I’m embarrassed. Proud. Scared, too. It’s hard saying out loud what I’m gonna do. ’Cause it mean she and Mr. E.— all my teachers — expecting me to do it. “What you think, Miss Baker?”
Her arms feel like a warm Snuggie, wrapping tight around me. My heart beating fast. Can I do it? Gotta do it. Read better. For me. You gonna fail … a like you always do, I hear myself say, way deep down inside.
Wrestlers win first in their heads, Coach says. Readers, too, I figure, wondering sometimes if I ain’t my own opponent.
Going up the hall, I see him, Adonis. Twice in one day. Plus I go to the library for lunch today. I’ll see him there — won’t chase him. But I still like to watch him out the corner of my eye anyhow. One day I won’t like him. Today he making me twinkle inside, like a planet not discovered but still shining brighter than the moon.
“Hi.” Dang it. Didn’t mean to stop.
“Hello, Autumn.”
I like when he has a fresh cut. They put good-smelling stuff on his hair. Even when he gone away from me, I smell it. Keep walking, Autumn Knight, I’m telling myself.
Sitting in his chair, squirming, he looking up at me. I look away. It’s hard. But I do. Now my feet moving, taking me away from him.
Peaches grabbing me by the arm, pulling me off. “I need to speak to you.”
She upset, talking low, looking back at him. He know, she say. And he gonna tell on her. “Mr. E. wants to see me.” She stops. “Adonis will be there, too.”
“Who?”
“Adonis.”
“Adonis?”
She telling how when he came to class, he saw her cheating. She ain’t tell me earlier.
“Pattie’s gonna kill me.” I hear her say under her breath. “He beat me. He’s smarter than me.”
Adonis is smarter than most everybody. I don’t know if he smarter than her, really. “You just stuck”— I bend down, pointing to gum hard and dirty on the floor. Can’t just pick it up or scrape it with your fingernail. You need a knife. Something strong — “stuck like this gum.” Walking up the hall, my arm around her, I tell Peaches Adonis is stuck, too. “I’m not talking about that chair.” Looking at me, she smiling. “He stuck in here.” I point to my head. “Scared, I think.” I tell her to think about it. “A smart boy like that with no friends. Me cute. And he don’t want me. Scared.”
She laughing, saying he not afraid of nothing. “Even in the pond. He never screamed.”
“You saw him?”
Peaches look like she just got caught cheating. “Yeah. I was there.”
In football, everyone wants to see a touchdown. In hockey, it’s the puck fiercely flying past the goalie and into the net that makes the crowd cheer. In wrestling, it’s the pin.
Sometimes at the end of a match I wonder, has anything in life ever pinned me? Held me down? Patricia would say yes. She would point to the pond incident as her proof. But I would disagree. I think about the incident a lot. I will for years to come, I believe.
But nothing will pin me down or stop me. Determination should be my middle name. Autumn is determined, too. Even when I think she’s losing, she seems to come out ahead. Can anything pin her? I’m not certain anymore.
Adonis.” When Autumn says my name, it sounds as if she’s singing.
The period is almost over.
“Can I talk to you? In the back?”
Only volunteers and employees are permitted there. I explain this to her, while my wheels turn. “Just this once,” I say.
Autumn sits in a chair beside me, leaning her elbow on a pile of books placed on the table. Hush. That’s a good title for a book, she says. Then she brings up Patricia, and how sorry she is for cheating in math. “Please, Adonis. Don’t tell. She won’t do it no more.”
I pull at the knot in my tie. “How many times did she do it, Autumn?”
She does not know the exact number, but Patricia has been cheating off and on for months, she says. She ruined the curve, I tell Autumn. Cheated on her friends, not just the test. “I have to tell.”
I do not want her to see me upset. I am concentrating on books all around me. They are stacked on shelves, sitting in boxes. I work hard when I come to the library.
“You don’t know her,” she starts off.
“I don’t know her?” I’m trying very hard not to upset myself. “You do not know what you are talking about, Autumn Knight.” I am livid. She tells me that Patricia’s parents pressure her to do well. “That’s no reason to cheat.”
“She just … thought … well.”
Nothing infuriates me more than someone who thinks they know more than they do. “You cannot tell me anything about Patricia. I know my own cousin.”
She hops out of the chair. “Cousin!” Picking up books like they’re dirty dishes from a table, she walks around aimlessly. “Y’all cousins?” she says, sitting the books near the cabinet. Scratching. She has not done that for a while.
I take off my watch. “She’s my father’s oldest cousin’s daughter. We never see that side of the family.”
Patricia would never tell her. So I do. Listening to the story, she cannot believe her ears. “I would have drowned. But Macon called the police, and two other boys held my head above the water.” Picking at the frayed band, I shove the watch in my pocket.
It’s been a long time since I’ve told the story to anyone. I do not think I will tell it ever again. I still get e-mails from teachers who ask if I am doing well. They always mention the pond. I did not drown. My reputation as the boy who could do anything did.
When I am famous, they will still talk about it. When Autumn is an adult, people will forget about her poor grades. They will only remember that she was a great wrestler. The only girl wrestler on our team.
Tears well up in Autumn’s eyes. All this time, she never knew the full story. It’s worse than she thought, she tells me. “I just want you to know.” Her finger slides down my nose. “You ain’t deserve to be treated like that.”
I lean forward. Finding her lips. Tasting cherry this time.
Pulling her into me, I open my eyes wide and stare. Kissing her again, I think of the day in the pond. And try not to cry.
All right. He’s my cousin. So?”
Peaches doing me like Adonis did, trying to get away from me. Turning left at the end of the hall by the bench, she just about running past Mr. E.’s room. Doubling back. Speeding up. Like I ain’t faster than her.
I block her. “I’m … your best friend. How … come I ain’t … know?”
She got on flats. But they new. It’s their first day on her feet. Catching her breath, picking at the loose skin on her heel, she say, “He’s my cousin. Now you know. Quit asking me questions.”
She taking the stairs, with me right beside her. Step after step, I ask her again, “How he your cousin? And y’all hate each other —”
“Leave me alone, Autumn!” She thinking he already told Mr. Epperson she a cheat. “That’s Adonis. Squealer.” Her other shoe come off when we get to the basement. We pass the weight room. I quit talking when we get near the wrestling room. Some of the guys are in there. “Hey, Autumn —” Zack telling me to hold up.
I keep it moving. Jogging past Peaches, pulling open the first door I get to, sitting beside the pool. I worry for my hair.
Sliding her feet in the water, Peaches making circles. “Part of our family lives on this side of Thirty-Seventh Avenue. Some live on the other side.”
A bridge separates Thirty-Seventh Avenue once you get past town. On that side, houses got ceilings high as heaven, five or six bathrooms, tennis courts, and next-door neighbors who need a car to visit you. Where I live, we hear the people next door brushing in the morning. They got the malls over there. We got churches, Laundromats, and dollar stores.
Peaches telling me they got doctors in her family on the other side of the bridge. “Plus a professor, two lawyers, and a judge.” She keeps at it, talking about some reporter on Channel 11 who is sorta kinda related t
o her daddy’s side, too.
I wanna say she lying. I see in her eyes she’s telling the truth. My family’s just regular. My grandmother work in the lingerie section at Macy’s, fitting bras and folding slips. My aunts work at Target and the nursing home on Eighth and Dickerson.
Peaches’s toes come out the water. Holding her knees tight, she say, “Ever since I was born, they been telling me about that side. How I need to do like them. Be like them.”
Her father hasn’t spoken to that side since she was little ’cause of some fight he had with Adonis’s father way back when. “I don’t even know what it was about.”
She never met Adonis’s father. “He died before Adonis was eight. They say”— she put her feet back in — “he was too old to be a father. You know what I’m saying?” She looking at her legs. “If you wait too long, things can happen to the baby. That’s what they say. My father was old. Sixty-five when I was born. We came out fine. There’s five of us. My mother’s his third wife.”
The gym teacher come in, asking what we doing. “Out.” She points to the door and picks up wet paper.
Heading out, my wet feet squishing in my shoes, I ask Peaches, “Do he live in a mansion?”
“Adonis?” Laughing, she say his mom moved to this side of the bridge, near the park, when he was in third grade. “They have a elevator.” She was there once when they first moved in. Adonis’s mother is a intensive care nurse, Peaches tells me.
I always wanted a doctor in my family.
“My father says they think they’re better.”
“What you think?”
“They tell me not to get outdone by that boy.” I think about our third-quarter grades. I flunked math. She got her A. Seeing her face, I wonder if she think it was worth it.
Pulling off my shoes, drying my feet with my socks, I ask how long she been hating him. She start talking about last year. She was good at math till then. “All I said was …” She stop to clear her throat. “Adonis. I can’t understand algebra, no matter how hard I study. Could you tutor me?” She breathing hard. “He was in algebra II,” she says, “he could do my homework in his sleep.”
Asking him was hard, she say. Her father woulda killed her if he knew. She had all As in everything else. Her teacher was hard to understand, even when she went for help. Miss Pattie and Peaches’s father kept pushing her. Do better. Be better. So she went to Adonis.
“He said no?”
“He didn’t say nothing.”
“I know how that feels.” I tell her about him and my reading. I ask about the pond, the final exam. “Did Emily’s brother give you one?”
“Good grades, straight As … in my family … are the most important thing …”
She holding on to my arm, admitting she went to the pond, saw everything.
“Why ain’t you do something?”
She talking about seeing bubbles. How he went down in the water more than one time. “I couldn’t … move. It was like, like my whole body was stone.” She couldn’t scream, either. “Just look. Like I was watching a movie. I prayed. I did that.”
Some boys walked by and helped him. Her story is the same as Adonis’s when she gets to that part. By the time Peaches got home, it was dark. Her shirt and pants was wet.
“What Miss Pattie say?”
She never told her mother what she saw. Miss Pattie read the story in the paper, transferred her here when she heard Adonis was coming. “It’s a good school, if Adonis is here. That’s what they think.”
She looking up the hall, past me, saying her parents is right. “It’s a good school.”
“I —”
“I’m gonna live in Paris, Autumn….” Our arms go over each other’s shoulders. “And be famous and rich. I’ll only come home for Thanksgiving.”
“I like rich. But, Peaches”— I stand so we looking eye to eye — “don’t cheat no more.”
“Auddy?” It’s Coach.
Ain’t seen him for a while. I been ignoring his e-mails.
Peaches hugs me. “I’m scared,” I say.
“Me, too.”
“Talk to him.” I look at her. She looks at me. We both said the same thing at once.
Coach waving me over. Peaches walking away. All my nervousness evaporating when I walk into the wrestling room.
We have a code of conduct at our school. No cheating. Some of us take it seriously. I am in the honors society, which does not only mean I make high grades. It means I aspire to do the correct thing.
Autumn wants to know if I’ll report my cousin. Mr. Epperson has not been able to meet with me. He’s at school, thankfully. It has been difficult catching up with him. I’m not certain what I’d say now if I did. Moral dilemmas — we’ve studied them in class. Experiencing them firsthand is tough. I have been here before. I’m only fourteen. Why does this keep happening to me?
“Adonis.” Autumn is handing out cupcakes. “For you.” Soon we’ll be taking state tests. She wanted to do something nice: freebies for as many people who would like them.
Her cupcakes have vanilla icing, sprinkled pink, with a fuchsia P, for Pinned, inscribed on the top. Mine is even more unique. I have a cupcake bearing my initials.
Autumn’s feather matches the icing. April is breezy, so the feather’s bent nearly in half. Rushing over to Jeff, she almost trips. I think her legs are my favorite part.
“Free cupcakes. That’s how you say it, Jeff. You gotta be louder.”
Jeff and a few of the van kids are volunteering today. Autumn offered to make them a special treat for Monday if they helped out.
“Three treats,” Jeff shouts. Leaning on his crutches, he takes a cupcake from Tyreanna’s tray and offers them to people passing by. The colored sprinkles sparkle in the sun.
I look at Autumn, amazed. She sees me smiling and asks if I’d like to hand them out, too. “No.”
She sits a tray on my lap and walks away. Students — the regulars — walk past with their hands held out. They say my name when thanking me. I did not know they knew me.
Patricia comes late. Together she and Autumn hand out sixty-five cupcakes. They spent all weekend baking. That is the reason Autumn and I only spoke a few times. I was upset with myself for texting her thirty times on Saturday. Ma was amused. Another moral dilemma.
My cousin does not speak to me. She hardly looks at me. Autumn wants us each to apologize, to make up to each other. For once, Patricia and I are thinking exactly alike. We will never be friends.
Near the elevator, beside the old teachers’ lounge, Autumn asks if she may kiss me. I notice that she says may sometimes.
We are a secret. No one is supposed to know. It was her idea for it to be this way. I think it’s a good one.
“I love you.” When she says that, you can tell she means it.
I love kissing her. I cannot explain what happens to me when our lips touch. I can’t breathe. I need oxygen. I think differently, like Autumn is okay just the way she is.
Holding up a cupcake, she says we should eat it together. She peels back the yellow paper, splits the cupcake in half, and loops her arms through mine. We both take a bite. I am looking around because this is totally irresponsible — stupid, crazy Autumn stuff. Of course we kiss.
Walking toward the elevator, she brings up math. Tutoring is helping. Lots of things are still very difficult for her to understand.
“I can —”
“Nope.” She presses the elevator button. “We got our deal.”
She will leave me alone about Patricia. I will leave her alone about school, unless she asks for help.
Sighing, she asks if she is ever going to understand the stuff. We are on the elevator when Autumn inquires about Mr. Epperson. “You think … he gonna be okay?”
He just told us recently. He has cancer. Some people are afraid of the word, not me. He smoked for many years. When he went to his doctor to see if he was a good candidate for weight reduction surgery, they gave him an exam. “He’ll be okay,” I tell A
utumn. But I’m not so sure.
Sitting on my lap, her head lying on my shoulder, she holds up my arm, checking the time.
“Your watch secret. I figured it out.” Her index finger circles the cracked crystal.
I freeze.
She holds my hand close to her heart, seeing all that I’ve tried to hide. “It’s rusted.”
Mud. It will stop a watch. Your arms will get tired if you hold them up for long.
I am extraordinarily quiet for a while, uncertain. Autumn talks so much. What if she tells someone? It’s my secret. My life. I have a right to privacy.
She takes both of my hands in hers and squeezes. I stare at the beige walls, and sigh. “My father said, ‘This is my watch. Protect it. Pass it along to your children. When they hear it ticking, that will be my heart speaking.’”
I keep my word. I never give it lightly. Patricia broke my word. We are family. Families honor and protect. She broke his heart.
“I have to go, Autumn.”
She holds the watch up to her ear. “It doesn’t tick,” I say.
“You tick,” she says, kissing me. “That’s what I care about.”
Elevators at this school move quickly. At times I wish they didn’t.
Miss Baker sitting on my desk, her bare legs crossed. “I like what I see, baby.”
I made all the tutoring sessions she and me had for a month and a half. I come before school, with sleep in my eyes, sometimes. It’s hard. But I’m here.
“Look what can happen when people put their minds to it.” She agreed not to make our class read out loud so much now. She said I helped her see it’s not always the best thing you can do for a kid. “Ready?”
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