Right as I get to the door, I hear, “Bryan.”
Ugh! It sounds like Ava’s following me out to get even after all.
But in the hall, Ava’s face flips. “That was crazy with Pa and Ma last night.”
I know it takes a lot for her to say this because she usually doesn’t talk about Pa and Ma fighting.
“Sometimes”—Ava looks back at our apartment door—“I wish Pa would just chill, you know?”
“Where you think he went?”
“He’s fine. He’ll just come home later like nothing happened.”
“I hope so,” I say.
“Yeah, anyways. You good?”
I nod. “You?”
She smiles, not a happy one but one that says she’ll be all right. “Yeah. Be good in school.”
* * *
• • •
There are two ways to my school.
I go the way to pass Pa’s corner, and Ava was right. Pa’s fine and he’s right there with Pito and Nicholas. I’m happy not to see Alex.
Pa looks across the street at me, and we lock eyes for a couple of secs. It feels like forever. It feels like Pa’s face shows ten different feelings at once.
He’s probably embarrassed to be out here grungy in the same clothes. He’s proud and likes to shower, shave, and wear fresh clothes every day. Right now, he’s wearing the clothes he wore yesterday, and his face is all stubbly.
I cross the street and want to hug him. But we just stand a couple of feet apart and nod.
“You ate?” Pa asks.
“Yeah,” I tell him.
I want to ask him if he ate.
I want to ask him where he slept last night.
But I don’t.
Pa reaches in his pocket, pulls out some dollars, and hands it to me.
Since forever, Pa’s used money as a way to apologize or make me feel like he cares. That’s how come he’s handing me it now.
“Go. Go to school. You need something, I’m here.”
I want to say, I don’t need “something.” I need you.
But I leave.
Half a block away, I look back at him.
He still looks at me.
His face: It’s like he wants to say a lot to me.
I want to say a lot to him.
He brushes his hand in the air like I should go. So I do.
CHAPTER 11
“Superman versus the Hulk,” Mike says when I bump into him at the water fountain outside our school library.
“Superman,” I say as we walk into the stairwell and head downstairs. “His heat vision will burn two holes through Hulk’s skull. Fry his brain into smoke. Hulk or Colossus?”
“Hulk! He’ll twist Colossus into a metal pretzel. Then fling him into outer space past the moon. Daredevil or Batman: no weapons, just hand-to-hand combat?”
“Daredevil,” I say. “He has super-hearing, better than a bat’s. He’d hear Batman’s fist or kick way before they’d reach Daredevil’s body. He’d hit Batman three, four times before Batman could connect.”
We get to the second floor, where both our classes are, but Mike taps me to keep following him. When we get to the first floor, we keep walking and I’m about to ask where he’s going when—all of a sudden—Mike pushes open an exit door and we see outside to the teachers’ parking lot.
Mike steps outside but still holds the door open.
I wonder why the alarms don’t go off and nothing happens.
“We could leave,” Mike says. “Anytime.”
“Yeah, but—”
“We won’t get caught,” Mike interrupts. “I’ve done it before. A lot in my old school. We could go the comic store in Carroll Gardens. They let you read as many comics as you want and you don’t have to pay for them. There’s a comic store in Manhattan we could hit that lets you do that too.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I’m just showing you,” Mike says and shuts the door. He gives me a disappointed look. “C’mon. Let’s go to class.”
* * *
• • •
A little after dismissal, I meet Mike outside of school so we can hit the arcade with the money from Pa.
As we get near Pa’s corner, I see him kicking it with Alex, Pito, and Nicholas. Pa turns to tell Nicholas something, and I get a bad feeling when I see Alex rock that fake smile again.
Mike catches Alex’s fakeness too. “Eww,” he says. “There goes that fake snake with your pops again.”
“Alex.” I suck my teeth. “Ma was saying he’s a real loser.”
“She right.”
Me and Mike dip into the arcade next to Hector’s corner store.
And just like that . . . No conversation about earlier. No conversation about anything really. Except us asking questions like:
“What’s your highest score you ever had?”
“You ever got to the board when you eat the big energy pellets but the ghosts don’t turn blue?”
“You like slow or fast Ms. Pac-Man better?”
“Why didn’t you eat the banana? It’s like five thousand points.”
I’m slaying Mike by like two thousand and something points. He’s down to his last life, and I still have four lives.
Then, through the side of my eye, I see Mike staring at me in a way I’ve never seen him stare at me before. Like Alex with that Steve Harvey fake smile we just saw him give Pa.
Maybe because Ms. Pac-Man has me feeling amped and I’m trying hard not to get eaten, my words come out mad forceful. “Dude, why you looking at me that way?”
Mike’s smile changes. “Nah, not you. I’m staring at the screen.”
I can’t read his face to tell if he’s lying because my eyes are on the screen.
I go back to focusing extra hard on my game because that ghost Pinky almost caught me.
“I have to be out,” Mike says. “My moms expects me home.”
He dips.
I stay.
While I play, Big Will from the sixth-grade class next to mine walks in. Heads joke that he has more facial hair and muscles than any sixth grader, ever. He also has better grades than most sixth graders and is on the honor roll. He geeks all the way out, but nobody messes with him the way they clown most nerdy boys in my projects.
He stands behind me and stares over my shoulder at my screen as I play.
“Dang!” he says when I almost die but shake off three ghosts.
“Yo!” He’s shocked when I U-turn faster than fast to eat all the ghosts.
“Bryan,” he gasps when I make it to the level where ghosts don’t turn blue and can’t be eaten. “I never knew they had this level.”
I keep trying to hide my grin, but Big Will’s props have me feeling wavy.
The next thing I notice is his face as he sees my points equal the high score, then pass it. He’s not even hiding his smile.
Real quick, I turn my head because I want to get a full view of his expression. He’s impressed. I feel like the man. Quicker than quick, I turn and look back at the screen so I don’t mess up.
Soon, I’m five hundred points higher than the new score.
“WHOA!” I hear Big Will say.
I don’t know whether it’s his props or whether I’m just extra good today, but I end up posting the highest high score I’ve ever seen on this Ms. Pac-Man screen.
When my game is over, I turn to Big Will, and he gives me this pound and we shake. His hand is dumb strong like Pa’s grown friends who forget I’m a kid and shake my hand OD hard.
I slip two quarters in to play again.
As I dodge ghosts, I start feeling that rush again.
I jam my joystick hard to the right and race Ms. Pac-Man into a side exit that teleports me onto the left side of the screen away from the blue ghost who almo
st just got me.
Big Will says, “BAM! You like Neo dodging bullets in The Matrix!”
I’m so in the zone I don’t hear Pa walk in and stand behind me and Big Will.
“I’m going home,” Pa says.
Pa doesn’t usually come in here for me. I think he wants me to go home with him so Ma’ll let him in because she’s probably still mad at him about their fight. I just want him home. I U-turn Ms. Pac-Man so she runs into a ghost and gets eaten.
I hate killing my men on purpose when I play, especially now when I’ve earned an extra life and have four instead of the three I started with. But Pa is going home.
I’m about to kill the rest of my men when Big Will asks, “Why you deading them for?”
Then it hits me. He might want to play.
“Will,” I say, without taking my eyes off the screen, “grab this joystick.”
And bust it: He does, and as I back away, I see his whole face change. He’s lit. And I feel a little boss being able give away a game.
Me and Pa leave, and as we’re at the door, Big Will calls to me without taking his eyes off his screen: “Bryan! Thanks for the hookup!”
I yell back, “No doubt,” feeling even more boss.
CHAPTER 12
Pa never talks when we walk outside together. We could walk as far from our projects as twenty-three blocks away to Downtown Brooklyn and the only time he’d open his mouth is to kick it with strangers or heads he knows.
With us not talking, my mind goes back to Mike’s fake smile in the arcade. Was he really just thinking about something else, like he said, which would explain his face? Whatever the truth is, I figure I’ll watch Mike’s expressions more.
When we walk into the apartment, Ma’s reading a piece of Ava’s homework to her. She stops and looks up at Pa.
He looks at Ma, then disappears into their bedroom.
I stand there for a minute and wait for her to ask me something about where I found him.
Finally, she just asks, “How was your day at school?”
“I . . .” I don’t know what to say.
“You were at the arcade,” Ma says.
“How’d you . . . ?”
Ava and Ma chuckle like they both see mud smeared on my face.
“What?” I wipe my cheek. “What?!”
“Your eyes,” Ma says. “They always have this ‘look’ after you play.”
“BOING!” Ava motions like I have bulging, googly eyes. “All intense, like you kray.”
Ma nudges Ava. “Don’t say that about him.”
Ava ignores her and says, “Eww! Don’t stare at me like that, Bryan. Now you look extra kray.”
Ma taps the book on Ava’s lap they were just reading. “Let’s finish.”
Ma starts reading a science problem out loud.
I don’t appreciate Ava saying I look crazy so I pass real close to her on the couch so I can dis her on the DL before I go into the bathroom to wash my hands for dinner.
But as soon as I get close enough to Ava, she mouths at me on the DL first, You look crazy like Pa.
I want to ask her, “What do you mean?” but I know what she means. That I look hyped, wild, and out of control. Looking like that is the last thing I want. But I know she’s right because I feel that way. And suddenly I hate it—I hate feeling so hyped and almost out of control.
I hate feeling like Pa can get.
* * *
• • •
Nothing happens the rest of the night.
We have dinner as a family: me, Ma, Pa, and Ava.
Ma and Pa don’t fight. They don’t talk to each other, but that’s cool since they’re not fighting. They just hand each other stuff and get out of each other’s way.
Nothing happening was the best.
So, when Mike yells my name from outside my window, asking to come up, I stick my head out and lie, “Can’t. My moms wants me to do chores.”
I sit back down on my bed, feeling real happy. There’s a peacefulness to my apartment that’s like the afternoons at Ma’s job when no phones ring and all I can hear from my pretend-office are the sounds of Ma’s coworkers’ pencils scratchy-scribbling on paper or fingers tapping on computer keyboards. Everything is chill and there’s not an ounce of drama. I love it. I look out my window and realize something. I helped make this moment chill, by what I chose. I think about that over and over, and I like it.
CHAPTER 13
I hear Mike on my way to school before I see him.
“Bryan! Hold up.” He jogs to me. “You finish all your chores last night?”
For a second, I don’t remember what he’s talking about. “Ye . . . yeah.”
“Want?” He holds out his Sour Patch bag.
Finally! Dude’s sharing instead of taking.
I dig in his bag and count with my fingers how many to take.
“Take mad much,” he says. “I have another bag.”
Ma doesn’t like me having candy in the morning, but she’s not here. Oh well! I pop a handful in my mouth and an eye winks shut. “Dang! Sour!”
He smiles. “But good though.”
We fist-bump a “no doubt.” As I lick sugar off my fingers, these questions come to me. Mike’s fake smile as I played Ms. Pac-Man: Is dude real or fake? True or a liar? Then one question shoots out without me meaning to ask it. “Yesterday, you meant it about cutting school?”
He looks real hard at me. Then he checks so no one else can hear. “If you had a choice, which would you choose? Stay in a boring class or be out? I mean, if you knew you could be ghost and not get in trouble?”
There are a couple of classes that are mad boring—Mr. Peters and Mrs. Donalds never teach. They hand out worksheets and make us work silently the whole period. I’d skip their classes if I, for sure, for sure, wouldn’t be in trouble.
“How won’t you get in trouble?” I ask. “Teachers take attendance in every class. Morning teachers would mark us present, then teachers later would mark us absent.”
“You too worried about getting caught?” he says. “You not thinking.”
“What?”
He unzips his book bag and shows me two pieces of paper. “Which is my moms’s handwriting?”
I tap his left hand’s note. “Fake.”
“Wrong.”
“Okay. So?”
“So, if you can’t tell, neither can teachers. I write notes to my teachers in my moms’s handwriting saying I won’t be in school. And guess what?”
“What?”
“They excuse me. Then I hit the comic stores. Who writes notes to your teacher?”
“My moms.”
Mike soft-punches my arm. “Then learn her handwriting. Write one of these, your teachers believe it, you miss a day, and we hit a spot I told you about.”
I read Mike’s face for a few seconds. Is he for real?
“Cutting school is wrong.” As I say it, I realize I sound like my moms.
Mike just stares me.
I don’t know what to think about him anymore. He flips-flops, showing the world one side of him, then he’ll show another like this. “But what about your grades? My moms said you get good ones. How you do that if you cut classes?”
He wrinkles his face like I haven’t been paying attention. “My grades don’t drop because I get excused and make up the work. I do extra good in school, so people don’t ever think I do stuff like this. See, it’s easy.”
All of a sudden, James from the other sixth-grade class runs up and tries sticking his hand in Mike’s Sour Patches bag without asking. It’s the same James who ate with his mouth all open in the cafeteria and disgusted me and Mike.
Mike smacks James’s neck, hard and mad obvious, and I notice a bunch of kids watching, including Melanie, the girl from my grade who saw me in Hector’s bode
ga getting food on loan.
“That’s a neck, bruh,” Mike says to James. “And the word you forgot is please.”
James holds his hand out. “Please.”
Instead of pouring some in James’s hand, Mike pours the rest of the bag in his own mouth. There’s mad much to share but he doesn’t.
James’s eyes pop wide, shocked by Mike’s playing him.
Mike munches while rapping this girl-song from back in the day to James, but in a hard way so it sounds gangster. “My name is no, my sign is no. Bruh, you need to let it go.” He flicks the empty Sour Patch bag at James, who catches it all stupid.
James looks tiiiiight, does nothing for a second, then flicks it back at Mike. “Dummy, I ain’t your trash man.”
I try not to laugh at James getting clowned, partly because it’s foul, but mostly because Melanie is staring at Mike with a low-key stank face and at me like I’m an idiot for being with him.
Ugh. I walk away and ahead toward school.
* * *
• • •
Before dinner Ma sends me to the store and I pass guys who usually chill in front of Mike’s building. One says, “Whattup,” and another asks, “Where your brother?”
I used to think it was so cool when everyone thought Mike was my brother. And that having one would make life easier. But now I’m not sure.
I know having a sibling is hard sometimes—me and Ava fight too. Still, I know she always has my back. With Mike, I never know for sure.
CHAPTER 14
Monday after school me and Mike head back into our projects bragging about slaying dudes at the handball court. He bet this kid Charles Charles’s bag of candy that we’d rock him and his friend in a doubles game. We did. Then rocked two more kids. Then another team.
“Son,” Mike says, “that was sick when Charles ran left but you hit the ball right! And you had him looking like this . . . “ He crosses his eyes and says, “Duhhh!”
I laugh. “Yeah, and your aces, man. Sick! Luis was tight every time you’d serve the ball too fast for him to hit, then you’d say—”
Tight Page 4