1
JAY
It’s Leroy, and I think he’s going to kill me. So I do the only thing I can: swing first.
Well, not exactly. I’ve never fought anyone, except my older brother, Jacob, and even those couldn’t be called fights. They are more like physical arguments that turn into one-sided tantrums I lose before a single punch is thrown. But Jacob did teach me one thing after I failed miserably at learning to throw a football straight (never happened), to hit a baseball (not even off a tee), or to dribble a basketball (does carrying the ball with two hands count?): how to tackle and run.
Honestly, I don’t know how I could have done anything to Leroy; I’ve always kept my distance, steered clear of him and the crowd vying for his attention, whenever he would drive by. When I heard a couple of guys say he’d been asking around about me, I thought it was a joke. I’ve only ever heard rumors about him, since we don’t even go to the same school. I couldn’t think of any reason why he—the younger brother of Taj, one of the leaders of the Black Diamonds who reign over K-Town—would want anything to do with me, so I said, “Whatever,” and walked off.
How was I supposed to know he was really looking for me?
I think about making a run for it since we’re next to a makeshift field in the back of a church, a shortcut I always take home on the way from school. If I run left, he could push me into the canal. If I run right, there’s only woods, and I’m far from anybody’s Mowgli. If I run in the opposite direction, he’s close enough to grab me, which means the only way out of this is forward, through him, by any means necessary.
I remember Jacob’s words: lower your stance, shoulders down but back, and then—as fast as you can—explode forward while pushing up. I charge toward him with everything I have, fearless and fear-full at the same time.
When I crash into Leroy, I smell peppermint gum and Cool Water cologne, but he doesn’t fall. Instead, he crouches low and holds fast. Pushing and pulling, we grasp for legs and ankles to take each other down. He smirks, as if me fearing for my life is amusing. Then, I take my chance.
With all my weight, I pull him close in a tight embrace and then barrel forward, throwing us both off-balance. We topple over Spanish-moss-covered tree roots that punch our bodies like iron fists in satin du-rags until we land in a bed of pissed-off twigs.
On top of him, I flail could-be punches with great effort and little form. Beneath me, his arms are right angles that dodge and slap away every blow. He chuckles, but I am serious.
Every closed- and open-handed hit that makes contact whispers a fervent prayer to whatever god will lay away me a miracle, because I need it. I’m not stupid; I know damn well Leroy is bigger, tougher, and faster. If the rumors are true, he’s also dangerous, like his older brother. I just need to escape so I can run home and never look back.
“Aye . . . yo . . . aye . . . ,” he repeats between swats, grabbing at my hands and wrists.
Suddenly he smiles, and then lifts me up with his hips. I lose my balance and fall to the side. He climbs on top of me, but he’s let his guard down.
Slap! The sweat on his face licks fire into my palm—I hit him hard.
Leroy glares, and in one quick motion, he slams me into the ground. “Chill,” he says.
I thrash about as hard as I can and barely graze his face.
“I said chill,” he yells. Leroy catches one of my wrists and dodges a punch from the other. I clutch at his throat but miss. I claw at his face and miss again.
Leroy finally grabs both of my wrists and pins me down. “Are you deaf? I said
chill out!” He growls the words into my neck.
Sweat drips from his face and arms, which glisten even in the shadows of the trees. A silver chain dangles in the space between us, against the backdrop of a tattoo peeking from the top of his white beater. Something stirs in my chest, a different kind of fear. My body freezes. I hold my breath without knowing.
“You gon stop tryna hit me?” he asks.
Fuck you, I whisper over and over in my head.
No matter how this ends, I won’t give him the satisfaction of hearing me utter another word.
His eyes soften. “Aight, I’m bout to let you go, but you hit me again, you aint gon like what I do.”
I believe him.
He loosens his grip, but our bodies are too close for comfort; my shorts are hiked up in the scuffle, waist and thighs exposed. Somewhere between us, the friction lights a spark. And in the stillness, our bodies are a cocked gun, our labored breaths are fingers stroking the trigger. I try to pull away, but the more I move, the bigger it grows.
He looks down, jumps up, and turns away, tugging at the front of his basketball shorts.
Before he can say anything else, I scramble to my feet and run down the field toward the church. I hear him behind me yelling, “Jay . . . Jay . . . I didn’t mean . . . I just . . . ,” but I keep running past the parking lot until I’m out of sight.
I don’t run home; I double back and hide between the pink azalea bushes at the front of the church and watch him. For a while, he stands there looking in my direction, his disappointed silhouette ablaze in the blushing sun.
Even after Leroy walks away, I stay, drowning in questions while standing up. Every muscle throbs, wound tight like a fist, waiting for him to jump out the nearest bush of pink azaleas for round two. In my mind, we clash into each other again and again, unafraid, until our bodies are a breath on the cusp of a moan.
I dust off my school uniform as best I can. Get all the leaf bits and twigs until only the faint scent of fight and dirt and close calls and shame cling to the tattered seams of my khaki shorts. I walk until it all makes sense, which means until my calves ache, my mouth goes dry, and the bottoms of my feet burn. Until the only sense to be made is that I’m fucking tired and I have no fucking idea what the fuck happened or what it means. I want to know why I still feel the heat of his palms, the weight of his body pressing down just hard enough that I know it’s there.
When I see the chain-link fences and hear basketballs licking palms and headbutting hot concrete, I know I’ve walked too far. I’m on the other side of Reeds Gate, somewhere near the lip of Peach Street. Any farther and I’ll cross the train tracks into K-Town, where I’m not allowed to go unless Jacob walks with me. Across the street, the “City Kitty” bus hisses and
then curses as it kneels near an orange bus pole with letters scraped off, so it reads, “Bop.” When the bus huffs away, all that’s left: an old man on the corner clutching a brown paper bag, sipping and singing to the cars.
I turn around and walk back until I stare at home. Jacob and Momma haven’t made it in yet—and won’t since both work until late in the evening. Relieved, I file away the story I concocted in my head. I don’t want Jacob or Momma to know what happened between me and Leroy because it will only lead to more questions. I want to keep it to myself because I don’t know enough of the truth to trust it, to risk whatever meaning might be waiting for me on the other side.
I walk through the front door and plop onto the couch but eventually get up and reheat the lasagna Momma must have cooked before she left for work. I scarf it down, outrunning the thoughts replaying me and Leroy wrestling. Afterward, I fall asleep waiting for something, anything that can answer the questions I’m too afraid to ask.
The next morning, while I’m trying to focus on trigonometry, Leroy’s face flashes in my mind, melanin crowned in sweat. In the middle of AP History, I remember his lips, their fullness. During chemistry, I’m struggling to balance chemical equations on both sides of the equal sign as I confuse coefficients with our bodies colliding, grabbing.
I want it to stop, but the questions keep going: If Leroy wasn’t looking for me to hurt me, then what did he want from me? What did it mean—him getting hard? Does it mean he likes me? Like, like me, like me? Does me thinking about it mean I like him? Whether I do or don’t, I already know I don’t like this.
I want to forget it ever happened because since Dad left nearly six years ago, nothing’s been what it should be. Even though we didn’t have anything to do with it, Dad’s deeds still haunt us long after he was locked up. This—whatever it is—I don’t have time for it. To think about something that I never thought would happen could happen.
Jacob turned down a full-ride track scholarship to his dream school, Northwestern University, and decided he had to work tirelessly to be the man of the house our father once was. And Momma has worked two and three jobs just to keep the house. I’ve had only one goal: make it up to Jacob (and Momma) by earning the highest grades, acing the SAT, and then getting a full-ride scholarship to the same university so Jacob no longer has to give up his dream.
The truth is, no one has ever liked me, not really. I do get compliments, but they always come with a “catch”—to “borrow” last night’s homework, to lean over just a little during the exam so they can copy my answers. And when it isn’t school-related, the ask
ask always revolves around one thing: my lips. Not like how people are with Jacob’s—big lips are a Dupresh family trademark—I don’t get long, handwritten letters or Pretty Ricky–style songs about the things they would do to me, if only I’d let them. Jacob gets the poetry, I get the rude, romantic-less version of what’s left: them begging to feel my lips on places only their hands are brave enough to touch.
When the bell finally rings, I try not to accidentally scuff the back of anyone’s shoes and risk starting a fight in my rush to make it outside. The scent of ripe dates rides a cool breeze through the trees, making everyone drunk in the sweet. It is the only treat after a day that has been long and hard, a blessing you can only smell on the Southside in spring. For a second, I forget that all day I’ve been beating the memories of yesterday away with a stick.
Then I trip, almost face-planting on the concrete but crashing into the girl in front of me instead.
“Get off! What is wrong with you?” she yells.
I mouth an apology, but no sound comes out.
“Oops, my bad,” someone says, and a whole crew of guys laugh behind me.
I freeze. I know that voice: it’s Rouk. For the little bit of time I’ve known him, he’s always been nice. But since his older brother, Faa, was killed last fall—some say by the Black Diamonds—he’s changed. Now he’s mean and always searching for a way to make himself feel powerful by making someone else feel powerless.
He laughs loud, looks like he’s going to try to knock me down, but my words strike first.
“Don’t touch me!” The words are hot on my tongue. I’m scared, but I want him to feel the burn.
A nearby instigator makes matters worse, sealing my fate. “Ooo, you gon let dat nigga diss you like dat?”
People turn around and more eyes settle on me, but I straighten up and keep walking, ignoring all of them. All I know: I’m tired, tired, and guess what? Tired. I didn’t do anything. I don’t know anything. I don’t even understand why any of this is happening to me. My junior year is almost over, and I haven’t had any issues. Why now?
The farther I get from the school, the more steps I hear gather behind me, which means Rouk now has an audience.
“Jay, where you headed?” he sings behind me.
No matter how I look at it, Rouk is bad news—I can feel it in his voice, hear it in his smile. But just ahead, I see Leroy standing near a powder-blue Cadillac, dapping up a group of guys in front of two other cars, donning fitted caps and extra-long basketball jerseys.
Up until Faa was killed and they fell out, the only person I’d ever heard Rouk brag about or saw him around was Leroy, which means he might be the only one who could stop him, the only one brave enough to speak up and make Rouk actually listen.
“You ignorin me?” Rouk yells louder.
I don’t answer. I just keep walking toward Leroy, hoping my gut is right—that he’ll save me.
Leroy sees me, tilts his head up, a greeting. I try to lock eyes with him, to say something, but can’t. It feels different to be seen by him. Instead, I walk past him, embarrassed.
“Fuckin faggot,”
Rouk spits.
I wince. His words hover like yellow jackets waiting for a second chance to sting and then bite. I want to swat his words away, tell him to fuck off, but I know better—it will only delay the inevitable, maybe even make it worse.
The crowd coaxes my demise into being, worshipping it like a god. They don’t care what happens to me, as long as it doesn’t happen to them first.
I feel my future humiliation drawing closer. I shut my eyes and brace myself, welcome it. It was stupid to think Leroy would stop him or care at all.
The sound cracks the air, stunning everyone into silence.
I flinch, stop, and then stand still, confused.
Around me, the crowd roars, and when I open my eyes, Rouk is holding the back of his head, his face turned over into itself in pain. He lashes back, exploding, “Who the fuck—”
A hush strangles him.
Leroy stands, chin angled up, enough body to end a war.
“Oh, it’s like that?” Rouk says, a statement, not a question.
Leroy doesn’t answer, just looks. If Rouk’s body is a question, Leroy’s is an answer, a bullet craving supple flesh. This isn’t the Leroy I met yesterday. There is no smirk, no wrestling, no asking.
“You know what?” Rouk clenches his teeth, slowly walks toward Leroy and—
“Rouk! Wait!” a voice yells from behind us, running in our direction. It’s Lyric Bryson, the Brazilian poster child of Providence Prep, also known as “Rich Kid Prep,” on the other side of Avalon Park. The only time I’ve ever expected to see him on this side of town is for a track-and-field meet—he used to compete against Jacob—but here he is, stuck to Rouk’s side and breaking up fights between friends turned enemies.
“Just calm down, it’s not worth it,” Lyric says, pulling Rouk back.
When I glance at the crowd encircling us, I see that I’m not the only one surprised at Rouk and Lyric’s sudden closeness. If anybody else had touched Rouk or tried to stop him, Rouk would have stomped him into the ground by now. But he hasn’t. In fact, when he sees the hellfire burning behind Leroy’s eyes as he glares at Lyric, Rouk steps back, as if to protect him.
For a split second, it’s as if Leroy is hurt, offended Rouk would do such a thing, make him out to be the monster.
“Jay,” Leroy says, clenching his jaw, eyes still locked on Rouk.
“Huh?”
“Let’s go.” He looks at me, then at his car, then at me again. I don’t want to, but he isn’t asking.
Lyric eventually calms Rouk down, and they walk back toward the school, but
it isn’t over: Rouk’s eyes burn a hole into me as Leroy’s gaze tattoos questions into him. Both seem suspended in disbelief at the other, angry and heartbroken from a distance, as an argument I don’t understand struggles silently between them.
Leroy gestures for me to get in. When he closes the door, he seems lost in thought before he starts the engine. The music blasts, and I jump.
“Too loud?” he asks.
I can’t hear him, so I read his lips. I shake my head.
Leroy smiles, turns it down anyway. He pulls his seat back as far as it can go and props himself up on his right elbow over the armrest, so close he can whisper a secret in my ear. He never does, though.
He never says a word.
In my mind, I carry on my own conversation: Where are we going? (I don’t really want to go home yet.) Why were you there? (You saved my ass, you know that?) If I needed you to do all of that again, would you? (Not that I would, I’m just sayin’.) Wanna talk about what happened yesterday? (Oh, okay, me neither.)
We’re riding for what feels like five minutes, when he pulls up to the same church we fought at, cuts the car off, and sits silently. I want to ask him if he knows why the church never had a steeple and if a church without a steeple is less holy, but the silence swallows would-be words and converts them into gestures. In the space between us, a conversation ensues: he drums his fingers on the steering wheel and smiles; I stare at him in the reflection of the windshield; he catches me looking, stares back, until I look down; he rolls down all the windows, inviting the world outside in to witness, then stretches out his arms and legs, ending in a moan; I close my eyes, place my hands between my knees; he rests one arm behind the headrest, a hug by a different name.
Leroy cuts the car back on, nods. I gather my things and then get out.
He turns the music up to its original volume, waits, and when I am far enough away from the car, he nods before peeling out of the parking lot. Then it finally hits me, what I wanted to say the whole time we were in the car: thank you. I say it now, knowing he can’t hear me.
With the glimmer of the sun at his back and the world rushing by, I hope he feels my words chasing him, like a prayer on the wind.
By the time I make it home, I can almost perfectly mimic Leroy’s motions, the way he licks his bottom lip first, then the top; the way he rubs his waves, then massages the sheen into the leather of the steering wheel, as the faintest smirk appears then disappears, never making eye contact.
After I kick off my shoes at the door and swipe some fruit snacks out of the cupboard, I run up the stairs and plop down on my bed. I close my eyes, replaying everything one last time.
I wake up to the room trembling, terrified, until there’s the waft of Old Spice. It’s Jacob, and he’s shaking me. When I turn over to face him, he grins, with his wrists crossed on his lap, as if he’s just been sitting there patiently.
“Dinner ready.” He
grins. “Ma said come down.”
For a second, I consider asking the obvious: why didn’t he just yell that from downstairs, but he’s already tied on his du-rag and changed into his white ribbed tank and gray basketball shorts, which means he’s plotting something. I’m too sleepy to care.
“In a minute,” I mumble, turning over.
He shakes me again, but when I look back, he’s sitting there calmly, this time with his legs crossed, pretending he’s admiring my Aaliyah poster.
I stare at him, waiting for him to get the hint and leave, but I know better. Beneath everything that made him the handsome (former) golden boy of the Daniel Lee High School Spartans—the mischievous charm, the muscles, the perfectly manicured waves that made everyone walk up to him and ask if they could stroke them, as they stared into his light brown eyes—I was the only one who knew the truth about him: he was the biggest teddy bear prankster and took pride in being the reigning tickle monster. And I don’t stand a chance.
“No . . . no, Jacob,” I repeat, trying to sound serious.
He nods, begins to tuck his chain beneath his shirt.
“Okay—I’m up—I’m up.” I try to sit up, but it’s too late.
Jacob’s hands are already near my armpits. I’m fighting for what little slivers of pride I can hold on to before I become a shrieking soprano.
“Quit—I just need a minute.” I push his hands away, then try to hold them in place. No use.
“It’s been a minute,” he chuckles.
“No, it hasn’t.”
“Yes, it has.”
“No, Jacob.”
“Yes, Jay.”
“Gimme five, then.”
“Why?” He smirks again, tilts his head, as if he’s really going to hear me out.
I say the one thing that might just work: “’Cuz you love me.”
He smiles. But Jacob has something else in mind.
Before I know what’s happening, he jumps on top of me and presses me down with all his weight, letting out a fake snore all up in my ear.
I squirm, but it is useless. Jacob’s two hundred pounds to my one hundred and forty means, at best, I can only hope to survive. It takes forever just to get him off me, especially when he accidentally falls asleep for real.
“Jacob? Jay?” Momma’s voice shoots up the stairs and finds us.
“Coming,” we sing in unison as Jacob runs down the stairs by twos and threes, holding himself up on the banister so he barely makes a sound. He waits for me at the bottom of the stairs, then grabs my wrist and pulls me toward Momma in the kitchen.
When Momma sees my face, she giggles. I am beyond irritated—I’m fuming—and Jacob is enjoying every minute of it.
“Awww. Hey, sleepyhead,” Momma says, rubbing my head.
“Hey, Momma,” I say, kissing her on the cheek. I sneak a peek under one of the pots and grin at the smell—collard greens. My eyes grow wide as I see a plate of fried chicken just out of the grease next to a bowl of Momma’s special sauce. She smirks, knowing.
“Noooo. You furreal?” I chuckle.
“Maybe . . .”
“Henny wings? Whaaaat? You only make these for special occasions. Am I missing something? What happened?”
“I just got off the phone with Lin—remember her son, Will? Y’all used to be tight.”
“Tight?” Jacob says, smiling.
Momma giggles, retying the bow in her apron. “Whatever . . . it’s a phrase I’m bringing back . . . well, she was telling me about some things that have been going on with Will, like him losing interest in things he used to like, being moody—all the stuff I went through with both of y’all at some point—”
Jacob and I look at each other, suspicious.
“And, since my two strong boys are here doing well and Lin could use the help, I proposed that Will come down from New York and stay with us for the summer. Plus, Lin said she can stay for a few days before heading back north, and we could all go do a few things together, like we used to. What do y’all think?” She smiles nervously.
It’s been a little over ten years since I’ve seen Will—since the summer I’ll never forget, especially the last night, when he kissed me on the cheek and said he’d miss me. I never saw him again, don’t even know what he looks like now. But a part of me has always held out hope that we’d meet again, that I’d experience another ray of unexpected sunshine, from the boy who glows like the sun.
“You askin’ for our permission?” Jacob says.
I’m just as confused as he is. Momma only decides; she asks for forgiveness, never permission.
“Yes, I am, actually.” She turns the burner to low, stirs the collard greens, then motions for Jacob to check the Henny wings. “It’s only right since y’all would need to, you know, spend time with him, make sure he’s comfortable. And if he likes it here, if he wants, since he’s got enough school credits, he could stay a little longer—they both could, if Lin wanted to come down again.”
That’s when I feel it: Momma’s hope. She hasn’t mentioned Miss Rosalind—“Lin”—her best friend since middle school, in forever. Not long after Dad got arrested, they stopped talking as much as they used to, and I never knew why. They still keep in touch, here and there, but Momma misses her best friend. If Will starts feeling better, it means Miss Rosalind might come back, too—and stay.
Momma finally takes the Henny wings out of the oven now smothered with sauce, after we’ve set the table and even moved the dessert over to the dining room table. After we say a quick prayer, I look at Jacob, wonder if he realizes these Henny wings, in their honey-glazed glory, are a bribe. After the first bite, neither one of us cares. When we ask for seconds and she says “Of course,” we agree to show Will a good time, whenever he arrives.
2
Leroy
No matta what I do, errthang keep goin wrong. This morning, I went from bein five minutes late to bein thrown round by Coach White and damn near expelled; Rouk spoke to me after months of ignorin me, but only after I slapped fire into his neck for tryna jump on Jay; and I finally got Jay to notice me, like furreal, furreal notice me, but ioeno what to do next or if he feel the same way. It’s like errthang is crowded, like the wall are closin in and errthang is too big, too heavy, and too hard for me to handle.
I floor the gas pedal, up the hill, and as I speed down the otha side and across the train tracks, it’s like I’m fallin—no flyin—higher and higher till all of it falls offa my shoulders and I can finally breathe.
Outside of K-Town, errthang feels fake, wrong. Aint nothin right if you aint smellin freshly baked bread from Durst n Em bread company on Mills B. Lane, if you aint seein the Chucks ova power lines in Oak Boulie, where the railroad track flows next to Freedom Parkway. That’s when I pass by the back roads where Figya and Eight’s crew, the Black Rydas, do chicken runs, after-parties up the street at the Where House.
Befo I turn the corner at Peach Street and East Lake, I see it: an old “Missing” poster. It’s taped to the middle of a streetlight pole, Faa’s face faded into the wood, a reminder: aint no pretendin in K-Town. Errthang is what it is: simple, till it aint—like me and Rouk.
We used to say we’d be boys fuh life, but when Faa was killed, errthang changed. At first, me and Rouk got even closer, but when the popos rolled up, talkin crazy and callin Taj a suspect, Rouk stop answerin my calls. Even when the charges was dropped cuz aint nobody had no evidence, he wouldn’t open the door when I knocked. And even when the detective who tried to put errthang on Taj was brought up on charges, Rouk still aint speak when he saw me in the streets. Next thing I know, he hangin round Lyric nonstop—pretendin we aint neva know each otha.
Taj keep tellin me to give him space, ...
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