Pinned (9780545469845)

by Flake, Sharon

  Raven walking by, waving. Jaxxon leave for a little while. Coming back, he can’t stop smiling. “Got her number.” He holding it up, waving. “Cute girl like her”— he kisses air — “need somebody.”

  Shoving him, I ask why he always putting on, chasing girls who could care less about him. He give it back to me, pointing at Adonis. “And he want you?”

  Both of us sitting with our arms on our legs, looking across the room at him. “No.” I say it out loud. So I’ll believe it, too.

  Changing the subject, I ask about Mr. E. “He still getting that operation? Don’t need it. He a little too skinny now.”

  Jaxxon shaking his head, asking why a girl who can beat boys wrestling can’t see when a teacher lying to her.

  Mr. Epperson asked if I would help a struggling student. Someone with potential, who cannot seem to grasp the fundamentals of algebra. I said I would see if I could help. Mr. Epperson has been a little under the weather.

  “Good morning, Mr. Epperson.” I move at his pace, following him into the library. Six of his students are sitting at a table. Raven and two guys from my AP statistics class are here to tutor as well. State tests are coming up. Mr. Epperson swears that with all the brain-power in our honors and AP programs, we can help improve the scores of struggling students at our school as quickly as any teacher.

  He gives each student their marching orders. They disperse throughout the library along with their tutees. I am all set to ask which student he wants me to work with, when he points toward her. She is slouched in a black beanbag over by the wall, her back facing us.

  I freeze.

  Autumn has not spoken much to me lately. At the library, she talks to her new friends. They’ve taken to really liking it here: eating their lunches in the caf, and then loafing in the library three or four days a week. Laughing. They do a lot of that.

  She wasn’t expecting me. When I say hello, she practically jumps out of her skin. Tiny papers in her lap fall to the floor like confetti. “Adonis.” Looking over at Mr. Epperson, she reaches down. “You don’t have to help me.” She picks up her red jacket, folding it in two. “I know you don’t want to.” Standing up again, she looks around, for another place to sit, I think.

  She has a notebook and a ruddy pencil. Most students have their math books here as well. When she sees my eyes on the things in her hands, she squeezes them to her chest. “I ain’t want to come anyway….”

  I’m thinking about what she told me once. Ain’t is her favorite word.

  She picks at the feather in her hair. She’s back to wearing feathers. “Mr. E. promised me”— she turns around, with her head high — “extra-credit points.”

  Moving quickly, I try to keep up with her. My eyes stay glued to her legs. Her purple tights disappear under her short gray skirt like smoke in the sky. Her curls dangle from her head like black, shiny ribbons. Stopping, sitting in my chair in the middle of the media center, I ask myself, Why would I ever chase after Autumn Knight?

  There is a dictionary to my right. I’m pretending to riffle through it when I notice her name carved on the wooden stand. I look at Mrs. Carolyn and then Autumn, who is almost at the door. Undisciplined. She ought to look that up. Careless. Irresponsible. Those are good words for her to learn. When I see my full name written underneath hers in calligraphy, with a plus sign in between, my head practically explodes.

  I am a private person. Something like this — written for everyone to see — is not me. A girl like her … is not me. For me. If she knew me, she would know this.

  I hear her black heels on the linoleum by the front door. Tapping like hammers on nails, they walk her out into the hall. I am wondering what to do about my name, when I hear tapping again. Her shoes. Her voice — saying hello to Raven, cheery and high. From the moment she returns, her eyes are on mine. She looks upset. What nerve.

  “Adonis.” Her hands go to her hips.

  Raven passes by, staring.

  “Autumn, why did you —?”

  We are both talking at once. Turning pages in the dictionary, I ignore her. I stop at the Ps, my finger jabbing the page. I ask if she can read that word. “Privacy.” As clearly as I am able, I explain how she has violated my right to privacy by writing my full name on this desk. I do not expect her to apologize.

  Practically falling into my lap, she turns more pages. She finds her own word. Apologize. She writes the word down. I watch her put the letter I in front of it. Not saying a word, as if she left her voice in the hallway along with her notebook and jacket, she finds other words: Disappointed. Mad. Sad.

  She closes the dictionary carefully, rubbing it as if it were a magic stone. “You don’t like me, Adonis. I know that now.” She breathes in deep. “And not ’cause you treated me mean … or ran from me all those times.” She steps out of her heels, holding them in her hands. “I know ’cause when I asked you to help me with my reading, you ain’t say yes. You ain’t say no.”

  If I had said yes, it would have meant I wanted her to do better, she says. Had I said no, it would mean to forget it, “Get somebody else to help you.” Not to acknowledge her request meant “You don’t care if I sink or swim.”

  Her shoes move from hand to hand. Her feet stay put. Her orange toenails, painted with white dots, look like springtime, not winter outside, freezing everything.

  “If I saw you at that pond, Adonis … I woulda jumped in and saved you. Even if I ain’t know how to swim.”

  Stepping closer to me, her knees touch the edge of my chair, like they did in my dream. She stoops. “But I been thinking lately….”

  I smell baby powder when she sits her shoes on the floor.

  “I’m good at swimming. I ever told you that?”

  She leans forward, taking a deep breath — kissing me.

  My back stiffens.

  Her mouth opens.

  My hands, limp in my lap, are as cold as the metal they made my chair with.

  Tasting peppermint.

  Feeling her fingers, smooth and soft on my cheeks.

  I kiss her.

  And let her sweetness in.

  Pulling away, Autumn takes my first ever kiss with her.

  “Good-bye, Adonis.”

  I swallow. The students around us shout and cheer.

  Autumn and those shoes walk out of the library. This time, she does not come back.

  Sometime at school I escape by looking out the window at clouds. Or watching Peaches do calligraphy or cooking — things like that.

  Wrestlers escape too — all the time. But on the mat, we can’t have our minds all up in the clouds.

  Let me paint a picture for you. Pretend I’m on my hands and knees on the mat. Can you see my opponent, kneeling on one knee close beside me; arms in position? Good. I’m in what’s called the bottom position. My opponent in the top position.

  Escaping means I break physical contact and arm control with my opponent. Then I stand face-to-face with ’em, in the neutral position. It ain’t easy. He want to score and win, too. So my opponent will do what he or she got to do, within bounds to stop me. But I’m a tough competitor. I don’t give up easy.

  You can be thinking a boy is your everything. Till he let you down. Then you be wondering how you ever liked him in the first place.

  I try to forget that boy. His lips. How when he kissed me back, my insides warmed up like a restaurant full of candles. It’s hard. I love him.

  I’m at the library, near my house. Texted Peaches, asked if she wanted to go to the mall. Her dad went to the hospital last night. Congestive heart failure. She home watching him. I’m here ’cause it’s not far from my house. And Mom wouldn’t drive me nowhere else.

  The public library round our way ain’t big. The statue of Frederick Douglass standing out front is. Holding a book, he stares down at you, with hair long as a woman’s, wild as a lion’s.

  Never did I like that big, gray metal statue. Those eyes. They look at you accusingly-like. In seventh grade during a field trip, the
librarian told us Mr. Douglass’s eyes be asking people questions: “Can you do what I’ve done? Travel the road I walked?”

  Maybe those ain’t her exact same words. But they close.

  A woman, walking by me, looking up at him, too. “Love his book.”

  I keep walking.

  “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Ever read it?”

  I’m shaking my head no, wondering why I’m here at the library, when school is out and I don’t wanna read or do homework or nothing.

  “It would be a pleasure to show you where to find it.”

  She’s got me by the arm, like she know me. Pushing open the door, telling me stuff about herself. She just got out of library school. She went to Spelman College, she says. Mrs. Carolyn graduated from there. She the new librarian. Her first day was last Thursday. They wanna start a teen group soon. Maybe I wanna join it, she say. “Or help me form it. Whatdaya say?”

  She talking a lot, moving fast. Her clothes look African. But she look like my cousin: cool sunglasses, fake nails, and a eyebrow pierced. She wanna know my name.

  “Autumn Knight.”

  Her hoop earrings patting the sides of her face while she bending down near her desk. Saying my name sound familiar. “Oh.” Shaking my hand, she winks. “The wrestler.”

  “How you know me?”

  Smiling, she say she reads everything. “Hold a sec.” After she helps a few people, she pulls out a file on me — not just the articles they wrote on me this year. She got other ones. Even from when I first started. “Research,” she saying, “my favorite part of the job.”

  I wonder if she kept those bad articles they wrote about me. She moving every second, it seem. Helping this person. On the computer hunting for books or articles for somebody else. Still talking to me.

  When a lady and her kids come looking for Keena Ford books, she walks ’em over to the kiddie section.

  I sneak upstairs, turn on the computer, and watch videos. Something is different up here now. Can’t tell what. I don’t itch. Maybe that’s it. Last time my teacher had to call home because my skin was on fire, my nose dripping. I got to leave early that day and not read out loud like the other kids.

  Bored, I’m walking downstairs, looking for the magazine section. I thumb through a copy of Wrestling USA. Looking at pictures, I think of me on the mat. It make me sad. Thinking about that kiss. Adonis kissing me back. Makes me sadder.

  I’m shaking my head to get him outta my mind. But my heart, he always gonna be there. Like that extra beat the doctors say my grandmother got. I’m turning pages, reading with my fingers, underlining words that way. I stop. Borrowing a pen, I write down two words for my jar. Discipline. Self-confidence. Wrestling give you that. It says it right here. Coach always told us wrestling will strengthen you inside and out, “on the mat and in the world.”

  Did it help me … outside the gym? Maybe … when it came to chasing Adonis. I was disciplined ’bout that. What about cooking? I always did that. When I was eight, even.

  School … discipline … me …? No. Reading. Forget it. Since I saw him on Tuesday, I been thinking and thinking, How do smart kids get all those As? Is Peaches smarter than me? Miss Pattie be pushing her. If she didn’t … would she still do better in school?

  Competition. Mr. E. was talking ’bout that again yesterday. I think some kids compete against everybody in class. They never gonna be outdone. It’s the mat and the frying pan that bring out the beast in me.

  I text Peaches, asking about Mr. E.

  I couldn’t sleep the night I gave Adonis that kiss. Stayed up half the night making macaroons. Gave them to Mr. E. yesterday. I don’t think he’ll eat them. No appetite lately, that’s what he said.

  Looking out the window, watching pigeons sitting on Mr. Douglass’s head, I try my best to push Adonis out my mind. A boy with no legs. Why you want him? Peaches be saying. Why not?

  I gotta do better. Come up with a plan like I do during wrestling season. Run every day. Lift weights. Eat small portions. No snacks. Be ready to win. That’s why it’s hard to beat me on the mat. Was hard. Folding my words, putting ’em in my wallet, I think about my jar filling up. I put my first W word in it. Wallaby. Seen a show on television about them.

  Laying my head down, shutting my eyes, I feel his lips on mine again. Did he kiss another girl before? Raven? Do he like my lips on his? I don’t want to think them things or think about him. I’m working hard not to. Wallaby, wallaby, wallaby.

  “Uh. Excuse me. Are you that girl?”

  I sit up. “What girl?”

  “The wrestler. Yeah. I see your muscles.”

  He pull up a chair, talking a mile a minute. He’s in high school. His sister wants to wrestle. She read about me in the paper. Only she eleven and her school don’t have a team. He been teaching her. He hold up two wrestling books. “We need some pointers. Things she can do every day.”

  “Jump rope. It’s good for you, and little girls like to do it anyhow.” I tell him that running gives wrestlers stamina. Once a month on Saturdays, he come here looking over the new magazines, or checking out a new book, he say. “She’s going to the Olympics.” He ask if I’m going. “You should.”

  His name is Michael. He walks here, lives only four blocks away. “You studying?” He talk a lot. “Bet you a good student, huh?” He leaning back in his seat, profiling. “Girls be like that, rocking those As. Making us look bad.”

  Wishing he would go away.

  His sister would love to talk to me, he saying, pulling out his cell and dialing her. He give me the phone after she gets on. She screaming. “You a superstar to her,” he say, leaving.

  I go a little while later myself. Making it past the librarian is easy. She in the stacks, picking books off the shelf, excited ’bout helping somebody with a book report, a kid my age. I hear her say The Color Purple’s a good book. Then she mention some book about skin.

  Jogging by the statue, looking up again, I ask Mr. Douglass a question. “How you read so good? Way back then, when I can’t do it now?”

  Adonis Miller. Clean that up, please.”

  It’s the second beaker I’ve broken this week. Sweeping broken glass into a dustpan, I try not to listen to the students sitting around me. Raven, however, is loud and clear, when she says, “I’m so glad he isn’t my partner.”

  I am disciplined. Focused. I always think before I act. Lately, I don’t know. I am not very careful.

  Mr. Epperson has invited me to work with his class again. So following honors biology, I head into his room. I am looking forward to it. The principal knows that I’ve taught in there a few times. He chastised Mr. Epperson, even though he’s sick.

  “A teacher who never breaks the rules,” Mr. Epperson says, “might need to wonder if they’re supposed to be teaching in the first place.”

  Having a good relationship with the principal is essential. I need him to write college recommendations, refer me for summer jobs with state officials so people there know the kind of student I am.

  But Mr. Epperson. When I get in front of his class, I know I was born to teach.

  When I get to Mr. Epperson’s class, I sit my hall pass on his desk and get to work immediately, explaining things. This period I have art class. Since I’m ahead of everyone else, my teacher allows me to come here. She and Mr. Epperson made a pact: For some very expensive South American coffee, she will allow me to come here every now and then. I think he owes her a few bags.

  From the front of the class, I can see everything. Nose pickers. Sleepyheads. Whisperers.

  I see Patricia jabbing Autumn in the side while I teach. Whispering. Most likely she is discussing me. One concern I have is that Autumn will tell someone that I’ve kissed her. What would be worse than people believing that she is my girlfriend?

  I work with the class for twenty minutes. Afterward I take a few questions. Surprisingly, Jaxxon is sitting up, hatless.

  “Papers out, folks. Pencils, too.” On my way out, Mr. E
pperson asks me to wait in the hall. He’d like to speak with me.

  Everyone is starting to notice how thin he’s getting. A little tired, too. Usually he stands while I talk. This time he stayed seated. He hasn’t said anything to anyone, Mrs. Carolyn says. But people are wondering.

  While Autumn’s class takes their quiz, he and I talk about a summer research project. He knows this college professor. “It will be challenging, but — you’re smart enough to help him out.”

  Standing next to me, he puts his hand on my shoulder. “Of course I’ll do it.” Swallowing, I ask if he needs me to do anything for him. “Grade homework. Anything. You name it, Mr. Epperson.”

  He heads back inside, coughing.

  I am at the elevator when I get asked for my hall pass. I left it on Mr. Epperson’s desk. The substitute teacher suggests that I go back to get it.

  From outside of his class, I can see Autumn scratching her head. Patricia, cheating. I am not surprised. There’s a cheat sheet on her thigh. She’s scribbling, looking down, and then up, checking to see if Mr. Epperson is watching. It’s too much. I’m sure that’s why she doesn’t notice me.

  Autumn is being Autumn, writing and erasing. An honest failure beats a lying win, I think.

  “Mr. Epperson.”

  Patricia’s thighs close as fast and tight as a dungeon door. She looks at me. She knows.

  Cheaters ruin it for everyone. They mess up the curve. Plus, it’s dishonest. “May I speak to you outside, sir?”

  You cannot let things like this pass. It even hurts the cheater if you don’t speak up.

  “Yeah, Adonis.”

  “I came back for my pass.”

  Both her hands are on her desk. Her legs are crossed, and shaking.

  He brings it to me. I feel bad, since he seems out of breath.

  “Something else, sir … I came back to say … to speak to you about …”

  “I’m administering a test, Adonis.”