Tight

by Torrey Maldonado

  “Corny. School is corny sometimes.”

  Ma believes me, relaxing back into the couch and putting one hand on her head. I feel like she’s about to say I can’t see Mike no more. I feel like she’s about to list mad punishments and ground me for forever. But she bites her lip and says, “You and him are too young to do this. It has to stop, okay? And I need to talk to him.”

  I nod.

  “But I don’t want you talking to him. Not until I do and figure things out. And you’re grounded. You’re not going out today or tomorrow. And your father and I will figure out more punishment for you.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The rest of the night I feel four things.

  First, I can’t believe the school sent Ma a letter about me cutting.

  Next, whoa! I got busted for only that?!

  Third, Pa almost smacked me into tomorrow.

  Fourth, I do everything half expecting cops or someone to knock on the door and—boom—everything with Little Kevin gets found out.

  Eight o’clock passes. Nine. Ten. Then it’s time for bed.

  Lying in bed, I stare at the ceiling. I can’t sleep. I didn’t hear nothing about Little Kevin tonight. But tomorrow?

  CHAPTER 30

  Two days later on Monday morning, Pa and Ava eye me real mean during breakfast.

  Ma walks me to school like I’m in kindergarten again.

  It’s mad embarrassing. I’m the only middle-school kid walking up our school’s block with a parent. Kids stop talking as we get close, and they stare and say stuff under their breaths about me as we walk by. I feel like such a herb. Ma doesn’t care. She wants to talk with my teachers and make me apologize for my cutting. She wants to get the whole scoop about how many days and assignments I’ve missed. She wants to do another thing: She wants to see Mike.

  I get to him before she does because I know where he chills in the morning and she doesn’t.

  “I need to pee,” I tell her after she signs in at the security desk near the main office.

  “Hurry.”

  And just like that, I stroll chill-like around the corner toward the bathroom, then jet past it down the stairs—two steps at a time—huff past the gym, tackle open the doors, and spot Mike where he hangs with other seventh graders and a few sixth graders in the courtyard. I race to him. As I get close, dudes he’s with tap him and say stuff like, “Yo, your brother,” and point, “Ayo, your bruh.” Before, I loved hearing that. Now? Not so much.

  I get to him. “Whattup,” I nod at everyone, then look dead at him. “Come talk.”

  He leaves the dudes he’s with. “’Sup?”

  I wipe sweat off my forehead and speak fast. “Ma’s here. School sent a letter listing days I been absent. You got one?”

  “I get them before my moms and I tear them up.”

  “Dummy. Why you didn’t say school sends those home? I could’ve been on the lookout.”

  “Forgot.”

  “Ugh! How could you forget that! Now Ma is here to find out stuff with my teachers. And she wants to see you before she leaves.”

  “Me?! Dang, you snitch! Why me?!”

  I look at him like he must be dumb. My mom is really here and really about to see all my teachers. I’m the one in deep doo-doo and here he is again only worried about himself. For real, for real?

  “I’m not a snitch,” I say. “But she knew I had to be with you. So I just told her me and you cut and stayed on my roof, drawing and reading comics.”

  “Ugh.”

  “I need to be out. Ma’s about to go to my first class with me. Remember, we just cut to be on one roof, my roof.”

  I turn to go and he grabs my forearm. “What if your moms tells mine? They talk. She will.”

  “Then handle that. It’s better than them knowing everything we’ve got into. And where’s Little Kevin at, anyway? He usually runs around here. You heard what ended up happening with him and the cops?”

  Mike shakes his head.

  “A’ight. I’m out.”

  I jet.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ms. Whitman goes all the way in, even telling Ma all about the notes I gave her written in Ma’s handwriting. “You mean, they weren’t from you?”

  Ma side-eyes me like she could backhand-smack me out my chair and send me crashing out the window.

  When Ma’s meeting with her is over, Ma walks me out of class.

  Her face turns seriouser than serious. “Where’d you learn to write like me?”

  I wish I could say Mike. “I . . . I . . . me.”

  I look at my kicks. I feel grimy. Me and Ma used to have the bomb relationship. I used to be able to tell her anything. Now, I lie to her left and right for Mike, who probably gives two craps about me.

  Ma says the worst. “I should let your father punish you. Leave you with him in the house and let him do whatever. Because I don’t know . . .”

  What?! She wouldn’t! Will she?

  Just the thought makes me nervously swallow, and my stomach and legs tremble.

  One time when I was nine, I slipped and said a curse in front of him and he took me home and OD’d on me. He said, “You wanna talk like a man? I’ll smack your face like a man!” I was so happy Ma was home and heard him. She ran into the living room and stopped him.

  The thought right now of her leaving me alone with him fires me up all jumpy, like when Pop Rocks are on my tongue.

  And the rest of Ma’s school visit gets worse. She collects so many assignments I missed—plus lots of extra ones for punishment—that before she leaves me there, she hands me a stack of papers so high that they’re almost too heavy for me to hold up.

  “You’re doing all of this.”

  What?! I’ll be writing until my hand cramps.

  “After school, you come straight to my job. No Mike. You have all of this to do and extra assignments that I’m making for you.”

  “Are you letting Pa punish me?” I ask.

  Ma turns and walks to a stairwell door.

  I stand there, my thoughts now popping like Pop Rocks in an oily frying pan. She didn’t answer. Does that mean yes?

  Right before the door closes, she side-eyes me. “That depends on how fast you make up that missed work. And how well you do on them. Mike is in seven-three-oh-two, right?”

  I nod.

  Yo! After school, I’m booking to her job like the Flash. And I’m gonna do every assignment perfect. No matter how long it takes. She is not leaving me alone with Pa.

  * * *

  • • •

  After Ma leaves, I spend the day feeling three things. First, too embarrassed to make eye contact with my teachers. Next, scared from yesterday—that any minute a cop or someone would show up with Little Kevin and it would be a wrap for me and Mike. Third, worried—anytime outside of class when crowds of kids are around, I scan for Little Kevin. Dude is nowhere.

  The whole day passes with me feeling those three ways on loop, and soon school is over.

  At dismissal, me and Mike end up in the same loud crowd rolling down the stairwell that leads out the side of our school. I spot him way ahead at the bottom of the steps, and I U-turn real fast before anyone can tell him, “Yo, your brother,” or something.

  I can’t see him because I’m not risking more punishment by being seen with him, but I’m fiending to know how Ma’s convo with him went.

  I go against the crowd back up to the second floor and exit on the opposite side of the building.

  * * *

  • • •

  At Ma’s work, nobody knows the trouble I’m in.

  The janitor—Mr. Roberts—talks to me like he usually does like I’m going to be president of the United States someday. He even says stuff like that. “Hey, Mr. Man.” He soft-punches my arm as I
come out of the bathroom. “When you running for mayor?”

  I shrug.

  The two secretaries—Ms. Torres and Ms. Betancourt—who treat me like I’m the coolest kid on earth start talking to me from their desks. “Is it me? Or is Bryan taller than the last time we saw him?” Ms. Torres winks at Ms. Betancourt, then says—because she knows I’m a sixth grader but is just playing— “What? Bryan, you’re an eighth grader now?”

  Ma’s coworkers have me feeling up from all their compliments.

  I look at Ma, who stands at her desk and eyes me like she did before in school. She’s still pissed. I don’t know why, but I flip from feeling up to feeling like I don’t deserve props from her coworkers. I look back at Ms. Torres and Ms. Betancourt and fake a smile and keep it moving.

  In my office, I pull the first handout on top of the dumb high stack of assignments I need to make up. It’s math and I wish I hadn’t cut because I don’t understand this.

  When Big Will showed me that TV show Heroes on his phone, there was this kid who looks like me who has a power I wish I could flex right now. Micah. Micah is mad smart and puts his hands on computers and downloads information. When he touches any electronics, they talk to him. Man, if I was Micah, I’d go swipe my hand over one of these computers in here and know how to do all these makeup assignments. I flick through the rest of the stacks. Ugh! I don’t understand most of this. I finally find a literacy assignment I can do, easy. I slide it out and get to work.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Did you double-check it?”

  Ma doesn’t even look at the literacy assignment in her hand that I just knocked out.

  The truth is no. I didn’t double-check it.

  She eyes me like, Don’t lie, and I’m already in trouble for lying so I take it back. “I’ll double-check it.”

  “Good.”

  Ma calls me back as I walk away. “I spoke to Mike.”

  “And?”

  “You don’t need to see him for a while.”

  I want to know about her conversation with him—not that I can’t hang with him. I stand there, waiting for that info.

  “That’s it. Go do your work.”

  “For how long?” I ask. “How long am I not supposed to hang with him.”

  “Until I say. That means at school too. Don’t let me and Pa find out you are.”

  There she goes again: Pa. She already threatened to leave me alone with Pa, so she doesn’t have to tell me twice to stay away from Mike. Done.

  CHAPTER 31

  “You avoiding me.”

  Hearing Mike’s voice, I wish I could teleport like Nightcrawler from the X-Men so fast and disappear from here and pop up in my next class so I don’t have to turn around and tell him some lie about why I’ve dodged him all day like Ms. Pac-Man shakes ghosts.

  I turn around, fake a smile, and put my fist out for a fist-bump. “Nah, bruh, I just been on my school grind. Ma wants me making up everything I missed.”

  “She told me that junk too. Your ma is OD corny, thinking I’m listening to her. Psst. Puhleez. And she said me and you shouldn’t chill until she says so. Sometimes, she can be . . . Anyway, change subjects. We chilling after school?”

  Nobody needs to tell me my eyes are wild googly like I want to flip right now. I feel them. First, I don’t like nobody dissing Ma. Next, he has nerve. After all he did, he thinks my moms is in the wrong?

  “What you looking at me like that for?” he asks.

  “Why you cutting on my moms?”

  “Psst”—he sucks his teeth—“you know she’s corny sometimes. Stop playing.”

  Little Kevin pops up in my mind. Since Mike’s here, I want to know what’s the dilly with Little Kevin. “What’s up with Kev?”

  He looks off like Little Kevin is the last thing he wants to discuss right now. “It’s all good.” He licks his lips and smirks. “Nothing is happening.”

  “How nothing?”

  He slowly turns and stares at me like I’m some joke. “Nothing, like nothing.”

  “The cops snatched him and nothing happened?”

  “Yeah. He didn’t drop our names and he’s not in big trouble.”

  “So what little trouble is he in?”

  “Cops do something sometimes when a kid is too young to be charged. They put a report on what the kid did in a file and keep it until he’s eighteen. That’s what Kev told me they did. They called his moms to the precinct and explained if cops catch Kev doing wrong again before he’s eighteen, then he’s in big trouble. But if he doesn’t do anything, they’ll throw out his file when he turns eighteen. No crime, no time.”

  I feel so happy for Little Kevin. I also feel relieved me and Mike won’t catch heat.

  He interrupts my thoughts. “Forget Kev. So, we chilling at dismissal or you being a nerd?”

  I look at him like he can’t be serious. He’s saying forget Kev, then herbing me and calling me a nerd?

  I start walking away. “I guess I’ll be a nerd.”

  Mike yells at my back as kids move in between us. “Why you gotta be wack, for real?”

  I breathe in deep to cool down.

  * * *

  • • •

  In school that first week of avoiding Mike, he side-eyes and sucks his teeth at me more and more from far off.

  And something else happens at home. Pa’s voice comes from behind me as I’m getting something off the bottom shelf of our fridge. “Bryan, you’ve been talking to Mike?”

  “No.”

  His eyes study my whole face for one sign that I’m lying. “Good.”

  That catches me off guard. “How come?”

  “I was outside Hector’s bodega,” Pa says, “and Mike started walking toward me like nothing ever happened. It took a lot for me not to yell at him for getting you in trouble. So, I just told him I’m disappointed in him and he better realize I’m good to him as long as he’s good to you.”

  The fact that Pa did that makes me know three things: First, Pa has my back. Next, Pa isn’t talking to Mike, which must make Mike feel like crap. Third, no wonder Mike has been sucking his teeth at me more and more—he’s probably extra tight that he’s been cut off from my family so hard.

  I know this is true because a week of Mike side-eyeing me turns into another week of him tapping whoever is next to him to say something nasty, probably something about me.

  * * *

  • • •

  I’m happy to go to Ma’s job in the afternoons. It’s peaceful. It feels more like how after-school used to be. And I feel more like the old me there.

  Anytime I need a break from doing schoolwork, I draw or read comics. I don’t know where Ma is getting the loot, but she bought me seven new ones. And I don’t know who’s telling her what to pick, but she picked the best ones. Wavy art. Black Panther and Batman and ones that’re movies or about to be movies.

  I won’t say I love spending every afternoon at Ma’s job in my office, because I’m still doing makeup work and it’s not as exciting as everything me and Mike chased. But, still, it’s sort of dip.

  CHAPTER 32

  All the weeks of me not kicking it with Mike means lots of weeks of me kicking it more with Big Will.

  We talk Ms. Pac-Man. He shows me more Heroes episodes on his phone outside at dismissal. Once, I point at Big Will’s screen. “You got Netflix?”

  “Yeah.” He nods as he keeps watching Heroes.

  I ask, “You heard of Luke Cage?”

  “Nah. Who that?”

  “A superhero you might like. Search him on Netflix.”

  “You have Netflix too?” he asks. “You saw his show?”

  “Nah. I know him from comics. But I heard he has a show. Let’s see.”

  Big Will types fast, finds, and plays season one, episode one,
and scrolls fast-forward to this whoa action scene!

  I already knew Luke Cage could pass for somebody in my family or Mike’s because he’s drawn Black in comics. He’s darker than me and Mike but looks like my cousin Diego and Mike’s oldest brother Randy. But Luke Cage is way more in shape. He could be a WWE wrestler. Now seeing Luke Cage as a real person and not drawn is straight whoa. The actor who plays Luke looks pissed right now. Luke Cage puts on his black hoodie over his baldie, walks to a parked black SUV Jeep, and rips the door off with his bare hands! He carries it like a shield and stomps up the stoop of a projects building that matches mine, uses the SUV car door to smash down the front-stoop door, walks in, and it gets so crazy that me and Big Will look at each other like YOOOOO, then back at the screen!

  Me and Big Will grip his cell phone tighter and lean in. The action gets crazier and crazier. When Big Will’s alarm on his phone goes off, we’re mad.

  “Ugh!” he says. “I have to go! My moms is waiting for me. Baseball practice.”

  * * *

  • • •

  For the next three weeks, it’s like this with Big Will.

  Three weeks of chillness after school on our school’s corner. Us watching Heroes and Luke Cage on Netflix on his phone.

  Three weeks of no drama.

  I like that Big Will is different and never acts like he has to prove anything.

  Most guys who don’t know each other do this stare-off thing and eye each other like What you looking at? It’s a way to show everyone you’re not soft. Tough guys respect tough guys and mostly let each other pass.

  I’ve never tried staring hard back at guys because I have Pa. Nobody wants beef with him so they don’t beef with me.

  Big Will doesn’t do the stare-off thing either. I figured at first it’s because of his size. But then one afternoon I learned he has a different attitude.

  We just left school and walk through a corner thick with older guys from our school. It’s like a video game steering between each one without bumping into anybody. And we do it until—thump—Big Will’s shoulder accidentally knocks hard against the shoulder of this eighth-grade boy whose name I don’t know. From the looks of the older guy, he’s the last boy you want to bump into. He’s as big as Big Will, and his face says “drama” and he doesn’t mind if he’s in it. His clothes and sneakers say swag and he’s ready to fight if someone messes that up.