“What? Trying to help my friend chill out? Trying to help a dude I consider my brother remember that life is still good? Trying to remind the great Miles Morales that nothing can stop him, and that’s cause for celebration? What’s wrong with that?”
“Whatever.” Miles sighed because he knew Ganke wouldn’t stop until he complied. And he needed to get off campus as quickly as possible. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Miles stood up, rolled his neck from right to left, left to right to loosen up.
“Just feel the music, bro,” Ganke said encouragingly. Miles bobbed his head to the beat, and when he felt like he’d caught it, he started to do…something. One leg shot out, then the other, like some kind of Irish jig. His arms, stiff as boards, swung out in front of him like a zombie’s. It was bad. Bad. So bad that Ganke immediately cut the music, while Miles was mid…um…lurch.
“You know what? This was a bad idea. Let’s just go.”
Rush hour. Friday. That meant a packed train with no seats. Miles and Ganke crammed in and held the railing above their heads, smaller people nestled into their armpits, bigger people with their hands planted flat on the ceiling of the train car. Most had earbuds in, books fanned open, or were talking to someone beside them.
“So, about this Halloween party tomorrow,” Ganke said. “You still goin’, right?”
“Why you keep asking me that?” Ganke had been bugging Miles about it every day that week. He had already made up in his mind that Miles would back out. And Miles had thought about it, was on the verge of flaking until he realized Mr. Chamberlain would be at the party, and he was buzz worthy. If it meant Miles had a chance to crack the Chamberlain code, there was no way he was missing the party.
There was only one problem.
“Have you even asked your folks?” Ganke knew Miles well.
“I keep forgetting, but I will.”
“Do you even know if you’re allowed out of the house this weekend? I mean, you lost your job. And then the next day you broke a desk with your bare hands.”
Miles glared at Ganke, who shot back a just sayin’ face. The commuters all swayed with the rocking train. Everyone but Miles.
“You don’t have to keep reminding me. Anyway, I’m going, Ganke.”
“Okay, good. Then I should tell you that I’ve decided that in your honor, I’m going as Spider-Man,” Ganke said low, keeping a straight face. “Just let me hold your suit. It’s spandex, right? It’ll stretch.” Ganke paused. “Unless, of course, you were planning on going as him. You.”
“Whatever.” They both laughed. A blind man snaked through the crowd, his cane tapping against the shins of many of the riders. He shook a jangling cup, and begged, “Can you please spare some change? Can you please spare some change?”
“What you think?” Ganke whispered as the blind man approached. Miles concentrated on the old man, studying the hesitation in his movements, the muscles around his eyes. Miles nodded at Ganke. They both put dollars in his cup.
As the train pulled into Prospect Park, people poured through the doors, allowing space for Miles and Ganke to breathe. Elders and teenaged jerks snatched up seats, sometimes squeezing in the sliver between an earbudder and reader. Miles and Ganke moved their hands from the railing to the pole as the doors closed. And then…
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We hate to disturb you on your way home and actually have come to provide the perfect start to your weekend. Most of you know what time it is, but just in case you in from out, or up from down, we welcome you to our crazy town with…SHOWTIME!” A young boy with a raspy voice came strutting up the aisle bare-chested, his T-shirt wrapped around his head, his hands cupped around his mouth.
“SHOWTIME!” two or three other boys shouted in unison.
“Showtime!” Ganke yipped, bouncing his eyebrows at Miles.
The music started, and then came the clapping. “Pay attention!” the young one shouted, as one of the older dancers started with the footwork. From there came flipping, handstands, pole tricks, and tourists looking on in awe, their mouths hanging down to their laps. Fingers in pockets and purses.
Thirty seconds later, the showtime boys yelled, “That’s our show!” The shirtless boy started clapping again, the train joining in. He ran up and down the aisle with a hat to collect the donations from the onlookers. Ganke held a twenty-dollar bill in the air, but when the kid got to the end of the train where he and Miles were standing, Ganke wrapped his fingers around the money.
“Let’s have a dance-off for it.”
“Ganke, don’t,” Miles whined. “Kid, he doesn’t—”
The kid looked up at Ganke. It was like he didn’t even hear Miles. “And why would I do that? I already got this money.” He shook the hat lightly.
“Because you just got about ten dollars from this car. I have double that in my hand. Either you walk away with thirty, or you walk away with ten. You can’t lose. It’s a safe bet.”
“And it’s me against you?” the kid asked. “What I look like, a fool?”
Ganke chuckled. “Okay, the best one of y’all.”
The young boy called the rest of the crew out. Miles tried to shut it all down, but Ganke kept waving the twenty around, which pretty much made Miles invisible.
“Aight, let’s do it. Me against you,” the captain of the showtime crew said. He was a wiry kid with braids and big earrings that were obviously fake diamonds.
“No, no, no. You guys got to choose your best, so I get to choose mine.” Ganke threw an arm around Miles. “Him.”
“He’s just playing. He’s gonna do it himself. I’m not a d-dancer,” Miles stammered.
“Yeah, you don’t really look like one,” the young boy jabbed. “You either,” he said to Ganke.
Ganke instantly went into a body roll. “Don’t try me,” he warned. “But he’s better.” Ganke leaned over to Miles and whispered, “Just don’t do what you did in the room.” Then he turned toward the showtime guys and said, “Hit the music!”
The beat came blaring from the janky handheld stereo again. A loop of some kind of electronic song Miles had never heard. Then came the clapping.
“Take two, ladies and gentlemen. A friendly competition!” The kid with the braids began contorting his body, almost knotting himself on beat. His limbs, long and noodly, were surprisingly strong as he jumped up, grabbed the ceiling rail, and air-biked down the train car.
“Give me your bag,” Ganke said, practically snatching it off Miles’s back.
“Your turn,” the young boy said.
“Dude, what in the world have you gotten me into?” Miles asked, but before he could say anything else, Ganke pushed him into the invisible dance circle. Everyone watched. Even the New Yorkers, who were accustomed to ignoring this kind of thing. Older black men glanced over their glasses, smirking. Young white ladies sat with their hands in their laps in anticipation. Little kids clapped off beat.
“Go! Go! Go!” Ganke said. Miles froze. And then, against Ganke’s suggestion, Miles broke into his weird convulsion dance, his legs and arms going every which way, his face contorting far more than his body, which seemed to have become stone. The kids burst into laughter.
“Uh, he’s just warming up,” Ganke said. He turned to Miles. “Do the wall crawl.”
“The what?”
“The wall…crawl.” Wink-wink.
And that’s when Miles got what Ganke had been saying this whole time. He turned his back on everyone and broke out running down to the end of the train, weaving between the poles. Once he got there, he jumped and kicked off the door—the one leading to the next train—and crawled on the ceiling of the train down to the other end. No railings. Just fingers and feet.
Everyone in the car went wild, erupting in a mixture of excitement and confusion. Even the young dancers were clapping and nodding. They cut the music, waving their arms and shouting, “It’s over! It’s over!”
Ganke put the twenty back in his pocket, then open
ed his backpack and trotted up and down the train car, collecting money from…everyone. Even the showtime boys gave him a dollar.
The young dancers glared quizzically at Miles. They even attempted the wall crawl, ridiculously trying to grip the ceiling before realizing they were wasting their time. Eventually the kids left the train and went to the next car for the next show as Ganke yanked bills from his bag and handed them to Miles.
“How much is it?” Ganke asked.
“Around forty bucks,” Miles replied in disbelief.
“Ahem,” Ganke said as the train pulled into the Atlantic Avenue stop, where Miles needed to get off to catch the C train to Lafayette. Miles peeled four bucks from the wad and slapped it in Ganke’s hand. “My fee is twenty percent. Also, this is gonna be the only fun I have tonight before the dinner of doom, so…c’mon.” Miles slapped another four in Ganke’s palm, stood up and threw his bag over his shoulder. And as Miles dashed for the door, pushing out as people were pushing in, Ganke shouted at Miles’s back, “Told you so!”
Thirty dollars richer, Miles walked through the park toward his house. In the late afternoon, the old men played chess and blasted soul jams from a parked car’s window. The little kids wobbling on their bicycles with uneven training wheels. First loves kissed on the wooden benches—soon to be beds for the homeless—next to the old ladies giving out church pamphlets. A breeze was in the air, and the trees in the park swayed, their leaves whispering to Brooklyn.
Miles passed the dog walkers, walking both pit bulls and poodles. People coming in and out of the corner bodega, the door chiming over and over again. Fashion folks draped in the latest trend snapping pictures in front of a sky-blue, rusted-over car. The one that used to be a home for someone. A man that was no longer there.
He went on past his house, down the block, and around the corner to the market. Not the bodega, but the actual grocery store. Flowers in buckets lined the front. One of the men who worked at the store was tending to them.
“How much?” Miles asked, checking out the roses.
“Fifteen,” the man spat.
Miles didn’t say anything else. He just kept walking. Roses would’ve been nice for his mother. But that would’ve been half his money. He knew he could’ve gone in the store and bought actual groceries, which would’ve been smart, maybe even convince his father to cook dinner for his mom for a change. She deserved it. But disasters come in all forms, and Miles and his father attempting to make a meal would’ve been nothing less than a disaster. And even if it weren’t, it would’ve resulted in Miles’s mother standing over them, her hand to her forehead as she gave orders in Spanglish and repeated over and over, “Alluda me santos.” Help me, saints.
Miles had other plans.
The next stop was the dollar store. An older lady held the door open for him as Miles slipped into the land of paper plates, party favors, greeting cards, and the off-brand version of pretty much everything else ever invented. Shaky-wheel carts rattled, registers blooped with each scan, plastic bags shished. Miles bopped around, peeking down each aisle, before spotting Frenchie. She was squatting down, putting price tags on bathroom air fresheners.
“Hey, Frenchie.”
“Miles?” Frenchie looked surprised to see him, which made sense since Miles was rarely around. “What you doing in here?”
“Lookin’ for flowers.”
“Flowers?” Frenchie stood up with a smirk, crossed her arms. “I know you ain’t old enough to be dating yet. I remember when your daddy used to pay me to babysit you, and you ain’t do nothing but pee on yourself, nonstop. Now you in here looking for flowers.”
“Not for no girl. I mean, not for…It’s for my mom.”
“Uh-huh. Better be,” Frenchie teased. “That’s sweet. I hope Martell is as thoughtful as you when he gets older.”
“Oh, he’s gonna buy you a whole rose garden when he gets to the league.”
“Heyyyy, you ain’t said nothing but the truth!” Frenchie put her hands in the air and closed her eyes, like she was sending up a three-second prayer. “Come on.”
She took Miles to the other end of the store, where the flowers were.
“Right here.” She pointed at the row of greens and browns and reds and yellows, all of autumn in aisle two.
“Y’all don’t have real ones? These plastic,” Miles said pinching the fabric petal of one of the fake roses.
“Kid, you at the dollar store,” Frenchie shot back. Miles picked up one of the roses, smelled it, and immediately felt stupid for doing so. Frenchie added, “But just so you know, these two dollars.”
After Miles bought the rose, he went next door to Raymond’s Pizza, not to be confused with Ray’s Pizza. They weren’t the same. Miles figured it would be safer for Raymond to make dinner for the Morales family than for Miles and his father to. Pizza always works and doesn’t require saints.
People lined the counter placing orders by the slice.
“Two regulars.”
“Let me get a pepperoni.”
“A regular and two sausages, please.”
The men behind the counter cut the pizza into slices, slid them into a big oven to be heated for a few minutes before sliding them back out onto paper plates and pushing the plates down the counter to be bagged up.
“Next!” the guy behind the register called out while slamming the cash register drawer.
“Let me get a whole pie. Regular,” Miles ordered.
“Whole pie, got it,” the man repeated. Then he moved on to the next person, a dude who looked a little older than Miles.
“Y’all got anchovy?” the guy asked.
“All outta anchovy, pa-pa.” The thought of anchovies on pizza immediately made Miles think of his uncle, and ordering pizza at the Ray’s by the Baruch Houses. A shudder shot through Miles’s body.
“Aight, well, let me just get a pepperoni. Well-done.”
About five minutes later Miles’s pizza was being shoveled out of the oven and into a box. It came sliding down the counter.
“Regular pie, right?” the man behind the register asked.
“Yep.”
“Fifteen.” Miles put his money on the counter, grabbed his box, and headed for the door, walking behind the guy who asked for the anchovy slice. But the door was being held by someone else. Someone familiar. At first Miles couldn’t place him, but as they all started walking, the anchovy dude first, the door holder stalking behind him, and Miles bringing up the rear, Miles realized who the middle man was. The thief, his face still black-and-blue from the lesson Miles taught him. Miles noticed the guy, who was now holding his pizza slice up to his mouth, was wearing brand-new sneakers. Air Max infrareds. The same ones Ganke had on at the basketball court. Miles’s spidey-sense buzzed. The thief kept looking to his left, and to his right, making sure no cops were around. Or no Spider-Man.
The jack-boy turned around.
But it was just Miles, as Miles, glaring back at him. And when they got to the corner, the thief cut off to the left. The guy with the pizza and sneakers kept straight. And Miles went right.
Miles climbed the stairs to his house, pizza and rose in hand. He could hear music coming from the other side of the door. He jiggled the key just right to unlock it, and was met by his mother and father in the living room, dancing hand in hand. Horns, cowbell, timbales, and conga drums blaring through the speakers. Salsa. The Fania All-Stars.
“Hey, Miles,” his mother sang out, back-stepping, whirling her arms around. His father reached out for her, and she took his hand just for a moment, before letting go and whipping into a spin. Celia Cruz’s voice wrapped around them like a warm quilt as Miles’s father pulled his mother close for an awkward dip.
“Rio, the boy has come bearing gifts,” Miles’s father said, pulling away from his mom.
“Um…I got a pizza.” Miles was in shock. He set the box on the kitchen table. He wasn’t expecting his folks to be dancing and laughing. Not that they never did, Miles just figured after th
e week they had all had, he’d find them in the house staring at the TV, still discussing bills, waiting for him to get home to figure out a possible punishment.
“Pizza!” Miles’s mother squealed. “So sweet, mijo. Thank you.”
“Did you steal it?” Miles’s father asked, lifting the lid, the cheesy steam wafting up to his face.
“Does it matter?” Miles joked lightly, as his father stuck his finger in a glob of cheese.
“Nope.”
So far so good.
“And I got this for you.” Miles held the rose out toward his mother.
“Me?” She played coy. “I thought that was for your girl at school. Tu amor.”
“No. It’s not. Plus, I don’t have a girl at school,” Miles said. His mother took the rose and held it to her nose.
“You didn’t spill the salsa yet?” his father muttered, slapping a slice on one of the plates he had taken down from the cabinet. “Also, is that rose plastic?”
Miles let his backpack straps slide from his shoulders, clasped his hands together. “This pizza and this rose, it’s just to say I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing and come dance with me,” his mother said, reaching out for him. “You remember this, Miles. We danced all the time when you were little.” Miles’s mother jibed back and forth, her arms and legs moving in sync.
“When you weren’t pissing your pants, or pissing the bed, or pissing me off,” his father joked.
“Whatever.” His mother swatted his father’s words away and set the rose on the couch. “Just follow me.”
And from there, Miles and his mother danced and danced, his body dipping and dodging almost as if he were boxing. “Less culo, more waistline. Hip. Hip. Let your body do what it wants. It’s telling you how it wants to move,” his mother instructed. Until his father cut in.
“Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crece la palma,” Celia sang.
“Wepa!” Miles mother hooted, taking his father by the hand.
“See, son, after you spill the salsa, then you hit her with a spin move,” his father boasted. “Works every time.”
A few hours later, as Miles sat in his room doing his weekly sneaker clean—a toothbrush to the sole—there was a knock at his door. Miles figured this was when they would drop the hammer. His father was known for doing things like this. Waiting a full day, laughing and joking and acting like everything was fine before—bam! Grounded.
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