I swear, if she doesn’t stop touching me—
“Let me go first, wait five minutes, then you leave. We don’t need people thinking we are onto them, got it?”
I make the okay sign.
I don’t know how surprised junior-year Devon would be by Chiamaka and me suddenly talking so frequently, but I know that he’s judging me harder than senior-year Devon is.
* * *
Mr. Taylor has my headphones in, listening to my piece. I finally managed to make an initial recording this morning, and I have been watching him nervously for the last three minutes.
He finally takes them off and looks at me. “This is good, really good. I think you have something great here, Devon.”
Great isn’t amazing.
“I’m going to go and check Tabitha’s piece. Good work, keep it up.”
I sigh, looking down at my music. Where did I go wrong?
“’Sup, Devon,” Daniel says, appearing at my desk.
I look at him. “Hey.”
“So, I have something pretty big to tell you,” he starts.
“Okay, sure.”
With Daniel Johnson, something “big” could range from pizza on the lunch menu to There’s a new headmaster, did you know that?
He looks around, his eyes darting all over, then landing on me. “I know who’s leaking your secrets.”
I feel like I could throw up all over his Marc Jacobs shoes.
“Who?”
“You have to promise not to tell anyone—this could get me in trouble.”
Now I’m really scared.
I keep going over it in my head. Only someone I know—or someone who followed me—could have known about everything that came out. The only person I’ve trusted with all the information was Jack. Why would Jack do that? I don’t know. And why would Jack know anything about Chiamaka?
“I won’t tell a soul,” I say, even though I’ll definitely tell Terrell and Chiamaka.
He leans in, whispering, “The FBI.”
I breathe out. I forgot that this is Daniel.
“Do you cover your laptop camera?” he continues.
I shake my head, trying to calm down and get rid of this feeling of dread.
He hits the table. “It’s them. I’m telling you, man.”
“Thank you, Daniel.”
“It’s okay, anything for my main man.”
I blink at him a few times, unsure of how to react. Giving up on a reaction, I turn, facing my music, hoping Daniel gets the hint and leaves or shuts up.
* * *
It starts raining on my way back from detention. I carry my backpack above my head to try to keep from getting wet, but that doesn’t do much. I can see home in the distance as I walk, but the closer I get, the farther it seems to be. I push through the drizzle and the wind until I finally reach our front door.
Ma’s at the table reading letters. She puts them facedown and smiles at me, but her eyes look sad. No matter what expression she has on her face, I can tell how bad things are when the light in her eyes dims, like it has now.
“Hey, Von, how was school?”
“Good, Ma…” I look at the letter in front of her. “What’s that?”
She shrugs. “I didn’t pay electricity last month, so they’re just writing about that.”
“Ma—”
“No, Von, I don’t want you involved. I’m your mother and I’m meant to take care of you, not the other way around.” She drops her head, which she does when she doesn’t want me to see her cry.
“Ma, please let me help you, okay? I can get the money.”
She shakes her head. “I know what you want to do and I don’t want you doing that ever. I want you off those streets, in that classroom—making your life better, not jeopardizing it.”
I say nothing.
“I’ll sort it out. Borrow money or something,” she says weakly.
“The bank won’t give you any more loans, Ma.”
“It’ll work itself out, Vonnie. God never falters.”
I want to laugh. He never falters, huh? Isn’t our life one big falter?
I stand here, watching her get dragged down by those papers, feeling as helpless as she is. Then I lean in, wrapping my arms around her.
I swear I will do well, Ma. I’ll get you a house, and a life where you won’t have to work.
I pull back, then head for my room, while weighing my options. I could listen to Ma and stay inside; hear her cries for guidance through the walls at night, hear her pleading to a figure who turns away when we need him most. Or I could go to Dre, ask him for help.
I walk into my bedroom, dumping my backpack onto the king bed I share with my brothers, who are watching cartoons on the small TV in the corner. I get lost for a moment, watching with them. Their eyes are wide and innocent. They don’t have to worry about the world yet. They have no clue. I hope they’ve eaten.
Ma has her way of dealing with things—praying to someone who couldn’t give a shit about us and working jobs that don’t pay enough. She always tells me how much she wanted to go to college, but it’s not something you can afford just like that, or something you can aspire to if your teachers—and therefore your grades—are shit.
We can barely afford Niveus, with my scholarship not covering all the tuition fees.
But she wants this for me: college, a degree …
I change into some sweats and get an umbrella from the closet.
“I’m gonna go to Jack’s,” I tell her when I step back into the kitchen. She and I share a look, one we share often. The I don’t believe you, but stay safe / Don’t cause any trouble / Stay out of areas the police cars park in / Keep your head and hood down look.
“Okay, Von.” There’s hesitance. “Stay safe.”
Ma’s always let me have freedom, as long as my grades were in check and I didn’t get into trouble at school. But ever since her friend Maurice’s Nathaniel got shot by that officer back in June, she’s been looking at me weird, like she wants to take that freedom away to shield me from what’s out there.
She lets me go, and I step back into the rain, now unaffected by its wrath as I rush toward Dre’s apartment.
The guy at the door hesitates before going inside, coming back moments later with permission to let me in. My heart goes wild as I realize that I’m about to see Dre again for the first time in over a week. I know it’s not important, but I wonder if I look okay.
I close my umbrella and slowly climb the steps, trying to gain some nerve before entering Dre’s apartment. When I get to the top step, I breathe out.
Dre knows it’s me coming. If he didn’t want me to, he wouldn’t have let me in.
I open the door. His living room is dim as I slowly walk across it, worried I’ll trip and bump into something, fingers vibrating against my sides. His bedroom door creaks loudly as I push it, stepping through.
Dre’s at his desk, head tilted up, eyes closed like he’s dreaming. He’s wearing a green durag. His dark skin is bright despite the dullness of the lights, and his beard has grown out a little. He’s trying to look like he’s older than eighteen again, wants to be taken seriously. Meanwhile, I’m scared of what growing up means.
I think sometimes we—boys from here—are dealt such a shitty hand that we forget we are minors, kids, in the eyes of the law. I guess technically, eighteen is adult enough, but not when most of your childhood has been robbed, like Dre’s was.
“Hey, Dre,” I say. He doesn’t move.
“What do you want?” he asks, his deep voice rattling my heart. I’ve missed that voice.
“To talk,” I say. His eyes open and his head drops forward. His stare locks on me and I feel like uncooked meat hanging in the butcher shop, surveyed and judged.
He pushes himself out of the chair, slowly walking over to me, though he’s avoiding my gaze now.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” he says. The pounding in my chest only gets faster.
“If that were true, you’d h
ave told that boy to not let me in. You wouldn’t even respond.”
“We were friends. I wasn’t gonna turn you around, make you look like a fool,” Dre says with a forced laugh.
We were friends.
“Just friends?” I ask. He looks at me now, his eyes glassy. I feel a pang in my chest. “Do you kiss all your friends, Dre?”
He sniffs and shifts uncomfortably.
“Sleep with them too?” I continue, vision blurring. “Tell them you love them?”
I wipe my eyes. I need to focus. He’s quiet, staring at me now, unwavering.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Don’t lose focus.
“We have different paths,” he starts, looking away from me again. “I’m a high school dropout, I have no family, I live to survive. Your path is school, then a job, and looking after your ma. You don’t know how much I think about you, Von. I want to call you but I can’t, because this thing we have has an expiration date, whether it’s when you go to some fancy college or when you realize that you’re too different from me.”
I want to say that isn’t true, but I have a feeling I can’t be certain about that.
“You say you love me, yet your boys beat me—”
“’Cause you weren’t gonna deal for me anymore. Everyone gets an exit beating!” he says with his voice raised. This conversation is riling him up. Dre’s usually a lot calmer, but everything about him seems on edge today.
I don’t care for his excuses and I don’t want to hear his gang’s political bullshit.
“You could have stopped them, Dre, but you didn’t. You knew what was gonna happen to me.”
“I wanted to stop it, but then they’d ask questions—”
“Think they don’t know what we do when I come here? Think they’re senseless?”
He turns away from me, wiping his face with his sleeve. I feel another pang, but I ignore it. I can’t let myself lose sight of what’s important.
Cry, Dre, I’m not gonna judge you for crying.
“If that’s what you do to the people you love, I’m glad this is done.”
He shakes his head, still turned away. “I was thinking about surviving, and those people at your school saying things. If I lose this, I lose everything—but if you lose me, you still have everything.”
Why doesn’t he get that he’s a huge chunk of everything?
I look around the room, how dark and cold it is—drugs on the table, some I know he’s locked away in the drawers. I wish he didn’t find comfort in temporary highs. I want to tell him that his path could be something different, but I’d be lying. He makes a lot doing this. It helps him survive.
He was so happy when he made enough to rent this place, and I just want him to be happy, even though I wish he was doing something less dangerous.
A draft of wind from an open window makes the room feel even colder. Dre and I are over; I knew that when he told me to get out last week, when his boys beat me up, and more so now that he can’t even look at me, but I’m so used to being with him, it feels impossible to let go.
His tense shoulders drop, then rise, and he turns, the tears I saw earlier gone.
“Can I kiss you goodbye?” I say, thinking of Terrell and his goodbye hugs. Andre gives me a look like it’s starting to dawn on him what goodbye means for us.
The wind pushes him toward me, only slightly.
“Yeah, of course,” he says softly. I ignore my gut, screaming at me to leave, to not kiss a boy who hurt me so badly, but my heart was always stronger than my gut. I inch forward with hesitation, my forehead resting against his as I breathe in his scent. I once asked Dre what cologne he used, and I remember how he smiled and told me “sweat,” which was BS. I wish I knew now. I want to be surrounded by it after this kiss; I don’t want to walk away from it. Dre’s arms pull me in, our noses touching, then our lips. He’s pulling me in so close it hurts, like he’s trying to fuse our bodies together. My heart is steady somehow, but the rest of me is shaky.
We break apart, but I’m still trapped inside his arms. I rest my head on his shoulder, breathing slowly, trying not to think about when I’ll have to move away, wave, and leave. For good.
Don’t lose focus.
But I did. I was going to leave without telling him that I need one or two small jobs, just to help Ma out. I look up.
His face, tearstained and wet, surprises me. It surprises me even more that he lets me reach up and wipe the tears away.
“Really gonna miss your company, Devon,” he tells me.
“Me too.”
I still stand here in this cocoon, waiting for him to pull back. But he doesn’t. I know I’m gonna regret this someday—maybe even moments from now—but I’m not ready to let go just yet, and I can feel him releasing his arms, and that scares the shit out of me, and so I kiss him again. He stops and pulls me close again, and even though my heart is rattling like I just ran a mile, I let him guide me backward slowly, like he’s done many times before.
Future Devon is shaking his head, watching as the back of my knees hit Dre’s bed, then how I quickly scoot back toward the cold pillows, finally breaking the kiss to pull my hoodie over my head. But I ignore future-me’s judgment.
Dre looks like he wants to speak, tell me to go home or say we shouldn’t be doing something like this. I can hear his thoughts racing. He’s overthinking this, like I would be if I didn’t keep pushing the feeling back. His thoughts are screaming, but then as if swallowed by a vacuum, there is complete silence. All worry disappears and all that matters is right now, not the future versions of us that might regret this, just present Andre and me, who both want to do this, kiss the pain away for a little while.
Dre moves off the bed and goes over to the drawer in his desk, pulling out some condoms. I look away from him now and up at the ceiling, listening to the sound of the rain hitting the windows and the wind angrily crying out, letting it drown my thoughts.
His weight tilts the bed as he leans over me and joins our lips together again.
I want this moment to last as long as it can; I want to be here with him for as long as I can.
Like always he’s gentle, and considerate, making me feel special, kissing me all over. And then, when we are finally done and I’m in his arms, I let myself cry.
I’m aware that I completely lost focus on what I came here for. But he probably would’ve said no anyway.
He kisses my shoulder blades and hugs me close, and I know that soon I’ll have to get up, put my clothes on, and say goodbye—face my other issues, like Ma struggling and Aces. But for now, I want to close my eyes, listen to the sound of the rain and Dre’s breathing, and drown.
20
CHIAMAKA
Tuesday
“You’re late. Again,” I tell Richards as he enters the lab.
He says nothing, just blankly stares at me like he doesn’t care. But I’m going to ignore that because I need him to be invested in this, and hopefully after today, he will be.
I walk toward Peter, who is waiting, with his laptop open on his lap. Devon is being annoyingly slow.
“What did you find?” I ask, cutting the niceties.
Peter smiles, leaning back against his chair.
“Probably everything you were looking for … but since I did this for you, could you do me a favor?”
It’s like all the years I spent gaining respect have been washed away by the random appearance of Aces the cyber-bitch this year. But I guess since Peter did help, I could.
“Depends,” I say.
“I heard Belle and Jamie broke up … and I hear that you and Belle are friendly now.”
“Heard from who?”
Peter smiles with a shrug. “Around.”
I’m sure people are surprised after the Aces blast about me and Jamie hooking up that Belle and I are hanging out. It’s the opposite of what usually happens: Boy is a massive dickhead to both girls, girls fight each other, boy is left unblamed as girls antagonize
each other.
I’m glad it isn’t like that with me and Belle.
“What about her?” I ask.
“Can you tell her about me, and how helpful I was to you?” Peter looks at me, desperate.
There’s a flutter in my stomach. I don’t like this, but I give a small nod.
Peter looks back at his laptop. “So, you’ll be happy to know that only one device is used to send the messages, and that device is easy to locate.”
“Where is it?” Devon asks, finally awake and interested.
“Right here, in the school. The Morgan Library, computer 17.”
That’s surprising. Why would Aces want to do it somewhere they could easily be caught?
“Can you get CCTV footage from Morgan?” I ask.
Peter shakes his head. “Morgan is one of the few places in the school that isn’t covered. Perfect location to do a lot of things,” Peter says, waggling his eyebrows.
I ignore the gross implication he’s making, because I know I’ll throw up my breakfast if I pay it any mind.
I hardly go into Morgan Library. It’s notorious as being hookup central, plus there’s a separate science library closer to the labs that I use.
“There’s more, though,” Peter says. Richards and I both lean in. “Sundays and Mondays, at around ten o’clock, the details are entered and the messages scheduled to be sent out at specific moments during the week. They’ve hacked into the school’s central administration system, so they can access the entire registry of student body phone numbers.”
I remember how Headmaster Ward said he could trace what we were doing on our personal school accounts.
“Could you look at the personal school account of the student who logged in?”
Peter scratches his head. “Yes, actually. I attempted to as soon as I got in, and I’m afraid the personal account used wasn’t registered to any student or staff member. On a normal account in the Niveus database, you’d have a unique name and passcode—yours for example, is Chiamaka Adebayo, 5681—”
“Could you lower your voice? There’s literally someone out to get me, and you’re here telling the whole lab what my password is,” I interrupt.
Ace of Spades Page 16
