by Ibi Zoboi
No argument from me. My only hesitation came in the moment I offered Dayshia my hand.
She took it.
The Nerd, the Eccentric, the Sneakerhead, and the So Cool Girl executed the emergency protocol, then stood in the parking lot while Briarwood Mall burned.
Not the whole mall—thank God. We needed those jobs. Mall-Stars was pretty much a crater, scorched and boarded up. For the rest of Briarwood, it was business as usual.
Amir left Foot Locker for a manager’s position at Footaction, and DeMarcus got on at Express Men. Moving up in the world.
Me and Dayshia became MeAndDayshia. Or as DeMarcus called us—once—“Day-Shawn.” Amir popped him in the back of the head, and he never said it again. Which I was grateful for.
I showed her WarGames. She showed me Love & Basketball. We didn’t spend much time actually watching either movie, and I had no complaints.
All the other Briarwood players kept doing their thing. Brian and Ben Lin stayed beefing with the Far East Emporium. Pia the waitress became Pia the time-share salesperson, which fit her no-nonsense attitude (“You’re going to vacation anyway, might as well do it for this once-in-a-lifetime price!”). Desdemona Bloodbayne kept moonlighting as a vampire slayer, or something. I don’t know. The biggest change was Cameron.
He vanished after the fire.
So did his kiosk. Like they’d never existed.
Kamala from Build-A-Bear said he was working a drone kiosk at Greenhaven Mall in Ocean Shore. Jeff from the vape shop said he conned a widow out of some insurance money and was on the run in Mexico. I believed the truth was somewhere in the middle because of what the fire chief said on the news.
According to him, the Mall-Stars blaze was caused by criminal negligence. An accelerant left too close to an open flame. Point of origin: the men’s room.
Things I thought about a lot after that report: the blunt I knocked from Cameron’s mouth. How it was still lit. Where it might’ve landed. That bag of cheap, stolen, highly flammable cologne.
Then I pushed those thoughts away. Didn’t talk about them—not with Amir, DeMarcus, or Dayshia. Didn’t write them down, either (at least nowhere anybody would see).
There was too much good shit to get here at the mall, I didn’t need more Black Nerd Problems. Plus, when it came to the ones I had, I was doing just fine.
Out of the Silence
Kekla Magoon
You died on a Friday, sometime during the night. In the movie version of my life, I would have woken up at the exact moment of impact, startled by an eerie premonition. But that’s not what happened. I slept right through.
You died on a Friday. It was on the front page of the paper Saturday morning. The article stretched over the fold, the picture of twisted wreckage caught my eye. I guess I’m like that, the sort of person who wants to rubberneck, even at a still image, even after the fact. It embarrassed me, to be like that. I slid the paper closer when my mom was in the kitchen. I wasn’t even going to open it up all the way, but then I saw your name.
The article contained all the scurrilous details. The sorts of information I would lap up when it’s a story about strangers. You’d been out past curfew, with a reputed “bad boy.” Driving too fast, not caring about the rules. Ignoring things like speed limits and stop signs. Fighting the establishment right up until the order of the universe inverted. Against the grille of a tractor trailer.
Two teens dead, two injured. Tessa Martin and Sean Ryan. Him, I didn’t know. He went to a different school, like the injured kids in the back seat, who weren’t named in the article.
You died on a Friday, late in the evening. Long after the football game, hours after the stadium had cleared. Hours after I caught my last glimpse of you, across the bleachers. Me in the marching band section, you entwined with the cool kids. It was the briefest of glances, really. I’m sure you didn’t notice me at first. You stood out from the crowd, whereas I was dressed like all the other band kids, clutching my clarinet.
You smiled, but only sort of. At first I wasn’t even sure you were smiling at me. Then you winked. And I knew. This time, like every time, I wondered if I was safe. If you were going to open your mouth and ruin everything. You only smiled, and it wasn’t cold or anything. I could trust you.
I could always trust you. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was, I wanted to get closer. I wanted to know how you had seen what you saw in me. How you had seen through every veneer of my heart and called me out from hiding. But I couldn’t.
You died on a Friday, and my secret died with you.
I didn’t go to your funeral. To remind myself we didn’t know each other. At all.
We had gym class first period. One hour per weekday for six months. That was our whole relationship. It shouldn’t have mattered much, should it? We were two of the four least athletic girls in class. Or really, I should say, the least interested. We did the bare minimum, and that was fine with us. Second semester of my sophomore year, your junior. It was sophomore gym. You were retaking the course, having been too lackadaisical about it the first time around. You played it fast and loose with the dress code.
“What are we, sheep?” might have been the first thing I ever heard you say.
“Huh?”
“Baaaa.” You flapped your ears with your hands and bleated. You dragged out the a’s until you snorted and your eyes grew big beneath your bangs.
I laughed.
“They want us to look exactly alike.”
“Gray sweatshorts are the look of the season,” I said. “Get on board.”
You pulled a tube of lipstick out of your waistband. The questionably fashionable shorts had no pockets, of course. “There have been lawsuits,” you said.
For a second you held the lipstick like a cigarette and I wondered if you wished you were smoking.
“Lawsuits?”
“Dress-code lawsuits. The American Civil Liberties Union. Imposing a uniform suppresses our First Amendment rights to free speech.”
The lipstick smeared on perfectly. So deep red it was more like maroon.
I tugged at the collar of my baggy blue Simpson High T-shirt. “I’d rather be wearing a law suit.”
You stared at me, unsmiling. “You’re funny.”
I didn’t go to your funeral. I mean, funerals are about the living and stuff, and I didn’t know your family, or your friends. I wouldn’t know how to stand around and spout clichés, or worse, to say something meaningful or memorable at all. Hi, Mrs. Martin, I’m Cassie Ellison. You don’t know me, but your daughter shook my life to its foundation. Would that be comforting? Tessa was a person who could wreak havoc with a sentence. Sixteen years doesn’t seem like long, but how many lives could a person with that kind of power have ruined in her time? By the way, I’m sorry for your loss.
I didn’t go to your funeral, but sometimes I wish I’d been bold enough. I wonder what you looked like, or if the coffin was even open. You always wore a lot of makeup, so maybe if they did a good job, maybe you even still looked like yourself. But I try not to dwell on morbid thoughts. I was curious, of course, but I didn’t want to be one of those people who pile on to a tragedy.
Even at school, I couldn’t stand how people who hardly knew you were sobbing and clutching each other as though a deep part of them had been ripped free. I couldn’t bear to appear the way they did, like a parasite feeding on sorrow. In some cultures, I’ve read, there are professional mourners. Women—usually women, I think—whose role it is to wail deeply and rend their garments, to lend voice to the sadness that surrounds such a loss.
This, this was something else. This was grief rendered chic. To have been close to the girl who died . . . “What was her name again?” To be close to her, to be one of the dear friends feeling the pain most deeply, that was a coveted position. Girls jockeyed for it, while her true best friend, and fellow quiet goth, rested in silence at the lunch table reserved for freaks and outcasts. Unceremoniously. Uncelebrated.
Tessa’s bes
t friend sat alone. It was hard, but not too hard, to approach her.
“Mya?”
Her eyes were rimmed with tears. Mascara smudged. Not so much a smoky eye as the soggy dregs of a campfire pit after the flames have been doused.
“Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry. About Tessa.”
Mya didn’t know me from Adam. Her lashes fluttered wetly. All she had on her tray was a sad piece of pepperoni pizza and a can of grapefruit seltzer.
“Well, thanks.”
I don’t know what the point of it was. She clearly didn’t know me, or care for anonymous expressions of sadness. I don’t know why it felt important to touch your personal sphere, even if it had to be in the stupidest of ways.
“She was always really nice to me,” I said. “We only had one class together, but . . .”
“Well, thanks,” Mya said again.
We didn’t really know each other. We came from different worlds. I was the quiet girl who never made waves. You were the actual ocean. You were goth before everyone knew what to call it. Or at least, before I did. I might have been called “preppy” if I was two shades cooler. Entirely different worlds. There were a lot of things I could have asked you, I guess, but I never thought of it at the time.
We’d sit in line and you’d take demerits for failing to appear in the correct attire for gym class. Ms. Corning stood above us, disdainfully marking it all down. “Hair not pulled back,” she noted.
“I don’t want a crease,” you said, tossing your hair like a mane. I understood what that saying meant for the first time with you—your dark hair flew back, revealing the barely checked wildness underneath your skin, a reined creature yearning to run free.
I smoothed a hand over my twin French braids. “I can relate.” My hair would hold absolutely any shape it dried in.
“Your hair’s cute like that,” you said. “But how come you never wear it down?”
“It doesn’t go down,” I said. “I could have a foot-high Afro if I wanted.”
“That would be cool,” you said.
I tugged the end of my braid, thinking of all the middle school boys who had teased my frizzy attempt at a ponytail. “Nah.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being yourself,” you said. Lipstick in hand, like a cigarette.
We didn’t really know each other. I never found out whether you smoked or not, for instance. I don’t know if you had siblings, or if Sean was your boyfriend, or if you secretly liked one of the guys in the back seat. Maybe you didn’t like boys. I don’t know. I’ll never know.
We didn’t really know each other at all. The day it all came crashing down—on me, that is, not the accident—the day it all came crashing down, you were wearing the requisite ponytail but not the right color shorts. You weren’t wearing shorts at all, in fact—it was a pair of sweats and they said “Hot Stuff” across the butt.
“Didn’t feel like shaving?” I said.
You smiled. “I’m not trying to impress anyone.”
“No boys you like in this class?” I said.
You shook your head.
“Me either.”
“Oh.” You sounded surprised. “I thought you were a lesbian.”
Your words sizzled straight through me. They found a lightning rod in me that had never been struck, that I never knew existed.
“What? No.”
“Really?” You raised your eyebrows. “I’ve seen the way you look at Angela.”
My eyes cut over to Angela, two rows away. My friend and default gym class partner when we had to pair up on things. When we needed groups of four, it was Angela, me, Tessa, and her default partner, Laini.
“I don’t know what you mean.” I said. “How do I look at Angela?”
I could imagine the shape of her butt right then, even though she was sitting. It wasn’t labeled “Hot Stuff” or anything, but when you mentioned looking at her, that’s what I pictured. I didn’t think it meant anything. It didn’t mean anything.
“Sweetie,” you said, “you might be a lesbian.”
The words rolled out of you, so matter-of-fact. I’d never heard anyone refer to gayness in such a casual way. It wasn’t a slur, or a takedown. It was a window opening to a whole other world I’d never imagined. A window I wanted to lean through and take in every detail of the landscape for as far as the eye could see.
“Do people look at me and think that?” My stomach knotted right up.
You shrugged. Up and down the rows, the other kids were talking or goofing around, or staring off into space. No one was listening to us.
We weren’t even speaking anymore, but your words echoed off the bleachers, and the mishmash of lines on the floor, and the gray and blue cotton uniforms everyone was wearing.
I think about how it felt. I think about whether you saw it coming. A blur of headlights. The squeal of brakes. An echo of something, anything, that promised release.
I think about whether it was painful. I think about your nails clicking against the dashboard. I imagine you were laughing, but maybe you were late. Maybe that’s why Sean ran the stop sign. You were trying to get home. I don’t know where you lived, though. I don’t know what you did with your time. I don’t know whether to be jealous of everything you had going that night, right up to the tractor-trailer impact. Out late, speeding, maybe with the wind in your luscious black hair.
I didn’t mean to say luscious. Your hair was simply black. Jet black. Ebony. The opposite of ice. Whipping in the wind, in the dark, it would look . . . like flames, already burned out but not knowing when to quit.
You died on a Friday. I didn’t go to your funeral. We didn’t know each other at all, and still, I think about you. I think about whether you saw it coming, and whether it was painful.
You died on a Friday, months ago, and still I think about you, you, you. I think about your eyes, your nails, your lips. Your red, red lips were silenced and a part of me was entirely relieved.
The Ingredients
Jason Reynolds
Summertime in Brooklyn means doing whatever you can to stay cool. Cool as in not becoming a melted version of yourself in the heat. Also, cool as in not sitting inside doing nothing, which means being outdoors, socializing in the midst of the buzz of the sun, that which serves as a heat lamp looming over the land of lizards—tough-skinned chameleon kids who blend into the browns and reds of the row homes and the jagged grit of the concrete. Kids who, in an effort to be cool and stay cool, can only hang out at one place—the swimming pool.
For Jamal, Big Boy, Flaco, and Randy, it’s Kosciuszko Pool, a name they butcher effortlessly because they’ve never met a Kosciuszko—or a Polish person at all—to tell them how to pronounce it correctly. Plus, to them, it’s just the pool. And on any given sweltering summer day, when Bed-Stuy becomes a microwave, the pool might as well be called heaven.
“It’s not really that funny,” Big Boy says, rubbing his forehead as if his skin is a smudge. “Y’all gassin’ it, making it something that it ain’t.”
“Ain’t nobody gassin’ nothing,” Jamal shoots back. Jamal, all head and feet, as opposed to Big Boy, who’s all everything, holds the door open for his friends, each of them filing out after skipping the locker rooms. They never shower. Never rinse or swap out wet clothes. Not because they have a problem with it—locker rooms are something they’re used to from years of gym class—but because they come to the pool with no baggage. No duffels or backpacks. They come already dressed in their trunks and tank tops. They don’t bring towels or any extra garments. The way they see it, one of the best parts about the pool is the wet walk home. The slight breeze dancing with the damp, sending a welcome chill up their legs and backs. And they know there’s no risk of yelling mothers, frustrated about the chlorinated water dripping all across the hardwood floors of their apartments, because the boys will be dry long before reaching home. Plus, they’re not going home, anyway. At least not to their individual apartments. They’re going to one apartment. T
hey’re always going to one. A collective dwelling, a base for postpool boyhood shenanigans. It varies by the day, but today, it’s Flaco’s house.
“Y’all are gassin’ it,” Big Boy grumbles. “It was a Band-Aid and y’all making it seem like it was poop or something gross like that.”
“Bruh,” Randy chimes in. “You jumped in the pool, went under the water, and when you came up there was a dirty-ass Band-Aid stuck to your forehead.” Randy brushes his palm over his head. The water has turned what used to be his freshly brushed waves into tiny onyx beads strewn across his scalp. Randy is obsessed with his waves.
“Yeah, like a . . .” Flaco tries to find the word while trying to hold in his laughter. “Like a . . . slug or something.”
“Shut up, Flaco!” Big Boy snaps, swinging his arm loosely at Flaco’s brittle birdcage of a chest. “You probably don’t even know what a slug is.”
“Yeah, I do. It’s a snail without a shell, dummy.” Flaco tightens his face for a moment, cocks his head back, and purses his lips into a shut your mouth look.
“And it’s slimy like you was, coming up out that water,” Jamal follows up. “No, like that nasty thing stuck on your head.”
“It was just a Band-Aid!” Big Boy barks again as they all turn onto Tompkins Avenue.
“Yo, real talk—what if that Band-Aid had some nasty disease on it, and it seeped into your forehead and is now eating your brain or something? Tomorrow you gon’ wake up even dumber than you are today.” Randy’s face is dead serious.
“And that’s a shame.” Jamal’s is too.
“A damn shame.” So is Flaco’s.
“A low-down dirty shame.” A smirk now splinters Randy’s mug like a crack in glass.
Big Boy sucks his teeth, and even though he knows they’re just jokes, he still rubs his forehead, not as if he’s fearful of germs, but as if there was once a horn there, or perhaps as if there’s one about to grow. “Well, if it is, maybe it skipped my brain and is working its way down to my stomach, because while y’all so busy roasting me, I’m starving.”
