Long Division(58)

“That’s not Evan. That boy is way cuter than Evan. Why you using words like ‘guy’ too? You kissed him, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t, but I want to.”

“Wait. This is a dream. I know it’s a dream, but you can’t really think Evan looks like that? For real. ’Laya, he don’t look like that at all. Why couldn’t you pull a picture out that looked all sick and gangly and like he’s smelling something? You know he’s raggedy as a roach, right?”

Shalaya Crump put the picture in her front pocket and put her hands on my shoulder. I’d practiced kissing her enough to know that I was supposed to put my hands on her hips and come in with my eyes closed and my nostrils kinda flared.

“Open your eyes,” she said, and kissed me on the left side of my lips, then on my cheek, then on my neck. Everywhere she kissed felt like a trail of rubbing alcohol and smelled like butterscotch.

Shalaya Crump was coming back toward my lips. “Do I keep my eyes open?” I asked her. “I ate a banana Laffy Taffy before we got in here. You smell it?”

“Shush,” she told me. “Let’s just do what we want.”

“What if Evan finds out?” I asked her.

“I’m gonna tell my guy,” she said.

“Me too,” I said.

Shalaya Crump pulled me even closer and took my bottom lip between her lips. Every feeling in my body sprinted between my wide hips. And for just about ten seconds, all those feelings screamed and tried to blow out these candles I didn’t even know were lit. After ten seconds of blowing hard as they could, the feelings ran from my hips back to my feet, my toes, my knees, my eyeballs, and wherever else they came…

When I woke up, Baize was standing up looking at me like I was straight crazy.

“What?” I asked her.

“Nothing, Voltron,” she said. “I just read more of that book while you were sleeping this morning.”

“So.”

“So nothing,” she said. “Let’s just go.”


We had to get up early enough that Baize’s great-grandma wouldn’t see that I was in the house. She said her great-grandma got off work at eight and went to her second job from nine to two. The plan was to head back to 1964, get Baize’s stuff, save Shalaya Crump, and never ever jump back in the hole again.

Baize was running around the house getting everything ready, so she really didn’t have time to talk to me about what had happened the night before. I waited out on the porch. When she finally came through the door, she had on a backpack and had a little carry case and a brush in her hand.

“What you doing with all the mess? This ain’t no vacation. We gotta go!”

“It’s a diva thing, Voltron. You wouldn’t understand.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Means that you should mind your stanky business, and let this brush touch your beady beads.” She handed me the wave brush. “If I wanna go outta town looking fresh, that’s on me. If you wanna go outta town looking like the number-one driver on the nappy-head truck, that’s on you. Niggas from the ’80s gotta do what niggas from the ’80s do.”

“It’s just that we ain’t going out of town,” I told her. “I bet you brought money, too, didn’t you?”

“Like I said, you wouldn’t understand. If I had some money, I would’ve brought all of it.” I stood there shaking my head. “Wanna be useful and carry my book for me?” She handed me Long Division.

We walked across the road into the woods and headed toward what used to be the Shephard house—what Evan had called the Freedom School. It now had a sign that read “Melahatchie Community Center.” Baize introduced me to a Mexican-looking man named Oscar who had a mullet and a yellow short-sleeve shirt. Oscar held out his hands and gave me some dap. Baize said he worked security at her school, and that he was deaf.

I whispered in her ear, “You know deaf Mexicans?”

Baize ignored me and started throwing sign language with the dude.

After a while, we walked down the hall. “What did you just say to that Mexican dude?” I asked her.

“Don’t call him ‘that Mexican dude.’ His name is Oscar. Please don’t tell me that you’re one of those niggas who stay hating on Mexicans.”

“I don’t know any Mexicans,” I told her. “They seem like they work hard.”

She shook her head. “Dude, just be quiet for a few minutes, okay? I didn’t ask you if they worked hard. Hell, some of them don’t work hard, just like some of us don’t work hard. Don’t you get tired of being such a hater?”

I ignored her question and looked around the center. “So is anyone you know gonna be in the contest with you? This reminds me of that first chapter in Long Division, where the main character…”

“Say his name.”

“I think his name was City.”

“If you read the first chapter, you know his name was City.”

“Yeah, well I only read the first chapter, so I don’t know what happens, but City and that other dude compete in some kind of contest, right?”

“Right. But that was a crazy contest. This is just a basic real-life county spelling bee. I hope you know how to act around white folks.”