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Sunday. I slept late and woke up to an empty room. Silence. No one. So nice.
Sunday TV is just as bad as Saturday TV, so I le it off and laid there in the cold space, staring at the wall, thinking about everything.
I was supposed to have been at Jill’s party on Friday. Me, English, Shannon, and Carlos—three-piece and fries. I was supposed to be all up on Tiffany Watts, giving her the business because even though I was soldier-boy when I was in school, everybody knew I was nice with the moves. Rhythm ain’t never been an issue for me. I was the kid Spoony made dance in front of his friends when we were younger. Show them the latest steps that I picked up from music videos. I owned the block party dance contests. So Jill’s party, like every party, was my time to two-step without it being a march. My time to be at ease, and let the soul seep back into this soldier. Damn shame I didn’t make it. Instead some big-ass cop decided to have a st party on my face. Y’know, normal stuff. No biggie. I’m just a punk-ass kid. I have no rights. Just got body slammed for no reason. Just got my life threatened, while lying at on the sidewalk. A broken nose, broken ribs, and a knee in the back is way more exciting than ne-ass girls checking for me (aer they
nished checking for English).
Fuck.
Knock, knock. e door opened and there was Clarissa pushing my lunch cart in.
“Good aernoon, Rashad,” she said. She had one of those voices that no matter what, was nice. Like, it could never sound mean. You know how some people have those voices? Like kindergarten teachers or librarians? “How we feelin’?” she asked, and I was momentarily confused by the “we” she was referring to.
“I’m ne,” I said, forcing a small smile.
“Good. Make sure you try to get yourself up today. You can’t just lie there on your back. Also, I need you to blow into this, as hard as you can.” She held up a strange-looking plastic thing with a hose sticking out of it.
“What is it?”
“It’s called an incentive spirometer. Because of your ribs, you’re going to do everything you can to not cough. But you need to cough. You gotta make sure you’re getting all the nasty stuff out of your lungs, because if it all stays in, it might turn into pneumonia and we don’t want that.” en she broke it all down to me as if I was a child, which I appreciated because I had never heard of a spirometer before. Luckily, it was a simpler process than the name suggests. All I had to do, a few times every hour, was breathe in through the tube slowly, hold it, and then breathe out.
As she set the spirometer on the side table by my bed, she announced, “For lunch today we’ve got chicken tenders, and fries, and a small salad,” while setting the tray down. en she went through the routine of checking my vitals. Blood pressure, and whatever else. Who ever really knows what all those machines and stuff are anyway? I just know the one they put on my arm is for my blood pressure, but who, besides old people, even knows what blood pressure is? Just make sure I ain’t dying, was what I was thinking as the cuff tightened around my arm.
Once she le, I got myself up, which was way more painful than I thought it would be. Who the hell knew broken ribs could make everything hurt? Or maybe it was that everything I did made the broken ribs hurt. Seemed like even blinking was painful.
I waddled slowly to the bathroom so I could handle my business—the post-sleep pee—which was interrupted by another knock at the door. is time, it was my family. Of course.
“Rashad?” my mother called through a crack in the door before pushing it open. I had just ushed and washed my hands while performing the strange task of looking at my bruised and broken face, but only in glimpses.
at’s all I could take. A few seconds at a time. ree seconds, then back to the sink. en back to the mirror for three more seconds before darting my eyes over to the paper towels. Anything longer than that made me . . . uncomfortable. Anyway, I was making my way back to the bed when my mother and father came in dressed in their Sunday spiffs. Behind them, even
more Sunday. As in, Sunday himself. As in, Jerome Johnson. As in, Pastor Jerome Johnson.
“Son, Pastor’s here to see you,” my father said as I eased back into bed,
ashing my ashy butt at everybody, including God.
ey brought the pastor? I sort of fell quickly onto the mattress and whipped my legs around until they were on the bed. Pathetic. My mother helped me adjust, uffing the pillow behind my head and pulling the sheet over me, up to my chin, which was way too far. She kissed my forehead and stared at me as if she was trying to recognize the kid beneath the bruises and bandages. “You okay?”
“I’m ne,” I said, short. She nodded, then glanced at the food tray. She lied the plate cover, the condensation dripping all over my chicken tenders. Damn. Soggy chicken tenders suck. “You haven’t eaten?”
“It just got here. I just woke up.” I said in a take it easy tone.
She kissed my forehead again, then leaned back so I could get a clear shot of my father, three-piece suited and shiny-shoed. And the minister, Pastor Johnson, dressed in an oversize suit, a gold chain with a gold cross lying perfectly in the middle of his fat satin tie. In his hand, the Bible. What else.
“How you feelin’, Rashad?” the pastor asked. Everybody was asking that, as if I was ever going to tell them the truth. Nobody wanted to hear the truth, even though everybody already knew what it was. I felt . . . violated.
at’s the only way I can put it. Straight-up violated. And now, to make it worse, I had to have church. Well, sorta church. I had to have prayer.
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a problem with a good prayer. I mean, I believe in God. At least I think I do. I just wondered where God was when I was being mopped by that cop. And I knew that’s what the pastor had come to tell me. at God was there. at God was always there. Which, to me, is the wrong thing to say, because if he or it or whatever was there and didn’t do nothing, then that would make God my enemy. Because he let it happen. I would much rather Pastor Johnson say that God wasn’t there. at he was busy. at he turned his back, just for a second, to check on somebody else, and that asshole officer snuck right by him and got me. But . . . nope.
“Son, I just stopped by to tell you that God is with you. He’s always with
you,” the pastor started, predictably. “And everything happens for a reason.”
Reason? is felt like a good time for me to grab my spirometer, because I was in need of a deep breath. I mean, seriously, what reason could there have been for this? Let me guess, I was too good-lookin’ and needed an extra bump on my nose, a reminder that only English Jones runs the school?
“Now we’re going to offer up a prayer for your healing, son, believing that God’s gon’ mend you,” the pastor said. “Let’s all bow our heads and look to the Lord.”
My mother and father lowered their heads and closed their eyes. I didn’t do either. Kept mine open, and my head up, looking at the three of them, wondering if any of this mattered. I knew it mattered to them, my parents, and maybe that should’ve been enough for me to participate, but did it matter to me? I’m not so sure. e prayer was long and dramatic, full of the preachy punches in between each point. e pastor mentioned how Jesus was persecuted (heh) and Saul was made blind (heh) and Job was tested (heh) and David beat Goliath (heh). My mother followed right behind the pastor, accompanying his rhythmic prayer with hallelujah whispers, and my father’s manly but, I guess, godly grunts, all eventually— nally—leading to an amen.
“Amen.” Spoony stood in the doorway, nodding his head, and clapping
his hands, a sarcastic look on his face. Man, was I happy to see him. Ma was too. Dad, well, not so much.
“Pastor, you remember my oldest son, Randolph,” he said, caught off guard.
“Yes, yes, of course I do.” e pastor reached out and shook Spoony’s hand. “Ain’t seen you down at the church in a while.”
“at’s ’cause I can’t afford to come.” “Spoony!” my mother gasped.
“Sorry,” he said, shrugging and smirking at me.
“No, no, that’s okay,” Pastor Johnson said kindly. “Nothing wrong with the boy having a mind of his own. God gave him that.” Spoony just looked at Dad like, See? “Well, listen, I better be going. But we’re gonna keep you lied up in prayer, Rashad. And we’re going to add you to the blessing list for the sick and shut-in.”
But I’m not sick or shut-in. I’m beat down. Is there a list for that? But I didn’t say that. I was hoping Spoony would do some kind of big brother ESP thing and say it for me.
“ank you so much for coming, Pastor,” my mother said, clenching Pastor Johnson’s hand. My dad gave him a rm shake and a tight-lipped nod, and the churchman headed out.
Five seconds couldn’t have gone by before Spoony sat gingerly on the side of the bed and grabbed the remote.
“Come on, man. It’s Sunday. Ain’t nothing on but reruns of what we just experienced,” I joked.
“Oh, there’s something else on. Trust me,” Spoony said pointedly.
“You know, you don’t always have to be so damn disrespectful!” Dad started in on Spoony with a bark, settling into a chair on the other side of the room. Cursing right aer the pastor le, tsk, tsk, tsk.
Spoony ignored him and turned the TV on. He nodded up to the screen. “Check it out.”
I looked up at the glowing screen. And there it was. ere I was. On the freakin’ news.
“Again, this is footage that was taken from a smartphone Friday night, of a police officer shoving a young man through the door of Jerry’s Corner Mart on Fourth Street. As you can see, the officer already has the young man subdued. He doesn’t seem to be resisting, but is still slammed to the ground, where the officer proceeds with what looks to be unnecessary force. Jerry’s has experienced a string of robberies, but as of now we are uncertain as to whether or not this was another one of those cases. We attempted to contact Jerry’s management for a comment but to no avail. e Springfield PD has also declined making a statement at this time. What we do know is that the young man in this video is sixteen-year-old Rashad Butler of West Springfield. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more.”
My mother’s mouth gaped. “What? I mean, how . . .”
“Spoony, how’d they get my name?” I stared at the TV in disbelief.
“I told you, li’l bruh, there are always witnesses. Berry kept checking online all night, YouTube, Facebook, everything, and eventually, the video surfaced. So we sent it to the news. Told them who you were.”
At this, my dad lost it. “I mean, seriously, have you lost your damn mind? Are them things on your head affecting your thinking? Rashad doesn’t need this kind of attention, Spoony. He doesn’t need all this craziness. None of us do.”
Spoony jumped to his feet. “You think me sending it to the news is crazy?
e crazy part is what happened to ’Shad. What’s happening all over this country. You of all people should know that!”
My father glared at Spoony and I mean he held it there, as if there was, in fact, some kind of father-son ESP thing, and he was beaming the cuss-out of the century straight to my brother’s brain. en, like he always did, Dad stormed out of the room, followed by Spoony throwing words at his back. “Yeah, run away, as usual.”
“Spoony!” Ma shouted.
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My throat dried. My stomach boiled. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I mean, it was me, but it wasn’t. But . . . it was. I didn’t know how or what to feel. Like, how could I be that boy—a victim. Me. It was just . . . I don’t know . . . surreal. But we kept watching as the story looped. Sunday, aside from being a wack TV show day, is also apparently a slow news day. Every few minutes, the footage of me being crushed under the weight of the cop played, the newsperson talking about the “string of robberies” and not being able to get a comment from Jerry’s management or the police department.
en a picture of me dressed in my ROTC uniform ashed across the screen.
I glared at Spoony. “Where’d they get that?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Man, listen, I had to make sure we controlled as much of the narrative as possible. If I ain’t send that photo in, they would’ve dug all through the Internet for some picture of you looking crazy,” Spoony said. “Trust me, man. I’ve seen it time and time again.”
I was pissed about the photo, and to be honest, a little embarrassed by it, but I knew Spoony had a point. I would’ve hated for them to put up some picture of me hanging with Carlos, posing with my middle ngers up. Even though . . . well . . . never mind.
e story played over and over and over again, like watching a movie in virtual reality where it doesn’t really seem like you—like it’s real—but you can feel every blow, every break. You can taste blood. You can smell the
officer’s breath. And that was hard for me. To see myself, like that. ey kept saying it was a developing story. As more unfolds. As we learn more.
“Cut it off,” I nally said.
“We need to keep up with how it develops,” Spoony said.
“Cut it off, Spoon!” I reached for the remote myself and was instantly reminded that my ribs were broken. “Argkk!” My mother lied off her seat, ready to spring into mommy mode. Spoony quickly handed me the clicker.
“Okay, okay,” he said apologetically. “Take it easy. My bad, man. It’s just . . .”
“I’m ne,” I said hard, shooting down whatever reason he was about to deliver. I turned the TV off. “I just don’t want to watch it no more.”
e truth is, I wasn’t mad at Spoony. I wasn’t. As a matter of fact, he did exactly what I expected him to do. I just didn’t want to keep watching it.
My mother, trying to cut the tension, began digging in her church bag, which was way bigger than her normal bag. e church bag had to be big enough to t her Sunday service survival kit. Her Bible, some candy, and all the sins of our family. “Oh, Rashad, I forgot, I brought the stuff you asked for.”
e stuff I asked for was my phone and phone charger—my mother was given the duffel bag with my ROTC uniform and phone aer I, and it, were released into her custody. But more importantly, I wanted my art supplies— sketchbook and pencils. at’s all I really needed. at was my hospital survival kit.
She plugged my phone in the wall and put the sketchbook and pencils on the roller tray-table next to the chicken tenders I now wasn’t going to be eating. And as soon as my phone had enough juice to power on, the damn dog started barking. Nonstop.
Let me explain.
Me and Carlos had this stupid joke that whenever we were going to a party, we would set our text message alerts to a crazy sound effect. Not for any real reason. I mean, originally it was so we’d always know where each other was, or be able to nd a phone if any of us lost one. But at a party, who would be able to hear it over the music? See, stupid. But we kept doing it because it was our thing. A tradition. Like, good luck, or something.
is week Carlos picked a dog bark, just because he thought it would be funny, or dare I say, cool, to tell a girl that there was something in his pants,
barking. I mean, it was kind of funny. But also, so wack. en he challenged me and said that he could get a girl with that bark line before I could. Truth is, I wasn’t even going to try. But I played along and changed my alert anyway. And now that my phone had enough battery to turn on, the dog was barking crazy.
“Hand me that,” I said to Spoony, who was frowning at all the stupid noise.
I checked my messages.
FRIDAY 4:43 p.m. from Spoony
SHAD YOU STILL COMIN TO GET $$?
FRIDAY 5:13 p.m. from Spoony
??? WTF
FRIDAY 5:21 p.m. from Los YO BE AT MY CRIB BY 7
FRIDAY 5:22 p.m. from Los
AND WATCH HOW MANY GIRLS I GET WITH THAT DOG JOKE
FRIDAY 5:23 p.m. from Los
U KNO GIRLS LUV DOGS DUDE!
FRIDAY 5:35 p.m. from Los WHERE U AT?
FRIDAY 5:51 p.m. from Spoony WHERE U AT?
FRIDAY 6:05 p.m. from Ma
HEY, SPOONY AND CARLOS CALLED HERE LOOKING FOR YOU. I CALLED BUT IT KEEPS GOING TO VOICE MAIL. CALL ME.
FRIDAY 7:00 p.m. from Los
DUDE UR KILLIN’ ME. WHERE THE FUCK ARE U?
FRIDAY 8:47 p.m. from Los
I DONT KNOW WHERE U ARE BUT IM OUT. IF U CAUGHT A RIDE WITH SOMEBODY ELSE YOU COULDA TOLD ME BRO. DAMN. UNLESS YOU WITH A GIRL. THEN I UNDERSTAND. BUT I KNO U NOT. I’LL CATCH YOU AT THE PARTY. BRING YOUR BEST GAME.
FRIDAY 10:03 p.m. from English
SHAD YOU HERE? ME SHAN AND LOS LOOKIN FOR U. LOS TRIPPIN! LMAO
SATURDAY 1:01 p.m. from Los
WHERE WERE U? OF COURSE IT GOT SHUT DOWN. SHIT WAS BANANAS!
SATURDAY 4:26 p.m. from Shan
YO, LOS IS TIRED OF TEXTN U SO NOW IM TEXTN U. U GOOD?
SATURDAY 4:41 p.m. from Shan WHERE ARE U?
SATURDAY 4:49 p.m. from Los
ENGLISH JUST TOLD ME BERRY SAID U IN THE HOSPITAL!
SATURDAY 4:51 p.m. from English U IN THE HOSPITAL? WTF
SATURDAY 4:52 p.m. from Shan
YO YOU IN THE HOSPITAL BRO? ENGLISH SAID SOME SHIT ABOUT THE COPS?
SUNDAY 12:11 p.m. from Los
YO YOU ON THE NEWS! CRAZY!
Crazy, indeed. I scrolled through, reading them all before sending quick responses to the three of them—Shannon, Carlos, and English—letting them know that I was okay. Well, I said a little more than that.
SUNDAY 12:17 p.m. to Los, Shan, English
IM GOOD FELLAS. GOT ACCUSED OF STEALING FROM JERRY’S AND THE COP ON DUTY ROUGHED ME UP. BROKE MY NOSE AND SOME RIBS. BUT IM OK.
“I see he’s got his lifeline back,” Dad grumbled, coming back into the room, looking calmer than when he’d le.
“Yeah, so he should be back to normal in no time,” Ma said, trying to be positive.
“I don’t know about that,” Spoony muttered. ankfully my father didn’t hear him, because I wasn’t sure I could take another blowup. So I turned the TV back on quick. A risk, I know. But I had to do something as it looked like my folks were settling in for the aernoon. And guess what saved the day? Football.
“Ah. Football,” Spoony said. “Another one of America’s favorite pastimes, besides baseball, and beating the brains out of—”
“Chill,” I ordered. Honestly, I just wanted to take it easy for the rest of the day. I didn’t want to hear Spoony preach about how hard it is to be black, or my father preach about how young people lack pride and integrity, making us easy targets. I didn’t even want to think about the preacher preaching about how God is in control of it all, or my mother, my sweet, sweet mother caught in the middle of it all. e referee who blows the whistle but is way too nice to call foul on anyone. at’s her. She just wants me to be okay.
at’s it and that’s all. So if football was going to be the thing that took our minds off the mess for at least a few hours, then ne with me. Let’s cheer and scream and cuss at the TV. Not at each other.
When the game was over, my family le. And at that moment, I thanked the God I hoped was there. Back to an empty, peaceful room. Just me and my spirometer, which, by the way, was also pretty painful to use. I mean, to inhale slowly felt like sucking in shards of glass. Yeah—not awesome.
Aer the game, the news came on. e rst story was about a kid accused of stealing from a store on the West Side. e footage of me being thrown to the ground. Again. Again. Again. My picture. My name. Again. And now, a new development. e officer’s name. Officer Paul Galluzzo. And his face on the screen.
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I stayed home with Willy Saturday night and we watched World War Z and then had a Mario Kart marathon until I felt bug-eyed and useless. It was good to escape into his world for a while, because aer we walked Jill home, I was still stuck in my head and it wasn’t fair to Willy. But Sunday was different. Ma came home, napped for a couple hours, made her marshmallow pie that everyone in the world loves but me—because marshmallows taste like little chunks of chewy soap!—and then the three of us went down the block to the Galluzzos’.
We arrived late; the house was already packed. A couple of the younger neighborhood kids sat on the stairs that overlooked the front hall and the living room. Each one had a hyper-colored plastic gun, and they pretended to shoot the group of guys in the living room watching the Pats play the Broncos on TV. It was the aernoon game, but it was already in the second quarter. ey were screaming at what should have been a pass interference that hadn’t been called.
“Boys!” Ma yelled into the room.
I almost laughed at how quickly the roomful of grown men snapped to attention when they heard Ma.
A moment passed, then Guzzo’s dad shouted back, “Marshmallow pie!” Everyone cheered.
“Nice to see you too, Richie,” Ma said. We walked into the kitchen and she put the pie on the counter, Mrs. Galluzzo hugging us all hello. Out the window, I could see the small backyard, the porch. It was packed too. It looked like half the neighborhood had shown up. Willy scrambled off to nd some kids his age down in the basement, where they usually played video games, and I headed outside. But I gotta admit, I felt weird. e Galluzzos’ had always been my second home, but as I moved through the kitchen
toward the back porch, I felt oddly slow and awkward, like I was wading through a pool of water.
As soon as I stepped onto the porch I saw him. Paul. My stomach clenched. He was ipping burgers at the grill. A red bandanna tied up over his head. Ratty T-shirt, even in this cool November weather. Guzzo stood right beside him. Two brothers side by side. Man, I’d never really taken in how huge they were, like, they could have squatted, pitched forward, and put their knuckles in the dirt, and they’d be the linemen I just saw wearing Pats and Broncos uniforms. ey waved, and I waved back, but was instantly wondering if Guzzo had said anything to his brother about the other night. It bugged me not knowing. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to keep quiet about it, or if I was supposed to head over and slap Paul on the back. It did feel like this party was thrown together all of a sudden for him. Why else were we all there? Paul didn’t live here, and yet he stood there at the grill, like he was at the helm or something, and the whole party radiated out in front of him.
Paul prodded the burgers and I saw that Jill was on the porch too. She was sitting on the railing, leaning against the post in the corner, watching Dwyer shoot hoops in the driveway. I joined her in the corner, sitting on the other railing, facing her and the yard behind her, where I could see Guzzo nudging Paul and pointing at me.
“You think you all really have a chance this year?” Jill asked me, nodding toward the basketball.
Of course she’d go there rst—that was all anybody wanted to talk about. “Everyone else does,” I said.
She turned and looked at me. “at make you nervous?”
“I keep hearing this voice in the back of my head,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound like a frigging crazy person. “It’s pushing me, you know, like, ‘go, go, go,’ but what I really hear is ‘Don’t fuck it up.’”
“Coach putting pressure on you?” she asked.
at wasn’t even half of it! Coach Carney and his plans were drilled into me. We’d had our warm-up practices the week before. e rst serious preseason practices began on Monday. Everyone knew we had a great team this year. People were even talking about it in the press, wanting to know how far we’d go—semi nals, nals—but all we cared about was who was
going to be a starter. at’s who the scouts would focus on—the guys with serious playing time.
But it wasn’t the team that bothered me, it was the press. I’d already seen Coach Carney doing interviews le and right, getting all excited like some clown at the carnival. I was sure we’d see more of them too. It had been a long time since we’d had a team with a shot at being ranked number one in the state, and even though there were only een players, three coaches, and a part-time trainer, it felt like we were chasing the trophy for thousands of people.
But right then, I decided I was only going to concentrate on one person. Jill. So I just said, “Not too bad,” and she nodded, and it was kind of impossible not watch the light shi in the highlights in her hair. ere were other people on the porch, but nobody was listening to us.
“So here’s something, I don’t know, weird. You know how the cops came to the party the other night?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Well, no one got busted. e cops broke up the party, shook a few guys down, looking for pot, but not nding any, and they just made me send everyone away, made me stand there in the hall and watch everyone leave.
ey made me call my parents. It was so embarrassing.” She leaned in closer. “But what was worse, they stood there in the front hall looking at me, waiting for my folks to come home, aer everyone else had le, and one of them, I don’t even know his name, but he obviously knew I was Paulie’s cousin, he kept looking at me like he was disgusted. Finally, he pointed at me and said, ‘Don’t fuck this up for your family.’”
“Did you get in any kind of trouble?”
“No,” Jill said skeptically. “I thought he was going to call Paulie, but he didn’t. He just said that, waited for my parents, and when they got home, he le. Nothing else happened. It was just . . . like I said, weird.”
Mr. Galluzzo pushed open the screen door to yell out to Paul. “Hey, it’s almost halime. We got a roomful o’ guys gonna come running out here for burgers soon.”
Just his dad shouting to him seemed to pull the whole yard closer— pulled me closer to him. I looked past Jill’s shoulder to Guzzo and Paul. ey were still at the grill, Paul with the spatula in one hand. “I get a day off and all you do is put me to work?” he yelled back to his dad. He laughed. “Don’t
worry,” he said, raising his hand in the air, the spatula his scepter, “I got this.” Paul was famous for his burgers. He made them himself and even while the burger itself was still juicy, the bits of onion inside stayed nice and crunchy.
ey were my favorite, better than anything Ma ever made. Mr. Galluzzo poked his head back in the house to tell folks that the burgers would be ready in a minute, but someone shouted to him to come see some play Brady made, and he le the porch and let the door slam behind him.
“I think I know why they couldn’t call Paul,” I said to Jill.
She gave me a go on look, then added carefully, “Yeah, I saw something on the news.”
“I saw it happen.”
“What?” Jill bent forward and grabbed my wrist.
I could hear the rubbery echo of the ball pounding in the driveway, the chatter from some of the neighbors in the backyard, the rattle of a bag lled with bottles being moved through the kitchen inside. I shied closer to her on the railing. “Me and Guzzo and Dwyer were at Jerry’s before your party,” I told her, voice low. “I saw it. I saw Paul and that kid.”
“It was Rashad, Quinn. at’s who Paul arrested. You know Rashad. He goes to our school. He’s tight with English and those guys.”
“Fuck,” I said. In fact, as soon as she said it, I could picture him, hanging with English in the halls. “ROTC dude, right? Shit.”
I felt like such an ass. I’d quickly convinced myself I had no idea who that kid with Paul was that night. And yeah, there were like a thousand kids in each grade at school, or whatever, but I did know him. Or know of him, really. I’d seen him—Rashad—in that uniform, and it’d made me think of my dad wearing his own at college. How my dad had looked proud in all those pictures.
Jill cocked her head in disbelief. “You all just watched it go down?” “Guzzo and Dwyer were waiting in the alley. But I was there.” I glanced
around, all paranoid, making my voice even lower. “It was ugly. I don’t know what Rashad did, but Paul kicked the shit out of him.”
“I heard someone talking about it earlier,” Jill said, scooching closer. “ey said he was resisting arrest.”
“I guess.”
“Did Paul, like, see you, or anything?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know,” I said. It felt weird to talk about any of this, as if by mentioning it at all, I was betraying Paul. I looked over to him and Guzzo as if reading their faces might tell me what they were thinking, or whether Guzzo had said anything.
“I don’t think he saw me,” I said, turning back to Jill. “I doubt it.” “Did Guzzo?”
“What?” “Tell him?”
We were hunched so close together at this point that when I heard my name shouted out, it felt like someone dropped an ice cube down the back of my shirt.
“Hey, Quinn!” It was Paul. “Why don’t you quit hitting on my cousin and come help me serve these burgers?”
I froze. e timing scared the hell out of me—it was as if he knew I’d just been talking about him! Jill spun around and yelled, “Go ip your own burgers, Paul!”
“What does that even mean?” he asked. He and Guzzo laughed.
“I don’t know,” Jill said, turning back to me. “But better than saying nothing.”
Jill never took shit, never let anyone get the jump on her. I always gured it was because she was used to being the only girl in a huge group of guys— there were eleven Galluzzo cousins, and she was the only female—and she just wouldn’t let them tease her, or if they did, she decided long ago that she sure as hell was going to make it through the gauntlet regardless.
I, however, wasn’t as used to it. In fact, I must have looked stupid with nerves because her eyes stayed glued to me as I got up and told her I’d catch up with her later, and as I turned, she smiled and I felt the air leave me in a rush, because I wanted to take her by the hand and get the hell out of there, but I couldn’t.
“Quinn!” Paul again.
en Guzzo. “Quinn!”
en Guzzo began a slow clap, and he and Paul chanted my name louder and louder as I crossed over to them, and I was sure even folks in the neighborhood who weren’t already at the party could hear them.
“Dude,” Guzzo said when I reached them. “You have no chance.” “Like you know anything about chances.”
“Damn right,” Paul said, grinning at me. “Shut up,” Guzzo said.
Paul ignored him. He had a bottle of beer in his le hand, and he held out that st to bump knuckles with me, and I did. “What’s up, Quinn?” he said. “You don’t say hello anymore?” He took a swig of beer and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his T-shirt. at’s when I noticed his right st was stuffed into a bucket of ice water on the grill shelf beside him, all casual—frigging hell, he had scabs all over his knuckles—like nursing his wounds from Friday night right there in front of everybody at the BBQ was NBD!
“What’s up?” I asked.
He tossed the empty beer bottle into a cardboard box near his feet. “Hold this,” he said, handing me a faded plastic tray. He squeezed the juice from a couple of burgers with the spatula, sending ames up and around them. “I know the O’Rileys like ’em dried out,” he said. He pressed again, charring them more. “Make sure they know which ones are theirs.” He pulled his swollen st from the ice bucket, exed the ngers, then stuck it back in. “Seriously, man,” he said to me. “Were you ever going to get your ass over here?”
“It’s a party,” I said. “People mingle. I just got here. Jesus. What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing’s the matter,” Guzzo snapped. “Why are you getting defensive?” “What are you talking about?”
“Look,” Paul interrupted. He cut the air between us with the spatula, a drop of grease landed on my T-shirt. He pulled his wet hand from the bucket and pinched at the spot, pulling off as much of the grease as he could. “What the hell’s the matter with you two?”
“Nothing,” I said, but I wasn’t sure. I kept trying to read his face or Guzzo’s for some sign. Still not knowing if Guzzo had said anything to Paul was starting to eat away at me. Guzzo wouldn’t meet my eyes.
But Paul did. “Listen,” he said. “I’m not kidding. You guys need to have a mind meld or something. If you keep bitching at each other like this into the season, you aren’t going to play well. You’re going to suck. So strap on a pair and get your shit together.”
I nodded and Guzzo did too. It was always like that—Paul’d give us marching orders and we’d march—especially with basketball.
“Way I see it,” Paul continued, “if the whole team moves off the ball more, and if you can get English to give it up more, you all have a real shot. Everyone else relies on two, maybe three players at most. You’ve got eight or nine solid players, right?”
“English’s been working on his range,” I said. “He’s going to shoot all he can. He’s going to break his record from last year.”
“You all should,” Paul said. “at’s my point.”
He started scraping burgers up off the grill and dropping them on the platter.
“ey better have the xings ready in the kitchen,” Guzzo said.
“Why don’t you go nd out?” Paul said. Guzzo was about to protest, but Paul spoke over him. “Seriously,” Paul said before shouting out, “Burgers up!”
Guzzo jogged ahead while I waited for Paul to slide the last burgers onto the pile. As soon as he did, I started to follow Guzzo, but Paul grabbed my arm. His blue eyes were red-rimmed and tired. “I’m going to have a few days free,” he told me. “We should work on your footwork. We’ll get a little in today. You come by aer practice tomorrow too. I’ll be here.”
“Yeah,” I said. But he kept holding my arm longer than he needed to until it was obviously awkward.
“You all right?” he asked. “You seem a little uptight. What’s up?” “Burgers,” I said, way too chipper. “Nobody wants them cold.”
I could feel his eyes on me as I carried them up to the kitchen, and I could still feel the pressure of his ngertips like a ring around my elbow. I made a point of eating in the living room with the guys watching the game.
e game was a good distraction, a way to pay attention to something else, to try to take my mind off Paul squinting at me, his gauging me as he’d been talking to me at the grill. He’d been all smiles, all business-as-usual, and despite the swollen hand in the bucket and the shredded knuckles, he’d been waving to people across the yard like there wasn’t a damn thing on his mind other than serving them their burgers.
And while I kept seeing Paul’s Popeye arms at the back of Rashad’s neck, nobody else seemed to be wondering about why the Galluzzos felt the sudden need for a party. No one else was talking about the fact that Paul was in the news. Instead they all yelled at the TV when the Pats blew a twenty-
ve-yard pass with another ag for holding. ey yelled again aer the Pats
recovered from a sack and, on third and eighteen, scored a touchdown. I yelled along with them. It was just easier. Guzzo came in and out of the room a few times, but it felt like he was keeping his distance from me, hovering around his brother, when Paul would come in to check on the score.
But the game wasn’t distracting enough—when I tried to swallow the burger down, it felt like I had an animal trying to crawl up and out of my throat, so aer a while, I wandered into the kitchen, wondering where Jill was, and I found her there ghting with her mom in the corner. ey were going at it about Friday night’s party, right there in front of everyone.
“I’m not kidding, young lady!” Jill’s mom said, cramping a cigarette between two ngers and waving it in front of Jill. “is is serious. e Rowells are still screaming at us because of the last party. is is it; you’ve really blown it this time.”
“All right. All right. I got it,” Jill said, standing like she was ready to ght or run, whichever she needed. “Can we not do this here?”
Her mother leaned back and drew a big breath, as if to collect herself. “And one more thing,” she nally said. “You can’t expect Paulie to just be there to save you all the time.”
“Oh my God. I don’t.”
Mrs. Galluzzo had been haleartedly rinsing off a few of the now empty platters with my mother, but when she heard Paul’s name, she swung around.
“You do,” Jill’s mom continued. “And he’s got bigger and better things to worry about than his little cousins screwing around.”
“You’re right—he does,” Jill said under her breath, but everyone heard her.
“Hey,” Mrs. Galluzzo interrupted, her face going all tight and pissed. “You watch what you say next.” She stepped away from the sink. Everyone else in the room went quiet, and Jill had gone deep red. “You might have a little respect. Today. In my house. To-day!” e platter in her hand shook, and my mother put a hand on Mrs. Galluzzo’s back to calm her.
“at’s what I was trying to say,” Jill’s mom said, stepping closer to Mrs. Galluzzo. “I mean, you know. He has an important job.” She fumbled for more words, then turned back to Jill. “See what you’ve done? You apologize to your aunt Rita right now.”
“I’m sorry,” Jill said automatically.
“You’re always sorry,” her mom added bitterly, before sucking on her cigarette.
“Honey,” Mrs. Galluzzo said to Jill, her face soening. “Paul has a hard job, and sometimes he has to make tough decisions. All I’m saying is, please respect that, and who he is.”
“Yes,” Jill said, but she wasn’t looking at Mrs. Galluzzo. She was looking at Paul, Paul who was looking in through the screen door.
“anks, Ma,” he said.
“Oh, Paulie,” Mrs. Galluzzo said, whirling around. She looked like she wanted to say more, but didn’t have the words for it.
And as we were all waiting to hear what she would say next, we heard something else. e TV. It was turned up so loud for the game that when there was a break, and the news anchor’s voice set up the teaser for the evening news, we all heard it in the kitchen: “Tune in tonight for the latest updates to this developing story as our experts analyze the shocking video released today of Officer Paul Galluzzo’s arrest of Rashad Butler.”
Suddenly the TV went mute. Someone in the living room must have
found the remote, but it didn’t matter. It was too late.
e kitchen was so silent I could hear my pulse in my ears, pumping red- hot burning blood into my face. I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t move. But I wasn’t alone—no one did.
We might have stayed like that, frozen in time, but Mr. Galluzzo busted into the kitchen from the living room in a kind of frantic waddle, holding a spread of dirty paper plates in his hands. “Hey, m-maybe we need to get some m-more burgers going,” he sort of stuttered, more nervous than I’d ever heard him, but he stopped short as he looked around the shocked crowd in the kitchen.
“Well, I’m not making any more right now,” Paul said from the doorway, staring back at his dad.
“Yeah. No. Yes. Of course. I just mean—”
“Look,” Paul told his dad, interrupting him. “Take it easy.” He sighed, but then he lied his head and glanced around the kitchen through the screen door. “Let’s just say it. ere’s going to be more of this press. It’s going to look ugly. But everything’s going to be just ne. is just comes with the job. I’ll be all right.” He remained on the porch, but he leaned forward, his thick
arms going up on either side of the door frame. “But yeah,” he added. “I do need everyone to stick by me. Especially family.”
Everyone immediately started saying how they supported him, and he nodded and smiled, but was looking past all the women to me. “You too, Quinn,” he added. “Right now, I need your ass out here on the court for a little two-on-two.”
I was so freaked out it was a frigging relief just to be given an order. “Okay,” I said dumbly, and I swear there were a few faces in the room,
including my own ma’s and Mrs. Galluzzo’s, who looked at me with a swelling pride, as if he’d just asked me to saddle up and join the posse on the hunt for some ruthless criminal, and I was putting down my farming tools to go join the greater cause. I passed Jill on my way to the porch, and I tapped her elbow as I walked by. She could hold her own better than anyone I knew, but I wanted to let her know she wasn’t alone, because at least Jill was strong enough to actually say what I was only thinking. Maybe everyone else at the party was nervous for Paul, but I was nervous about him— especially as I followed him down to the driveway.
“Two-on-two,” Paul said. “All rebounds are offensive. Aer a basket, you gotta make three passes before you take another shot. Got it?” He waved his thumb between Guzzo and himself. “Galluzzos against you two dumbasses.”
e dumbasses were me and Dwyer, of course.
ey gave us the ball rst, and from the rst drive, I knew it was going to be a physical game. I didn’t shoot. I just dribbled and kept Paul slapping at my forearm and side. He’d taught me to dribble, a little too well. Guzzo’s too big to try to take him to the hoop, but he took my bait, so I got the lane plugged with both Galluzzos and Dwyer popped out back by the top of the key. I got him the ball with a no-look pass and he made the shot.
“Get your ass in action,” Paul told his brother.
is went on for a while and the game got rougher. e score stayed close, but none of us could hope to out-rebound Guzzo, so they made more points off our missed shots than they could make on their own. eir driveway is narrow, and the rest of the time, Paul and Guzzo bumped us until we were backed up against one of the houses on either side. But while Paul’s arms were as thick as my neck, I beat him off the dribble, and twice in a row I got a foot around him and nailed fadeaway jumpers Guzzo couldn’t block.
“What? You think you’re English now?” Paul said to me. “No.”
Paul put his hand in the air for us to stop. “Wait. Was that even three passes?”
“Yeah,” Dwyer said.
“You losing count,” I laughed, trying to keep it light.
But Paul didn’t. We checked, and he came up all over me. If we’d had the full space of a real court, this would have made it easier to get around him, but in the driveway, he just kept bumping me back and back, until I was almost out to the sidewalk. e driveway sloped down, and I was in the street when Paul nally eased up.
“Where the hell are you going?”
I didn’t answer. I just chucked the ball from the street. It wasn’t a real shot, and I didn’t think I could actually make it. I just wanted to watch it hit the rim and see what would happen. It hit the top of the backboard and bounced into the yard near the grill.
“What’s up with that?” Guzzo yelled.
“You got to be tougher than that,” Paul said to me. “You can’t give up. I’m just trying to help you, Quinn. You got to keep your head in the game and nowhere else. You got that?”
“Man,” I said. “is isn’t a game.” I brushed past him and walked up the driveway. “I’m done,” I said.
Dwyer and Guzzo started to complain, but Paul’s voice rose up over theirs. “I’m just trying to help you, Quinn. Like I always have. You remember that.”
How could I forget? I collected the ball from the yard and tossed it to Dwyer, then went inside. I said a quick good-bye to Mrs. Galluzzo and told Ma I’d meet her at home, then le through the front door, taking the steps two at a time, half expecting Paul to be there, blocking my path, reminding me how many times he’d been the one working with me in that same driveway, the one cheering me on from the stands of my middle school, JV, and now varsity basketball games. e one who taught me how to angle the blade beneath my chin when I shaved. But he wasn’t there. He was back under the basket with Guzzo and Dwyer, showing Dwyer how to get a leg around a man bigger than him—the same move I’d used on him moments before.
