While Alex pondered this, he watched Tanya turn beet red. Her fists were clenched tight. For a second, he thought she might hit him. Instead, she stood up, got up in Alex’s face, and said, “You don’t know shit about me or my life, so shut the hell up before you get smacked.”
Then she turned around, grabbed her bag, and left.
“The love, people, the love,” Savon said sadly as Tanya stormed out.
“Shoot, now we can get something done without her talking about I can’t do this time, I can’t do that time, my time is important. I’m tired of her.” Everybody stared at Kenisha after she said this.
“Amen,” Eddie said.
“Okay,” Savon said, “so we’re still gonna put her name on the project, mostly because I ain’t got time to listen to her if we don’t. So let’s move ahead. The Web site is almost ready, and it really shouldn’t be a problem to finish it over the weekend. I’ve just got to make sure we can get a report sent to somebody’s phone straight from the site during our presentation. Speaking of which, even though he don’t seem to have it workin’ today, Alex is our smoothest talker.”
“Hey, I got rid of her, didn’t I? That was smooth!”
“No time to argue. You need to take the lead on the presentation. I was going to put you and Tanya on this, but why don’t you handle it yourself?”
“Got it,” Alex said, and he was surprised to find how much he was looking forward to this. He had sold the project to business owners he didn’t know, and now he was going to get to do it in class. He’d do a good job and show Lewis that he wasn’t a charming screw-up.
“That leaves the written part for Kenisha and Eddie,” Savon said.
“The business plan is basically done,” Kenisha said.
“And the promotional materials are done, but I don’t have the explanation of the marketing strategy done yet,” Eddie added, looking a little embarrassed.
“So you two get together and make sure we have a professional-looking written component.”
“Okay,” they both replied.
“All right. Our project is better than anybody else’s, and we are going to get the highest grade in the short, sorry history of this school.”
Alex smiled. He wanted to head over to Melville’s with Eddie, but Eddie was already deep in conversation with Kenisha, so he decided to go by himself. He surprised himself by grabbing a notebook and a pen so he could make notes for his presentation.
As he walked out of the Parley Funds Tower, Alex felt really strange. It took him a minute to realize that he was going to Melville’s to work, and not to scope out hot girls. With another minute’s thought, he found he was actually glad the project had been moved up—it felt kind of good to be involved in something urgent and important. He’d never really felt this way before, but on this particular afternoon, he was excited and happy about school.
21
Eddie met Kenisha in the FA-CUE Media Center right after school on Tuesday. The room was filled with sophomores trying to finish their marketing projects. Eddie was glad Kenisha had gotten there early and saved them a computer. She was typing away when Eddie entered, and she turned, grabbed a couple of papers, and said, “Here, would you mind triple-checking these? I spell-checked them and proofread them and got my grandmom to look them over, too, but it never hurts to have more eyes on something.”
“Okay,” Eddie said, and read over Kenisha’s business plan. It was easy to read but not dumbed down, and it was perfect except for a missing “is” on page 3.
“Wow!” Eddie said. “This looks fantastic. You’re missing an ‘is’ here on page 3, though.”
“Oh my God, thank you. I do not want any red ink on this.”
Eddie lined up all his notes and began typing his marketing strategy while Kenisha worked on graphs for the presentation. He felt a little self-conscious with Kenisha sitting right there while he typed, but she got out her graphing calculator and started doing stuff with the numbers Savon had given them on the cost of the Web hosting and bandwidth, the figures they’d gotten from the potential advertisers in Dudley Square and on Blue Hill Avenue, and their own estimates of what they would have to pay people to get them to reliably report “traffic problems” to the Web site every day.
Eddie typed an explanation of how the service would be marketed to its target audience and why they had chosen this kind of advertising. He wasn’t used to doing his work in a public place like this, but there was something reassuring about it. All over the room, there was just the quiet clacking of keys as thirty kids sat at twenty-five computers busting their butts trying to get their projects done. It felt serious and important. Forty minutes later, Eddie had a few decent pages, which he printed and handed to Kenisha. He felt nervous and watched her face as she read what he’d written. She finished, read the pages again, paused, and then said, “I think this is very good, except for the second paragraph on the second page. It’s not clear.”
Eddie found himself getting defensive—of course it was clear! He wrote it! He got an A on everything! He had raised himself for over a year! He silently took the papers back and examined page 2 again and found Kenisha was right. Finally he finished, and then they looked over figures for the graphs.
“We need to put together a spreadsheet and some graphs to go with this. If we save the graphs on a disk, I can go to the copy shop before school tomorrow and print them in color, ’cause I don’t trust this old printer not to start looking ghetto after everybody prints their projects,” Kenisha said.
Eddie looked down at Kenisha’s neat, clear notes and began setting up the spreadsheet. After about ten minutes, she said, “Um, Eddie, that looks great, would you mind saving it? It’ll make me feel better.” Okay, okay, he thought, and he wondered if he was this annoying when he was trying to get a good grade on a project. He saved it, and then he saved it again every five minutes, which was pretty much how often Kenisha reminded him to save it.
When he was done, he felt something wet smack the back of his neck. He removed the spitball, then looked around the computer room. Everybody seemed to be working. Then, just as he turned to face the computer, he saw Kelvin out of the corner of his eye spin around, put a straw to his lips, and shoot a spitball at Gisela’s neck.
He then turned back around, along with everyone else in the room, as Gisela jumped up from her seat and said, “Damn! See, Kelvin, you play too much, that’s why you’re gonna get hurt!” Gisela looked angrier than Eddie had ever seen her, and she started walking over to Kelvin, who was laughing and saying, “Aaaaaah-haaaaaah! See, that’s what you get! Ahhhhh-haaaaaah!” As Gisela advanced, Kelvin seemed to understand that she really was going to smack him, so he jumped up from his seat, said, “Time to bizzounce!” and promptly tripped over the front leg of his chair. As he put his hands out to break his fall, he pushed the switch on the power strip, and six computers turned off at once.
There were screams, and Kelvin was suddenly being threatened by several people instead of one, each promising to do really horrible things to Kelvin’s face, family, and private parts.
The noise brought in Mr. Paulson, who Eddie guessed must actually live here, since nobody he knew had ever been here late enough to see him go home.
“What appears to be the difficulty?” Paulson yelled in his big, booming voice. There was silence for a second, and then everybody started talking at once, with variations on the phrase “behaving unprofessionally” popping out at least fifteen times.
Paulson reached down, switched the power strip back on, and turned to Kelvin. “Well, my young friend, it appears that your inability to conduct yourself in a professional manner may have adversely affected not only you but also your colleagues here. Let’s go to my office and call your parents, shall we?” For once Kelvin didn’t have a joke to crack, and he just hung his head as he left the room.
Once all the computers had rebooted, Eddie had to admit, if only to himself, that they had lost less work than anybody else because Kenisha had been buggin
g him about saving every five minutes.
As a result, they were able to get the spreadsheet done and the graphs generated in only another half hour, while several other people in the room were still retyping their documents. They packed up and headed out. Kenisha stuck her hand out and said, “Well, Eddie, I gotta say it’s nice to work with somebody who actually does something for a change.”
Eddie smiled. “I heard that.”
“Well,” Kenisha said, “I gotta go down to the office and try to use the phone to tell my grandmom I’m on my way. She won’t let me get a cell, but she expects me to check in with her whenever I leave school late. It’s a pain.”
“I guess I should probably check in at home, too. I could probably get a phone, I just haven’t bothered because”—because I don’t know how long I’m staying, Eddie thought, but what he said was “I’ve been so busy, you know, new school and everything.”
“Yeah,” Kenisha said, and smiled. When they got to the office, Eddie strained to hear what was going on with Kelvin behind Paulson’s closed door, but he couldn’t make it out. Kenisha told him to use the phone on the secretary’s desk first, so he picked it up and called home.
Alex answered. “Hello?”
“Hey, Alex, it’s me,” Eddie said.
“Why yes, I do happen to be the person who makes the decisions regarding phone service in this house!” Alex shouted.
“What?” Eddie said.
Alex kept shouting. “Please reveal to me all the advantages of your unlimited-calling plan!” Eddie could hear Uncle Brian in the background saying, “Don’t torment the poor telemarketers!”
“Uh, Alex, what are you talking about?”
Alex whispered, “Your mom’s here. I thought you should have some warning, and she’s gonna want to talk to you if she knows you’re on the phone. I’m gonna tell them you sent me a text message from school, and you’re tied up, but you’ll be home soon. Take as much time as you need, but call my cell next time. She’s, uh, she’s spending the night, so you can’t really wait her out.”
Eddie stared into space.
“Eddie?”
“Okay, thanks, Alex,” Eddie said blankly.
“Ah, but what about my in-state toll calls?” Alex bellowed. “For I have a different lady friend at every exit off the Turnpike, from Stockbridge to Boston, as the James Taylor song my mother is so fond of … Hello? Hello?” and he hung up.
Eddie put the phone down, sat on the floor in front of the desk, and put his head in his hands.
“You okay?” Kenisha said.
Eddie had no idea how to answer that question. Was he okay? Well, he was going to get a really good grade on the biggest project of the year. He was, up until two minutes ago, happier than he had been in a long time. And now Mom was back, and she was going to want him to leave, and how was he going to tell her that he didn’t want to? And would Aunt Lily and Uncle Brian even let him stay? Would they want him? They told him they loved him all the time, and they did seem to like him, and it couldn’t hurt that he was way less trouble than Alex. But did that mean they’d be willing to fight for him? Probably not.
He must have been quiet for a long time because Kenisha bent down next to him and asked, “Eddie? Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, I … uh …” And before he could finish thinking please don’t cry in front of a girl, he found himself choking up and saying, “My mom’s out of rehab, okay, and I don’t want to see her and I don’t want to go back with her and I hate her and I hate that.” He sunk his head back into his hands. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to say that, and I know nobody wants to hear about it.”
“It’s okay. Hey, listen, are you hungry?”
“Uh … I think I was a minute ago.”
“’Cause when I feel bad, I mean, I usually feel worse if I’m hungry, of course I have to have a snack every two hours or I get mad cranky anyway, high metabolism or something, but anyway, maybe you should eat something before you go home.”
Eddie picked up his head. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. I have to figure out what to say to her, or at least get myself ready to see her.”
“Okay, let me call my grandmom here, and we’ll go find something to eat.” Eddie listened as Kenisha talked to her grandmother. “Hi, Grandmom. No, I’m still working … Yes, I had my part done yesterday … No, I know, Grandmom, but I can’t pick who I’m in a group with …” She looked apologetically at Eddie as she said this. “Yes, Grandmom. No more than an hour. I know. Yes. Well, I have to come all the way down to the office to call you. Now, if I had a cell phone … No ma’am. Yes ma’am. Yes ma’am. Okay” Kenisha rolled her eyes and hung up the phone. “I love her, but she is mad strict. She needs to chill. She’s afraid I’m gonna end up like my mom, I guess.”
Eddie wasn’t sure if he should ask, but he figured he’d already told Kenisha his secret, so he said as he was getting up, “How’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Kenisha said as they walked toward the elevator. “She had me when she was sixteen, and she’s in Los Angeles now trying to be some kind of actress, but mostly she waits tables, which she could do here if she cared about me at all.”
Eddie didn’t know what to say about that, so he didn’t say anything. They headed out of school in search of food, but it was already close to seven, and Boston’s financial district was practically a ghost town after six. Finally Kenisha said there was always something open at South Station, so they went there and got slices of bad pizza and sat in hard plastic chairs.
As soon as he started eating, Eddie realized he was starving. He ate his two slices in about a minute and got two more. They both attacked their food and didn’t really speak. Eddie enjoyed thinking only about pizza for a few minutes.
But then, of course, he had to stop eating eventually. When he was done, Kenisha looked at him. “I guess you were hungry.”
Eddie blushed. “Yeah, I guess so. I always feel better after I eat. But I still don’t feel good.”
“I hear you. Sometimes I don’t feel too good about going home either. It’s mad boring at my house, and my grand-mom is so strict … Oh, I’m sorry,” Kenisha said. “I should shut up about my problems, I know you got problems of your own.”
“That’s okay. I kinda like hearing about somebody else’s problems. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the world with messed-up stuff going on at home.” Neither one of them spoke for a minute. “Well, I guess I should go see my mom. Or maybe I’ll go see if I can get beat up on the street or something so I can go to the hospital instead.”
Kenisha smiled. “Yeah, that financial district crew is hardcore, yo. Don’t be wearin’ the wrong bank’s colors down here.”
Eddie laughed. “Ugh. What am I gonna say to her?”
“I don’t know. My mom calls every week, and I never know what to say to her. Sometimes I think she just calls so she can feel like she’s not a terrible mom, and it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“Yeah. I feel the same way. I mean, what my mom’s gonna say is that she wants me back, and it’s not because it’s better for me to live with her, it’s just that she feels better about herself that way Like she didn’t really screw up her life that bad if her son is there.”
They were quiet for a minute. “Well,” Kenisha finally said, “I better get my butt home.”
“Yeah, I guess I have to see her sometime.”
“Listen,” Kenisha said, reaching into her book bag and ripping a piece of paper out of a notebook, “if you want to talk about it, give me a call. I just convinced her to let me talk to boys on the phone.” She handed Eddie her number. “Not that it’s happened”—Kenisha laughed nervously—“but you know, I had to stand up for the principle.”
“I hear you. Thanks,” Eddie said. “See you tomorrow”
Even though he was dreading going home, he felt a little bit lighter for having unloaded his big secret on somebody besides Alex.
Maybe he would call her when this was over
. It was nice talking to somebody who kind of understood his life. Alex was great, but he had two pretty stable parents and just couldn’t really understand the way somebody like Kenisha could.
Eddie suddenly realized something with a shock. He might call Kenisha because Kenisha, who was a girl, and pretty, and nice, had given him her phone number. In spite of everything, he found himself smiling.
He took the piece of paper out of his pocket and waved it around to the empty street, and called out, laughing, “Digits, baby!”
22
Alex was on the couch playing Splatterpunk 3: The Rivening. He was doing horribly, partly because he was also trying to overhear his mom’s conversation with Aunt Dinah in the kitchen. His stomach felt so tight and acidy that he felt like he might actually puke.
He could only imagine how Eddie felt. He really didn’t want to be there, but he had to have Eddie’s back tonight. Even if Eddie didn’t want Alex in the room when he talked to his mom, he might want to talk to Alex later. Or maybe Eddie would want him in the room if Mom and Aunt Dinah were tag-teaming him about how he had to go back to Oldham. It might help Eddie to have a smooth talker on his side.
Alex was so distracted he didn’t really pay attention to his game and caused poor Mace Hardcastle to have his flesh ripped from his bones by the level-five army of the undead yet again.
Finally he heard the elevator and dropped the controller and stood up. Aunt Dinah, Mom, and Dad all came running, then stood there trying to pretend like they just happened to be standing right by the elevator. Under different circumstances, Alex would’ve thought it was funny.
The doors slid open as Eddie hauled on the strap on the inside, and he stepped into the loft looking kind of lost and scared. Alex wanted to jump up, push Eddie back into the elevator, and run away. Instead, he just stood there looking stupid like his mom and dad.
How Ya Like Me Now Page 14
