by G. Neri
My video. Between all the hooting and hollering, Destiny noticed me standing in the doorway. She smiled and nodded her head in approval.
A tiny Chihuahua came out from under the table and wandered over to me. I kneeled down and he licked my hand. He was wearing a dog collar that had a gold 314 badge on it.
The dog was taken with my camera, so I did what I always do: I recorded him.
I could see my reflection in his big eyes. He saw his reflection in my lens too. We gawked at each other for about fifteen seconds when I saw a pair of red Jordan high tops come into frame.
“He likes you.” The guy’s voice was soft, but had a little rasp to it.
I didn’t look up. “What’s his name?”
He cleared his throat. “Boner.”
Now I looked up. The first thing I saw were his fists. Scarred on the knuckles from some ancient fights. But it was the tattoos on them that caught my attention. One said K.O. The other had a crown.
“Dude loves bones,” he clarified.
I didn’t ask him what kind of bones his dog loved. The guy seemed unbelievably tall from down here—lean and wiry but even with his oversized Muhammad Ali shirt, I could tell he had muscles. He looked like a senior in high school, but he stood there like he owned the place.
When he kneeled down to pick up Boner, my breath stopped short. He took one look at me and that’s when I saw he had the most piercing green eyes I’d ever seen. I almost didn’t notice he was black.
“You’re pretty good with that thing, Fish.”
“What?”
He smiled. His teeth were as piecing as his eyes. “The camera.”
“Oh . . . thanks,” I said. Maybe I blushed.
“So why’s that one better than my phone cam?” he asked, holding up his smart phone.
I knew this—I’d looked it up when I was figuring out how to work the camera. “Uh, well, it’s um, HD and it shoots thirty frames a second, so the images and colors are better, I guess. Brighter. And um . . .”
He kept staring at me in a way that no boy ever did. I wasn’t used to it.
“And uh, it doesn’t blur when you move it like phone cams do and its real good in low light.”
Those green eyes of his drilled right into me like lasers, and in that few seconds he seemed to know everything about me. I couldn’t take it. I looked back down into my camera and started babbling faster.
“It holds about an hour of footage and it’s got stereo sound, um, a 12x zoom, all these, like, cool filters and stuff and its own built-in editing software—”
“You got a real name, Fish?” he interrupted.
“Yeah.” I was still thinking what to say next about the camera, so I forgot to answer him until I heard him kinda laugh. Duh.
I cleared my throat, “Erica.” I was breathing hard, so I tried to slow down and act somewhat human. “But only my mom calls me that. Oh, and my dad too.” My focus shifted back to his fists again.
“E-ri-caaa . . .” he rolled it around on his tongue. “Hmm. You probably guessed I’m the Knockout King.” He rubbed his right knuckle, then glanced back to see if anyone was listening. The whole crew was staring back.
He relished the attention. Not just theirs, mine too. He leaned in and whispered. “How ‘bout you call me Kalvin, and I’ll call you Erica?”
“Sure,” I said, unsure.
“Just not in front of them, right? They all call me K.” He was checking out my red hair, as if he’d never seen anyone with red hair before. He even reached out and gently pulled back my hoodie. His eyes lit up. “Nice.”
I almost fell over.
“Don’t seem right calling a girl Fish.”
I nodded. I was not used to talking to boys. And definitely not black boys, though he could’ve been a mix. He had a kind of exotic look about him: green eyes, light-skinned, but with those nappy short dreads and full lips, he was definitely at least part black. What else, I didn’t dare ask.
“I really dug what you did,” he said. “Your video, I mean. That shit was fire. But you still got room to expand your visual vocabulary, ya feel me?” He nudged my shoe.
I did. “I wasn’t even finished. I just uploaded it for Destiny to see is all. I didn’t think anyone else would watch it. She didn’t even tell me what I was gonna be shooting, so it was kind of all on the fly. I can do better.”
He nodded, impressed. “Good. I like a girl who thinks she can do better. Some of these clowns think just because you do something once makes you king of the world. They don’t realize someone’s always gonna be bucking for your spot. To keep on top, you gotta keep pushing, keep trying to surprise ‘em, ya know?”
I knew.
“You’ll be better prepared next time. Then we’ll see what you can really do.” He stood up and offered me his hand.
Next time? I thought.
His hand engulfed mine. It was all rough on the outside; he’d seen battles. But his inside palm was soft. He pulled me up and his height caught me by surprise. He seemed about two feet taller than me.
He was used to it. “Why don’t you come and have some egg rolls with us?”
I turned off my camera and gazed at the table. Everyone was watching us. Destiny looked a little unsure.
“OK,” I answered.
He walked back to the table. I followed. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, the one where they all make fun of me. All the boys stared at me and I noticed I was the only white person there.
One of them, a skinny runt with cornrows trying to act bigger than he was, took offense. “How come you letting this white girl sit with us?”
Everyone froze. Kalvin didn’t say anything. Instead, this Latino guy who was dressed like a rapper in a shiny purple track suit, hauled off and slapped the kid upside the head.
“Tyreese, if you disrespect our guest, you disrespect the King here. You should know better.”
Tyreese lowered his head. “Sorry, K,” he said. Kalvin looked at him and then gestured toward me.
He shrugged. “Sorry, white girl,” he said.
Kalvin busted up, then everyone laughed. “He means well. But he’s only twelve and kids can be fuckin’ idiots sometimes.”
“Especially Ty here,” added the Latino guy.
“Now this guy,” Kalvin put his hand on the Latino guy’s shoulder. “This is Prince Rodriguez, my number two, my main ese. He thinks he’s black, but don’t tell him otherwise. He can’t help it if he’s a wetback.”
Prince didn’t mind Kalvin’s jab, but he narrowed his eyes at me. He had kind of a mohawk thing going. He acted tough, but even I could tell he was just following K’s orders.
“Que ’onda, Heina? Your vid was alright, I guess. I don’t know why nobody likes mine. This phone has seen things—” Some of the older guys groaned as he held up his purple phone.
“Yeah, your mother’s pink stinky!” cracked Tyreese.
“Shorty never learns,” said Prince, slapping the kid upside the head again. “Who calls it that—but you know what? You wished you’d seen my mother’s pink stinky. Then you’d know where greatness came from, homes.”
That was wrong on so many levels but nobody questioned it.
Kalvin grinned, put his arm around him. “Prince is his real name too. I think his mom saw that movie Purple Rain about twenty times before he was born.”
“I never saw it, but my Mom tried to show it to me once,” I said.
K tried to suppress a laugh. “You hear that—her moms and you got the same taste!”
Prince rolled his eyes. “Well, she got good taste then, ese. Are you kidding? That movie’s a classic. A little too gay, but there’s no denying—that chulo Prince got mad skills.”
We sat and ate lo mein and dumplings and fried rice. We had ourselves a party. Kalvin had snuck in some beer and poured some for everyone! I didn’t really drink so much. Sometimes my dad offered me a sip of his, but it always tasted too bitter to me. But somehow here, it tasted sweeter.
The K
ing paid for everyone. I liked that. He was taking care of his boys. I don’t know where he got his money. I don’t remember them stealing from the pizza guy. But everybody was happy, so I just went with it. Destiny kept an eye on me, but seemed kind of quiet.
I noticed the owner watching us. Maybe Kalvin knew him, but I’d think having middle schoolers drinking beer in public would be a bad thing. He wasn’t Chinese and he wore these big glasses that made it obvious he was keeping an eye on us. He just stood there behind the counter pretending to work, but I could tell he was just waiting for us to leave.
It was like TKO owned the joint. Sitting at the right hand of the Knockout King was definitely better than sitting home alone or wandering the city by myself.
Tyreese looked at me like he wanted to say something. He was going to ruin it, tell me that it was all a joke, or something. He leaned over to me and said in a tiny voice, “I guess you OK for a girl.”
9
It began the next day, Sunday.
Destiny texted me that the crew was hyped up on the video and wanted to play again. “Fish gotta swim,” she texted. I wasn’t sure what she meant.
Then she added, “K wants u there.”
I got ready quick.
They wanted to meet over by The Loop, which was a local hot spot. I went down once with Mom—it was packed with too many teens and tourists for her. Seemed like a crazy place to play the Knockout Game.
But that’s what made it exciting.
Mom had read in the paper about some attack on Grand Avenue by a group of young hoodlums. They called it a flash mob. “You better be careful, Erica. They say that pizza man might have brain damage from the attack.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Sometimes I wonder why we came here. . . .”
When she said brain damage, I had a weird feeling in my head, like a dull burning sensation in the back of my brain. I didn’t want to think about that man and wiped him from my thoughts, but not before wondering if someday she’d read about me.
We met by the Chuck Berry statue. Destiny was there with some of the Tokers. Chuck Berry was some kind of St. Louis hero. They said he invented rock ‘n’ roll. I’d never heard of him.
I was a little nervous. There were no Eyez watching us but the cops were out in force among all the regular people walking around The Loop, shopping, enjoying their Sunday. It was stupid to try something here. We’d get caught for sure—
“Er-i-caaa . . .” a funny voice said behind me. Then I felt a cold nose on my cheek.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Boner’s big eyes dancing next to mine. He was excited (though I didn’t want to see if he was excited like his name).
Kalvin was holding him up to me, talking in a funny voice like a dog might. “Erica. Will you kiss me? Huh, huh, huh?”
Hearing that come out of his mouth made my mind go blank. I tried not to blush.
Kalvin laughed. “I’m just shitting you. You don’t have to kiss the dog. Got your camera?”
I held it up.
“Good. Come get a shot of us in front of this statue.”
He gathered everyone up just like a tourist family posing in front of a monument. He put a nervous Boner up on Chuck’s head. Everyone thought it was funny, but I rescued him after I got the shot.
We walked around, cruised in and out of the stores there—a comic book store, a record store, a sports shoe store. Grabbed some ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s.
After a while, we seemed like regular people too.
The Tokers cruised to a less crowded part of the Loop, toward a parking lot off to the side. I was lagging behind, recording tourists shopping and teens hanging out listening to their iPods. I tried not to judge too much what I was filming—some of the vids on that DVD were tough to watch but it was all symbolic—animals being experimented on, people dying of AIDS, a woman who used blood to paint with—I guess that made it art. Maybe it was too much to think I was like them, but I was doing something different. And that’s what Mrs. Lee was talking about.
When we caught up, Kalvin had his crew in a circle around him. He looked like a coach in a huddle before the big game. “Alright, who gonna be a man today?” he asked.
The Tokers all raised their hands, jostling for his attention. “Let’s see,” he said, his eyes studying them closely. I got in there with my camera, catching the excitement in their eyes.
Kalvin picked a Toker called Doughboy. He was my height, but must’ve weighed over two hundred pounds. And it wasn’t muscle.
“I’m gonna be MVP today!” he piped up.
Prince interrupted, “Didn’t work out that way last week, did it, ese? Most Valuable Punk, is more like it.”
Kalvin put his hand on Doughboy’s shoulder. “Don’t listen to him. You fall down; you get back up and try again, yeah?”
I zoomed in on Doughboy’s pinched face. His eyes darted around, unsure. He nodded, his voice cracking, “I’ll do right by you, K.”
Kalvin waved his fist up to Doughboy’s mug. “Just remember: the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
He pretended to pop Doughboy in the jaw and Doughboy made a cartoon face like a character who got hit with a frying pan and was seeing stars. “But in your case, you better not fall on the dude. You might kill him.”
Everyone busted up laughing. They all looked up to the Knockout King, and he liked being the center of attention.
Destiny couldn’t make it, so it was interesting to get a glimpse into this all-guys world, something girls hardly ever see. Kalvin walked Doughboy away from the others, pumping up his confidence as they moved around the parking lot. I stepped in close enough to hear.
They stopped when they spotted a guy getting out of a powder blue Honda. The target was some sensitive college-type. He wore a sweater and Converse shoes, a pretty-boy haircut, and shaved eyebrows. He did not look like he’d put up a fight.
“Him.” The King had spoken. “One hit or quit.”
They bumped fists.
“Better get him a blanket and pillow; he gonna say g’nite,” I heard Doughboy say. He started making his way over to the unsuspecting guy.
“Check this shit out,” said Kalvin. “Better than anything you’ll catch on HBO.”
I knew what was coming up, but I tried not to think about it too much. I went into Fish-mode. Like Destiny said, my camera gave me a protective shield, like I was safe underwater in my tank, staring out at the world. I was just observing this weird scene unfolding in front of me. It was so unreal, it might as well have been a movie already.
I followed Doughboy from the next row over as he snuck around in between cars. When he picked up speed, so did I, though that wasn’t hard since he didn’t run that fast.
The action was quick and awkward. This time I came up right behind Doughboy and got close up in the heat of it all. He was slow, though, bouncing up out of breath. You could hear him wheezing. The college guy heard him too. When Doughboy swung, the college guy ducked. His fist barely grazed him. The target panicked and ran. Unfortunately, the other Tokers caught up to him.
They pushed college boy to the ground, where he rolled up like an armadillo. The boys played him like a soccer ball.
I’m making art, I told myself.
A security guard came out of nowhere, yelling at us. He was huge—a grown-up Doughboy—his ginormous mass jiggling under his windbreaker. This is where the running part came in. The boys took off laughing at the guard. Kalvin wanted me to keep shooting, which I did as I ran away. The security guard was slow. Too many frozen custards and butter cakes.
After a couple of blocks, he gave up and we stood across the street egging him on. He flipped us off, which made for a great shot. When he started back, the boys thought it’d be funny to play the Game on him.
The security guard started running. He didn’t get far.
Doughboy knew he had to make up for his failure. He had been so winded that he’d just stayed behind and the security guard hadn’t noticed.
Doughboy poppe
d out from behind a van and clocked him good. I just happened to have had my camera pointing that way when it happened.
The boys all leapt in the air and yelled, “Knockout!” They ran over, crowded around him, celebrating and whooping it up, patting Doughboy on the back of his head.
There were real cops to avoid, so we headed into an alley. Kalvin raised Doughboy’s arm and shouted into the camera. “The Champ! You my MVP today, Toker!”
Doughboy beamed. There was no higher compliment. It was a great ending to my movie.
10
That video was an even bigger hit than the first. I made it all slick and action-packed with fast cuts and house music, like the crew was a bunch of rabid dogs on the hunt. Then as a joke, I did a remix from the guard point of view, but this time I speeded the chase up, made it black and white, and put some scratchy filter over it to make it into a silent movie. With some old-timey music, I knew the guys would bust a gut laughing at it. They loved it.
I got more friend requests. I began to wonder what’d happen if the wrong person saw it, but Destiny said that’s why they used Facebook—this was an underground club, invite only screenings. As in, if you only invite friends, no one else will see it.
The TKO Club met up every few days for a bit of mayhem and adventure after school. In between, me and Destiny started hanging out more. She even came over one day after school. I could see she was kind of surprised by where I lived, but I guessed she’d seen worse.
I showed her the videos I was working on and she made some good comments—what she liked, what could be different. She kind of pushed me to go deeper, not to repeat myself or rely on cheap video effects. She had a point, but it didn’t mean I liked being criticized.
I left her in my room to see if we had any eats. When I came back with some cereal, I found her on the floor, going through my old drawings that were still packed away in some boxes.
“What are you doing?” I asked, more than a little pissed.
“You made these?” she said, like she couldn’t believe it.