“That’s okay,” Eddie said. He wished he had a joke to make here, some way to dis Alex and show that he wasn’t just a pathetic puppy target, but he couldn’t think of anything.
“All right, let’s go,” Kelvin said, and they all headed toward the T stop. There was some other kid there, a black kid who Eddie had seen around school but didn’t know. “This my little brother Deshawn. He’s a first-year associate,” Savon said. Eddie looked at Deshawn. He was about three inches taller than Savon. Now that’s gotta suck, Eddie thought, and sure enough, Deshawn piped up with “Naw, see, I’m younger, but you the little one.”
Savon acted like he hadn’t heard. “Now see, Left Eye,” he said, “you gonna get to see some serious ghetto today. Serious ghetto.”
“I don’t know why you talking about ghetto,” Kelvin answered. “You live across the street from the projects. Bullet holes all in the windows, people peeing in the doorway, and your moms on the sidewalk talking about do you wanna date?”
“Okay, okay, we’ll see when we get to your house, if we make it there alive and the crackheads ain’t stolen your PS2 yet.”
“Damn, Savon,” Deshawn said, “don’t talk about Kelvin’s parents like that.” Everybody but Eddie laughed at this one, and as Savon said, “Oh, my fault, K, I know your parents ain’t crackheads. They just got them nasty teeth …” Eddie wondered if any of these kids knew that somebody here actually did have a crackhead for a parent, or, anyway, a drug addict. Well, Alex obviously knew, and Eddie was glad that he just played along with the joke and didn’t try to tell people, “Yo, don’t talk about that around Eddie, dawg,” or anything like that. Still, he hated the fact that his real life was the kind of thing normal kids, or even Alex’s friends, laughed about.
Hey, he’d just made a joke! Only in his mind, but still. Maybe there was hope.
The T ride to Kelvin’s house took forever. They took the Red Line to Ashmont, then changed to the Mattapan High Speed Trolley, which looked like something you’d see in an old black-and-white movie on cable, where the guys wore suits and hats all the time and said things like “Say, whaddya lookin’ at, Mac? She’s my gal, see?” The trolley clunked along at a speed that was not high, and Eddie noticed that he and Alex were the only white people on it. He also noticed that all the smiling and goofing this crew usually did stopped immediately when they got on the trolley. Everybody sat with their legs spread wide apart and stared into space like they were pissed off at somebody, or maybe just the world. Eddie did the same thing, and found that it was pretty easy.
Finally they got off and walked up the street to Kelvin’s house. Eddie looked around, kind of surprised. Mattapan was on the news all the time—this was one of those mysterious places, Dorchester and Roxbury were the others—where people got shot, where Eddie pictured life as being like one long rap video. So, yes, he was kind of surprised to see nobody toting guns or dealing drugs. Kelvin’s street was quiet and lined with triple-decker houses. Other than the two old ladies shuffling down the street, they didn’t see anybody.
After Savon’s intro, Eddie fully expected them to go into the triple-decker house with the peeling paint and the second-floor front porch that looked like it was about to fall down, but they walked right past this and went into the house three doors down. It was also a triple-decker, but the porches were straight and looked like they might actually hold the weight of somebody who stepped onto them, and the paint was not new but not peeling. Eddie was actually surprised at how normal it looked.
He was even more surprised when they got up into Kelvin’s apartment on the third floor. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting—a big-screen TV and some ugly furniture, pictures of Jesus or Tupac hanging up somewhere, or maybe just filth. But Kelvin’s apartment was clean and neat, and the living room looked a lot more normal than the one at Alex’s house. Kelvin had a regular couch instead of that uncomfortable black thing with the chrome everywhere that was in Alex’s living room, or anyway the part of the loft that they watched TV in. The TV was like the one in Eddie’s old house instead of tiny like at Alex’s, and the stuff on the wall was just paintings and family pictures, and the paintings were a lot more normal than Uncle Brian’s paintings, especially that one that didn’t really look like anything that Alex told him was called Blue Vagina #6.
Kelvin disappeared into the kitchen and returned with bowls of chips and pretzels and a couple of two-liter bottles of soda while Savon made himself at home and turned on the PS2 and the TV.
Since this was the brand-new Madden, they watched the whole intro, which they would never watch again. And then Kelvin said, “All right, so why don’t Deshawn and Left Eye get the first game, and then, you know, the real competition can begin.”
Ahhh. Now Eddie understood why Savon had been so nice to him, had wanted to make sure that he didn’t get stuck talking to a teacher for an hour. He was looking out for his brother, trying to make sure Deshawn had somebody to beat. Well, he was in for a surprise.
“I got the Patriots!” Deshawn said, and Eddie just smiled. He knew from when Dad was alive that whoever didn’t trust his own skills always picked the best team.
“Detroit Lions,” Eddie said, and everyone snickered.
“Damn,” Alex said, “Pats versus Lions. This is going to be ugly.” Oh, it was going to be ugly all right, but not the way Alex thought. The game started, and Eddie quickly found that Deshawn was terrible. After three plays on either side of the ball, Eddie could read him like a book. He anticipated pretty much every play Deshawn tried to run, so he stopped his runs, intercepted his passes, and basically scored at will. The final score was Detroit 42, New England 6.
He wanted very badly to talk trash, but he couldn’t think of any clever put-downs, and anyway he’d only just met Deshawn, so all he said was “Next!”
Apparently this was trashy enough, because it drew an “Oh!” from somebody in the room. Eddie didn’t know who, because he didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
“Okay, Alex,” Kelvin said, “handle your cousin so I can handle you.”
Alex smiled at Eddie kind of apologetically, as if to say, “Yeah, sorry I have to do this to you, cousin.” Well, he’d see.
And he did. Detroit 28, Tampa Bay 14.
Eddie was starting to get into that zone he sometimes used to get into at 1 a.m. when he’d been playing all night and he just felt like he couldn’t possibly lose, and that was good because as soon as he went to bed, he’d be back in the real world.
Since Alex was family and Eddie was getting kind of buzzed on adrenaline and the soda, he said, “Looks like the new kid has some surprises up his sleeve. Who else wants some?”
This provoked grins from everyone, even Alex, who seemed to be taking losing pretty well. Actually, Eddie thought, much better than he himself would have.
“Okay, then, son,” Kelvin said. “School’s in.”
“I don’t know, Kel,” Alex said, “I think this might be Left Eye’s day.” Eddie smiled. His dumb nickname didn’t sound quite as dumb now that it was his day, and it was kind of nice to feel like Alex had his back, as they said at school.
Now Eddie didn’t have to talk trash, because Savon and Alex, who were better at it anyway, kept up a steady patter at Kelvin. “Oh, you in trouble now, Kel,” “Left Eye’s got you on the ropes, homes,” and stuff like that. This game was much closer than the other two, but even when Kelvin beat Eddie’s defense and scored, Eddie was never worried. He knew he was going to win. And so he did: Detroit 28, Kansas City 21.
“Yeah! Who went to school? Who went to school? ’Cause I don’t think it was me!” Eddie realized after the words were already out of his mouth that he’d never imagined saying something like that to a black kid who was like a yard taller than him and probably outweighed him by fifty pounds. Kelvin sulked while Alex, Deshawn, and Savon pointed at him and laughed.
“Oh!” Savon said. “In your own house, too. Homeboy came into your house and chumped you right there on your own
couch!”
Savon then wiped the grin off his face, got a real serious expression, and stepped up to the controller. “Okay, Left Eye,” he said, “you had a good run, and I appreciate you puttin’ Kelvin in his place, but now you’re done.”
“We’ll see about that, Soap,” Eddie said.
“Soap again? What the hell is that?” Kelvin laughed. “That some kinda white boy suburban cap or something? You really hate somebody you call ’em detergent? What the hell is soap?”
“Soap!” Eddie replied, then watched as some stranger who appeared to be in control of his mouth said, “The kid’s name means soap in French! Look it up!”
Kelvin looked quizzically at him, then went and started up his computer. As Eddie’s Detroit Lions received the opening kickoff from Savon’s New Orleans Saints (Eddie knew that Savon’s choice of team silently showed him respect. Savon was already planning for the possibility of his defeat by picking a team almost as bad as the Lions so he wouldn’t have the added humiliation of having lost with a better team), Kelvin called out, “He’s right! Savon means ‘soap’!”
This caused some laughs, which Eddie observed did not disturb Savon at all. The game was much tougher than any of the others from the beginning. Defenses dominated, and neither team seemed able to score. Kelvin and Alex cheered Eddie on, while Deshawn rooted for Savon. Finally, as the clock wound down, Eddie completed a 20-yard pass to get him into field goal range and made the kick as time ran out. Detroit 10, New Orleans 7.
He’d beaten them all. He threw his controller down on the couch, jumped up, and watched again as the kid who looked just like him but said things he’d never even think of saying yelled out, “Woooooo! Yeah! How ya like me now, bitches? Huh?”
There was a moment of silence, and Eddie was suddenly terrified that he’d crossed some invisible line he hadn’t even known was there. Savon, Alex, Kelvin, and Deshawn looked at each other in silence, and then simultaneously started laughing hysterically.
“He …” Kelvin laughed, “he … damn, he said that so white …” More laughter. “All ‘How do you like me now, bitches?’”
Everybody continued to laugh, and Eddie started laughing, too, and found himself being punched in the shoulder in a friendly way, bumping fists, and hearing compliments about his Madden skills. He laughed and laughed, and he thought he might still be a pathetic puppy, but it was really nice, even just for a few minutes, to feel like a big dog.
8
Eddie immediately became more bearable after their afternoon over at Kelvin’s. Now when he was greeted with “Yo, Left Eye!” in advisory, he’d come back with “Soap! Temperature Scale! What up?” He’d had to explain the whole temperature scale thing, which took forever and was not that funny but had something to do with absolute zero, which Alex thought would be a much better nickname for Kelvin than Temperature Scale.
Eddie was better at home, too. Alex could get him to play Soul Caliber with him, and Eddie would actually laugh and talk trash, even when he lost, which was often. It was like that grumpy, quiet kid who used to live here was replaced by somebody who was actually kind of fun to hang out with. Alex still wasn’t crazy about sharing his space, but he had to admit it was nice to have another kid here. Not only did he have somebody to joke with and ask for the homework he hadn’t written down, but since Eddie had some issues, it distracted Mom and Dad from crawling up Alex’s butt about his grades all the time.
Of course, Eddie was still studying more than Alex was, and when progress reports came home, all of Eddie’s mid-quarter grades were higher than Alex’s. Lewis even singled Eddie out in class and talked about how his analysis of ESPN’s success was a great example of how this project was supposed to be done, and everybody else should peruse it if they wondered what a B+ paper looked like, since most of them were quite far away from that territory and they would need to do much better on the group project, which would be assigned shortly. Alex’s PlayStation paper got a C−, which set off another lecture from Mom about limiting his college choices. Eddie was funny, though—when a couple of kids came up to him after class and actually wanted to see his paper, he looked like he was about to fall over in shock. “If this was my old school,” Eddie said, “kids would be lining up to kick my ass after Mr. Lewis said that.”
Overall, Alex thought Eddie’s study studliness was kind of funny because they had had all these meetings with Paulson about how Eddie was going to have a difficult adjustment period, how the founders thought it was impossible for anyone unused to the academic rigor at CUE to adjust to it after the ninth grade, and how Eddie was the first transfer student in the history of the school. It turned out that Eddie had no trouble at all adjusting to the academic rigor, while Alex was still happy getting C’s and B’s.
Eddie got so comfortable that he even took on Gisela. One day Eddie randomly piped up with, “Hey, you know, I was looking at the map, and actually, I mean, technically speaking, Cape Verde is not really in Africa.” There was shocked silence in the advisory. Before this, Kelvin had been the only one dumb enough to challenge Gisela.
Gisela stood up to her entire six feet and loomed over Eddie, who, Alex had to give it to him, kept his cool and continued talking. “I mean, Cape Verde is a series of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, so when you say it’s in Africa, I think it would really be more accurate to say it’s off the coast of Africa, since it’s several hundred miles to the African mainland.”
“What state is Nantucket in?” was Gisela’s only reply.
“Uh, well, that would be Massachusetts,” Eddie said tentatively, and Alex knew he was done.
“Oh, so that is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, but according to you, it’s in Massachusetts! What continent is Ireland part of? Do you know that? Do you know that the Republic of Ireland is part of the European Union? Oh! So it looks like that’s another island in the Atlantic Ocean! But according to the European Union, it’s part of Europe! Hmm, what about Great Britain? What continent is that part of? Oh, I see! What continent is the Philippines in? Hmm … I thought that was just a series of islands in the sea! So it looks like you got no idea what you’re talking about, maybe you ought to do some more studying before you open your mouth, ’cause you got your head in those books every day and you obviously don’t know anything!”
Alex looked sympathetically and somewhat nervously at Eddie, wondering if his ears would turn red and he’d start grinding his teeth again, but instead he just smiled and said, “Give me my dollar, Kelvin.”
“What? What?” Gisela looked confused.
“Kelvin bet me a buck I wouldn’t say anything to make you go off. Sorry. Nothing personal, I just kind of had to take the bet.”
“Shoot, you taking a dollar from that fool? I’ll give you five dollars if you get him to shut up for a whole day.” Gisela smiled.
“Oh, see, she’s just gotta stop being so in love with me. Talkin’ about shut up and kiss me,” Kelvin said, puckering up.
Gisela punched Kelvin hard on his upper arm, saying, “That’s as close as you’re ever gonna get to a kiss from me, big mouth.”
Kelvin winced and said, “Damn, Gisela, that really hurt. See, now you just lucky you’re female, because—”
“Because what? You wanna go? I’ll take you down right here right in front of your boys. Yeah, you don’t want that, all your boys see you cryin’ like a little girl.”
“Yeah, that would be almost as weird as you acting like a girl,” Alex added, and Harrison, who seemed to have some kind of magical sense about this kind of stuff, came walking in just then and probably saved Alex’s life.
So Eddie seemed to be getting used to life at Alex’s house and at school. Well, except for Wednesday nights after he came back from his appointment. He usually went straight to their room, and sometimes Alex heard him punching the crap out of his futon, or sometimes it would be completely quiet in there. Alex felt bad—he wanted to help somehow, but he had no idea what would be the right thing to say, or even if there was anyt
hing to say. So he’d just hang out in the living room and feel kind of bad, thinking he could make it better if he only knew what the secret thing was to do.
One Wednesday night, when Eddie was in their room and Alex was on the couch with Dad, he said, “Why do you guys make him do this? It only seems to make it worse.”
Dad looked sort of uncomfortable. “I guess the idea is that he’s actually this upset every day, and we need to give him permission to feel it and not feel like he has to hold himself together all the time.”
Alex thought that sounded nuts, but maybe his dad knew what he was talking about.
So apart from Wednesday nights, when he was worried about Eddie, Alex could devote some more energy to thinking about Hanh, who seemed to be avoiding him since Kelvin made that joke that was actually true about Alex trying to look down her shirt in math class. Alex figured that Hanh was ignoring him either because she liked him, too, or because she hated him. It could go either way, and there was no easy way to go up and say “Are you ignoring me because you like me, or are you just ignoring me?” Maybe he’d try to concentrate on Marie for a while.
One Thursday, Alex stayed after class for “extra help” in history, braving Ramirez’s nasty coffee breath just because he knew Marie was going to be there making up the homework she missed when she was absent on Wednesday. He wondered if Marie would date a non-Haitian. He stared at her while Ramirez went on and on about the Treaty of Versailles, until Ramirez busted him with “Alex, if you’re just here to stare at Marie, I can stop talking and save myself some energy.”
Busted again, and he could feel himself blushing. “Sorry, Mr. R. I was just thinking about how hard it must have been to live in postwar Germany under the provisions of this treaty.” He wasn’t sure Ramirez bought it, but he did keep talking for another twenty minutes.
How Ya Like Me Now Page 5
