Blackout

by Dhonielle Clayton

  He shrugs, mind elsewhere. “Maybe.”

  I start to ask what’s wrong, but that ain’t my place. Or at least I don’t think it is.

  “Kareem, I—”

  My phone buzzes. An unknown number. Kareem looks over and brightens.

  “Oh shit, that’s Twig,” he says and presses speaker. “What’s up!”

  “Yo, fam! Where you at?”

  “Still in the city, but making moves,” he says, checking the time. “What’s good?”

  “Nothing. That’s what’s good. I’m trying to throw the party of the summer and everything’s working against me. Just get your ass here with quickness. Peace!”

  Click.

  “Okay. He ain’t much for talking.” I laugh.

  “That’s Twig for you,” he says, before turning his head. “Hey, you hear that?”

  Music. A deep bass from nearby.

  He throws me a sly grin and nods ahead. “Yo, let’s check out the park for a second.”

  I don’t argue. The more time we waste on detours, the more chances of the power turning back on before it’s too late.

  We pass under the large white arch at the entrance of Washington Square Park. When the power is on, this thing is lit up bright white, reminds me of that big famous arch in Paris we learned about in European History. It leads to a massive fountain in the middle of the park, surrounded by benches and patches of grass. This is where all the New York University students and Village folk hang out. Even with the blackout, the place is packed, bands playing music, chess games in the dark, teens skateboarding.

  “Ew! I can’t believe people are swimming in that nasty-ass fountain,” I say, watching a white woman sit neck deep in the murky pool.

  “You blame them? It’s mad hot out here,” he says, laughing. “Hey, wasn’t NYU your first choice?”

  I rub my hands against my dress. “Um, yeah.”

  Back when I wanted to stay in the city.

  Back when I wanted to still be close to him.

  Back when my life and all the things I wanted included him.

  We find the source of the music: a portable speaker playing Bob Marley’s “Is This Love.” A small crowd of hipsters dance and sing along.

  “Ohhhh, okay! I knew I recognized this tune! It’s your people’s music!”

  I roll my eyes. “Of course the white kids with dreads smoking weed on a college campus would be playing Bob Marley.”

  “Come now,” he teases in a fake Jamaican accent while two-stepping, waving me on. “You trying to bust a whine?”

  “Boy, quit playing,” I laugh.

  He takes my hand and spins me around. “One dance won’t hurt.”

  I slip right into his arms and even though this isn’t exactly a slow song, we sway slow, to our own rhythm. My arms instinctively find their way up his shoulders. His skin is sweaty and hot, his hands grip my waist . . . my neck is burning, the sky is spinning and I’m focusing on his feet because if I look up into his eyes I know, just know, I’ll kiss him. His lips graze my forehead, and my whole body shivers.

  Girl, what you doing!

  I jump back five feet.

  “You okay?” he asks, frowning, as if he’s confused by his empty hands.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” I squeak, searching for a distraction. Another speaker is playing a hip-hop beat on the opposite side of the fountain. A group of kids sets off a rap cypher, the crowd bobbing their heads. Kareem bobs along with them.

  “Aye, whose beat is this?” he asks a guy near the speaker. “Shit is fire!”

  As they chat, the crowd thickens and I struggle to take a deep breath, tugging on his shirt. Too many people. Waaaaay too many people.

  “Um, we should get going.”

  “Hold up one second,” he says, turning to me. “Lemme see your phone again?”

  I hand him my phone, and he opens up Google, pulling up a weird music page, then grabs the aux cord from the speaker.

  “Aight. Let’s see how y’all rock to this!”

  Kareem puts on a new beat and the cypher continues, the crowd rocking along, asking him about his music. The beat is smooth, chill, something anyone could rap over but also makes everyone vibe to it.

  “Thanks, man,” he says to the guy manning the speaker as they wrap up. “Yo, hit me up anytime!”

  We walk off, heading for the exit, Kareem cheesing.

  “That . . . was so dope, Kareem,” I squeal. “You made that beat on your phone?”

  “Yeah,” he says, beaming. “I think they gonna hit me up for more beats. Maybe DJ a party.”

  “I didn’t know you were trying to make . . . like a career out of this.”

  “Don’t see how, it’s all I talked about.”

  “Yeah but . . . I didn’t think you were serious.”

  Kareem smile fades instantly. “Well, yeah. I was. My dad even convinced me to switch my major to audio engineering.”

  So that’s how he was able to apply for the internship. He switched majors. And I guess that would explain why he was so into going to all those parties. He really has always been obsessed with music.

  He tips his chin at a building ahead of us. “Aye yo, what made you change your mind about NYU?”

  Glancing up at the NYU Library, I cook up a quick lie. “And waste all my money to go to school blocks from my mother’s house? No thanks!”

  “Yeah,” he sighs. “But going to any college cost money, even the local ones. That’s why I need that Apollo gig. And all the DJ gigs I can get.”

  Local ones? So he must be going to St. John’s with Imani. She been bragging all over school how she got a full scholarship. He wants the internship so he can go to college with her . . . instead of me. He’s being all nice and flirty so he can trick me into dropping out of the position.

  Just like my cousin said, “He’s a pretty boy. You can’t trust those types.”

  “Why’d we come this way?” I snap, crossing my arms. “We should’ve stayed on Broadway.”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. Thought a quick drive-by would help change your mind. Not be in such a rush to run away.”

  I fake a laugh. “Ha! I’m not running away.”

  He cocks his lips to the side. “Yo, you don’t think I know you, but I do know you, Tammi. You’re only trying to leave early because of what happened with us.”

  He’s up to something.

  A lump rises up to my throat, skin prickling. It’s a bull’s-eye hit I wasn’t expecting.

  “That’s not true. Clark Atlanta was always on the list of colleges I wanted us to go to. I even filled out an application for you!”

  He laughs. “Let me ask you something—you ever consider how I was gonna pay for all those schools you picked out for us? You have your parents to take out loans and shit. What about me? You know my folks can’t afford to send me anywhere.”

  My mouth drops to defend myself, but I come up empty. I never once thought about the logistics of how we’d go school together. I was just so focused on getting there.

  He shakes his head. “You wanted to go to NYU. That was your dream. I knew I couldn’t afford NYU, but I still thought we’d be here, in New York . . . together.”

  “Well, things change!” I reply. “Clearly.”

  “Not everything has to,” he says.

  I throw up my hands. “Why, Kareem? Why after months of silence, why do you have so much to say now? All this time you could’ve talked to me and now you coming out your neck.”

  He closes the distance between us, grabbing both of my hands.

  “You know me,” he says. “I ain’t good with words and shit. That was your job! But I’m talking now. Is it too late?”

  He leans down, resting his forehead on mine. I hold my breath as a voice inside me says, He’s right, I do know him! I know him more than I know myself.

  “Is it too late?” he asks again, inching toward my lips, and the world starts spinning faster.

  “Kareem,” I gasp, just as the phone rings in my
bag, bringing me back to reality.

  “It’s, um, my mom.”

  Kareem straightens as I put the phone on speaker. “Hey, baby. You guys okay? I have Kareem’s mom on the line too.”

  “Hey, Tammi!” Mrs. Murphy says. “How y’all doing?”

  “Fine,” we answer in unison.

  “Everything good?” Kareem asks.

  “Kareem, don’t you remember? G-Ma moved to a home up on the Upper West Side on Wednesday. To be with her friend, Pearl.”

  Kareem hits his forehead. “Shit. I forgot!”

  “Upper West Side? We were just there!”

  “I know, but don’t worry,” Mom says. “My friend’s daughter Nella is there visiting her grandpa and says she’s doing fine. Helping to keep others calm.”

  I click off with Mom as Kareem stares in the direction we came from.

  “Should we go back?” I ask.

  He sighs. “Nah, we’re almost to the bridge. And your phone’s at thirty-five percent. We just need to get to Brooklyn.”

  I nod. “Um, okay.”

  The music grows faint as we head down West Fourth Street. I always imagined us taking long walks around here, but as college students. Now . . . I don’t know what I want anymore. All I know is that I miss him, and even though it has to, deep down, I don’t want this day to ever end.

  Just as we turn back on Broadway, a red double-decker bus dips in and out of traffic, and I catch a quick glimpse of the driver.

  “Hey!” I shout, running into the street after it, waving frantically. But the bus was already through the next light, making its way to Chinatown.

  Kareem catches up to me. “Yoooo! Was that your—”

  “I think so.” I laugh in disbelief.

  “Damn! We could’ve got a ride! Well, at least to the bridge.”

  This day has been a mess from start to finish.

  “Let’s keep going, I guess.” I sigh, fanning my neck.

  We walk in silence again before Kareem snickers. “Yo, if I didn’t say it before, good looking out back there with old boy in Times Square.” He laughs, bumping my shoulder. “Definitely wouldn’t have gotten the job after beating the life out of that chump.”

  We catch eyes, nervously blinking away. Looks like we both need that job more than we’d like to admit. The blackout brought us back together—will the Apollo internship rip us apart?

  No Sleep Till Brooklyn

  Angie Thomas

  Double-decker bus, downtown New York City, 9:07 p.m.

  LET’S START WITH the facts:

  There are twelve hundred miles between Jackson, Mississippi, and New York City.

  It takes two flights and a mad dash through the Atlanta airport to get to New York City.

  The Atlanta airport is too damn big to make any kinda “mad dash” through.

  There are 2.9 million people in the entire state of Mississippi.

  There are 8.3 million people in New York City alone.

  Yet even in a blackout, New York doesn’t feel big enough when you’re sitting next to your boyfriend while four seats away from your crush.

  The double-decker tour bus creeps down some busy Manhattan street, past a park with a stone archway entrance. According to our bus driver, Mr. Wright, it’s Washington Square Park. If it weren’t for that, this would look like any other Manhattan street to me—skyscrapers towering above, packed sidewalks, and traffic-jammed streets.

  My first thought when we arrived in New York? Everything’s cramped as hell.

  Second thought? Everybody stays busy.

  The blackout hasn’t even stopped that. My whole class was on this bus when the lights went out. Picture it, twelve rising juniors plus a first-year teacher on a class trip from Mississippi. Scratch that—twelve Black rising juniors from an “inner-city school” (does anybody say “outer city”?) with their twenty-something-year-old white woman teacher when a blackout hits the Big Apple.

  Fact: New Yorkers don’t call it “the Big Apple,” just like Atlanta folks don’t call it “Hotlanta.” A couple of us Mississippi folks do call it “Da Sip,” though.

  We all freaked when the power first went out. We hit up social media and discovered that it was a city-wide power outage. Then our phones blew up as our families back home checked on us. My daddy, a southern Black man through and through, was like, “See? I don’t trust that New York mess. I knew we shouldn’t have let you go up there.”

  Daddy has an interesting relationship with New York. He and Momma visited once back in 2003 to come see Daddy’s younger brother, Graham, and there was a major blackout back then. Kinda ironic that I’m in one now. ’Til this day, Daddy will tell you all about how he and Momma were sightseeing on the Brooklyn Bridge and had to walk back to their hotel in Manhattan because of the blackout. Momma was pregnant with me too. Had just found out a week before. Daddy claims his feet are still calloused from the journey.

  “That’s the last city that ever needs to be without lights,” he always says. “I ain’t scared of much, but you couldn’t pay me to be in New York during a blackout again.”

  New York is kinda creepy with all the lights out. Headlights and brake lights glow for miles and miles, the brightest things around. People shine the flashlights on their phones as they navigate the sidewalks. I think the weirdest part of all of this is that shit don’t stop. Back home, a power outage is a good excuse to sit outside and do nothing, especially during a heat wave like today. Here, everybody’s finding a way to keep it moving and keep it mostly calm.

  Mrs. Tucker ain’t one of them. Poor woman is on the verge of a breakdown. She goes over the class roll for the fifty-millionth time, like somehow one of us snuck off this bus.

  “Rashad?” she calls out.

  “Present,” he says, from the first row.

  “Jazmyn.”

  “Here,” my bestie says behind me.

  “Kayla?”

  “Here,” I say.

  “Tre’Shawn?”

  “Here,” my boyfriend says beside me. He gives me a smirk, probably thinking, how long before this lady loses her mind. When she does, it’ll fill in one more spot on the Karen Bingo we got in the class group chat for every time Mrs. Tucker does something Karenish. Take yesterday morning, for example. We had arrived at LaGuardia and were filing onto the shuttle bus to go to the hotel when Mrs. Tucker asked our Latinx driver what country he was from.

  “Jersey,” he said.

  “No, where are you from-from?” she asked, in the kinda tone you use on a kindergartner. She’s lucky that man didn’t cuss her out.

  Back to Tre’Shawn. I hate that he looks so cute when he smirks. His dimples appear—it doesn’t take much for them to show—and his light brown eyes get this twinkle in them that melt me. I’m supposed to be mad at him, dammit. So I roll my eyes and stare ahead.

  He groans. “Kay, c’mon. You still upset that I—”

  “Micah,” Mrs. Tucker calls out louder than usual. That’s her way of telling Tre’Shawn to be quiet while she takes roll. She really does act like we’re preschoolers.

  “Present,” Micah says with an easy smile a couple of rows ahead of us. Even in the blackout, he’s fine. Black boys with dark skin tend to look majestic in the moonlight. He lounges in a seat to himself, his long legs stretched across it and his back to the bustle of New York as if he doesn’t wanna gawk at people like the rest of us. But I think he’s sitting that way so he can see me.

  You see, he sent me a text a few hours ago. Seven words that could shake everything up:

  Do I have a shot, lil momma?

  I’ve left it on read since I saw it.

  Because I don’t know.

  Which kinda makes me a shitty girlfriend.

  Who shouldn’t be mad at Tre’Shawn.

  Because ditching your girlfriend to hang with your homies and lying about it isn’t as big of a deal as talking to somebody else.

  And flirting with somebody else.

  And purposely finding ways to spend ti
me with somebody else.

  Like going to study hall when you know he’ll be there.

  Or deciding to do a story in the school paper about the track team just because it means you’ll have to interview him.

  Then letting him take you home after school one day.

  And laughing and talking and getting so caught up that when he leans over the gears and tries to kiss you.

  You almost let him.

  But you don’t. I didn’t.

  I just almost did.

  Which is still bad.

  Mrs. Tucker finishes the roll—yes, everybody is exactly where they were when she checked forty-five minutes ago—and heads to the lower level.

  “Behave, everyone,” she says in a singsong voice. “I’m going to check with the driver and see why we’re not moving anymore.”

  Um, maybe because the traffic lights are out, and cars were already bumper to bumper before that? We’re the only ones left on the bus. All the other tourists hopped off a while ago and decided to walk. Never happening with Mrs. Tucker.

  She disappears down the steps, and the second she’s gone, we all bust out laughing.

  “Ay, five dollars say she ask the driver if she can speak to his manager,” Rashad says.

  “Pshhhhiiiid, fool, she probably already did,” says Jaysean, not to be confused with Tre’Shawn. First day of school, Mrs. Tucker asked if they were twin brothers even though they don’t look alike. They just have similar first names and the same last name.

  “No, ma’am,” Jaysean told her. “Our ancestors were probably owned by the same slave master, though.”

  The look on that woman’s face was priceless.

  Aja leans over the railing of the bus. “Why the hell these people still going into restaurants? Don’t they know it’s a blackout?”

  “They still gotta eat, Aja, dang,” I say. We’ve been real touristy, I gotta admit. We say “they” and “them” a lot ’cause even though we’re all humans, New Yorkers may as well be aliens compared to us. It’s fascinating to watch them.

  Not like they don’t do us the same way. This morning we grabbed breakfast at the hotel restaurant, and the waitress was like, “Where are you guys from?”