‌Monday

 

 

‌If I thought walking away from Paul would make me not think about him, or what he had done for me over the years, I was an idiot. At school on Monday it felt like everyone was talking about Rashad. Who’d seen him? What was going on? Was he coming back to school? How bad was he hurt? Was he gonna die? When you go to a school as large as ours, it’s impossible to know everyone, but even in a school as large as ours you de nitely know someone who was friends with Rashad. And of course, it worked the other way around too—especially when the cop involved was the older brother of your oldest friend.

But what was worse was that everyone—everyone—was talking about the video. e clip that had made the rounds on the Sunday morning news

shows, and then went viral. e video everyone had seen but me, because there was no way in hell I was putting myself back there, back at Friday night, watching that happen all over again.

I’d gotten texts all night from Dwyer and a couple of other guys on the team, other kids too, but I’d ignored them. I’d clicked my phone to mute. No way was I watching that video. I wanted to erase the whole damn memory from my mind, but I couldn’t because it was like the whole damn high school had been there on the street with me—everybody had seen it.

It was nonstop Rashad buzz all day, and by fourth period, as I was making my way up the stairs and Nam yelled to me from behind, I already knew what he was going to say.

“Quinn, man. Wait up.” Nam was another one of the guys on the team, our point guard when English needed a break, and he dodged around a few people to catch up with me. “Yo, all that shit that went down with Rashad on Friday, right?”

“Yeah, man.”

ere were a couple of other people in the stairwell watching us.

Listening.

“e cop, that’s Guzzo’s brother, right?” “Yeah, man.”

“But like, that’s got to be weird, right?” “Yeah, man. It is. It’s weird.”

“I mean, you wonder why he did it?”

“What? Steal something from Jerry’s? Are you kidding?”

“No, man. Not Rashad. I’m talking about Paul Galluzzo. Why’d he do it?” We pushed open the doors to the third oor and walked down to trig. A couple guys I’d seen at Jill’s on Friday nodded to me. I nodded back. “What

the hell, Nam?” I said. “He was just doing his job.” “You kidding? You’ve seen the video, right?” “No.”

“What? You kidding?”

We walked into trig together and sat down in our usual seats. Mrs. Erlich sat us in alphabetical order, which put me in the last row, but Nam sat in the middle, next to English. I ashed a peace sign to English and he nodded, but only brie y, then he and Nam started talking quietly. Nam looked back at me once, and I was certain they were talking about Paul and Guzzo, and therefore me too.

Why did it feel like everyone was looking at me? Wanting answers to all those questions from me? Plus, what the hell was wrong with me, anyway? Why was I the paranoid one? Shouldn’t they all be looking at Guzzo instead?

en it hit me. e video! Was I on it? Had anyone seen me on it? at must have been why everyone was staring at me like I had four heads. ey

were looking at the dude who just stood there like a pants-shitting ve-year- old watching everything happen in front of him instead of doing anything about it.

Aer class, Nam and English busted out before I could catch up with them, and I was sure it was going to be a long day—and practice was going to suck. If nothing else, English and I would usually swap a few words about a party or a game from the weekend, something, anything, but today he was clearly avoiding me. I made my way downstairs, hoping not to get caught in another conversation I didn’t want to have, and when I pushed open the

door to the second oor, I was surprised to see Jill by my locker. She was waiting for me! And she was about the only person I wanted to talk to.

“Hey,” she said as we hugged hello. “Do you want to grab lunch?”

Of course, I’d have had lunch with her any damn day and every damn day, and aer we both dumped our books in my locker, we skipped the cafeteria and went around the corner to Burger King.

“Back-to-back burger days,” I said when we found some seats.

“Salad. Seriously. Does anybody actually like it? Multicolored Styrofoam.

No thanks. I’m a burger girl.”

“Hell yeah,” I said. “But these aren’t half as good as Paul’s.”

“Yeah . . .” She trailed off and we were quiet for a moment while we ate.

But then she nally got to it. “Have you seen Guzzo today?”

“No.” In fact, honestly, I’d actually been avoiding him. We weren’t in any classes together, so we usually found each other by one of our lockers or in the hallway to the gym. But not today. Of course, he hadn’t come looking for me, either.

“Whatever. Aer you le yesterday, everybody was talking about how it was unfair the media had to make such a big deal of the situation. ‘How are cops supposed to do their jobs if they’re always under the microscope?’ Rita kept saying. ‘It’s just backward,’ she kept saying. She might be my aunt, but it bugged the hell out of me.”

“Yeah, but then look at today,” I said, more mopey than I wanted to sound. “All anybody’s talking about is that stupid video.”

“Well, duh.”

I didn’t say anything. I just took another bite of my burger. Jill watched me as I chewed.

“What?” I nally said with my cheek still full. “You haven’t watched it, have you?”

I took a sip of soda. “No,” I admitted.

“You should,” she said. She sounded almost a little pissed at me.

“I was there. I don’t want to see it again,” I argued. “I just keep thinking about how extreme it all was. I mean, I don’t know what Rashad did, but whatever it was, I can’t imagine he needed to get beaten like that. I mean, as far as I know, he’s a guy looking to stay out of trouble.”

“Yeah. Exactly.” She paused. “And did you hear?” she asked with more concern. “He has internal bleeding.”

“Jesus.”

“He has to stay in the hospital for like days.” “Jesus.”

“Yeah. It’s awful.” I was silent again.

“And you were there,” Jill continued. “I can’t believe you were there.”

“I was,” I said. But as I was freaking out that she might have been saying she’d seen me in the video, my pulse suddenly quickened because—oh, my God!—I’d been there with Paul before. Or, sort of been there. Years and years ago. How had I forgotten about that? Paul, with another kid. Marc Blair. “Oh, Jesus,” I said.

Jill nibbled on a fry and waited for me to continue.

“It was almost like that time he kicked the shit out of Marc Blair,” I said. “I mean, that was different. But this thing with Rashad. at thing with Marc. ey’re like side by side in my mind right now.”

“Oh my God,” she said, scrunching up her nose. “I forgot all about that.

Paulie killed that guy.”

Not literally. But it was bad. I hadn’t actually seen it. But I’d seen the aermath. And here’s the thing—Paul’d done it for me. I felt sick.

Jill tapped the empty plastic Coke bottle against the table nervously. “You think those are the only two times?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it’s Paul. is is the same guy I’ve seen carrying my mom up the front steps, for God’s sake.” I was thinking about that time Ma got trashed because it was her rst wedding anniversary without Dad. Paul had been so gentle. He’d taken the frigging day off just so she didn’t have to spend it alone. “She was tanked,” I said to Jill. “And he helped her home. I remember him putting her down on the couch and pulling the afghan over her.”

“Paulie’s always been the good guy.” “at’s what I want to think.”

“at’s what my mother kept saying last night aer the party, aer she was done yelling at me for being the world’s most ungrateful daughter for the hundredth time. ‘Paulie’s the good guy,’ she kept saying. ‘Why is anyone giving him a hard time?’ But people are giving him a hard time. I don’t know. I was watching some of the news online. It’s kind of hard not to wonder. I mean, I wasn’t there, but . . .”

“You’ve seen the video,” I said, at. e fear that I was in it kept buzzing through me.

“Yeah, Quinn. Everyone’s seen it. It’s crazy.”

I swallowed hard and nally asked. “Am I in it?”

“What?” Jill said. “No. You must have been too far away. Different angle. I don’t know.”

I couldn’t help it. I sighed with relief. “Jesus. ank God.” Jill narrowed her eyes. “is is not about you, dumbass.”

I took a deep breath through my nose and just held it. She was right. I’d been all worked up about whether or not I was on the video. Rashad was in the video and he was in the hospital. Paul was in the video too. Where was he now? Sitting at his parents’ house watching all the news about himself on TV? Was he hiding?

“Look,” Jill went on. “I get why you’re worried, but when you see it, well, it’s just crazy.” She hesitated. “I feel so stupid saying this, but I don’t know. It just changes things for me.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly.

We nished the last few fries and had to get back to school. But before we got up, I reached across the table and put my hand on Jill’s. “I know this sounds weird, but I kind of feel like you are the only person I can talk to about this right now.”

She turned her hand beneath mine and squeezed back. “I know. Me too.” As we walked back to school, we tried to joke a little about the party on

Friday, but we both knew we were just putting on a show and really thinking about Paul and Rashad. Because as Jill was telling me about the guy who spent half the night puking in the upstairs bathroom because he’d done a keg stand right before I’d gotten there, I was thinking more about how I spent all this time playing basketball with a bunch of guys who were friends with Rashad and I didn’t know jack-all about him—which made me feel all kinds of asshole-ish.

When we got back, Jill had to rush to get all the way over to the physics lab, but I had econ with Ms. Webber, so I took my time at my locker, playing with my phone, but really, now I was stuck on that time Paul had beaten up Marc Blair.

When I’d been much younger, and I rst started going down to Gooch on my own, there was a guy who lived right next to the park who was a few

years older than me, Marc Blair. Compared to my scrawny ass, he was all muscle—if it didn’t get too cold in the winter, he’d have played shirtless year round, a pit bull charging up and down the court on these squat, beefy legs. I was too young, and he never let me onto the court when he was there. I hated it. He didn’t like me, or any of the kids younger than him either, but he didn’t like me in particular, because while most kids my age played mute around him, I sometimes mouthed off. Finally, aer I’d called him an asshole one too many times, he grabbed me by the collar, dragged me across the court to the chain-link fence, and pressed my face into the wire so hard it le a crisscross hatch of red indented on my cheek and forehead. When he let go, I cried on the spot like a goddamn baby, falling to my hands and knees. He stood back and pointed at me, and I was so scared I puked near the base of the fence. And aer that, I was always afraid of him. And I began to imagine what it would be like for Paul to beat him up. Take care of him. I thought about it with a kind of freaky hunger. Paul wasn’t a cop yet. He was just the tough guy who took me under his wing. I wanted to see Marc pay. I wanted him to feel a kind of pain that matched my own level of fear whenever I was near him.

And that was the part that was tripping me up now. e fear. I was making leaps in my mind now, but once I’d hung on that word “fear,” I remembered the time I was a freshman and I saw a senior walking down the hall. He was black, and I didn’t know his name, but he was wearing an old- school Public Enemy T-shirt: Fear of a Black Planet—the bull’s-eye logo poised to eclipse the Earth. Fear. e T-shirt was right. Like the way Mrs. Cambi talked about our neighborhood now. Fear. Like the way Ma told me to cross the street to the other side of the sidewalk if I was walking home alone and I saw a group of guys walking toward me. Guys. at wasn’t the word she used. ugs. Fear of thugs. Just like what some people were saying on the news. Rashad looked like a thug.

“ug” was the word Paul used when I told him about Marc. It was two

weeks aer Marc had pushed me into the fence. I nally told Paul, and Paul found him later that same night. Beat the hell out of him. Paul was banged up too, but he said he’d won. Fucking thug won’t bug you anymore, for real.

I never found out if Marc had needed to go to the hospital that night. But if Paul’s bruises and split lip were the signs of the winner, I had to image that Marc was a whole lot worse.

And now, six years later, I felt as sick as if it had happened yesterday: I was the one who could have put another kid in the hospital all those years ago, just by asking someone to take care of him. It was no different than ordering a hit. Didn’t that make me a thug? Christ sake, I’d wanted to see someone else’s blood. To see him bleed.

And so I was thinking about all that when I got to Ms. Webber’s class. Aer she got us settled, she explained that she had a change of plan for the day. We’d get back to our study of marginal utility another day. Today we were just going to sit quietly and work on a practice section for the next test. Quietly. She emphasized that. Quietly. But as we got started, it was all too easy to see Ms. Webber twitching, smiling like she was reminding herself to, and anybody could tell she was nervous and just wanted a silent and nonteaching day of class.

Only about ve minutes into it, though, Molly leaned over and asked EJ if he’d been to Jill’s party. Before he even had time to answer, Ms. Webber looked up from the pile of papers she was grading and pointed to EJ.

“Every time, EJ,” she said abruptly, so loud that she seemed to surprise even herself.

“What?” he asked.

“You.” Ms. Webber’s eyes narrowed and she spoke calmly, maybe too calmly. “Every time I look up and see something going on, some distraction.

ere you are. Right at the center of it. Do you need to take your test out in the hall?”

“Guilty until proven innocent, huh?” He hesitated, but not for long. Nobody likes to be spoken to like he’s a damn child, least of all EJ, and he wasn’t the kind of kid to stay quiet. He didn’t miss a beat. “Just like Rashad.”

I swear I could hear Ms. Webber suck in her breath as she tried to gure out how to answer.

It was awkward for all of us. Especially because EJ was black, just like Rashad, and Ms. Webber was white, just like Paul—like me and like Molly, too. I think EJ was hoping someone else would pipe up, but none of us did, not the white kids, nor any of the kids of color. We all just le him hanging out there until nally Ms. Webber found something she wanted to say.

“at’s not— It’s not— You just can’t go con ating things like that.” en she pointed to the copy of the test she had in front of her. “is is for your bene t,” she squeaked. “We don’t have time to talk about this right now.” She

took another breath. “I’m sorry. I know there’s a student from our school who is in the hospital today, but we don’t have the full story. What I do know is that if we are going to be ready for these exams, we have to get down to business today. ey won’t wait for us. We have to be ready.”

“Rashad,” Molly said. “What?” Ms. Webber said. EJ looked at her, surprised.

“Rashad,” Molly said louder. “at’s his name. Rashad’s in the hospital.” “I know that,” Ms. Webber said.

“Yeah, well, that student in the hospital isn’t here to take any practice tests today because he’s, you know, beaten to hell,” EJ said.

“Rashad,” Molly said again.

EJ smiled. “Rashad,” he said louder.

ey both said the name again and looked around for others to join them, but the rest of us sat there in shock.

“All right, both of you, outside now!” Ms. Webber yelled. She was ushed straight down to the base of her neck. She stood up and walked EJ and Molly to the hall, and as they le they kept saying “Rashad, Rashad,” until I couldn’t hear them anymore.

And before Ms. Webber came back in, someone in the back whispered, “Paul Galluzzo.”

e other damn name that was all over the news. I turned around to see who it was, but everyone had his or her head down. I was pretty sure it’d been a guy, and I found myself looking at Rahkim and Malcolm and realized I was looking at the only two other black guys in class. I was pissed. I was pissed someone had said it, because I was sure they said it so I would hear, and I was pissed I was taking it to heart, and I was pissed I’d just done the same goddamn thing and had assumed it had been Rahkim or Malcolm, but I was pissed that I was pissed, because I was also pretty sure it had been one of them.

And mostly I was pissed because I just wanted everyone to shut up about it. Didn’t talking about it just make it worse for all of us? Did everything have to be about Paul and Rashad?

I was still pissed aer school when I got to the locker room, changed, and headed out to the court. Guys were already shooting and warming up. I stretched and bounced up and down on the sidelines, keeping to myself.

at wasn’t new. I like to avoid the early shoot-around, the chaos of just throwing the ball up and having it bounce out because someone else’s shot smacked it away. I liked to nd my rhythm on my own. I got loose with a ball and worked on my handling, sprinting up and down the sidelines with shadow fake-outs, keeping the legs loose as I popped a zigzag pattern back and forth, working the day out, so I could just concentrate on basketball.

Easier said than done, though. I couldn’t get my head in the zone—and found myself keeping an eye on English and Shannon Pushcart, and I knew exactly why—they were tight with Rashad. I watched English spin circles around Tooms, moving so quickly he could have been on skates on ice. Shannon, Nam, Dwyer, and Guzzo and most of the rest of the team chased loose balls that bounced off the rim like popcorn. Nobody else seemed pissed off, though. Was I the only one looking out at every goddamn interaction on the court through the lter of Rashad and Paul? I didn’t think so.

Coach gathered us at the bleachers, and the een of us stacked up side by side in the rst three tiers, as if we were having our photo taken. He paced back and forth as he gave us a speech about how everybody was saying it was our year, the newspapers, people in the league, even TV sports news was covering us. But who was he kidding? He was going crazy about it too.

“Now I know what you’re thinking, boys, you’re thinking about the scouts,” Coach now said. “Who is coming when? When’s that guy from UNC coming, right, English? Or is it Georgetown?” He bent toward him and grinned.

English glanced up at Coach and nodded.

“But you got to block out the bullshit,” Coach said, choosing English again, this time pointing at him. en he stood up and continued to pace. “If all you think about are the scouts, all you think about is yourself. en we don’t win. en nobody wins.” He paused. “You listening?” he barked.

“Yes, Coach,” we grumbled back, but he just kept on talking, not waiting for our answer.

“Every day is the same day. We are one team, and we stop the other team from getting easy shots, and we work them hard as hell on the other end so they give us the easy shots. We do that as one team and we do that every day. You hear me?”

“Yes,” we said.

“I said you hear me?” “Yes!” We all shouted now.

“You hear me?” he boomed. “YES!”

“Bring it in.”

We jumped out of our seats and circled him, dropping our hands into the pile.

“TEAM on three. One, two, three.” “TEAM!”

“at’s right, bring it back in here.” We were all bouncing and swaying, loose bodies with blood on re. We got our hands back in the pile.

“Media shit’s gonna hound us every day. You let me handle that. You just ignore that shit. ere’s all kinds of pressure going on out there, at school, in your lives back home. You leave it all at the door of this gym. In this gym we’re only Falcons, you hear me?”

“YES!”

“Pack it in closer!”

We did as we were told.

“You tell me whose house this is.” “Our house!”

“Who are we?” “FALCONS!”

“Who?” “FALCONS!”

“Who?” “FALCONS!”

“Team on three. One, two, three!” “TEAM!”

at is what I wanted to believe too. I’d walked onto the court and seen the team like this: seven black guys, ve white guys, two Latino guys, and one Vietnamese guy. But now, aer Coach’s rally, aer we got into three lines and began the weave together, passing and running, passing and running,

ve balls whipping through the air between all this, dodging in and away from each other, een guys moving like the connected parts of one heavy- breathing animal, I thought that maybe leaving all the shit behind at the

door wasn’t such bad advice. And hell, it wasn’t my problem, really, right? Couldn’t I leave it at the door wherever I went? Maybe we all should have tried to do that. It wasn’t any of our problem. It was a problem of the law, and the law would work it out—isn’t that what it was for, for God’s sake? To take care of us?

And as I hustled to the sidelines and jumped into a full minute of foot

re, shouting the countdown from sixty with Coach, I kept wondering: Wouldn’t we have been better off thinking that way? All of us. What did we really gain by talking about this—Paul, Rashad, what happened—digging it up and making everyone feel like shit?

Maybe for this one practice we were all thinking only about the team: one unit, one thing, no parts, one whole, no problems, just one goal for one team, none of us thinking about race or racism, all of us color-blind and committed like evangelicals to the word “team,” just like Coach wanted.

Maybe. But I doubted it. at’s what I wanted to think, but it wasn’t what was in my mind or gut. Instead I knew there was a problem, and I was beginning to think I was a part of it—whether I was in the damn video or not.

 

 

‌There’s this dude named Aaron Douglas. Scratch that. ere was this dude named Aaron Douglas. A painter in the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Mrs. Caperdeen, my art teacher freshman year, turned me on to him during a lesson about artists from that period. Now, I had already been into art, way before Mrs. Caperdeen’s class. I’ve been drawing since I was like ve or six. It came from hanging out with my dad aer church on Sundays. Well, Spoony and Ma would be there too, but for some reason, when I think back on it, it always seemed like it was just me and Dad, probably because we had our own thing. Our own aer-church tradition. He would drive the whole family to this diner downtown. Ma would order the eggs and English muffin, Spoony always got the French toast, and me and Dad both got pancakes.

en Spoony and Ma would go back and forth trading corny jokes, which I was usually all about, except on Sundays. Sundays was when I butted out and let the two of them have their dry humor because me and Dad, we had pancakes, coffee (hot chocolate for me), and the newspaper.

Dad, of course, would be really reading the newspaper. Politics, current events, sports, every single story. But he’d pull the comics section out and hand it to me. As I’m sure you can tell by now, my old man doesn’t do funny all that well. But me, I loved the comics. All of them. But there was one in particular that struck me more than the others, and the funny thing is, I’m not really sure why. It de nitely wasn’t the funniest one. As a matter of fact, most times it wasn’t funny at all. Not to me, at least. It was called e Family Circus. A brilliant name for a comic strip, even though the family in the comic wasn’t much like a circus. ey were pretty normal. And the strip wasn’t really a “strip.” It was just one image. One scene. Not like the others, which were made up of a whole bunch of different boxes, each one telling more of the story. I know you know what I mean. Everybody knows what

comic strips look like. But this one, e Family Circus, was just one picture, in a circle. Not even in a box like normal comics. And it was all about this normal white family. Four kids, two parents, and a grandma. And nothing ever seemed to be happening. Like I remember this one, where the oldest son, Billy, and his younger siblings are watching their grandmother talk on the phone, and it just said, Grandma’s phone is really old-fashioned. at’s it. See? No punch line. Not funny, and if anything, it’s actually pretty lame. But maybe that’s why I liked them. Maybe I was fascinated by the fact that it seemed like white families, at least in comics, lived simple, easy lives. at, and also the images—I loved them. Loved them. And every Sunday aer church I would tear e Family Circus out to save.

By the time I got to Mrs. Caperdeen’s class, and by the time she taught the

lesson about Aaron Douglas, I had collected like a thousand Family Circus clips. I stored them all in a shoe box under my bed and would go through them sometimes, just to pick one out to copy-sketch. And aer a while, I got better at drawing and started making my own family cartoons in the same style. I called them e Real Family Circus, and most of them featured a cartoon version of my father shouting at a cartoon version of my brother. But when I saw Mr. Douglas’s work, well, e Family Circus kinda went out the window. Aaron Douglas was doing a different thing, on a whole other level.

Let me describe what his work looks like. Imagine e Lion King. But all the lions are people. Black people. So Simba and Mufasa, are, let’s say, a black king and a prince. Now, imagine that you’re looking at them through the thickest fog ever. So thick that you can’t make out any actually feature on their bodies, but you can still see their silhouettes. So it could be any king. Or any prince. But you can still tell they’re black. at’s Aaron Douglas’s work. And the rst time Mrs. Caperdeen showed us a slide from his series Aspects of Negro Life, I knew the kind of art I wanted to start making.

And so I did. e only difference was that I framed mine in a circle, like

e Family Circus.

And that’s why I needed Ma to make sure she brought me my sketch pad and pencils.

I woke up early, and before doing anything else, before getting up and having a morning pee, or brushing my teeth, or spirometering, I turned the

TV on, muted it, then grabbed my stuff and starting sketching on a fresh page. I wasn’t sure what I was drawing.

at’s not true.

I knew exactly what I was drawing. e only thing I could. I was going to re-create the scene, what had happened to me, what was playing constantly on the news, on the page.

First the outline. A teenage boy. Hands up. No. Erase. Hands down. No. Hands behind his back. Outline of a gure behind him. Bigger than he is. Holding him around the neck. No. Not that. Fist in the air. No. Not that either. Hand pushing through the teenage boy’s chest. A building behind him. A store. Person in the doorway. Cheering.

Aer the rough outline I started shading, which was the tricky part. See, in Aaron Douglas’s work, there’s always this haziness. is ghostliness to everything. But then there’s also lots of light. As if light beams just break through certain parts of the paintings. I like that. But in order for me to get that look with pencils, I have to do a lot of shading. A lot of licking my

nger and smearing the pencil lead to make a lighter gray on some parts of the paper, then scratch the pencil over and over again on some other areas to make darker marks. Like I said, tricky.

Clarissa came in in the middle of me rubbing my wet thumb on the paper, adding a little light to a dark area.

“Hey, there,” she said, bringing in breakfast. “How we doing?”

“I’m cool,” I said, smirking. Clarissa set the food down. Pancakes and fruit cocktail. She glanced at the pad, the black and gray smudges probably seeming like a crazy mess to her. en she shot her eyes at the silent TV.

“So you’re an artist, huh?” she said, her focus now back on my work. “Yeah,” I said.

“I knew it.”

I looked at her curiously. “Oh yeah? How you know?”

“I don’t know. I could just tell.” She could just tell? Yeah right. What she really meant to say was, I want to say something, but I don’t know what to say. Instead she followed with, “Mind if I look?”

“It’s just the beginning,” I prefaced, handing her the sketch pad.

Clarissa, who by the way couldn’t have been much older than Spoony, maybe early twenties, white, freckles, bright-red hair, looked at the start of my new piece.

“What you gonna call it?”

“Don’t know yet,” I said, shrugging. Sheesh. Even that hurt.

“Well, it looks like it’s gonna be good. I mean, not good because I mean, this whole thing, this, I mean . . .” She went bright red but soldiered on. “I just mean it looks like it’s going to be nice. Nice art,” she nished, handing the pad back to me.

“You’ve seen the news,” I said, letting her off the hook.

Clarissa glanced at the TV again. en back to me. She sighed. “Yeah. And . . . I think it’s bullshit.” She put her hand to her mouth, probably realizing that maybe nurses shouldn’t curse. Not that that was my rule, it just seemed like it was probably discussed somewhere in the training that you might wanna refrain from using foul language around patients. I liked it, though, and even thought about responding with a hell yeah it’s bullshit! but

gured that would probably be a little too much. “I think it’s just so . . .”

Clarissa couldn’t nish her statement. I nodded to let her know I understood and that I was having just as much trouble trying to gure it all out too. But one thing we could agree on was the part about it being bullshit.

To cut some of the discomfort that now surrounded us, I ipped through the pages in the sketchbook to show her some of my more nished pieces.

“is is what a completed piece looks like,” I said, holding the pad up.

e image was of silhouettes of soldiers. Maybe twenty of them in a line, marching. At the back were babies. Marching. And they progressively got bigger, older, and right in the middle was the ultimate image of a strong soldier. And then they started getting smaller again, becoming a baby again.

“Wow,” she said. “It’s beautiful. Why do you frame them in a circle like this? Why not use the whole page?”

“Because, well, the circle changes how you see it. Like, what are we looking through? A telescope? A peephole? e sight of a gun?”

“I see,” she said. “But how come none of them have faces?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re there, but they’re not. Like, ghosts. Or invisible people,” I said, instantly thinking that sounded dumb, but hoping Clarissa would just think I sounded artsy.

She nodded, then glanced at the TV again. It was like a magnet. My face was on the screen. “Well listen here, Rashad, the artist,” Clarissa said, low. “Don’t forget what I said about getting up and moving around. It’s

important.” She wagged her nger at me playfully. “I’ll come back and check on you later.”

I worked on the drawing for a while, until my hand started to cramp up, which is just one of those things that happen when you work with pencil. Seems like some genius would’ve gured out how to make pencils out of rubber or something a little soer, even though that’s probably a silly thing to even think. But when your hand starts aching in the middle of such a personal piece, there’s no telling what you might think about.

I put the pencil and pad down and decided to follow Clarissa’s instructions and get up. But not only did I decide to get up, I decided to get the hell out of that empty, boring, beige hospital room. Room 409.

I climbed out of bed, snatched the back of my robe closed, and ventured out into the wild—not so wild—world of the hospital. I hunched over like an old man, protecting, I guess, my ribs—they hurt more when I stood straight. I eased slowly down the hall, each step pricking me inside, as I looked around at the nurses and the doctors and the families standing around the beds of their loved ones in the rooms with opened doors. Phones ringing. Machines beeping. Doors opening and closing. Soda cans dropping in vending machines. Conversations about next steps and tests and surgeries. At the end of the hall was an elevator that happened to open the moment I got to it. A doctor got off, and I got on for no other reason than that it was there, open, waiting for me.

I hit the “1” button, and down to the rst oor I went. Once the doors opened again, I found myself in the busiest part of the building, the main

oor where people were checking in, doctors and nurses zipping back and forth to the cafeteria, and most importantly, where the gi shop was. It was the only thing remotely interesting. So, destination gi shop was in full effect.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that hospital gi shops have terrible gis. At least that one did. I mean, really bad gis. Oh, so sorry you’re in the hospital having your legs amputated. Know what’ll make you feel better? A snow globe with a unicorn in it. Oh, so sorry to hear about your cancer. But I’ve got just the picker-upper. A refrigerator magnet of a lighthouse that says SPRINGFIELD. Ain’t no lighthouses in Spring eld, but who cares!

I poked around, looking at all the snacks (they did have good snacks), weird doodads, and whatnots, trying not to make any moves that were too

sudden. It was more of a step-step-step, swivel head to the le, then to the right. Repeat. Nice and easy.

e woman behind the counter didn’t seem to be paying me any attention and instead was ipping through the newspaper. She had to be in her sixties. I could tell, not because she looked old—she didn’t—but because she had all those little moles all over her face that only old black ladies get. My grandma had them.

“Can I help you?” she asked, catching me off guard. I threw my hands up and backed away from the assortment of plastic owers.

“Just lookin’, just lookin’,” I said, wound up.

She zeroed in on me, smirked. “Relax, kid. I’ve been here long enough to know that no one steals from a hospital gi shop. And if someone did, well, hey, I can’t blame them. We should be giving this stuff away.”

I put my hands down, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Never apologize when there’s nothing to be sorry for.” She put her eyes back on the newspaper, licked her thumb, then ipped the page. I just stood there like an ass, until she spoke again. “But seriously, do you need anything?”

I almost apologized again, but caught myself. Not sure why I was all sorry sorry sorry, all of a sudden. “Nope.”

“So you just came to see me?” she asked sarcastically. And before I could say no, she demanded, “Say yes.”

I nodded with a big grin on my face and walked toward the counter. “Yes,” followed by the truth. “Honestly, I just needed to get out of my room.”

“Yeah, I hear ya.” She closed the paper and extended her hand. “Well, I’m Shirley Fitzgerald.”

“Rashad.” I squeezed her ngers lightly.

Mrs. Fitzgerald and I talked a while, but I didn’t tell her anything about why I was in the hospital. At least, not the truth. I told her I got banged up in a car accident.

“Were you wearing your seat belt?” she asked predictably.

“Yep, thankfully.” I felt bad lying to an old lady, but I had to. is was the most comfortable I had felt in a while. Turns out the best gi in the gi shop was the fact that it didn’t have a TV. No news. No fuss.

Aer we got through why I was in the hospital, I asked Mrs. Fitzgerald how long she’d been working there.

“I don’t even know. Maybe three or four years. Lost track. Wait, let me think. Frank died . . .” She started running through the timeline in her head. “Yeah, four years. Mercy, has it been that long?” She put her hand to her neck and ddled with the gold chain she was wearing. A ring dangled from it. “My babies are grown. My grandbabies, too. And my husband has gone on to glory, so this is how I spend my time. I volunteer here a few days a week, and on my off days, I go and volunteer down at the rehouse.”

“What you do down there?”

“I ght res, what you think I do?” she snapped.

“Oh,” I said, stunned. I mean, she was old. Like, too old to be hosing down blazing houses, that’s for sure. “at’s cool.”

“at’s a lie, baby,” she said, grinning, and ipping the newspaper back open, fanning through it until she got to the comics. e rest of my time with her was spent with me standing at the register and her reading funnies out loud, and either bursting with laughter, or totally shit-talking about how lame some of them were. Eventually, my body, waist up, started broiling on the inside, and I knew it was time to make my way back to the fourth oor.

“Come back and see me, Rashad. An old lady needs a little company every now and then,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said.

“I will.”

 

 

Around four o’clock, I had visitors. But it wasn’t my family this time. It was my boys.

“Housekeeping,” a light voice came from behind the door, aer a tap. “Housekeeping.” en came the idiotic snicker of only one person—Carlos.

“Don’t come in!” I yelled.

“Oh, come on, Rashad. I know how much you love housekeeping,” Carlos said, lowering his voice ten notches below its normal tone. He pushed the door open and English, Shannon, and Carlos led in, backpacks and all.

“Oh man,” Shannon said, instantly becoming serious when he saw me lying in the hospital bed, my face swollen, bruised, bandaged.

“Dude!” English came right behind him, shocked. “It’s nothing,” I said.

“Nothing?” Now even Carlos was serious.

“Come on, y’all. I’ve gotten it from my family already. So just chill. I’m

ne,” I insisted. Carlos leaned against the wall. English and Shannon took the chairs. eir eyes, caught between bad and worse, bounced from me to the TV. e Rashad Show, on repeat. I tried to bait them back in. “Tell me about the party.” Carlos was the rst to bite, of course.

“Yo, guess who almost got some?” Carlos asked, a clownish smile spreading across his face.

“Who, English?” I replied.

Carlos shot me a mean mug. “Really? Really, ’Shad?” He lowered the lids of his eyes until they were almost closed, then popped them open wide and bawked, “Me, man! at dog bark thing totally worked! My game was on a million, man, I swear.”

“Who was it?”

“Sweet, sweet Tiffany Watts.” Carlos closed his eyes and puckered his lips as if he was remembering some passionate kiss.

I glared at Carlos. “My Tiffany Watts?”

“Yep, cartoon-character-looking Tiffany.” Now he wrapped his arms around himself and swayed. Asshole. My heart stopped. at cop didn’t kill me, but the thought of Carlos getting with Tiffany might be the fatal blow.

Shannon couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out laughing. en Carlos

ashed a toothy smile.

“Sike, man. You know I wouldn’t do you like that. I know her Daffy Duck–lookin’ ass is the love of your life,” Carlos teased. When dealing with a clown like Carlos, the key is to never let him see you ustered. Never let him think you take him seriously. It’s the opposite, come to think of it, of how we were trained to deal with police. With your friends, you never put your hands up. I have to admit, though, Los almost got me with that one.

“By the way, she asked about you today,” Shannon said. “Word? What she say?” I asked, eager.

“Just that she and a bunch of other people were thinking about coming to visit you,” Shannon explained.

“No,” I waved my hand, as if I was waving off the thought of Tiffany coming. “No one can come. I don’t want nobody to see me like this.”

“You sure?” Shannon asked.

“Yeah, man. Please. Tell everyone I’m ne. But no visitors.” I caught eyes with each of them to make sure they knew I was serious. I didn’t need

anybody else standing in front of me all teary-eyed, or sitting on the edge of the bed feeling awkward. I’d already had enough of that

When I caught Carlos’s eye, he jumped right back into form. “Man, can I

nish my story?! Damn!” he said, all indignant.

“Yeah, yeah, go ’head,” I said, trying to rush him along. “So, the girl I got a little closer to was, drumroll please!” “Come on, man,” I huffed.

“You wanna know or not?” “I don’t really care.”

“Just give me a drumroll, bro. C’mon.”

I shook my head and started patting on my legs, doing my best to ignore the pricking feeling in my abdomen.

“Latrice Wilkes!” Carlos blurted this out like a dude squatting behind a couch waiting to yell surprise to an unsuspecting birthday boy. “Latrice ‘Silky’ Wilkes.”

Now, Latrice Wilkes was no slouch. As a matter of fact, she was pretty much one of the coolest, prettiest girls in our class. And “Silky” really wasn’t her nickname. at’s just what we called her among each other, and I have no idea why.

“For real?” I was honestly surprised. I mean, Latrice was way out of Carlos’s league. “Okay, okay, well, then why was it an almost?”

“Because . . .”

“Because then Latrice saw English,” Shannon interjected, with perfect timing.

“Whatever! It’s because the cops came and messed my whole groove up,” Carlos shot back.

I laughed. Hard. Well, as hard as I could without feeling like my head was going to explode, or my ribs were going to rip through my chest. Once I

nally got it under control, I said, “Well, listen, if it makes you feel any better, the cops messed my groove up too.”

None of them laughed. Not one of them. You could almost feel the temperature of the room drop, like the way light dims whenever a cloud

oats in front of the sun. I was that cloud. So I changed the subject. “Anyway, what else is going on at school?”

“Same ol’ shit. You ain’t miss much except for the fact that everybody’s talkin’ about you,” Shannon explained.

“Yeah, you nally popular,” Carlos mocked. I couldn’t gure out if he was trying to bring the mood back to a lighter tone, or if he was just trying to make up for getting crushed by Shannon. Or both. “is might even land you an actual date with Tiffany.”

“Please, I don’t need no broken nose to get a girl.” e mere mention of it made the bandage itchy. I scratched it super gently.

“Take what you can get, bro. It’s an easy layup,” Carlos replied.

“Too bad you didn’t have all this layup knowledge when you were trying out for the team, huh?” I owed him a good one for the I almost got with Tiffany joke. Redemption.

“Yeah, whatever.”

Me and Carlos went back and forth because it’s what we do, but neither one of our hearts was in it. e jokes lacked punch. No zing. Just . . . at. Like e Family Circus.

“Forget all that, man. When you getting outta here?” Shannon asked. He stretched his legs, crossed them at the ankles.

“e doctor just le right before y’all got here. He said my nose and ribs are healing ne, but they’re still watching me because I got some internal bleeding. He said it hasn’t gotten any worse, thank God, and that aer a few more days I should be good to go.”

“Sweet,” Carlos said. Meant it. “Cool,” Shannon said.

English didn’t say nothing. He just stared at the TV like he was in a trance.

“English, you good?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, snapping out of it. “I just . . . I don’t know, man.

is is crazy. You know that’s Guzzo’s brother, right?” “Guzzo?”

“Yeah, big giant goony kid on the team. His brother is the asshole who did this to you. Paul Galluzzo. at’s why they call Guzzo, Guzzo. It’s short for Galluzzo,” English explained.

“Wait, you tellin’ me the ogre-looking dude on the team, that’s his brother?” I asked.

“at’s exactly what I’m telling you.” “Has he said anything?”

“Not that I know of. Coach Carney won’t let us talk about it,” English explained. “Says we gotta focus on the team and our season, and that’s it, and to leave all this stuff at the door. Said he’d bench anybody who brought it on the court.”

“And you can’t afford to be benched, dude. Especially since scouts are checkin’ for you, hard,” I said.

“Yeah. But it’s just nuts.”

“Yo, what I wanna know is, what the hell happened,” Shannon jumped in. “Since Carney’s made it clear that I ain’t allowed to ask Guzzo, let me hear your side of the story. I mean, English told us what Berry said, but I wanna hear it from you.”

at was my cue. I knew English had already heard most of it from his sister, but I still gave the fellas the play-by-play, hoping that somewhere in it, it would make sense. But it didn’t. I grabbed a bag of chips, reached into my bag to grab my cell phone, a random lady tripped over me, and the next thing I know I was getting pressed out by the officer. ere really wasn’t anything else to the story as far as I was concerned. e cop and the clerk thought I was stealing and wouldn’t give me a chance to explain.

“Did you resist?” Shannon asked.

“Why would I resist? C’mon, man, you know I was shook. Ain’t no way I was resisting,” I said. “And when he got me on the ground, that’s when he really started going in. Like, every time he hit me, I would move—who wouldn’t—it HURT!—and then he’d tell me to stop moving. But I couldn’t help it.”

“Shit,” Carlos said, his eyes full wide.

English was staring at the TV again, his face now becoming a st, tight and angry. e room was sti ing with a weird tension, this strange sadness, when nally Shannon spoke up. “English.”

English didn’t respond. “English!” Shannon snapped.

“What?” he snapped back. And that’s when I could tell this whole thing was getting to him. It was stirring him up inside in a way that I had never seen before. I mean, this was English Jones, the coolest dude on Earth.

English braced his hands on either arm of the chair, and for a second I thought he was going to throw it. But then he drew a deep breath and simply said, “We got practice. We gotta go.”

He looked from Shannon to me, his eyes slightly glassy. He stood up.

Shannon stood with him.

“Yo, what we gonna do about this?” Carlos asked, watching English and Shannon grab their bags. He ran his nger along his nose like he always did when he was thinking of something he probably shouldn’t have been thinking of.

“I don’t know. But I’m telling you, Coach ain’t playing,” Shannon said,

inging his bag up on his shoulder. “Just leave it alone,” I said.

“Naw, man, we gotta do something, ’Shad. I mean, maybe you can’t do nothing, ’cause you in here. And maybe these two can’t do nothing because of punk-ass Carney. But I’m not on the team.” Carlos caught my eye and stopped me from cracking a basketball joke before I could even open my mouth. “So I can do something. Somebody gotta do something.”

“Los, just don’t be stupid,” English warned, coming over to the bed and

giving me ve.

Carlos didn’t respond. Instead he just asked me if I wanted him to stay.

Carlos didn’t have anywhere to be. He never had anywhere to be.

“Naw, I’m cool,” I said. “I’m sure my parents and my crazy brother will be by here later.”

“Word,” from Carlos.

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” from Shannon, reaching out for my hand.

Only a nod from English. And then it was just me, the TV, and the shadows, fades, and outlines of my art again. I thought about the fact that English and Shannon wanted to do something but were afraid to break the rules. I understood. I did. But the look on English’s face was a look I had never seen. He was struggling with it all. Maybe it was what happened to me that was eating him. Or maybe it was the fact that he felt like he couldn’t do anything about it. And then I thought about what kind of ridiculous plan Carlos might cook up. I just didn’t want him to put himself in some stupid situation where he got his ass beat too. Even though I hadn’t had to put myself in any “situation” for that to happen.

I glanced at the TV. My face, again. Wasn’t there anything else going on? I mean, there had to be something going on in the Middle East, right? Celebrity drama? Anything besides me?

I wasn’t sure what to do about any of it, or if I even wanted anyone else to do anything on my behalf. e looks on my friends’ and family’s faces—it hurt me to see them that way. Especially knowing that it hurt them to see me this way. I didn’t deserve this. None of us did. None of us.

I grabbed the remote, pointed it at the screen, and hit the power button to click it off. But it didn’t go off. I clicked it again. Nothing. I slapped the remote in my palm a few times, because that’s what you do to, I guess, activate the batteries. Clicked again. Nothing.

Now, split screen. Galluzzo’s face, next to mine. Him in his uniform. Me in mine. But we were not the same. We were not the same.

I didn’t deserve this. Click. Nothing. Click. Nothing. My eyes began to well up and my throat suddenly felt scorched, as if I had swallowed re. Click. Click. Click. Click. Nothing. Fuck. Click. Please. Please turn off. Please. His face. Next to mine. I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t do nothing. His face. Made my bones hurt. A scrapy feeling in the marrow stuff. Fuck. Click. Nothing. Click. NOTHING. I couldn’t take it anymore, and before I did something stupid like throw the remote across the room, smashing it into hundreds of plastic pieces that I wish were Galluzzo’s face, I leaped from the bed in a panic and yanked the cord from the wall, which turns out was also stupid because it felt like giant hands that I couldn’t see were ripping me in half.

But the TV was off. My face next to his, gone. Finally.