Feral Youth

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “Because it’s stupid.” Eli shrugged. “He’s always bragging about winning contests or whatever, but it’s a waste of time. There are, like, a million people better than him who want to be choreographers.”

  Sunday looked back in the room. What Micah was doing seemed to be anything but a waste of time. And if Micah knew he had an audience, he didn’t let on. After a couple of minutes, he crossed the room, turned on the stereo, and unleashed the choreography that was in his head. And it was gorgeous. Not just the steps, but the way Micah executed them. Sunday had noticed how he always seemed to be aware of the way he held his body, even when they were just walking across campus, but she never could have imagined he moved like this. It was as if his limbs turned into air, as if the music was woven into his muscles. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, wondering each time how high he would leap and how gracefully he would land.

  “He’s a drug dealer.”

  Sunday was so entranced with the performance that for a moment, Eli’s words didn’t register. She slowly looked away from the dance studio, turning toward him.

  “What?”

  Eli’s face and neck were ruddy, and she thought he was flushed from embarrassment, but later, she would wonder if it was from exhilaration instead.

  “My brother.” He lowered his voice, even though no one else was around. “He’s, like, the school drug dealer.”

  Sunday rolled her eyes. “I’m new, not gullible.”

  “I’m not kidding, Sunday. He’s who everyone goes to for anything they need.”

  “Anything?” She admittedly wasn’t the most well-versed in what people were smoking or swallowing, but her mind instantly went to the antidrug posters of severe addicts with boils on their faces and track marks along their emaciated arms.

  “Mostly weed. Some molly. Mushrooms. Pretty basic shit, but . . .”

  Sunday’s throat was dry. She was afraid to look at Micah again, worried he’d suddenly morph into a monster she wasn’t aware she’d been hanging out with this whole time. How could she have been so clueless? Why hadn’t he said anything to her?

  She glared at Eli. “Why are you telling me this?”

  He shrugged again. “Don’t you think you deserve to know?”

  The music inside the studio stopped. Sunday looked in, catching Micah’s eye. He waved and held up a finger, signaling he wanted her to wait for him.

  When he turned to grab his shoes and towel, she turned and walked out to the parking lot where Ben was waiting for her.

  * * *

  Micah was already sitting in first period when Sunday arrived the next day.

  She said hello without looking at him, then felt him watching as she dropped her bag at her feet and slipped into her chair.

  “Everything cool? You kind of ran off yesterday,” he said, tapping a pencil against the side of his desk.

  Sunday glanced at his hands. She felt as if they should look different now that she knew what he used them for. But they looked exactly the same, and when she got up the nerve to meet Micah’s eyes, he looked exactly the same, too.

  She shook her head, unable to come up with a response.

  Micah leaned in close, bending at the waist so only she could hear him. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  Sunday’s head whipped toward him, her mouth open.

  “Eli told me you know.” Micah sighed. “He made it sound like it slipped out, but nothing is an accident with him. He really hates not being involved in what I’m doing.”

  Sunday looked at him curiously, still silent.

  “Like the dance thing . . . Maybe it’s because he was worried about what people would think, but honestly, he wasn’t ever that good.” Micah paused. “He would get so mad when the teachers praised me and didn’t say anything to him. And he’d go into, like, a full-on rage at home if they corrected him in front of the class . . . which happens to everyone in every dance class.”

  Sunday frowned. She didn’t want to talk about Eli. “You couldn’t just say it? Like, hi, I’m Micah and I sell—”

  “Knock it off,” he said through gritted teeth. “Do you really have no idea how this works?”

  Sunday’s eyes darted around the room, but no one was paying attention to them.

  “I thought you’d figure it out,” he said in a softer tone a few moments later. “But then you didn’t, or I thought maybe you were just cool with it and didn’t want to talk about it, and . . . I wasn’t trying to hide it from you.”

  “Why?” she whispered. “I don’t get it. You don’t need the money.”

  Mr. Moore arrived then, juggling an armful of books and a coffee.

  “To be continued,” Micah said, turning to face the front of the room.

  After the bell they walked like normal to their second class, but Sunday felt like things between them were anything but normal.

  “I’m still the same person,” he said without looking at her.

  Sunday considered this. She knew he was right and that she wasn’t being entirely fair by judging him. It wasn’t so much about the drugs. The idea of them made her nervous, and she wondered exactly how much and what had been stashed in his house when they were there. This reminded her of Emma Franklin, who was in their youth group back in Chicago. That is, until she’d gotten pregnant and stopped coming to meetings and hangouts. No one stopped inviting her, but it was understood that they couldn’t just pretend like everything was the same once her belly started swelling. Sunday hadn’t been particularly close with Emma, but she couldn’t help feeling like she’d been betrayed by her. Emma had worn a purity ring and pretended like she was as inexperienced with guys as Sunday, and then one day she was pregnant.

  It wasn’t that Micah had betrayed her, but Sunday guessed she would have preferred to hear it from him instead of his brother.

  “Why do you do it?” she asked again.

  They stopped outside the building.

  “Because . . . I don’t know, Sunday,” he said with a tinge of annoyance. “Because it feels good to not be the spoiled Beverly Hills kid everyone thinks I am when they hear who my parents are or see where we live. Because it’s so different from what everyone else knows about me. It’s not like it’s going to be a career. I’ll quit doing it after we graduate . . . maybe before.”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  He cocked his head to the side as he eyed her. “We’re good?”

  Her father and Ben would kill her if they knew she was hanging out with the school drug dealer, but they’d never have to know if she didn’t tell them. Besides, it wasn’t like she wanted to be his girlfriend.

  “We’re good,” she said. “But . . . is there anything else?”

  Micah shook his head. “What about you? Are you really so . . . virtuous?”

  “I’m not virtuous. That makes me sound like a nun.”

  But she knew it appeared that way, and not for the first time, Sunday wondered if that meant she was simply boring.

  * * *

  Ms. Bailey was in the art room when Sunday walked in after school.

  She waved from her desk in the corner, then pushed her glasses up on her nose and went back to whatever she was scribbling in a notebook. Bailey was everyone’s favorite because she mostly left them alone, but she knew her shit when it came to art, and she always knew what their work needed for them to take it to the next level.

  Eli walked in a few minutes later, after Sunday had unpacked the materials from her portfolio and spread them out on her desk.

  “Hey,” he said, sitting down next to her.

  “Hi.” Sunday picked up the piece of charcoal but couldn’t bring herself to start drawing.

  “You know, it’s still cool if we hang out, right?”

  Sunday looked at him. “What?”

  “I mean, just because you and Micah aren’t friends anymore—”

  She frowned. “Who said that?”

  Eli’s eyebrows twitched. “Well, I just thought . . . I mean, you seemed pretty up
set about what I told you.”

  He glanced toward Bailey, but she wasn’t paying their conversation any mind.

  “I was . . . surprised,” Sunday said with a shrug. “I’m not going to stop being his friend. It’s not like he’s pushing anything on me or selling to kids or something.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But what?” Sunday practically snapped. She wished he would just say whatever he had to say and get it over with.

  “Nothing. Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Hey, do you want to come over again sometime? There’s some more art you didn’t see—some stuff you might like or whatever.”

  Sunday wasn’t feeling particularly fond of Eli at the moment, but she felt bad for him. He was younger than them and insecure, like Micah had mentioned. He was trying to smooth things over, and if it meant another chance to look at that Aaron Douglas piece, the one she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since she’d been there, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

  * * *

  She went to their house after school again on Friday, but this time it was just the three of them.

  They made grilled cheese sandwiches, stuffing them with bacon and tomato. Eli heated up three cans of spicy tomato soup and they ate in front of the TV, where Micah queued up online videos of some of his favorite choreography.

  Sunday expected Eli to complain about the videos or Micah’s overall presence, but he seemed to be in good spirits. She’d been skeptical about coming over, but she was glad she’d decided to. Everything seemed to be normal, or at least the normal she’d been used to for the last two weeks.

  Micah scooped up the dishes, carrying an armful to the kitchen. Sunday turned to Eli.

  “Can I look at the Aaron Douglas painting again?” She’d been trying to be patient, but this was the reason she’d come over, after all.

  “The who?”

  She rolled her eyes and pulled him up from the couch by his arm. Eli happily followed her to the staircase and up to the painting.

  “He was a Harlem Renaissance artist,” Sunday said, leaning in closer to inspect the piece. “He was a painter and an illustrator who—”

  Suddenly, Eli’s face swooped in front of hers, and he was kissing her. His lips were too wet and his breath was too hot, and everything about it was wrong. Sunday put her hand on his chest, pushing him away.

  “What are you doing?”

  Eli blinked at her, as if this reaction wasn’t something he’d ever considered.

  “Eli, I . . .” She bit her lip and chewed for a moment. “I like you, but . . . not like that.”

  “Oh.” He swallowed hard, his dark eyes focused on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry if I . . .” But she trailed off, because there was nothing to apologize for. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d been nice to him and hung out with him after school. She hadn’t flirted with him or led him to believe she liked him. “I’m sorry, but I just want to be friends.”

  “Sunday!” Micah shouted from downstairs. “I found another video I want to show you!”

  She looked at Eli, who was standing with slumped shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s—” He brushed past her, thundering down the stairs.

  A few seconds later, she followed, but Eli had already disappeared. She didn’t see him again that night, not even when she tried to find him to say good-bye before Micah drove her home.

  * * *

  Sunday had art class during fourth period, just before lunch. On Monday, like every day, Bailey greeted them at the start of class, going over what they should be working on and when it was due. Then she left them to their own devices, strolling through the room to track their individual progress and see if they needed help.

  Sunday was still working on her charcoal drawing. Bailey had asked her to start with the bowl of plastic fruit sitting on the table up front. It was a pretty basic assignment, but she knew Bailey wanted to see what she could do in her room, and Sunday planned to give it to her farmer’s market–loving father when she was done.

  Sunday was moving a little slower that day, still groggy from the weekend. She couldn’t get Eli and the kiss out of her mind, though. She hadn’t seen him since he’d run away from her at his house, but she hoped they could go back to normal. She hadn’t told Micah. She’d bet money that Eli was too embarrassed to have said anything, either.

  “How’s the charcoal going, Sunday?” Bailey was at her elbow, holding a paper cup of coffee from the faculty lounge.

  “Pretty good, I think?” Sunday unzipped her portfolio, rooting around for her sketchbook among the loose papers and class handouts.

  She pulled out the book. There was something squeezed between the pages, leaving a gap in the middle. Sunday flipped it open, thinking one of her pencils or gum erasers had gotten wedged inside.

  She didn’t understand what she was seeing at first. It was a plastic sandwich bag, the kind that zipped closed along the top. That much was clear. But as for what was inside . . .

  “What’s this?” Bailey frowned, setting her coffee cup on the corner of the table. She picked up the bag between her index finger and thumb, only looking at the contents for a few seconds before she sighed deeply. “Is this yours?”

  “I don’t . . . I mean, this is my book and my bag, but I don’t know what that is.”

  “Pack up your things and come with me, Sunday,” Bailey said, her voice harboring what had to be every ounce of disappointment in the world.

  The room was completely silent. Everyone was watching, eyes wide and mouths open. Others were already on their phones, texting furiously.

  Magic mushrooms. They looked like regular old mushrooms, with stems and caps, but these were the sort that made a person hallucinate. That’s what the head of school said when Bailey dropped the bag on her desk.

  “Sunday, the Brinkley School has a zero-tolerance policy,” Ms. Ashforth said. She didn’t seem livid, like Sunday had feared, but she was unsmiling, and one of her eyebrows appeared to be permanently furrowed. As if Sunday didn’t already know how serious this was. Zero tolerance meant expulsion.

  “They’re not . . . I’ve never done a drug in my life,” she said in a voice so soft she wasn’t sure they could hear her. “I’ve never even seen any.”

  Ashforth exchanged a look with Bailey. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Then tell us where you got them or whose they are, and we’ll go from there.”

  “I didn’t get them from anyone. They just showed up in my bag, I swear.”

  Bailey sighed. “This will be so much easier for everyone if you tell us the truth, Sunday.”

  “I am telling the truth,” she said, though she knew they didn’t believe her and probably never would.

  “Do you have any idea who could have put this in your bag, then?” Ashforth again. “If it wasn’t you, we need to know where else to look. Otherwise, we’ll have to call your parents to come down here to talk about next steps.”

  She didn’t even want to think about how angry her father and Ben would be. They trusted her, but more than that, she knew how much her father expected from her. She couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t explicitly stated how differently people viewed them because of their skin color—how she had to work twice as hard at everything she did, simply because she was black. There was a huge list of activities that Sunday had always known were not an option, no matter how forgiving other parents might be: getting pregnant, drinking and doing drugs—even bringing home a grade lower than a C (which, to be honest, he was pretty peeved at anything below an A). Getting caught with drugs—hers or someone else’s—was certainly at the top of that list.

  Sunday knew without a doubt where the shrooms had come from. She wasn’t positive who had placed them in her bag, but in that moment, she felt Eli’s hot breath on her skin, his unwelcome lips pressing against hers. . . .

  “Sunday?” Bailey prompted her. She got the feeling Bailey wanted her to be cleared from this just as much as Sunday did.
/>
  But she couldn’t speak. Even as she thought of Eli’s spitefulness, the way he’d tried to get her to stop liking Micah by revealing his secret, she knew she couldn’t tell. If she ratted him out, he’d tell on Micah, and Micah didn’t deserve that. He’d been doing his thing long before she got there—she couldn’t make everything come crashing down for him in just two weeks. He didn’t deserve it.

  And she thought of Emma Franklin, the pregnant girl back in Chicago. The youth pastors, parents, and even their friends had tried to get Emma to reveal who the father of her baby was. But Emma never told. Sunday didn’t know if she was protecting someone in the youth group or maybe an older guy she was never supposed to be seeing, but Emma kept her mouth shut, and even after she virtually disappeared, the secret never got out. Sunday had always respected that, even if other people called Emma cowardly and immature.

  Sunday wasn’t sure what her father would do; she’d never been kicked out of anything. Or been in any trouble, really. What if this meant she couldn’t get into any other private schools in the city? Or that she couldn’t study art in a place where people respected it? They’d searched long and hard for Brinkley, and there’d been a huge celebration when she was accepted. They had been so proud, her father and Ben. She didn’t want to think about how they’d look at her now. She didn’t want to think about the fact that they might not believe the mushrooms weren’t hers.

  But most of all, she didn’t want to listen to that little voice at the back of her head. The one that said maybe it wasn’t her father at all who would be the most upset—that maybe this would disappoint Ben so much that he’d no longer want to adopt her. What if he decided she was too much trouble, that he didn’t want to be the official dad of someone stupid enough to get caught with drugs? She knew he wouldn’t announce something like that, but she also knew it would be much worse if they just became silent about the topic—swept it under the rug until they thought she’d forgotten about it and was too embarrassed to bring it up herself.