Quad Squad

by R. Barri Flowers

  Friday Night

  “What are we gonna do?” Sabrina asked.

  “There’s nothing to do,” Maya said. Friday night and the three of them were all just sitting in Maya’s room again. Now that football season was over and Certain People Who Could Make a Party Fun weren’t around anymore, Maya had to admit that some of the time she missed Certain People, even if Certain People were always talking to your not-exactly boyfriend and disappearing with him after football games.

  “There’s never anything to do,” Rachel said. She blew on her toenails, which she had just finished painting. She had them separated with cotton balls and was wondering why she even bothered when A. She always wore shoes, at least in public and B. It was, now that she got a good look at it on her actual toenails, kind of an extremely ugly coral pinkish red that Maya was letting her use, and C. She had some idea that maybe it was ridiculous for girls to always be painting their toenails. Like, why? To be decorations? For who -- or for whom, whichever it was. For boys? That was so sexist. And anyway, were there really out there boys who were like oh, I really like that girl, she’s so cute, but her toenails aren’t coral pink, so no?

  “Did you get this?” Maya asked, still looking at her phone.

  “Who is it?” Rachel asked.

  “Jerry. He wants to know if anyone is down for a movie.”

  “Oh!” Rachel said. All three of them stayed where they were but perked up internally. Was this a date? Rachel thought about that time that she had walked in step with Jerry. That was cool. That was actually really cool.

  “If you’re down or if people are down?” Sabrina asked.

  “People, I think?” Maya said.

  “Something to do,” Sabrina noted.

  Rachel checked her phone. “I got it,” she said, and everyone’s posture sort of relaxed, because although no one said it, if Rachel was invited then obviously that meant that every person they could pretty much imagine was invited, because if Maya was invited it might end up sort of a date thing somehow even if a few people were going, but if Rachel got it then it was obviously a group thing. The fact that everyone knew this immediately and she could tell that they knew it depressed Rachel.

  Sabrina checked her phone. “Yeah, Ben and Jerry and those guys?”

  “Cole, Dylan,” Maya theorized.

  No one said Mike.

  “I mean, what movie?” Rachel asked. They all looked up from their phones for a brief moment.

  “Movies are like a million dollars to go, it’s kind of ridiculous how much you’re paying for something you could see on Netflix in a like, month,” Sabrina said, which reminded Rachel that she herself was in fact kind of rich, and it was kind of embarrassing that she ever even forgot that, but how was she supposed to constantly be aware of it?

  “Get a boy to buy your ticket,” Maya said.

  “No, don’t,” Rachel quickly said, not sure if this was a serious question. “Then it’s a date. I mean, right? I’ll buy your ticket if you want.”

  “You’re nice, but it’s all good,” Sabrina said, hating that this had to be a thing. She pretended to laugh and said, “Oh my God, Maya, no boy would buy me a ticket anyway.”

  Rachel and Maya immediately saw this as an obvious attempt for sympathy but since they were friends and friends give sympathy, Rachel said, “Are you kidding? Any guy would love to go out with you.”

  Maya sort of smiled in a supportive but then felt herself sort of turning into a little bit of a new person, becoming the skeptic, the crass one, now that She Who Shall Not Be Named wasn’t around. She said, “If they buy you a movie ticket, you have to have sex with them. That’s an automatic fact, I read that in -- wait, what’s ‘Fast and Furious?’” she asked, scrolling.

  “A movie?” Sabrina tried.

  “Definitely,” Rachel said. She pulled her foot toward her face and blew on her nails, which were seeming pretty dry, but then sometimes you thought that and later when you took your socks off they were all gunky.

  Maya updated the info, reading off, “So we’ve got Ben and Jerry, Dylan, Karen and, wait for it …?”

  “Naeli,” Sabrina and Rachel said.

  “We down?” Maya asked generally into the air.

  “I don’t know,” Sabrina said, suddenly exhaling. That had been so weird, because she had just been thinking about what she really wanted to do tonight, and then she thought Maya had said, “Weed down?” And it was kind of sick and disgusting and pathetic how her heart had kind of skipped a beat and not even funny that it was a word mistake. God, was there something wrong with her, or what?

  She sighed. Rachel looked over, then went back to work on her toes.

  Well, Sabrina thought, movie or weed, but no way she could afford both. Although if Karen and Naeli were there she might be able to score a few hits of off them but lately she was always never buying, just using other peoples’ weed and it got kind of uncool, even though Karen was always saying that it was chill, let’s just kick it, you can find some next time, but still a person felt guilty and that could definitely harsh the mellow.

  Rachel cleared her throat and asked as casually as she could, “What about Cole and Mike and Andrea and those guys?”

  There was a long few seconds while Maya pretended to scroll through her messages. “Not seeing them yet.”

  Sabrina and Rachel exchanged a glance. At some point, Andrea and Maya would make up, but for right now it was apparently Sabrina and Rachel’s job to talk about it with Maya now to make her feel better. But how had they ended up on Team Maya, anyway, because it wasn’t like Andrea had really done anything bad to them? And Mike? That was just too awkward.

  “Dylan’s out,” Maya announced.

  Rachel asked, “So that’s furious how many now?”

  Maya counted. “With us, eight. I think it’s about guys driving cars.”

  “Pull up the trailer,” Sabrina said, wandering the bedroom. It was probably double the size of her own bedroom and there were all kinds of cute decorations and stuffed animals and shit that Sabrina wished she still had. A lot of it had gotten thrown out when they’d moved the last time.

  “What are you doing?” Maya asked.

  “I’m busy,” Sabrina said. She was reading an old collage of Maya’s in super-childish handwriting from like zero grade.

  Maya said, “God, I need to throw some shit out.”

  Sabrina said, “You were so cute!”

  “Shut up.”

  “You were, though,” Sabrina said. “You wanted to be a ‘disco dancer.’”

  “Oh God, that!” Maya shrieked. She jumped up. “I have to take that down right now.”

  “A disco dancer?” Rachel repeated. “For a career?”

  “No, for like her favorite thing to do,” Sabrina said.

  “Oh, my God, how did the teacher let me do that?”

  “What even kind of life goals is that?” Sabrina asked.

  “Is that Ms. Rawls?” Rachel asked.

  “No, I wasn’t at Miller, remember? Oh, Karen is out.”

  “There goes Naeli,” Sabrina said, thinking, oh, well, there goes my weed.

  “Malik is in, do we like him?” Maya asked.

  “He’s okay I guess?” Rachel said.

  “I have no special opinion about him,” Sabrina said. They all avoided saying that there seemed to be something between him and Andrea. Actually, there seemed to be something between Andrea and a few different people?

  Maya said, “What should we say?”

  Sabrina said, “I’d be down for something, not necessarily a movie?”

  Maya let people know. Meanwhile Rachel showed Sabrina a Harambe meme that they both forced a laugh about. Memes that you showed someone else were either way funnier because you both laughed, which was what Rachel had been hoping for, or they were really unfunny because you were trying too hard to show someone something that really wasn’t that great. This was that.

  Maya said, “Meeting at the m
ovie in ten minutes, just to let parents think, then do something else.”

  “I’m down, I guess,” Rachel said. She started putting her socks on.

  “Yeah, sure,” Sabrina said.

  God, I hope Andrea doesn’t show, Maya thought, and texted, “on our way.”

  Jerry skated over to Tim’s. Lately it seemed like Tim was being weird about skating together? But then when Jerry texted that he was there Tim just came out and it was chill. They skated down to the theater, Tim going onto and off the sidewalk and dodging traffic and Jerry following and basically doing the same tricks. Like, basically the same? A few he skipped because tbh they really weren’t that safe.

  Malik was there when they got there, he’d been dropped off by his mom or something, and the three of them chilled for a second and waited for the girls. Girls always took forever, everybody knew that. Malik tried to grab Tim’s cap and Jerry sort of helped out but nobody was really that into it and still the girls weren’t around. The guys decided to do something else while they waited.

  They went into the giant candy store that sold everything ever made out of sugar ever and Cole showed up and started pretending to knock over displays and towers of candy and it was pretty fucking funny as far as Jerry was concerned. But also he didn’t feel at all comfortable about the whole being in a candy store thing and being possibly made fun of for eating too much candy maybe when he was a kid or whatever, and he knew, like, he knew, that he needed to get over being chubby and everything, but it was just kind of hard.

  Plus there was some sick candy including a Kit Kat that was as big as a person practically and they pretended to break off a piece and eat it and Snapchatted that and Jerry could see where it was kind of worn in the corner from people picking it up and messing with it and that was kind of sad that people did that to the poor giant wrapper, it looked so good, but whatever, what even was he thinking about, it was just some candy in a store.

  Tim and Malik were arguing about what candy was the best, basically it was the Halloween argument again but they were being sort of loud and then Jerry saw that Cole was giving him a weird smile and gave a weird eyebrow twitch and Jerry saw that Cole had a weird bulge in his shirt and Jerry was like, oh shit, he’s stealing stuff. And then it was like, well, what do I do? because Jerry would never in a million years like, tell on him, but it was also super uncool to steal from a store, plus illegal, could you got to juvie for that? And also, it was dragging Jerry into it and now he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t seen it and it was kind of messed up, and the only thing that he could think to do was get out of there as fast as possible.

  So he and Cole took off and went running down the sidewalk. Tim and Malik were kind of pissed because suddenly everyone had ditched them and Tim caught up to Jerry and was all, “What the fuck?”

  Jerry was like, “Ask Cole, we had to ditch.”

  Tim said, “What, why?” and Cole showed them all this huge mound of candy from under his shirt and he was cracking up about it and Malik went, “Dude, sick, give me some of that,” and Cole kept glancing back at the store and walking fast the other way.

  But then Tim caught up to him and said, “Bruh, not cool.”

  Cole said, “Bruh. Then don’t have any.”

  “That’s not the point,” Jerry said.

  Malik said, “What are you, gonna take him back and narc on him?”

  “No,” Jerry said, but he wasn’t sure what they actually were going to do.

  “Yes,” Tim said. “Fucking take it back.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” Cole said.

  “It’s bullshit,” Tim said, “Stealing’s wrong, you know it. You could have paid for it.”

  Cole said, “Whatever, it’s not the end of the world, it’s just some candy. Fuck. Chill. Plenty of illegal shit goes down, like at that party you were all raging at, I don’t see you saying anything.”

  “That was different,” Tim said, trying to figure out the difference. He wasn’t raging, but he knew Cole was just saying that to change the subject.

  Malik said, “Victimless crime, smoking weed.”

  Cole nodded at that.

  “Girls are at the theater,” Jerry said.

  There was a hesitation.

  Tim shook his head a few times, frowning. “Fuck it, don’t take it back, but don’t do it again.”

  “I’ll do whatever I want,” Cole said. “How is it your problem?”

  “It’s my problem because I was right in there with you,” Tim said.

  “Exactly,” Jerry said, wishing he’d thought to say that. “My dad says--”

  “Okay, next time I won’t do it if you’re there?” Cole said.

  Tim thought for a second. “Fine,” he said.

  Jerry nodded.

  Malik looked at Tim and Cole for a moment, then said, “We cool?”

  Tim shrugged.

  Cole said, “Yeah.”

  Malik said, “Cool, let’s see what’s up with the girls.”

  Nobody really had the greatest motivation for the movie except Jerry and even he wanted to hang out with the girls more even though obviously he didn’t say that. So it ended up being a walk, basically, just randomly in no particular direction.

  Some older people were out because it was Friday night so the guys had to kind of man up so that some college thugs or whatever wouldn’t intimidate the group but also were skating in and out of people, which got complicated.

  Then it got more suburban and less street lights, more houses, and mostly it was just people telling funny stories and stuff like that, but Jerry kept feeling like something was missing? He thought what it could be for a while but wasn’t sure. He had been kind of skating into the street and then back into little, like, conversations with people as they walked, same as Tim, but then they had both kind of separately but at the same time realized that it was a little douchey to roll away when someone was talking to you, and picked up their boards for a while.

  Jerry noticed that after a while everyone else was a little bit ahead, but him and Rachel were walking together. She had a weird little look but it was dark and he couldn’t quite figure it out and then she sort of hopped and skipped to sort of catch up with him but he wasn’t even going that fast? She was being weird. He slowed down in case he was being rude but then she slowed down the same way and it was like, why are you slowing down, are you okay? Except he didn’t ask it out loud.

  It was like, for a while he had thought that maybe he liked her? Or maybe in a kind of special friend way, or something? But when you saw her with Sabrina there it was like no contest. He moved a little faster to catch up with Tim and Cole and Sabrina, plus Maya and Malik who were kind of ahead, and Rachel kind of raced with him, which was like, God, stop chasing me.

  Sabrina was saying, “Never have I ever--”

  And immediately Jerry said, “Oh, can I start in--”

  And Rachel said, “Can we start over--”

  And Cole said, “Next round,” and Tim said, “Whatever.”

  Sabrina said, “Well, just -- never have I ever made a basket in basketball?”

  “What!” Tim practically yelled.

  Maya and Malik stopped and came back and were like, “What? What happened?”

  “Oh my fucking God you have to be kidding me,” Cole said.

  “What happened?” Maya asked.

  “I knew that. I would have totally said that,” Rachel put in, but no one seemed impressed. When she thought about it for a moment longer, it was a stupid thing to say, anyway, because no one would have asked her if she’d known, that wasn’t how the game worked.

  “I’m down to six,” Tim said.

  “What already?” Maya asked.

  “Sabrina has never made a basket in basketball,” Cole said.

  “That’s impossible,” Malik said, laughing.

  The others started laughing, too. It grew and spread.

  “Oh, my God, you guys,” Sabrina said, but she was laug
hing now, too. “You guys are so mean! Oh, my God, a girl can’t help it if --”

  “How can anyone be in ninth grade and never ever have made a single basket?” Cole demanded.

  “We’ve had P.E. basketball for about a hundred years,” Maya said.

  “So?” Sabrina said. “A lot of people have never made --”

  “Bullshit!” about three people said at once.

  “I have this nephew, I’m not even lying to you,” Malik said, “Four years old? Makes like a hundred baskets a day. Never stops practicing.”

  “On a kid’s basket,” Tim said.

  “No, regulation,” Malik said.

  “I call bullshit on that,” Jerry said.

  “Hey, fuck you,” Malik said. “My nephew is a baller. I got him a Steph jersey, he wears it like 24/7.”

  Tim said, “Curry is overrated.”

  “What? What the hell did you just say?” Malik demanded.

  “Guys!” Rachel said. “Let’s just continue the game.”

  “It’s like, no way I could have heard that right, you did not just say that Steph Curry is --”

  “Guys,” Maya said.

  “Whose turn is it? Tim asked, and added quietly to Malik, “Chokes in the playoffs.”

  “You’re fucking hallucinating,” Malik said back. “I feel sorry for you.”

  “Were you even playing?” Maya asked Rachel out of curiosity, but then realized how it sounded and added, “I mean, I wasn’t, it’s all good, it’s not…” she wasn’t sure where she was headed.

  Jerry said, “How about Rachel does one?”

  “Where we going?” Cole asked.

  They all looked around. Tim said, “You know where are? You know we should go?”

  “Where?” Cole asked.

  Tim laughed, and then Jerry laughed too, figuring it out. Jerry announced, “Comstock Elementary Class of 2011 in the house!”

  “Oh my God, yes!” Maya said. “Let’s go there! I have to see how big that lower playground is. And oh! I have to do the … monkey bars,” her voice trailed off at the end as she remembered that monkey bars was a total Andrea thing.

  “It’s trespassing,” Rachel pointed out.

  “Oh, no,” Cole said. “We’ll disturb all the kindergarten kids hanging out at fucking 10 o’clock at night at school.”

  Sabrina said, “We don’t have to if Rachel…” and everyone looked at Rachel, who said, “No, it’s cool,” worried what her mom and dad would say.

  They turned up the little hill that they all remembered so well. There it was, their old elementary school.

  “Did you even go here, I don’t even remember you,” Tim said to Malik.

  “Racist,” Cole said.

  “No, dumbfuck,” Malik said. “He would remember me even more if I was the only black kid. I transferred in fourth,” he explained to Tim.

  Tim threw his skate down and shredded the curb, Jerry doing the same right after him, feeling good because he completely nailed it except for falling off just right at the end.

  “That is the lamest mural of all time, was that even there?” Rachel asked. They all looked at an undersea mural with some misshapen animals and distorted perspective.

  “Fucking retarded little kids go here now,” Cole said, laughing. “That whale looks like a sperm.”

  “Sperm whale,” Jerry said.

  “Don’t say retarded,” Rachel said.

  “Sorry,” Cole said, not that sorry.

  They walked into the grounds. Everything seemed insanely small.

  “I am a giant human,” Sabrina announced, hulking stiffly over the water fountain like a robot, kind of cracking everyone up and feeling weirdly psyched about it because it wasn’t really that often that everyone cracked up because of something she did.

  “Shh,” Rachel said, but it was unlikely anyone in the neighborhood could hear some kids messing around at the school. Could they?

  Tim jumped on a tiny bench then said, “Check this out,” and jumped off, announcing “Parcour!” as he landed about a foot down from there.

  Malik and Cole thought that was hilarious, then Cole said, “Check this out,” and started climbing a little wall to keep little kids out of the janitor area. When he was on top he sat down looked at the others and said, “I have this weird need to spit.”

  “Fucking don’t,” Maya said, laughing.

  Jerry watched her and Sabrina laugh at Cole up there and climbed the wall, too, hoping his shirt wasn’t climbing up in back like it sometimes did. He and Cole steadied each other and climbed from the wall to the roof of the classroom building.

  “Shit,” Tim said. “Nice!”

  “What’s up there?” Malik asked.

  “Maybe you guys shouldn’t?” Rachel said.

  “This is sick!” Cole announced.

  “What?” Maya asked.

  “There’s like a million balls up here,” Jerry explained. They disappeared from view, and then balls started bouncing from the roof onto the playground below. This for some reason cracked everyone up and Tim climbed up there, too, while everybody else tracked the balls down and chucked them back up, those bouncy red and yellow balls from elementary schools everywhere, and the guys tried to keep them off the roof and everyone was having a good time.

  It went on for a while, surprising Jerry, who was chasing balls all over the roof and trying not to trip while he ran on the roof and wondering if his skateboard was okay down there, probably it was, what could happen to it? It was kind of unexpectedly insanely fun, every single person was involved, Jerry wasn’t sure why it was so great, just a game of throwing balls, but people were cracking up and even Sabrina got major applause for managing to get a ball onto the roof twice even, maybe because it was their old school that it was so fun, or breaking rules or everyone having just something to do together, like everyone doing it?

  But then Cole chucked one way hard that bounced once on the playground and went right through a classroom window, crashing the glass.

  “Oh, shit!” Maya said.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Rachel called out responsibly. She had gotten caught up in the fun and was a little out of breath from chasing balls down, she had been so stupid to forget how much noise they were making and now they had done it.

  “There’s no alarm?” Cole asked.

  “Silent alarm,” Tim said.

  “Nah, there’s no silent alarm at a school,” Malik said.

  “They have to put up a sign that says if there’s silent alarm,” Jerry said.

  “No, they don’t,” Maya said. “They just put one up so you won’t do stupid shit.”

  “Too late,” Cole said, and started climbing down. The other two on the roof came down, too.

  “Let’s head,” Sabrina said. The last thing she needed was cops.

  “Hold on, check this out,” Cole said. He went over to the classroom window. The ball had neatly shattered a window. He looked closely at it and then suddenly grabbed the side of the window where his hand wouldn’t get cut and used it for leverage to hop right into the little classroom.

  “Ho, shit!” Malik said.

  “Get the fuck out of there!” Tim sort of whisper-shouted, trying to get Cole out but not wanting to be heard by the whole neighborhood.

  Suddenly something appeared out of the window. It was something that Cole was holding out, and kind of waving back and forth. They all looked closer in. It was a kid’s drawing that said, “THIS IS LAME.” And everyone cracked up, even the girls who were getting worried that the cops were about to show up.

  “How even are you allowed to put that on your drawing?” Jerry laughed.

  “Oh, shit, that kid is dope!” Malik said, barely catching his breath from laughing so hard. “That motherfucker came to school to tell these teachers what time it is. Let me see that.”

  Cole waved it again, then yanked it in.

  “Imma see what else,” Malik said, heading for the open window. />
  “No, don’t!” Sabrina said.

  “This is lame,” Jerry said.

  “You guys!” Rachel said very loudly, and everyone sort of paused what they were doing. “Not this is lame!” she explained. “This is Lambie, like a lamb? Look at the picture!”

  “Oh, my God, you’re totally right,” Maya said. “Not lame, lambie!”

  “Good call,” Jerry said, and Rachel felt proud, ridiculously proud, like how great an accomplishment was that? Decoding a first-grader’s picture, and also this was just distracting her from being pissed off at Cole. And now Malik, who had just jumped into the class, too.

  Tim and Jerry looked at each other, and at the girls.

  “They have to get out of there,” Jerry said.

  “It’s a school,” Tim said, as though that wasn’t obvious, then got mad at himself because it was such a stupid thing to say and he could even see Sabrina laughing at him and it hurt extra because she looked hot tonight and especially when she laughed, but obviously not when she was laughing at him, but then he thought that that was obvious, he was thinking too much about it, he was overthinking it again and --

  He went over to the little window and called in, “We’re taking off right now. You guys either come with us or stay there, we’re out.”

  “Wait!” Cole said from inside.

  “Hold on, check this out!” Malik said.

  “We need to get out of here!” Rachel said.

  “Everybody stop right where you are,” the cop behind them said.