“I’m worried, Eddie.”
“Max. Stop. They’re nothing. They’re cowards.”
William comes into the kitchen to get a glass of water. “The guys in white who went around lynching black people were cowards, too. That didn’t make the people they’d lynched any less dead,” he says, taking the water back to Imani.
Max says, “People who are afraid are the most dangerous—especially those true-believer types...Mr. Hockney wants you to stay home from school tomorrow.”
“That sucks! I’m not the one who should be suspended!”
“It’s not a suspension. He says it’s just...”
“It’s a suspension. What else is it if he says I can’t come to school?”
“Like all of a sudden you love school?”
“Some of it,” I say. “Besides it’s the principle. I don’t mean like principal, like the principal is your pal, I mean it’s just wrong.”
My phone rings. Rosie. “I need to take this...”
Max nods, walks out to the living room. I take the phone outside.
“Hey, Rosie.” I lean against the eucalyptus tree, pull off a leaf, crumble it between my fingers, breathe the strong, fresh scent.
“I heard you got suspended,” Rosie says.
“Not officially.”
I tell her the story, all but the panic attack. She tells me about new Patriot hate posts, and how everybody’s talking about it, and how everyone is totally on my side. I change the subject with talk about the cornhole games we missed on Friday night. Rosie says Brent and Brianna seem to like each other. Meghan told Rosie that cornhole was actually fun.
“Brent says he’s setting up a practice tournament this Sunday,” I tell her. You want to come with me? Give it a try?”
“Maybe after church. But what do you mean, a practice ‘tournament’?”
So, I explain to Rosie about Brent’s bet with his dad. And starting this coming Friday, Brent’s dad’s off on business, somewhere in Canada. And Brent wants to practice, practice, practice while his dad’s away—doesn’t want his dad to see how much his game has improved. His dad’s been practicing a little, but nothing like Brent.
“You talked to Brent? Does he like Brianna?” Rosie says.
“I don’t know. We talked about cornhole.”
“He must not like her, or else he’d have said something.”
“He probably likes her. He’s obsessed with cornhole, that’s all,” I tell her.
“Hey, I’ve got the car tomorrow,” Rosie says. “Do you want a ride in the morning?”
“Sure. And do you think you could drop me at Big O’s tomorrow afternoon? It’s over there near First and Huntington.”
“Okay. I’ll have to get Zoe from school first, but then we can swing by the tire place.”
Rosie says she’s probably going to be up until after midnight what with an English paper due tomorrow. The paper will count for 15% of her grade so she’s all stressed about it.
“I’m so tired of always feeling so much pressure about grades. I think I liked school back when we were at Palm Avenue, but now, I can’t even remember how it felt to like school—not to always be worried about grades, and college, and the future.”
“Yeah. I’m glad not to be worrying about that stuff. It must totally suck.”
“It does! Maybe I should forget being a music therapist—just be a painter like you.”
We both laugh at that, but I don’t exactly like how she says, “...just be a painter...” like it’s some loser job. I don’t say anything about that, though. I mean, why sweat the small stuff?
“I better get back to my homework,” she says, tapping her phone three times. I tap back: one (I), two (love), three (you).
Imani’s in bed when I come back inside. William and Max are in the living room watching some TV news program. William mutes the TV and motions for me to sit down. Max has those deep worry lines, like the kind she wore constantly for months after she got home from Iraq.
“You’re right about going to school tomorrow,” William tells me. “You can’t let fear of those guys keep you away.”
“I’m not afraid of them,” I say.
“Well, you can’t let Hockney’s fear of them keep you away, either.”
“I don’t know...” Max says.
But it’s settled. It was already settled anyways—Rosie’s picking me up in the morning.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Close Calls
I help Miss May get set up for writing before zero period and pass out notebooks while everyone goes quiet and watches me. We start the read-around: “Six Inches” by Jeff Coomer. Phong keeps his left index finger on the line he’ll read when it’s his turn. With his right hand, he pulls his phone out and nudges my thigh with it. I look down, see another anti-me post. May glances our way. Phong shoves the phone back in his pocket.
When it’s Maryam’s turn to read, she shakes her head. Miss May nods at Mark to take the next lines. Maryam’s got some kind of agreement with Miss May about not reading things that could be offensive to her religion. Or something like that. It’s no big deal anymore. Just like it’s no big deal anymore that she wears a scarf thing. Hijab. That’s what Rosie says it’s called. I guess she knows because she’s friends with Sofia and also with Fatima, another Muslim girl who’s in choir.
But back to Write. We don’t talk about the poems we read at the beginning of the period—like picking out symbols, or metaphors, or any of that regular English class stuff. Miss May tells us to let the words wash over us. Poems should be experienced, not laid out on the examining table and picked to death.
That’s a relief. In Freshman English we spent day after day on some poem about this guy coming to a fork in the road and taking the one that wasn’t so busy. Like what did the roads stand for, and decisions, and regret, and by the time we were finished examining every little piece of it, I’d filled a whole sketchbook with cats swimming and standing on their heads and chasing dogs, brushing their teeth, and one napping with his head resting on a big thick book of poetry. I got a C in that class.
“Six Inches” is about this guy, all relaxed, driving down a country road when all of a sudden, his car’s off the road and totally wrecked. If he’d skidded six inches to the left, he’d be dead. Just six inches between life and death.
After the read-around, Miss May projects the writing prompt up on the screen. It’s the usual routine:
The narrator of the poem writes about a close call. Think of any close calls you may have had, and choose one to write about. Your own story, or something fictional. OR...pull six or more verbs from the poem and weave them into a poem of your own. OR...write about anything else of your own choosing.
Close calls. I remember once when me and Angel, this kid who lived across the street, were playing on Tio Hector’s tractor. It was parked out in the field, not far from the barn. Whenever Tio Hector was worried or upset, he’d go out and work on his tractor, oil the parts, clean it up. Sometimes he even waxed it. He didn’t use it for farming any more, but he kept it, kind of like it was a special old friend. Me and Angel were just messing around. We were probably around eleven or twelve. Seventh grade.
So, we were sharing the driver’s seat, pretend steering, pulling all the levers, and we knocked it into neutral. It started rolling, slow at first, but we were on a slight slope and it was picking up speed, going faster than you’d expect a tractor to go. At least that’s how it felt. And we were headed straight for the barn.
Tio Hector came running out, yelling and waving his arms. “Turn the wheel! Turn the wheel!”
I yanked the wheel so hard to the left that we nearly tipped over, but we didn’t, and the turn had us facing uphill and the tractor gradually rolled to a stop. Tio Hector ran up to us, breathless.
He reached in and pulled the brake back hard, wiped the sweat from his face and then, catching his breath, he said, “This is the brake.” He released it, then said to me, “Pull the brake on,” and I did. H
e released it again and said to Angel, “Pull the brake on,” and he did. “First thing to know with any vehicle is where the brake is and how to use it.” That’s all he said. Then he took the driver’s seat with us standing behind him and drove the tractor back to its usual parking spot—except this time, he parked it sideways, headed for the open field instead of the barn.
Tio Hector went back to the house, and Angel and I jumped from the tractor onto the soft weeds below and lay there, each of us seeing that other possibility. Crashing through the side of the barn, boards and debris slamming onto us, crushing us, or being hurled from the tractor onto the hard cement floor, or...and then we started laughing. Laughing, laughing, laughing until I peed my pants. I’m pretty sure Angel did too, but we didn’t talk about it.
So, okay, I wrote about that, except the peeing our pants part. And writing about it got me thinking about Angel, wondering what he’s doing now. Maybe I’ll see him next time we go to Redville.
What will stay with me from today’s writing is what Phong wrote about his great-great-grandfather’s kiem—a double-edged sword that hangs over their fireplace at his house. It’s been passed down for generations, and it’s the one thing his grandfather took with him when he escaped from Vietnam at the end of the war. The kiem had rescued family men from close calls from many, many generations back. “I probably’d never even have been born if my grandfather hadn’t had that sword for protection,” Phong said.
Miss May is standing right in front of our desks when the bell rings. She tells me and Phong to hang on for a minute. After everyone else is gone, she holds her hand out to Phong.
“What??” he says, all innocent.
“Phong. What were you and Eddie looking at when you should have been following the read-around?”
He shows her. She looks at it, shaking her head, then finds the same posts on her own phone and gives Phong’s phone back to him. “Next time you have something to show Eddie, do it somewhere beside in my class. Because if there is a next time in here, you won’t get your phone back until one of your parents picks it up from the office.”
Miss May writes a tardy excuse for Phong for his first period class and tells him he can leave. I start to leave but May calls me back. “Eddie, this has got to stop!”
“Why’re you talking to me? I’m not the one posting this stuff. I don’t even...”
The school phone rings. “Hold on a second,” she says, reaching for the phone. “May here.”
She’s quiet, listening intently, then it’s “Okay,” and she hangs up. “You’re not even supposed to be here!” she says.
So, it’s another trip to the principal’s office, except this time I don’t have to wait on the plastic chair. And then it’s another ride with the principal back to my house and a lecture along the way.
“Just give it today, Eddie,” Hockney says. “We’re getting this thing cleared up.”
And now it’s like Groundhog Day. Buddy’s waiting at the door. I give him a pat and a few of his favorite scratches. He leans hard into me with his comfort lean. I watch through the front window as Hockney drives away. Buddy’s all top-speed tail-wagging happy to have someone home again on a weekday.
Cameron texts with links to stuff on Reddit. I check it out. Same old thing—anti-Mexican, anti-genetically inferior (with images of a “defective” hand), purify the race, etc. Some of it’s definitely directed at me.
I read. Eat. Get bored. Decide to meet Rosie in the parking lot after her soccer practice. I don’t want to miss a ride home from Rosie.
3:15 and I’m at the corner, waiting for the bus. But this is where Groundhog Day ends. No blue pick-up. No panic attack. The bus comes to a stop at the curb. I get in, ride to within two blocks of the school parking lot, and find Rosie’s car. I barely get there when I spot Rosie walking toward me. Cool.
It’s the first time I’ve been in a car with Rosie driving. She backs out of the parking space at about .005 MPH and is almost as slow driving out of the lot.
“I need to get to Big O by closing time.” I tell her.
“What time do they close?”
“10:00 tonight.”
She takes her hand off the wheel long enough to smack me on the thigh, then gets super focused on driving again. We swing by Palm to get Zoe.
“Be right back,” Rosie says, hurrying toward the courtyard where kids play tetherball.
I sit in the car, browse Snapchat and Reddit. The posts from this morning are gone, but there’s a new one on Instagram. It’s strange, getting so much attention all of a sudden. There’s so much super mean stuff, but then there’s all of this pro-Eddie backlash. People who barely even know me are posting stuff like what a great guy I am, and their posts are getting hundreds of likes. And there’s a lot about how whoever sees hate graffiti anywhere should paint over it.
Rosie and Zoe come skipping across the lawn. I don’t know. It’s a thing they do. Zoe opens the passenger side door. “I get shotgun!” she says.
“Don’t think so,” I say.
She pulls at my arm, as if she can pull me out. She cracks me up. “C’mon!” she gives a yank. I laugh.
Rosie gets in the car and calls across to Zoe, “Get in the back.”
“No! I hate riding on all these books!” She stomps her foot and pulls harder, which makes me laugh harder.
“Zoe! You can get in front when we drop Eddie off at the tire place.”
Zoe gives one more pull, yanks the back seat door open, gets in and slams it with all of her might. “I feel sorry for Imani with a brother like you!” she says.
“I’m not Imani’s brother,” I tell her.
“Are too. Imani says.”
“Doesn’t make it true,” I say. “We live in the same house, but we don’t have the same parents.”
“Well, I feel sorry for her anyway, having to live in the same house with you!”
Zoe’s funny. Sometimes she loves, loves, loves me. Sometimes she hates, hates, hates me. Really though, as much as I complain about the pesty Imani, I sure wouldn’t want to trade living arrangements with Rosie. For one thing, Imani always loves, loves, loves me.
At the tire place, I give Rosie a quick, Zoe-acceptable kiss, and go into the office to pay for my tires. Really, I’ve got Max’s credit card, but I’ll be paying her back a little bit at a time. I’ve already paid her $55.00 from my painting money. I’m soooo happy to have my car back. Now the trick is to park it where those fools won’t notice it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Challenges
Between the Hamilton High tech administrator tracking down and blocking posts, and social media companies generally being more careful about hate talk, the anti-me posts disappear by the end of the week. Like I said. No big deal.
Max and I spend Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle’s place up in Redville, like we always do. The whole family is there: Mario and his girlfriend, Francie, our cousin Vincent, Jordan, his wife, and their daughter Hannah, and, of course, Tia Josie and Tio Hector. We don’t do the turkey thing. It’s enchiladas for Thanksgiving and tamales for Christmas. William will be cooking a turkey back home, then taking it to his mom’s house where he and Imani, and two of his sisters, will be for Thanksgiving.
Wednesday evening, we all have take-out Thai at Vincent and Jordan’s. It’s the first time the whole family’s been together since before the election so there’s a lot of talk about what the new guy’s been saying about immigrants, and trade, and pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, and how every other country in the world takes advantage of us. And then there’s how he treats women, and how he makes stuff up, and on and on. Everyone agrees that talk of politics will be off limits on Thanksgiving Day, though. Not that they’d be arguing and getting mad, but that the subject is so depressing.
Thanksgiving Day, we do what we always do, watch a little football, play horseshoes, Mario and I arm wrestle, two out of three, to see who gets the comfortable bed and who has to sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag. I
win! Last year I finally beat Mario one round, the first ever. But this year, two out of three!
“Okay,” Mario says. “It’s double workouts for me starting Monday.”
I flex my biceps.
After dinner and clean-up, we always watch a movie. It’s a Thanksgiving tradition.
As usual, it takes longer to decide on a movie than it does to actually watch it. Tia Josie doesn’t want violence. Jordan wants a classic. Tio Hector and Vincent want something funny. Mario and I waver between classic and funny. Hannah wants a musical. Max wants animation. You get the idea. After a lot of discussion and voting and drawing straws as a tie breaker, we end up with “Shaun the Sheep.” Funny, animated, strange. I can’t possibly describe it, but everybody ends up liking it. As great as it is to be with the Redville family, though, I can hardly wait to get back to Rosie.
As soon as we get home Friday afternoon, I drive to over to Rosie’s, pretty sure I’ll find her in Tilly, and I do. She’s just sealed the envelope that holds her early application to University of the Foothills.
“I’ve been working on this since September,” she says. “I’m worried it’s not good enough.”
“Here,” I say, taking the envelope from her. I put it on the table, on top of the pile of books, and wave my hands slowly back and forth over it, casting a spell.
Abra, cadabra, this takes top spot,
Acceptance is certain, because she’s so hot!
I TAP THE SEAL THREE times and hand the envelope back to Rosie. “There. You’re in!”
She laughs and pokes. I laugh and kiss her. “Missed you,” I say.
“Missed you, too,” she says.
We’re about to get seriously reacquainted when there’s a pounding on the door. Rosie pushes it open. It’s Zoe.
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