“You . . . ,” he says, “you like my brother. For real. I didn’t want you in trouble like this.” He keeps on apologizing about name-calling me, Dennis and Christian, and it really doesn’t matter what he says because of what I feel. I’m OD glad that he’s acting different and wants things different between us.
But a part of me is confused. “What made you come in here?”
“My moms.”
Really? I never knew his mom thought twice about me and his friendship. “Why?”
“She said you a real friend and I shouldn’t crap on real friends. So?”
“So what?”
“Want to see some new comics I got?”
“What you tell my moms just now?”
Mike looks at her as she handles a work phone call. “Not the whole. Just I’m sorry I hung with you on the roofs when I could’ve been a better friend and made us go to school.”
I look at my moms now. “You didn’t tell her the whole because—”
Mike jumps in. “Because she doesn’t need to know the whole. Just that I’m sorry and won’t be getting you in trouble again.”
“You pushed Dennis and Christian to beef with me.”
“And I’m a herb for it. That won’t happen again and I won’t put you in drama, ever again. I’m telling you—that’s my word.”
“Word.”
We fist-bump.
He pulls his new comics out his backpack and we flip through them.
It sort of feels like old times.
CHAPTER 36
Ma won’t let me be over at Mike’s and she won’t let him chill in our apartment. She says something about “take it slow.” But she lets us hang outside and in her job.
When we break from playing basketball on the court that Carmelo Anthony donated to our projects, me and him chill on a bench and he sees me OD reread his newest Luke Cage comic for the fourth, fifth time.
“Take that,” Mike says.
I slap it shut and try handing it to him. I don’t want his handout. It makes me feel like a broke bum beggar. “Nah.”
“That’s yours.” He pushes the comic back at me. “You hit me off with stuff all week. Let me pay you back with that.”
“Nah.”
He pushes the comic back at me, again. “I’m telling you—that’s yours.”
I zip it in my backpack. For the rest of the day, I expect him to ask for it back. He doesn’t.
Heads on the street flex back to treating us like we close brothers, even Dennis and Christian, who Mike yeasted up to fight me. They even apologize to me. But I see it in Christian’s eyes—he’s not sorry. If me and Mike fell off again, he’d fight me again.
Lately, I’ve been hanging some with Big Will too, but in these moments I wonder why I don’t just hang all the time with him. Because he’s cool. Plus, he’s good backup.
When Ma lets Mike back into our apartment, first he acts like nothing bad ever happened between us.
Then a few days later he starts acting a little too comfortable in my bedroom—kicking his sneakers at my wall and flinging his coat on my floor. He eyes me like he wants to see if I ask him to pick his stuff up.
I ignore him and flip through my Black Panther comic. “When we weren’t hanging,” I say, “I found out that Black Panther trained and has reflexes better than a real wildcat or panther.”
Too quick, Mike sucks his teeth. “That’s garbage information.”
Little by little, day after day, it feels like Mike’s real attitude and anger boil more and more to the surface. It’s like everything he does I could list in a game of I Get Annoyed When.
Soon, he starts strolling in my apartment like whateverwhatever hostile. Like all he sees when he sees me is his memory of everything that upset him about past garbage. He rocks the same cocky face and cocky body language I’ve seen on him before but now he’s extra. I wonder why he is acting this way when I don’t act ill with him.
One afternoon Mike comes into our apartment and puts his feet up on the couch, acting like he owns the place.
I point at his kicks. “Ma doesn’t like sneakers on the couch.”
He doesn’t move.
“Can you please,” I repeat softly and point at his kicks again, “move your feet?”
He snaps, “Calm down!” then beasts louder. “It ain’t that serious!”
He slowly moves his feet.
I try to be nice and make conversation. “Where you just came from?”
He stands, brushes by me, knocking his shoulder into mine, hard. “Hanging. With Christian.”
He grabs this mini Nerf basketball that Ma just bought me. Anything Ma buys me is special to me.
Mike tosses it from one hand to his other. Immediately, I don’t want him touching it.
“So, you best friends with Big Will now?” He looks and sounds extra salty, like the way he was when he came into Ma’s job and saw me having fun with that kid Kamau.
“Why is me and Big Will being cool a problem?” I say. “I don’t care if you cool with Christian. And can you put my ball down?”
He flings it on Ma’s dinner table like whoa, knocking a plastic cup of pens over. Without looking at me, he says some gibberish I can’t understand ending with “And you made your dad not talk to me for weeks.”
He swings around and the look on his face! Yo! He growls the next thing real clear. “So why you keep acting soft, hanging out with nerds?”
I look at that spilled cup. I hear his word soft. My heart races.
I nervous-chuckle. “Don’t call me soft.”
“But you are. That’s probably the only reason you hang with stupid Big Will. Because his size and he can protect your soft butt.”
My mouth gets dry. I think about Big Will’s advice: Say “My bad” because it usually relaxes someone who is tight. I go open my apartment door. “My bad, Mike. You right. About everything. But you should bounce. Maybe come back when everyone is here and we can talk then.”
Mike ignores me and goes to the table and picks up a new comic Ma just got me as reward for finally catching up with my makeup assignments. “This is nice.”
He flings it on the floor.
I’m tight and the anger in me is building, so I breathe in deep the way Ma taught me to not lose control. I hold the door open wider. “You need to be out now.”
He bops up to me so close that I smell the mint gum he chews. He slams the apartment door shut and snarls in my face. “Make me.”
What the—? He’s acting like he’s ready to beast on me.
I walk farther away. “You playing?”
He laughs. “No! I’m not.”
He picks up the Nerf basketball he just tossed on my dinner table. “It’s mine now.”
“Put it back.”
He holds the Nerf ball out. “Take it.”
When I try grabbing for it, he snatches it away.
Whoa. What’s wrong with him? I’m done playing his stupid game. I turn to walk away when—
Smack.
Yo. He just soft-smacked me.
His face grins all the way max like the Joker’s. “Do something.”
My warning comes out as a whisper. “Get out.”
He snarls, all cocky, “Or? What?”
He smacks me again and then shoves me hard, and I start feeling those feelings in my gut that I felt when Christian hopped in my face to fight.
He bumps his nose against mine, saying, “Oh, that’s right. You never been in a fight, so you aren’t going to do anything. Right? Punk?”
Every explosion I’ve ever stopped from exploding in me when he did something grimy to me explodes now and I let my temper go.
Real fast, I wrap my arms around his waist, lift, and body-slam him.
He scrambles back onto his feet and punches for my head. I d
uck and let my fists fly.
And I connect.
My blows tag his nose, stomach, arms, and I keep swinging until I back him into a corner. I imagine I’m the Flash and start throwing faster and faster punches.
He mainly blocks, then weak-swings twice—punching the top of my head, then missing.
I uppercut him. “You Luke Cage? Huh?”
I punch him again near his ear. “You Luke Cage, BRUH?!”
I imagine I’m Luke Cage when he punched one guy through the ceiling. I hit Mike harder. “Nah Mike! I’M LUKE CAGE!”
I puff up. I feel unbreakable like Luke Cage. I yell, “YOU THINK I’M SOFT?! HIT ME!”
He punches my jaw and goes to swing on me again, but I dodge him. I knee him in his groin hard, and he drops. I manage to mount him and use my knees to pin down his arms. “YOU AIN’T NO HERO! YOU A BAD GUY! AND YOU GONNA STOP BULLYING ME!”
Right then, my sister busts through the apartment door and drags me off him. I let her.
“Stop!” She shoves me against the wall.
“He hit me first!” I stutter. “He . . . he came in here and he . . . he started smacking me and disrespecting Ma!”
Ava sticks her finger in my face. “You. Stay. HERE!”
I do.
She goes to Mike, who’s crying on the floor, and she checks his face.
He jumps up, yelling at me, “YOU GONNA CATCH A BEATDOWN!”
He runs at me and I put my fists up, but he runs by me to leave our apartment.
As the door opens, I run to follow and give him a last kick in his butt, but Ava grabs me.
“Stop!” She holds my arms tight. “You hurt him enough!”
The hyped look on Ava’s face doesn’t even match how hyped I feel.
I’m so up I feel like I just mashed a hundred guys back to back in handball. I feel like I just three-sixty-dunked on someone.
Ava soft-smacks me.
WHAT?!
What she smacking me for? Didn’t she hear me? Mike came in here bullying me.
“You mad at me because I defend myself? I finally fought back,” I yell. “Look at my face! He smacked the crap out of me!”
Ava rushes to the window.
I follow her fast.
We see him about to turn the corner when he looks up at our apartment and yells, “WATCH! I’m gonna get my boys and we gonna body you!”
He turns and disappears.
* * *
• • •
“You dumb!” Ava yells at me. “You know he has a lot of troublemaker friends! Look at what you did! Now he’s probably telling them and they’re getting yeasted up to fight you.”
Right after beating Mike’s butt, I felt like that song “All the Way Up” with Fat Joe, Remy Ma, and French Montana. But now Ava just mentioned his homeboys, and my mood’s like an elevator and she pushed B for basement. I feel the opposite: “All the Way Down.”
I try explaining to Ava. “But he disrespected me! He smacked me over and over! What am I supposed to do? I can’t let him just smack me! Next thing you know, he’ll tell everyone that I’m soft. Then they’ll be smacking me. He even said he’d tell Christian to—”
“Okay, okay, but shut up for now!” Ava claps and eyes me in a protective way.
For the first time, I realize she smacked me because she loves me and tried to calm me down.
“So, now what?” she asks. “Mike gets his friends involved. Then, you know Pa’s friends are getting involved because they won’t let anyone hurt you. Then what happens next? Ugh! I’m going after him.”
“What for?”
“To stop him.”
CHAPTER 37
Every five minutes after Ava went chasing after Mike, I check the time.
While waiting for her to come home, I feel different feelings.
I feel proud I stood up to him.
I have no doubt that I can kick his butt if he ever tries to one-on-one fight me again.
But I feel another way too. Even though I feel invincible and unbreakable, I don’t feel like I can’t be hurt. Because I can’t fight all the guys he knows. And what if Pa’s friends get involved and one of them gets hurt or locked up over me?
Ava is gone, and I go into the bathroom and squint at my fists. My knuckles are red, and my wrists hurt from hitting Mike.
I wipe sweat and tears from my face.
I feel ashamed too.
I don’t know why, but I feel that.
* * *
• • •
When keys jingle outside our apartment door, I stand at the dinner table.
Ma, Pa, and Ava walk in together, and I freeze.
Ma’s and Pa’s faces. They know.
Pa jokes with Ava and Ma. “I told you Bryan has my temper.”
What? He’s not mad at me?
He comes, rubs my head like he’s proud, then leaves for his and Ma’s room.
I start feeling good until I see Ma’s tight face. She slides a chair in front of me, sits, and wants to know everything.
Ava stays standing behind her.
“Mike has everyone thinking he’s a good kid,” I whisper to Ma. “He’s not. And he’s definitely not my brother. He’s not even a friend.”
Ava jumps in. “Ma wants to know about the fight, Bryan.”
I stare at my red knuckles, then glare at Ava.
Ma tells her, “Ava, leave.” She doesn’t want to but bounces.
“So, what happened?” Ma asks. “I need you to tell me everything.”
* * *
• • •
I tell Ma about times Mike called me soft, ways he took my stuff on the regular, bullied me, pushed Dennis and Christian to fight me.
I leave out other stuff. I don’t snitch about hopping subway turnstiles, train-surfing into other neighborhoods, or the cops and Little Kevin. I’m mad at him but I don’t want to drag him and get him—and me—in more trouble.
Ma stares real hard and caring like she soaks everything up. When I stop, she looks me in my eyes while nodding over and over. “You’re done?”
“I guess.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this stuff before it got out of hand?”
Hearing that makes me wish I said something sooner.
I grab the Nerf basketball he threatened to take. “He thinks he’s a superhero and—”
“What do superheroes have to do with this conversation?”
“Me and him used to say which comic hero we wanted to be. But in real life he’s not one. He’s a bad guy.”
“I’m not on his side but think,” Ma says. “Ava caught you beating him up. Some people might say you’re the bad guy.”
“I’m not.”
“In his mind, he might think he’s not. Listen, you stayed friends with him this whole time so there must be good in him. And what about the bad? Did you try to speak to him about that?”
“No.”
“Were there times you could’ve not followed him doing bad things?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you?”
We sit quiet for a long time.
I think about the rush of train-surfing and how I felt free from all my stress. I think about times I followed him just because.
I mutter, “Felt good. For fun. Habit.”
“So, you see that you made choices, right? You chose not to talk first with him. You chose to follow him when he was making the wrong choices, and then you chose to explode on him.”
“I was just handling that like a man. Like Pa.” As I say it, I feel like a parrot, just echoing what I was taught. “Soft. I can’t be that.”
Ma sits for a minute not talking.
She says, “I love your father. There a lot of things I love about him. But I don’t love that he follows the wrong fri
ends. I don’t love that he doesn’t try controlling his temper. I don’t like when he explodes on people and uses his hands. That’s not tough or smart.”
I say, “Yeah, but he can’t let people disrespect him. And I can’t let people disrespect me.”
“You’re right. But if you start doing what your father does, then you’re going to end up where he ends up. Do you think I want to see you in jail?”
I think about it. I hate when Pa is in jail. I would hate it if Ma ever had to hear that I got locked up. And I don’t really know what jail is like. But I know I never want to go.
“You have choices,” Ma says. “You can choose different reactions. You can choose your friends, ones with different habits and different ideas of fun. Mike isn’t the only boy in this neighborhood.”
I want to tell her, I didn’t choose Mike. You and Pa chose him for me. Instead, I say, “I felt like I had to hang out with him or hang out with no one.”
“That’s not true,” Ma says. “That boy Will. Julianne and Juan’s son. He seems like a nice kid. Why didn’t you hang out with him more?”
“I will. I was thinking that the other day when me and him were in your office. I was realizing he’s cool and more my style than Mike. I’m definitely hanging out with him and kids like him more.”
I hold up my Nerf basketball. “Mike wanted to take this.” I grab my comic. “And this too.” I start getting hyped thinking of how he acted then. “You see what I mean by he takes what’s mine?”
“Why are we going back to that? Calm down.”
“I don’t want to see him ever again.”
“You’re going to see him.”
“Why?”
She points at our window. “Because his apartment building is right across from ours. You go to the same school.”
“Why’d you even invite him over for dinner that first time?”
Ma lets out a long sigh. “I’m going to tell you something you can’t tell Mike.”
I wiggle to the edge of my seat. “Okay.”
“He came in that day to say there was no food in his refrigerator and that he was hungry.”
Ma doesn’t know that I already know his fridge stays empty.
Tight Page 12
