Long Division(22)

“Oh my god, dumbness. I just can’t.”

“And this is a computer and a TV and a newspaper all on that screen?”

“Yes, boy.”

“And what is that?”

I pointed to a little rectangle on the side of the newspaper where someone named @UAintNoStunna815 wrote @SMH you goin to that Spell-Off #yoassdumberthanyoulook and someone named @YeahTheyReal601 wrote TTYL LOL cute herb on my porch #hat-ingaintahabit.

“Twitter,” the girl said, “but that ain’t none of your business.”

“Wait. And people here talk on phones with no hands?”

“Voltron!” It was weird because even though my name wasn’t Voltron, it made my insides tingly to hear her call me by what she thought was my name. “Why are you acting like you stuck in the ’90s?”

“What year is this?” I asked her. “Be for real.”

“2013, crackhead. You got that new swine flu?”

A voice from inside the house interrupted my good feelings. “Baize, come on in here and set this table. We got to practice them words for that Spell-Off.”

“That’s my great-grandma.” Baize looked down at my hips. “She want me to come in and study for the spelling bee tomorrow. It’s over in the community center. You going? Want me to ask her if you can eat with us? I ain’t gonna lie to you; her cooking is wack, but she getting better at frying some catfish.”

As the screen door slammed closed, I got closer to the laptop. Right next to the computer and Long Division was this little black thing that looked like some kind of special calculator. If it wasn’t sitting next to that computer, I would have been super interested in it, but it was kinda boring compared to that laptop computer.

I didn’t know what to focus on when I looked at the computer—the machine carrying the pictures and the words, or the pictures and the words themselves. I had never felt anything like that before. I just wanted to talk to someone who would also understand none of what I was seeing and all of what I was feeling. And that someone was across the road peeking her slow/fast-blinking eyes through green and orange and brown trees.

I picked the laptop computer up with my two hands scooped underneath like it was a tray, placed Long Division on top of it, and looked toward the hole. Then I thought about how happy Shalaya Crump would be if I brought her a calculator from 2013. So I put the calculator in my mouth, jumped off the porch, and sprinted back to the woods.


When I reached her, I gave Shalaya Crump the calculator and we both ran toward to the hole. Shalaya Crump got in first and I followed her. With just my head outside the door, I could see Baize sprinting toward us. She was screaming and cussing, talking about, “Naw. Naw. I know you didn’t.”

It was too late, though. The secret door was closed. The computer, Long Division, the calculator, Shalaya Crump, and me were in it and we were headed back to 1985.

When the door opened up, you couldn’t see Old Ryle Road at all, but you could see the fuzzy glow of the streetlight. Shalaya Crump was next to me breathing louder than I’d ever heard her breathe. I had never even seen her tired in all the years I knew her, not even during push-up contests. Shalaya Crump actually had the best wind of anyone I’d ever met.

“Look at this.” I angled the screen toward her so she could see the pictures and the newspaper and the black president, but the screen was blank except for little shapes along the bottom. “That girl, she told me this is called a laptop computer from Katrina. I don’t know why it ain’t working. I swear when I was on the porch there was all this stuff on the screen. And look at this book. That girl said it’s the weirdest book she ever read.”

Shalaya Crump simply turned and walked off. “I’m going home, City,” she said.

“Wait. Why? Why’d you stay in the woods? You talked to that girl before? She said she’s seen you before. She’s like a fatter version of you with a nappy mohawk but not really…”

“You like her, don’t you?”

“Like who?”

“I know you do.”

“That girl? Baize?” For some reason, I thought Shalaya Crump was really asking me if I liked the girl as in spit-some-GAME like, so I thought about it and told her exactly what I thought.

“I don’t like her like that, but she didn’t get on my nerves like a lot of girls do either. She had these big circle earrings and there was something strange about how she talked. It’s like her tongue was too fat, but sometimes it didn’t seem too fat. She kept talking about rhymes and ‘one hundred’ too much. Her face was bumpy, too, especially on her forehead. And then she liked how I dressed. No girl ever told me that. She looked like you, except her hair was way shorter, but I already told you that. Maybe I liked her but not that much. I think she knows more than I know and I guess I think I know more than her about other stuff, too. I liked that she had a laptop computer more than I liked her. You know what I’m trying to say?”

“Bye, City.”

Shalaya Crump walked off in front of me out of the woods. I followed her down Old Ryle Road talking the entire time about the girl and the laptop computer and asking her did we really just jump to 2013. We must have looked crazy to anyone who saw us.

When I got in front of Mama Lara’s house, I said bye to Shalaya Crump, but she just went to her trailer without saying a word to me. I would have cared if it were any other day.