As they were leaving the gym, Zara gazed wonderingly at D’Melo. She didn’t know what to make of him. He was super smart, had girls fawning all over him, reporters chasing him, and scouts salivating at the thought of recruiting him. And here he was, practically begging the janitor to allow him to clean the gym.
“You truly don’t care about playing in the NBA, do you?” she said.
“I mean, who doesn’t want to be in the NBA? But,” he said, reflectively, “when you watch your mom die right in front of you, your priorities change.”
D’Melo offered no further details of that fateful morning, and Zara didn’t ask. Instead she sighed empathetically, remembering her own mother.
“Things don’t have the same meaning anymore,” he said. “Certainly not money or fame. I would trade the NBA for one more day with Mom anytime. I realize that this sounds crazy to people.”
Zara thought, Not to me.
A sleek black car glided silently along the lengthy driveway. Marley exclaimed, “Oh Sweet Lord; that’s a Tesla Model S!” He wriggled out of his sleeping bag. “Do you know that car has an autopilot system that can control the throttle, brakes, and steering. And it’s electric!” He shot a dubious gaze at Zara. “Which is good for the environment, by the way.”
Zara ignored him and grabbed her sign off the grass. The sign read: “Water belongs to all of us; how can one man choose to destroy it?” She thrust another sign into D’Melo’s chest. “Here, hold this,” she said. D’Melo’s sign read: “When all the waters are polluted, only then will you discover that you can’t drink money.”
“Ohhh, snap,” Kazim fretted. “He’s stopping!”
The darkly tinted window slid down. “You.” The driver pointed in their direction.
“Who, me?” Kazim trembled, jabbing a thumb into his chest. “Hey man, I ain’t got nuttin’ to do with this. I don’t mind pollution.”
“Oh, my God, dude. Seriously?” Zara nudged Kazim aside and sidled up to the window.
“I hope he ain’t callin’ the po-po,” Kazim mumbled. “I ain’t tryin’ to get arrested over some dirty water.”
The gate swung open. The car passed through. Zara strode back over to the boyz.
“Are we gettin’ arrested?” Kazim blurted. “My mom’s gonna kill me!”
“No, dude,” Zara grimaced. “Get a hold of yourself.”
Zara then conveyed her brief conversation with the CEO. Apparently, he had seen Zara in the newspaper. Her passion had resuscitated his long-forgotten love of nature. He had spent much of his childhood in West Virginia, appreciating the purity of the Appalachian Mountains. So miraculously, just before leaving the office, he had actually tasked his head engineer to figure a way to limit the pollutants his company produces. Also, he had invited Zara to give his staff environmental-awareness training.
“Zara, we did it!” Kazim claimed then moved in for a hug.
“Dude, no.” Zara repelled him at arm’s length.
“We did it?” Marley snipped. “Weren’t you the fool over there talking about ‘I ain’t trying to get arrested over some dirty water?’” Zara gave Marley a fist bump.
After a few minutes of celebratory recapping of the evening’s events, they took an Uber back to Lincoln Downs. Marley and Kazim got dropped first. They bopped up their shared stoop, arguing about which one of them had helped more that night.
On the ride to the drugstore, Zara’s energy flattened. She gazed wistfully into the distance. D’Melo stole a glance or two at her every few blocks. The car pulled up to the store. Zara spun to D’Melo, who quickly averted his eyes.
“Hey, don’t forget, you owe me a movie. How about tomorrow? Queen of Sheba, 2 p.m.”
“The cartoon?” D’Melo balked.
“What, are you too cool to watch an animated movie?”
“Nah, I didn’t say that. I’ll drop by your spot at 1:30.”
Zara plodded to the alley side of the drugstore. She dragged up the stairs that led to the apartment. D’Melo asked the Uber driver to go slowly. He wanted to make sure Zara got inside.
D’Melo found himself fascinated by how Zara didn’t seem to be afraid of anything or anyone. She had camped out, by herself, on the driveway of one of the most powerful men in Philadelphia. And somehow, she had gotten him to reconsider how his business operates in practically no time. Until that night, apparently no one else had been able to do that. But then, why isn’t she happy? What happened? Did I do something wrong?
When he finally climbed into bed that night, D’Melo thought about how he hadn’t yet grasped the depth and mystery of Zara. Would he ever get a glimpse, he wondered, into her seemingly tumultuous inner world?
Chapter Four
Taji Anaru!
Saturday for most high schoolers meant a day of rest after a taxing week. But for the boyz, it meant it was time to get paid. Few Saturdays remained to make a quick buck at the Citadel. Winter was fast approaching, and in Philadelphia it could arrive at any moment with unforgiving vigor. Then, graduation would follow on its frigid heels. So the boyz were keen to seize every opportunity.
Usually D’Melo eagerly awaited getting on the court, not for the money, but to do what he loved most. But this Saturday was different. The boyz ambled through his door only to find D’Melo sporting jeans and his favorite Meek Mill T-shirt.
“Come on, dawg! Get ready,” Jeylan urged. “Those Whitman Park busters think they can take down the LD Boyz. If they wanna give us their hard-earned cash, who are we to deny them that?”
“I can’t ball today,” D’Melo said.
“Stop playin’, man. Grab your kicks, let’s bounce.”
“I’m not playin’. I’m going to the movies.”
The boyz were flabbergasted, realizing that he wasn’t joking. D’Melo had never missed a Saturday at the Citadel.
“Can’t you and Baba go to a later flick?”
“I’m not going with Baba.” Now D’Melo had everyone’s full attention—who else would he be going with besides Baba or them?
It clicked for Kazim. “Ohhh, snap! You’re going with Zara!”
“Who?” Jeylan scoffed. “That white girl?”
Although the conversation had turned tense, there was no chance Kazim was going to miss this opportunity to mock D’Melo. “Look at you, Mister ‘I’m not messin’ with girls until I’m ready to get married.’”
“It ain’t like that,” D’Melo retorted. “I lost a bet.”
“So what y’all gonna see?” Kazim queried with interest, stoking Jeylan’s fire.
D’Melo mumbled, “Queen of Sheba.”
“The cartoon?” Jeylan’s voice rose a couple of octaves. “Let me guess, Princess Snowflake wanted to see that? Maybe after the movie she can take you to a Garth Brooks concert and you can square-dance the night away. Don’t worry about us, though. We’ll be at the Citadel losin’ our grad money.” The boyz had been saving their Citadel winnings for years to pay for a graduation trip.
“Jey,” D’Melo exhorted indignantly. “You need to move on from this hatred you have for white folks.”
“Whatever, dawg,” Jeylan snipped. “So, if you’re not ballin’ today, who we gonna get to run with us?” D’Melo directed his eyes at Marley. “Man, you trippin’! You know that fool can’t ball.”
“Well,” D’Melo suggested. “Just don’t pass him the rock.”
“Heyyy . . . guys,” Marley interjected. “I’m right here, and I do have feelings.”
“Enjoy your cartoon with Snowflake,” Jeylan spat. “Let’s go, y’all.” He stormed out.
Kazim smirked at D’Melo. “You go, playa.” He punched D’Melo admiringly on the arm on his way out.
It was an unusually toasty day for October. While the boyz were sweating it out on the court, D’Melo was sweating almost as much trying to keep pace with Zara. His light gray s
hirt grew darker by the moment. But Zara’s loose-fit blouse, tied in the front, was completely dry. There wasn’t a bead of sweat on her forehead, as her open-heel booties clicked briskly down the sidewalk.
“Hey, Usain Bolt,” D’Melo quipped. “I think we broke the sound barrier back there.”
“Sorry, dude. I didn’t get my morning run in. So I’m feeling a shade guilty,” she reasoned, as she polished off an eggplant and avocado sandwich.
Zara ran six miles every morning. But on the days she needed to work through something vexing her mind, she would easily exceed ten miles.
“Can I run with you sometime?”
“Do you think you’ll be able to keep up?” She grinned dubiously. If there was one thing that Zara did well, it was run. She didn’t run for exercise or to shed a few unwanted pounds. She ran to survive. It helped her deal with the hyper-intense feelings she suffered on a daily basis. Like D’Melo on the basketball court, for forty minutes every morning Zara was in a world of her own.
Suddenly, Zara’s stride tapered.
“You don’t have to go that slow,” D’Melo teased. “I’m not disabled.”
Zara closed her eyes and inhaled a steady breath.
“Are you okay?” D’Melo said.
“Yeah. I think it’s just a bit of anxiety.”
“What are you anxious about?” D’Melo attempted to lighten the mood. “Me leaving you in the dust during our run?”
“Dream on, dude.” Zara struggled a smile onto her face. “Let’s talk about something else. Thinking about anxiety just gives me more anxiety.”
D’Melo had a ton of questions he had been wanting to ask her. Why was she living with her grandparents? Where was her dad? Why did she move to Lincoln Downs just a year before graduating? Why does she stay to herself at school? What does she want to do after she graduates?
But instead, he spouted, “So what’s your favorite movie? I’m gonna guess, Erin Brockovich.”
“Ehhhh!” she rebuffed, like a buzzer on a game show when the contestant gives an incorrect answer. “Good guess, though. My all-time favorite is Inside Out. You’ve probably never even heard of it.”
“What, you assume I don’t watch animated movies because I’m black? Or maybe it’s because I’m a guy?”
“Touché,” she said. “So are you saying you’ve seen it?”
“Well, let me think. Hmmm . . .” D’Melo gazed insincerely into the distance. “Is Inside Out the film about a little girl named Riley who faces mental struggles when she moves to a new city? And, are Riley’s emotions portrayed as characters as she navigates her new life?” D’Melo grinned smugly. “Should I continue?”
Zara pursed her lips, realizing she was now the one who had been bamboozled.
“The brilliance of that film,” D’Melo continued, “lies in how it manages to fluidly traverse the line of reality. What I mean is, it’s able to broach reality and yet be far from it at the same time. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2016. Is that the movie you’re talking about?”
“Hilarious, dude. Are you always this ostentatious?” Zara motioned to twist the cap off her invisible good word jar. “Clunk.” She tightened the cap back. “‘Ostentatious’! Good word,” she said proudly.
“Why do you say, ‘clunk’?”
“Because that’s the sound the word makes when it hits the bottom of the jar.”
“Is the word made out of lead?”
“Oh, shut up. Well, what sound do you think the word should make?”
“I think it should be, ‘Swish.’”
“Of course, you do. Why did I even ask?”
Zara halted abruptly. Her face blanched, then she doubled over.
“Hey,” D’Melo said, alarmed. “Maybe you should sit.”
Instead, Zara lifted her weary head. Her unfocused gaze honed in on the white row house at the corner. She staggered toward it, clutching her chest.
“Where you going?” D’Melo shouted fretfully.
Zara peered at the house from outside the chain-link fence that boxed in the tiny yard. She grasped the latch on the fence gate, then snatched her hand painfully back. The metal fence was burning hot from the high sun. She nimbly unlatched the gate, then jolted it open with the bottom of her boot. The gate crashed against the inside of the fence.
“Whoa, whoa,” D’Melo said. “What are you doing!”
She hastened along the concrete path and mounted the steps to the porch. The front door was locked. She peered through the porch window, her vision obscured by sheer curtains.
“Zara, please tell me you know these people?” D’Melo said, his voice sounding strained with worry.
Zara ran around the side of the house and down the alleyway to the backyard. D’Melo followed her. “Here, hold this,” she said, shoving her purse into D’Melo’s stomach. She unstrapped her boots and kicked them off. After hopping the fence, she latched onto a tree branch and dug her feet into the craggy bark. Within seconds she was high enough to vault onto the porch roof.
“Zara!” D’Melo shouted. “You’re gonna get us killed!”
Zara cupped her hands against the windowpane. Her eyes probed into the house. She screamed down to D’Melo, “Call 911! Now!” D’Melo dropped the purse and fumbled for his phone.
Zara tried to lift the window. It was locked. She slipped off her blouse and wrapped it around her hand. With a swift jab, she shattered the glass. She punched out the remaining shards from the frame then contorted her nimble body through the window.
On the balls of her bare feet, she navigated through the glass fragments to the elderly woman sprawled on the floor. Zara sat on her feet next to her and rested the woman’s head on her lap.
“You’re gonna be okay,” she comforted, having no idea whether her words were true. Zara patted the sweat off the woman’s sweet mocha face. “The ambulance is on its way.”
“This is really embarrassing,” the woman huffed, each breath a struggle. “I’m lying on a floor in my pajamas in the middle of the day.” The lightness of her words stood in sharp contrast to the intensity in her eyes. Zara was momentarily taken aback at how profoundly the woman peered into her, as if boring into her soul.
“You think that’s embarrassing, huh? I’m pretty sure I can top that,” Zara said, trying to take the woman’s mind off her condition. “One time, I dreamt that soldiers were chasing me across a field. Bullets were buzzing past. The forest edge was about thirty feet in front of me. I knew that if I could just make it to the tree line, I’d have a chance. I sprinted as fast as my legs would move. When I reached the forest, the soldiers followed right behind me. I clambered up a tall tree. My shoulder was burning. I’m not sure why. But the pain made it a real struggle to climb.”
The old woman got excited, as if she was living the dream with Zara. “Oh no!” she exclaimed. A cloudy white curtain descended over her eyes. “The blood!” she wailed frightfully. Zara sat up, backing away from the woman’s sudden outburst. “The blood! Don’t let it drop!” the woman cried out.
“Ma’am.” Zara caressed her cheek. “Are you okay?” Where’s that ambulance!
The woman’s eyes appeared lucid again. “What happened next?” she said, as if nothing peculiar had just occurred.
“Well,” Zara pushed past the woman’s bizarre behavior. “One of the soldiers shined his flashlight up the tree. I made myself as small as I could. As the light crawled just beneath me, I woke up.”
“That’s thrilling stuff,” the woman said feebly. “But how’s it embarrassing?”
“Oh, sorry,” Zara said, rocking forward and smiling under her hand, embarrassed now too. “I got so caught up in the dream that I forgot why I was telling it. Well, my dreams are so real sometimes that I act them out in my sleep. And, unfortunately, this was one of those times. I opened my eyes to my neighbors videoing me in my fr
ont yard. I was perched in a tree in my underwear.”
The woman laughed into a choking gasp for air. Zara stroked her woolen curls. “I just realized how rude I’m being,” the woman said. “You’re a guest in my house and trying to save my life, no less, and I haven’t even asked what your name is.”
“It’s Zara.”
“Oh! That name fits you perfectly. Do you know what ‘Zara’ means in my language? Well, silly me. How could you know? It means ‘light.’ And here you are, just as luminous as you can be.” Zara dabbed the woman’s forehead. “Your aura is so brilliant. There’s light all around you, like an angel.”
“Wow,” Zara said, trying to sound excited. “And my whole life I thought my name was just the Nečzian version of Sara! I hate to disappoint you, though. I’m far from an angel. But thank you for saying that. And what’s your name?”
“Yande Keba,” the woman said hoarsely.
“Do you know what that name means in my heart?” Zara said. “It means, lovely woman who I am privileged to have met.”
Just then, an ambulance siren blared in the distance.
“They’re here!” Zara said. She shot down the stairs. She paused in the foyer; an elaborate fireplace caught her eye. That’s interesting. I’ve never seen anything like that.
The ambulance squealed around the corner. D’Melo was in the street waving it down. Zara frantically led the paramedics to Ms. Keba. They carefully transferred Ms. Keba onto a gurney and carried her out of the house.
Just before they slid her into the ambulance, Ms. Keba sat up abruptly. Her eyes were wild, as if she had seen a ghost. She tried to climb off the gurney toward D’Melo. The paramedics laid her back down.
Spirit King: Return of the Crown Page 8