The Black Kids(66)
“Got it!” he shouts.
He starts to blow-dry my hair. I can’t hear anything above the dryer, so for a while it’s just flashes of fire and newscasters and shots of the soldiers in a line. It looks like Vietnam or something, but it’s only the ghetto.
“You know, more black folks are out there right now helping and tryna do good than riot, but the media don’t show none of that.”
He turns the dryer off and begins to braid.
“I need to tell you something,” I say to him. “Something important.”
“Aight.”
I turn around to face him. “I don’t know how to say it.”
I’m afraid that as soon as I say what needs to be said, he’ll leave. I don’t want to be left alone with my thoughts in this room, but it’s time to do the right thing. I think about what Lana said yesterday: “Just make it right.”
“I started the rumor about you looting. About the sneakers. I didn’t mean to. It just happened. And I’m sorry. On Monday, I promise I’ll go to Principal Jeffries and tell her everything. I would understand if you left right now.”
He looks at me. “If I was you, I’d a waited until my hair was finished to tell me that.”
* * *
We don’t talk while he finishes the next braid and pins it down. Then he moves from his perch on the bed down to the floor. He sits with his knees tucked under his arms. We’re almost close enough to kiss. In a different world, he could be the Dwayne to my Whitley, I think.
“Say something,” I say. “Please.”
“I honestly don’t even know what to say to you right now, Ashley.”
“Just… something.”
“Okay… well… I thought you was better than them girls you hang around, but you’re just like them. I thought maybe…” He trails off and stares at some point in the corner. “Anyway, you’re an asshole like all the other kids in this stupid school.”
I know I deserve it, but when it comes out of his mouth, it’s like being pushed into the pool all over again. I hear myself whimper, “I’m sorry.”
“You know I could lose my scholarship?”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that!”
“What do you want me to do? How do I make things right? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
This is not how this was supposed to go. Although I guess there’s no other way it really could’ve gone, given the circumstances. He goes quiet for a long time, retreating somewhere into his head.
He places his chin atop his knees.
“I didn’t steal those sneakers,” he says finally. “My mama got them for me for getting into Stanford.”
“I know you didn’t steal them.”
“But I ain’t gon’ pretend like I don’t want to be at home tearing something up. So, I don’t know, maybe I would’ve stolen them. We got a right to be angry. Our lives don’t mean anything to them. Doesn’t matter if Rodney was an ass; he didn’t deserve to get beat like that. And Latasha Harlins didn’t deserve to die over some damn juice. And nobody cares, ’cause we don’t matter. They treat us like we’re goddamned animals.” His voice cracks like he’s about to cry.
“Isn’t it kinda stupid to steal and set your own neighborhood on fire?”
“Maybe. But maybe it’s the right kind of stupid.”
I think of my sister out there doing God knows what in the name of rebellion and progress, and Uncle Ronnie laid out on the couch, and Morgan and my father’s sad filling the whole house today, along with the ghost of Grandma Shirley’s American dream.
“I don’t know. I just wanna be home,” LaShawn says.
“I have an idea.”
* * *
We’re going to LaShawn’s house. We’re black kids in a car that isn’t ours, and there’s a riot going on, and this is reckless behavior on both our parts, but Trevor is rolling on E, and his car won’t be reported. Plus, LaShawn wants to check on his family, and I kinda owe him big-time.
“Do you want to listen to the radio?” I say.
My dress drips on the seat all around me, still kinda wet from the pool. It’s uncomfortable, but I figure it’s better than running around the city half-naked in a bathrobe.
“No,” LaShawn says.
“We could listen to the news, or KJLH. They’ve been—”
“I said I don’t want to listen to anything.”
“So you have a little sister?” I say after we’ve been driving in silence for what feels like forever.
“Yeah. Kaitlyn. She’s fifteen,” he says.
“Your mom didn’t want to send you guys to the same school?”
“Only reason I’m going is ’cause of the scholarship. We couldn’t afford this shit otherwise.” He sighs.
I think I’ve seen Kaitlyn before in the stands at LaShawn’s games. A husky girl with glasses and bright-red braids atop her head like a girl on fire.
“Do you guys get along?”
“We used to. She’s really, really smart. Smarter than I am. And funny. And she’s damn near as good as I am at basketball. But she stopped applying herself. She’s starting to talk back to my mama and acting like she’s grown. I think it’s ’cause of the girls she’s running around with at her school. She’s pissed that my mama drags her to my games and spends all this money on me for basketball, and I get to go to this fancy-ass school. Meanwhile, she’s at the school around the corner where they don’t even got books half the time.”