Yeah, I tell myself, you have Pa’s eyes. I cock my shoulders back, push out my chest a little, and ball my hands into fists.
Back home, me and Mike sit on my stoop.
“Don’t you want to do something?” he asks. “Like really do something?”
Since I fiend for life to be different, I ask, “Like?”
I don’t see it coming when Mike mentions cutting school again. Maybe because he dropped it for so long.
“Hold up,” I say.
I come back with Ma’s notebook where she writes down recipes and my composition notebook. I start trying to copy her handwriting.
Mike watches me, smiling. “It almost looks the same. You’ll be a pro in no time. Keep going.”
* * *
• • •
That night, I can’t sleep.
I get out of bed and go to my T-shirt drawer. I pull out a photo of Pa that I’ve had since I was little. And I start missing him so bad, I get mad.
I put the photo back and sit on my bed.
I feel all this stuff building up in me. Like I need to do something. Like I can’t think straight. My knee gets jumpy. I go unzip the secret pocket in my book bag. I pull out and unfold the paper that I tore from my notebook where I practiced Ma’s handwriting. It has everything from imitations of her signature to whole sentences. I’m getting the hang of Ma’s really artsy loops in her lowercase j’s, g’s, p’s, f’s, q’s, and y’s. I start feeling impressed because Mike said I’ll be a pro soon.
But that’s not the only thing I feel looking at this paper with my ma’s handwriting in my handwriting. The other thing I feel is a question. I wonder, Are you really doing this?
And that question stays on my brain.
CHAPTER 18
Sunday night, me and Mike sit side by side on my bed and compare drawings we just finished.
He shows me his. “What you think?”
“I like the details you put in Darth Vader’s outfit,” I say. “And bust how you got Kylo Ren coming out of Darth Vader’s shadow! Kid, this is bananas! Like, this looks real. In that first movie, they set it up like Kylo Ren is the new Vader. It’d be crazy if we had some of those expensive color art pens or pencils that our school has. You know how sick this’ll be if you colored in these lightsabers?”
I swear, his drawing is so good that I can hear Darth Vader’s and Kylo Ren’s voices in my head. I hear their lightsabers pulsing and throbbing those sword-fighting sounds.
“Let me see yours,” Mike asks about my drawing.
I don’t want to show him mine because I didn’t go all out. But I show him.
He moves his hand across my drawing and big-ups my Flash. “That’s wavy. You got the Flash moving so fast, parts of him are almost invisible.”
I start thinking my drawing might not be as bad as I thought.
Mike’s hand moves across my drawing to another part. “Word? Son, you draw Transformers?” He taps Bumblebee. “Teach me how to draw him.”
I give him a look. Is he for real? His drawings are way past mine. I try reading his face but can’t tell if he’s seriously feeling my art. But his face looks like he means it.
Sometimes, this is how it is with Mike, and it’s the part that keeps me being friends with him. I could be feeling down and dude says something that gets me up. I know my drawing isn’t dip, but he’s making me feel like I’m on his level.
We talk about our drawings some more, then Mike switches topics, lowering his voice to almost a whisper. “So, you got your moms’s handwriting yet?”
I jump up, go outside my room, come back with her shopping list, copy part of it, and hand it to him.
He holds the list. He’s impressed.
“Do eggs.” He hands me back the copy paper. “You said her g’s were hard.”
I bust that out and hand it back to him.
“I can’t even tell the difference,” he says, straining to find one.
He gets up and pulls a paper out of his book bag. “Now, write one of these and you won’t have to go to school.”
I take it from him. It reads:
To Whom It May Concern:
Please excuse my son Mike from school this Tuesday. I am taking him to a doctor’s appointment.
Sincerely,
Nancy Freedman
“You wrote this?” I ask. “Or your moms? Because this looks nothing like your handwriting.”
“This Tuesday they’re releasing the newest X-Men comic,” Mike says. “That joint’ll be sold out if we wait until dismissal to cop that. I’m hitting that Carroll Gardens comic store in the morning. You should come.”
I look back at him. “How you use this note?”
“Just show your homeroom teacher,” he says. “Ask her to tell your other teachers that you’ll be out. If it’s her telling them, they’ll believe it. Adults believe adults. But if you show every teacher your note, you killed it. That’s at least five teachers seeing the handwriting and five chances for someone to spot it’s not real. Five chances to get caught.”
This feeling rushes through me. I can’t tell if it’s excitement, nervousness, or what.
“So?” he presses me.
“Yo, I can’t get busted, bruh.”
“You won’t. Never. Never has a teacher busted me. Just give it to your homeroom teacher at the end of the day,” Mike says. “At the end of the day, teachers are mad faded and tired. They don’t even want to deal with us.”
He takes that fake note from his moms and acts it out. “I go up to the teacher like this and say, ‘Oh, I forgot to give this to you,’ and they barely look at it. One look, they’re, like, ‘Fine.’ Most teachers don’t even keep the note. They write down somewhere that I’ll be absent and hand my note right back to me. Then, I take it and burn it or rip it up so my moms won’t find it.”
“This Tuesday?” I ask Mike.
“This Tuesday. Just this Tuesday.”
I stand, not even sure that I want to do this, but I grab another sheet of paper and sit back down. “Give me that shopping list. And your note.”
He does, then grabs his Star Wars drawing and goes back to adding details.
I copy word for word what his note says. But I sign it with my moms’s name.
Then I show him.
He smiles wide like it’s Christmas. “You know, you not going to believe how much fun we’ll have on Tuesday.”
* * *
• • •
It’s five minutes till class ends. I stand and feel my knees get weak a little. My heart beats faster and harder. My stomach flips from nervousness. I swallow hard and pretend I’m Mike.
“Excuse me, Ms. Whitman.”
Her back is to me as she packs up her expensive-looking brown leather bag. Ms. Whitman’s long blond hair is in a bun and bobs up and down.
“Yes?” She doesn’t even turn around.
“My mother told me to give you this.”
Ms. Whitman holds the note close to her glasses.
I swear every second she reads my note, my heart beats faster and faster. It’s beating as fast as the race car tires blur in those Fast and Furious movies.
She hums as she reads. “Mm-mmm.”
I feel my heart stop.
“Mmm. Okay. Tell your mother thank you for letting me know.”
“Okay.” I turn to leave, not believing it just worked. I feel the rush I feel when I play tag and shake off whoever is “it.”
“Um . . . Bryan.” Her voice hits my back like an arrow, and my heart stops again. I feel caught.
“Yes?”
“Here. Take this letter back. I’ll write myself a reminder on a Post-it.”
WHOA to the WHOA!
CHAPTER 19
The next morning, we link up behind the check cashing spot near the highway that splits our
project from the rich, mostly white neighborhood next to us.
Me and Mike don’t even speak. We fist-bump, then jaywalk across the highway.
I feel like I’m in a Ms. Pac-Man video game because I dodge speeding cars at the right time the way I dodge ghosts in the game.
Safe on the street, I expect to dip left and uphill mad blocks to the comic store in Carroll Gardens. Mike goes right.
“It’s too far to walk,” he says. “Let’s take the train.”
“I’m broke.”
“It’s cool. I got it.”
I look surprised at him.
I like that he saved enough for me to ride the train too—that’s good looking out and what a brother would do.
I think back to times he didn’t share with me and I jumped to feeling that he was grimy and not acting like a brother. Now he’s here acting this way and I’m the one feeling grimy.
* * *
• • •
In the train station, Mike moves like a snake, slithering quick through the crowd toward the turnstiles. There, he waves me over.
I’m confused.
“You see five-oh?” he whispers.
I check. “Nah,” I whisper back. “Why we checking for cops?”
Mike ducks under a turnstile and races up the steps.
“PAY YOUR FARE!” the teller’s voice yells through the microphone in the MetroCard booth. It sounds extra scary because it’s all metallic, like Darth Vader’s voice.
I watch Mike’s sneakers race up the stairs and out of sight.
I’m so scared and don’t know what to do. My eyes shoot everywhere. But the people coming in and out of the station don’t know or don’t care about what Mike just did. Even the teller in the booth is back to handling money and MetroCards.
I’m so Stuck On Stupid! I have to make a move.
I jet to a turnstile and duck under.
“PAY YOUR FARE!” the teller’s scary Darth Vader voice barks at me as I race up two steps at a time.
Everywhere on my body, I sweat.
I’m out of breath.
I’m OD amped from what just happened. OD scared a cop will pop out of somewhere and arrest me when I turn the next corner.
When I finally get to the platform, I see Mike chilling against a pole like he did nothing.
I’m so tight I want to push him off the platform onto the train tracks. But I’m also so out of breath and relieved no cops are around that I hunch forward and wipe my T-shirt bottom across my sweaty forehead.
I deep-breathe over and over to get myself together.
Mike comes and rests a hand on my shoulder. “Crazy, right?”
I hear the smile in his voice. I also hear all the curse words in my head that I want to explode on him. Before I can say or do anything, I feel the platform under my kicks rumble and the train coming.
“C’mon,” he says.
I look up and see the small light in front of the train grow bigger and brighter as it approaches.
Then I feel Mike’s arm scoop under mine to move me along.
“You have to tell me next time before you pull some stupidness like that,” I tell Mike.
“I didn’t tell you,” he whispers, “because I didn’t even know I would do that.” He pulls out a bunch of bills from his pocket. I see a five, a ten, and a few singles. “I have loot. But tell me what we did wasn’t more fun.”
I have questions I should ask. Were you planning to do this? Why you look so relaxed hopping that turnstile? What do you think would’ve happened if cops caught us?
But I don’t ask. Those questions might make me look soft.
Boop! Boop! The train’s door closes behind us.
Our train pulls out, turns, then all this sunlight busts into the windows opposite of us.
I lean the back of my head against the window. Wow. The Freedom Tower is on the right, standing high above my pipsqueak projects buildings, which are on the left. In between my projects and the Freedom Tower is my school. The kids in my class are probably doing our Do Now right now. Or Ms. Cransfeld is telling kids something we probably won’t remember. I don’t know what is going on in class right now but I do know that as much as I’m tight at Mike for pulling that turnstile stunt, I know he’s right.
What we just did was crazy. And fun.
Real quick, the Manhattan skyline starts disappearing out of sight as our train sinks. We dive into a tunnel.
Mike taps me. “Come look.”
I follow him, weaving through the crowd of people. Soon, we get to the front of the train and there is this little window at the door of the operator’s booth. Mike looks, then steps out of the way to let me. I peek in and it’s bananas.
I can see the operator drive the train, and I can see ahead of the train onto the tracks as we go in the tunnel.
The tunnel is dark. It’s scary. It’s dope.
“Yooooo,” I say to Mike.
“It feels like you flying through the tunnel,” he tells me. “Right?”
That’s the exact feeling. “Word.”
CHAPTER 20
“Hey, Rob.” The guy behind the counter of the comic store calls Mike the wrong name but treats Mike like he’s used to seeing him. “Who is your friend?”
I expect Mike to call me his brother but he goes with what the cashier said. “This is my friend Ray.”
I feel like this is a moment to copycat Mike so I nod like my name is Ray, follow Mike into an aisle, and pull a comic off a shelf like he does.
We’re next to each other, flipping pages, and pretty far from the cashier. I whisper to Mike, “Rob? Ray?”
He puts a finger over his lips. “Later.”
First, we’re standing. Next, we’re sitting crisscross- applesauce. Then, we’re standing again. In total? We hang in the store enough to read maybe ten comics apiece. Maybe an hour passes.
Then Mike grabs the newest X-Men comic that he came for and a few others. He pays and we head outside.
“Now what?” I ask.
“Now we hit somewhere to chill where five-oh won’t bug us.”
“The park?” I ask.
“Um? Hello?” He sounds like he’s talking down to me like I’m an idiot. “If you a cop looking for kids cutting school, where’s the first place you’d look?”
“A park.”
“That’s why we going to Starbucks.” He points up the block to a Starbucks.
“Cops drink coffee,” I say, trying to talk down to him, and I shoot him a look like, Who’s the idiot now, huh?
“True,” Mike says, “but I got this.”
There he goes again saying that. I got this.
I don’t trust him because the last time he said that he meant something else.
“Nah.” I stop walking. “What do you mean, ‘I got this’?”
Mike huffs and looks me up and down like I’m softer than soft, like I’m being a baby.
He smirks, shakes his head, then leaves for Starbucks.
I feel so far away from where I should be. It might sound silly, but I feel far away from who I am.
I should be in school, but I followed Mike here. I shouldn’t have hopped a turnstile, but I followed him and did. I watch him walk off and see that he doesn’t turn around. He knows that I’ll follow him. Because I have to. I have no train money to ride home. Even if I did have money, I’ve never ridden the train by myself.
Mike calls all the shots, knows it, and has me kissing his butt.
I feel myself getting tight and something in me wants to explode. I wish I could catch up to him and throw him a beating.
But then what? I’d still be stuck in a new neighborhood without a dime or a clue to get home.
I catch up to him and follow him into Starbucks.
He looks around like he’s searching for
something. “There.” He points at grown-ups who could pass for our family. He leans in and whispers, “Sit kind of close to them but not close enough to freak them out. If cops walk in, they won’t question us because they’ll assume we’re with them.”
We do that, and as soon as we’re in seats, I lean in and he leans in too.
I ask, “Why you call me Ray back there? Why you Rob?”
Mike says, “Don’t ever give your real name if you cut school. Heads know who you are, then soon your moms knows what you did. So you Ray and I’m Rob. Want a coffee, Ray? My treat.”
I nod. I never had Starbucks before.
It smells good.
He hands me his comics and heads to the cashier.
When he brings me my cup, I sip and feel grown drinking it because only grown-ups are here drinking coffee.
For the rest of our time in Starbucks, we call each other Rob and Ray.
At first, I hate it.
After a few sips, I guess my new name isn’t so bad. Batman is Bruce Wayne. Power Man is Luke Cage. Heroes have two different identities. Mike is Rob. I’m Ray.
* * *
• • •
Sitting and reading with chill people and listening to music in this Starbucks reminds me of when Ma takes me out of the projects for some “us time.”
We both like to do exactly this, except no coffee.
This is our thing: chilling and being peaceful.
The people sitting in here being quiet and calm make me wonder—are they always like this? What other places do they go to be chill when they leave here?
It feels like my projects’ drama doesn’t even exist. So when the people next to us who look like family stand and leave, I feel sad.
“Now what?” I ask Mike.
“Over there.” He nods at a man and woman who can pass for family.
Mike has to tell me “Be smooth about it,” because I grab the comics and start cleaning up our table too quick. He reminds me to head over there without being obvious.
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