked. “Can I come with you?”
Ma started to freak out in her old way. Then she settled down. She looked at both of us. “The old me would have said no. I’d say let’s move away again, some place the Fencers won’t find us. But I’m tired of running. I’m tired of the Fencers. We need to get this resolved once and for all. And I’m taking the day off to come with you.”
“You never do that,” I said, surprised. “Not even the holidays.”
“I believe other people’s blood can wait for once.” She looked at her watch. “You both have breakfast. I’m having a shower. And Randall, put on another pot of coffee for me, will you?”
Outside I heard a car. Was it the garbage truck? No, just Myla’s family pulling out of their driveway. Hard to believe we were all awake. Wait till she heard what Randall and me found in our pop’s duffel bag. She’d be all over herself wondering why we didn’t think of the chalk box first.
On my way to the kitchen, I almost tripped over Randall’s shoes. “Watch where you’re leaving these things,” I called out to him over the sound of the coffee brewing. Not that he could hear me one bit. I moved the fakes to the mud room. They’d covered a lot of ground this year, bending and giving with Randall’s feet. The twin Jumpmans had held their own, with only a few cracks. Just like mine. There was a magic in them after all, the magic of lasting, and lasting some more. The way I saw it, soon we’d be putting on our fakes that were fakes no more, but legits that would carry us to the train, and the city beyond. Then we’d show the world, my brother and me, how we’d take what our Ma had given us, and just how far we’d go.
It turned out I hadn’t broken any bones. I’d just sprained my ankle from my fall in the Keeper’s House. Which meant hobbling my way through September, with Ana and Peter carrying my books for me. After my ankle healed, I started learning yoga from my dad. At first I wondered, how will a short person like me do all those bends and stretches? But what I learned was height doesn’t really matter. It’s all about the strength of your body and mind. Dad and I did our sessions at night, and afterward, I would lie in my new bed, feeling floaty and loose.
Sometimes Cheetah would come after yoga, or when I was doing homework, and read on my bed. It was nice hearing the crinkle of pages turning while I did math. And at night I slept pretty well, even though there were a few nights I’d grab my pillow and blanket and sleep on the rug. From there I could see the stars through my window, like I did that night on top of the garage. All this time I’d wondered about being noticed, but here I was noticing things that had been around me all this time, things I’d never stopped to really see. Like the stars. And Cheetah.
Lots of things were settling down in our lives. too. Turns out the diamonds were with Peter’s family all along. Ms. Smith confirmed their authenticity and turned them in to the state for evidence. With that and Peter’s and Randall’s testimony, the Fencers went to jail, including Bernie. Tops did, too, for armed robbery and manslaughter. A hair that was found on Omar’s body matched Tops’s DNA. And a surveillance video found with Bernie showed Tops moving Omar’s body outside. Jimmy also did time for armed robbery, and the only person who got away was Tyson. But Kai tracked him down when she saw him in a stolen vehicle and looked up the license plates in her dad’s database. Turns out she made a good cop. She says now she wants to go into law enforcement like her dad.
After Scottie Biggs got out of jail, sometimes I’d see him at the Cedar Street Café. One day I asked him for his autograph. He was eating a grilled cheese sandwich, and he looked surprised. “Nobody’s ever asked me for that,” he said. He glanced curiously at my necklace, but I didn’t flinch.
“I’m Peter Wilson’s friend. He lives next door to me in Margaret’s old house.” I wanted to see what he’d say. Did he know who everyone was?
He signed my napkin. Then he pointed at my necklace. “You know who made that?”
When I nodded, he leaned back in his chair. “Well, since you’re such good friends with Peter, tell him this. With the Fencers in jail, I had my people do a look around for me. Seems they found somebody who’s been making jewelry for years up north near the border. She’s one hell of a jewelry maker. I know because I’ve seen her work. And her hair’s still red.”
I stared at him, my jaw wide open. “Sir?”
He waved me away. “Now take that napkin and let me finish my sandwich in peace.”
You can imagine the state that put me in.
For Thanksgiving, we were invited to Peter’s house. Ana came, and she and Peter smiled and blushed at each other, but now it didn’t bother me so much. Nike came, too, and he had on a new pair of bandanas so he said I could keep his old ones. He even showed me how to tie them on my wrists, and I felt swoony and happy while he did.
“When’s the exhibit going to be ready?” Dad asked.
Shanthi said December.
“They’re giving me a ribbon-cutting ceremony,” Randall said, grinning.
“And it’s not an exhibit,” I told Dad. “It’s an installation.” Because Randall helped solve a crime and lots of people liked his Om at the station, the village council voted to keep it. With Mom’s recommendations, they’ve hired an artist to seal the tag and make it permanent.
“Aren’t you a feisty young lady?” Richard said to me.
“Oh, hush,” said his mother. “You’re just sore because she figured out the necklace and you didn’t. Selling it was the best thing I ever did.”
“I never said she wasn’t smart.” Richard smiled, and then he didn’t seem half as bad. But Mom’s still mad at him for breaking into my room and defacing our front door. She only warmed up a little after he replaced our door for free. He still hasn’t fixed his muffler.
Once, I
told Peter my family’s theory about how us being neighbors was no accident.
“Margaret made everything happen,” I said. “Kind of like God.”
Peter looked skeptical. “I barely remember her.”
“Well, I’m not sure if I agree,” I said. “But it does seem like she orchestrated it all.”
“If you and me weren’t neighbors, I wouldn’t have found Randall, that’s what,” Peter said.
“Because of Margaret.”
“Because of you. Nobody can take that credit but you, Myla. You got to own it.”
I flushed under his praise. Finder and Keeper. That was us.
“There’s a kind of magic that goes on in the universe, is what I say,” Peter said. “If you want to call that God, or if you want to call that Margaret, all right.”
It seemed that the universe was working in our favor. I knew it as soon as the doorbell rang. I grabbed Peter to come with me. This was a surprise for him, a month in the planning.
On our way past the dining table, I expected Cheetah to leap out of his chair and tag along. But he went on talking to Randall, asking him where he learned to do graffiti.
“You don’t learn, bro,” Randall was telling him. “You just do.”
It was weird seeing them together. Peter heard them, too, and we smiled at each other. I guess some things with Cheetah will never change. Like I’ll always be impatient, and I’ll always want to do things without Cheetah trying to help. And he’ll always try to spell out what I’m thinking, whether I like it or not. But what has changed is knowing all of it, and knowing that when you’re in a family, you need to look over your shoulder. Because sometimes it’s you up ahead, and sometimes it’s you coming from behind.
At the front door I said to Peter, “You can’t get mad. You can’t say, why didn’t you tell me before? These things have to happen suddenly, or they don’t happen at all.”
“Well, now you’re just scaring me,” Peter said. “Who’s on the other side of the door?”
When we opened it, she was facing the other way. I suppose she was looking at the Palisades in the distance, those majestic cliffs that had lasted longer than any of us. When she turned our way, a gentle wind began to blow, picking up the ends of her copper hair.