“Ganke.” Miles put his hand up, waving the rest of that sentence off. Nobody wanted to think about Mr. Chamberlain that way.
“I’m just saying, I love you, but, bro, you’re reaching. And I get it. You need an excuse to get over the fact that you just blew it with Alicia.”
Miles pushed a gust of air from his nostrils, slapped his hands to his face and massaged his brow line. “I guess. Maybe you’re right.”
“Except…maybe not.” Ganke floated the orange paper over to Miles’s bed. “At least not about the Alicia thing.”
Ganke nodded mischievously as Miles grabbed the paper and held it up to his face.
THE BVA SENIOR CLASS, IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT, PRESENTS: THE SCHOOL GHOUL FEST
Miles slapped the paper down. “Ganke, we never go to this.”
“I know. Just figured it was worth a shot since you keep acting like your Super Hero days are over. Since you’ve decided people don’t need saving no more. And I feel you, why should you be responsible for looking out for so many strangers just because you have superhuman strength?” Ganke dramatically turned away.
“I know what you’re trying to do.”
“Come on,” Ganke pleaded, now turning back to Miles. “The city needs you, especially on Halloween. And even though this might be an opportunity to try to fix it with Alicia”—he pointed to the paper—“this is who you are. What you do.” Ganke put his arms out, palms up, and pretended to shoot some web. “You’re Spider-Man, whether you like it or not.”
“Ganke…don’t.” Miles’s tone shifted. He reached over and grabbed the invitation, skimmed the details. Judge, a sko-low who grew up in Flatbush, was deejaying. If he was controlling the music, it was guaranteed the party was going to be live. Miles studied the invitation again, as if it were some kind of code to cool. Or girls. Or cool girls. Like Alicia. Or…just a damn good time as Miles Morales. Not Spider-Man.
After a few moments, he lay flat on his back, the party invitation slipping from the mattress and sailing down to the floor. He’d always heard great things about the Halloween party. And Ganke was right, they’d missed it their freshman and sophomore years and, afterward, were forced to stomach the weeklong social media exhibition of selfies and group shots. Not to mention everyone talking about the yearly Halloween prank. Ugh. Miles always acted like it didn’t bother him. That he was unfazed by the fun on everyone’s faces. But the truth was, it got to him. A little.
But Ganke didn’t press the issue, not about the party or Miles’s “retirement.” Just let it rest until out of the blue, Miles’s alarm clock went off. Ganke flinched.
“Dude, you’re already awake.” At this point, Ganke had pulled a thick textbook from his bag and set it on his lap. He had also kicked off his shoes and was smelling the insides. Seriously, why?
“I know, but I set it just in case I fell asleep so I wouldn’t be late for work. Which, by the way, I wish I didn’t have to go to, because I’d rather be at the poetry event.” Miles couldn’t believe he’d just said that, but he needed more than just redemption with Alicia—he needed the extra credit. Miles sat back up, swiped both hands down his face as if he were wiping the tired off, then grabbed the notebook with his failed sijo attempts from the corner of his bed. “How am I supposed to work to keep some of the weight off my folks, and do stuff like extra credit? It’s hard to do extra anything, y’know?” Then, after a pregnant pause, Miles simply asked, “If I don’t go to this party, would you go without me?”
“Depends. Are you not going because you have to watch over the city dressed in tights and a mask?”
“No.”
“Then, yes.”
Miles hmph’d and glanced down at the invitation on the floor, a corny graphic of blood dripping and ghost emojis above the text.
“Okay.” He randomly lobbed the word in the air as if it were obvious what it was connected to.
“Okay…what?” Ganke was clearly confused.
“Okay, I’m in.” Miles sighed.
“In…?”
“Come on, Ganke. You know what I’m talking about.”
“The Halloween party?” His mouth twisted into an uncertain frown. “You sure you don’t think you should, you know…” Ganke did the awful web-shooting impression again.
“I just need to…not…be…all that,” Miles said awkwardly. “Look, we goin’ or not?”
And just like that, it was settled.
While Ganke, now bubbling with excitement, blabbered on about ideas for costumes, Miles got dressed for work. As he zipped up his backpack and wiggled his feet into his sneakers, he asked Ganke as casually as possible, “By the way, what about you? You going to the poetry club event?”
“Not sure yet. I mean, I want to because, you know…I got heat. But I also got chem homework.” He tapped the book he had resting on his lap. “Nothing like a little chemical bonding to round out the night.”
“I wish,” Miles replied, smirking. “Well, if for some reason you end up there, can you just apologize to Alicia for me?” Miles tossed his notebook in his bag and slung it over his shoulder. He headed toward the door, but stopped at Ganke’s desk and flipped through their mail. There was a letter with his name on it. Miles slipped it into his back pocket.
“Yeah, yeah, I got you.” Ganke thumbed up. “If I go, I’ll tell her.”
“Thanks, man.”
And as Miles pushed the door closed behind him, Ganke yelled, “That you love her!”
Campus Convenience: The store that’s sure to bore. Miles’s job was part of the work-study program, and it was basically a way for him to get free room and board so that his parents could keep a roof over their own heads. Rent in their neighborhood was going up yearly, and there was always the fear that their landlord—a man named Caesar that no one ever saw—would sell it, which would leave Miles and his parents scrambling for housing. Miles had seen it happen before. A man named Mr. Oscar used to live at the end of the block. Been there Miles’s whole life. Until a FOR SALE sign went up beside his stoop. Until people started standing around outside, looking up at the windows, scribbling in notepads, typing on cell phones. Until Mr. Oscar wasn’t there anymore.
Whenever Miles thought about this, he pictured his mother and father crammed up in the dorm with him and Ganke, his mother trying to microwave plátanos on Sundays. Miles, sleeping head-to-toe in Ganke’s bed, while some new family moved into his home. A family like Brad Canby’s or Ryan Ratcliffe’s. A family that ate off good china every night.
It was a ridiculous image. But it was enough motivation to keep Miles going to work.
But the thing about Campus Convenience is that it conveniently didn’t sell anything any actual teenagers wanted. No phone chargers, no nail polish. Just notebooks, tear-off or spiral. Pens, felt-tip or ballpoint. Pencils, no. 2 or mechanical. And of course, sausage in a can. And Miles’s job was to ring up the teachers and students who would pop in to buy something. Which meant Miles’s job was to do nothing. Because no one wanted sausage in a can.
Miles stood hunched over the counter, his life raft in a sea of one-ply toilet paper and three-hole punchers. There was nothing to do, no one to talk to, and what made it worse was the music—saxophones crooning a perfect soundtrack to a workplace wasteland.
So Miles did what he always did at work: homework. He’d finished his chemistry and breezed through his calculus before leaving the dorm. And no history assignment, as usual. Mr. Chamberlain made it so that the entire grade was based on tests. No extra credit. No special assignments. Just listen and…regurgitate.
So it was just Miles and the sijo. The prompt, a piece of cake and a knife in the gut at the same time: write about family. It had been giving him trouble since he’d started it, hours before. But before he could, again, try to tap into his inner Edgar Allan Poe, he remembered the envelope in his back pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the return address he hadn’t bothered to look at on his way out the door.
Austin Davi
s
7000 Old Factory Road
Brooklyn, NY 11209
Miles Morales
Brooklyn Visions Academy
Patterson Hall RM 352
Brooklyn, New York, 11229
Miles slipped his thumb along the closure and slowly tore the envelope open. Slipped the letter out, unfolded it, revealing line after line of penciled words, written in all capital letters.
MILES,
IF YOU’RE READING THIS, THAT MEANS MY GRANDMA REALLY DOES KNOW HOW TO USE THE INTERNET. SHE TOLD ME SHE WAS GOING TO SEARCH FOR YOU. AND NOW YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING WHO I AM AND WHAT THIS LETTER IS ABOUT. MY NAME IS AUSTIN. MY FATHER’S NAME WAS AARON DAVIS. IF GRANDMA IS RIGHT, AARON DAVIS WAS YOUR UNCLE, WHICH MAKES ME YOUR COUSIN.
Miles’s eyes scanned which makes me your cousin over and over again, mainly because he didn’t know his uncle had any children, and also because he didn’t have any other cousins. Which makes me your cousin. Uncle Aaron had a son? Which makes me your cousin. Miles kept reading, other words jumping off the page like fifteen and locked up and if you write back.
Locked up.
Cousin.
Austin.
And when Miles reached the end of the letter, he started over, and read the whole thing again. His saliva turned sour, a syrup oozing slowly down his throat. He didn’t know what to think, if he should even believe what he was reading. He couldn’t. This couldn’t be true. How could Uncle Aaron have a kid and Miles not know about it? Did his father know? He had to. But maybe not, because he and Aaron never spoke. But still…he had to. Besides, Miles talked to Aaron all the time. Well, he used to, before…before. Wouldn’t Aaron have said something? Wouldn’t there have been something to give it away? A picture? Something?
A loud thump snapped Miles out of his haze. A group of obnoxious students walking by the store had banged on the window. Miles instinctively folded the letter as if he had been caught doing something wrong. But once he set his eyes on the fools in the BVA it-crowd, he relaxed. Didn’t really seem like the poetry types, but he assumed they were heading to the quad for the event anyway—everybody loved Alicia and her crew. He figured at least one of them would pop into the store, maybe for candy, water, sausage in a can, a stupid joke, a random rich-kid taunt which typically sounded like gold-plated fart noises…anything to shake up the boredom. But nope. They kept walking, leaving Miles with his thoughts, with the contents of the letter, with the idea of Austin—and Aaron—all dancing off beat through his mind to the sound of smooth jazz.
He unfolded the letter again. It had been folded in thirds to fit into the envelope, and it was obvious that Austin had struggled to get it right from the different creases making veins across the paper. As soon as the letter was open again, there was another bang on the glass. But this time it was Ganke. His face was contorted against the window, as if he’d had a run-in with the crew that had just walked by. He kept his face mashed on the glass, his lips sliming up into a smile as if they were made of lava. Then he unstuck himself and yanked the door open.
“Sorry to interrupt. I know this is the busiest time of your shift,” Ganke said, standing in front of the counter with his arms spread, turning in circles.
“Shut up.” Miles folded the letter again. “Ain’t you supposed to be doing homework?”
“Yeah, well. I got most of the chemistry done and started working on my sijo. But the prompt is…I don’t know…kinda got me stuck.”
“Family?”
“Yeah, man.” Ganke’s voice slipped from silly to serious. “Like, what am I supposed to write? My-fah-ther-and-muh-ther-have-bro-ken-up-and-I-am-sad?” Ganke counted on his fingers. “This is a true statement, but not exactly my best work.”
“I feel you. I was working on it earlier, and was struggling, but after reading this, it seems even more impossible.” Miles extended Austin’s letter to Ganke.
Ganke took the letter, unfolded it, and began reading. His eyes darted across the page, spreading wider with each word. “Who…?” Ganke glanced up from the page. “Who is this from?”
“You read it. Apparently my uncle had a son. Named Austin. Who’s fifteen. And in jail.” All fact, no feeling.
“Whoa.” Ganke refolded the letter and handed it back to Miles. “You gon’ tell your father?”
“I don’t know,” Miles said, sliding the letter back into the envelope. He folded it in half and slipped it into the small pouch in the front of his backpack. When he lifted his eyes back to Ganke, a look of stress had smeared across his face. He shook his head. “Anyway, what you come here for? You need something?”
“Do I need something? Really, Miles?” Ganke teased, each word soaked in sarcasm. “I actually came to tell you that I was going to the open mic. I’m hoping the extra credit will offset me not getting my sijo done, in case the family thing, y’know, stumps me.” A flash of pain struck Ganke’s face, but it left as quickly as it came. “And I wanted to make sure you knew I was also gonna put in a word for you. Get it? Put in a word for you? A word? With Alicia? At the poetry open mic? Word?”
“I get it.”
“Got it.”
“Please leave.”
“I’ll take that as a thank-you. And you’re welcome.” Ganke threw the words at Miles like a no-look pass as he left the store.
Leaving Miles alone.
Miles leaned onto the counter, using his elbows to prop himself up, still trying to wrap his mind around the whole Austin thing. He wondered if he should tell his father. Or if he should write back. Or maybe just ignore it. Besides, how could he prove it was true, that this was his actual cousin? He could go see him. That was an option. But not really. That wasn’t an option. He’d need one of his parents to take him to the jail, and telling his father—though another option—wasn’t really a good one either. His father wanted nothing to do with Aaron and insisted Miles also have nothing to do with Aaron, so there was a good chance Miles’s dad would want that embargo to remain intact. But Miles couldn’t help but think about it. About what Austin looked like. About how he ended up behind bars. About what Austin knew of his father’s death.
Guilt crashed into him, shaking every bone in his body as a saxophone solo blared through the speakers. But there was nothing to do, nowhere to put the guilt except—and he couldn’t believe he was even thinking this—his homework. The poetry assignment. For once, the store being empty and boring seemed like a good thing.
Miles yanked his notebook from his backpack, flipped it open, stared at what he had already written in the dorm. Then ripped that out, crumpled it into a ball, and did a stiff hook shot to the garbage can. Missed. Basketball just wasn’t his sport.
He started again. Actually, he stared at the paper and thought about starting again, waiting for the words in his head to somehow pop onto the page. He hadn’t even pulled out a pen yet.
Austin. Aaron. Dad.
Family. That was Ms. Blaufuss’s new prompt. Write two sijo poems about your family, something you love and something you don’t. Miles kept eyeing the page, the saxophone crooning, making it hard for him to think about a family whose soundtrack wouldn’t be anything as soft as this.
Finally, he reached in his bag for a pen.
WHAT I LOVE
WHAT I HATE
smooth jazz
I hate my father’s face when he tells me my block is my burden
like my job is to carry a family I didn’t create
to somehow erase the blood he left in the street like cursive
like my life is for fixing something I didn’t even break
WHAT I LOVE
The way my mother says, “Mijo. Sunday dinner is ready”
and kisses my father gently while I set the table
If only we were more like her
If only everyone were as gentle and loving
The way she looks at us like we’re perfect, though we’re not
Miles scribbled and scratched out, scribbled and scratched out, over and over again trying
to find the right words, the right count. And what he landed on, what he finally came up with, he hated. Ugh. A poet would have a better grasp on language. A better understanding of how to put words together to at least communicate a coherent idea. Exhibit A: Austin, if we are in fact family, I wish I would’ve known you a long time ago. Being an only child means you fight every battle alone. Plus, I always wanted bunk beds. Or Exhibit B: Alicia, I like you. I like the way you think, the way you look, the way the hair curls on the back of your neck, and I’d like to invite you to split an order of chicken fingers in the dining hall, as a precursor to my mother’s chicharrón de pollo on a Sunday in the near future. But instead, all Miles had was C-grade poetry and a near-puke situation.
More kids walked by. And Miles imagined what else he would say to Alicia if he could just get the courage. It frustrated him that he could wrestle with monsters ten times his size, but not get his mouth to cooperate whenever he was in her presence. So, at the risk of embarrassing himself only in his own mind, he scribbled another sijo, this one not a part of any assignment.
UNTITLED
I’m not even sure that people write love letters anymore
and if this is one, I’m sorry for using it to tell you
that I’ve always known, from the beginning, it’s sandalwood
Another group—baseball caps, school hoodies—traipsed by. And another. It seemed like the whole school was going to the open mic. Ganke was probably already there. And he’d probably already talked to Alicia for Miles, which should’ve been a comforting thought. But Miles knew that the likelihood of Ganke just walking up to Alicia and saying Hey, Alicia, Miles wanted me to tell you that he’s sorry about what happened today was basically at a negative number Mr. Borem had yet to teach.
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