The Black Kids(93)

I guess that’s exactly how you’d view black people if you were from elsewhere and all you knew of us came from the news, like the riots. Still, I’m afraid for her.

“What about Jose?” I ask.

“Que sera, sera. But first, it’s time to see my boys.” She reaches over next to her and passes me an envelope. “The mail came.”

It’s from Stanford. If this were a few days earlier, if this were a different story, I’d leap up at the sight of it. It’s funny how a few days changes everything.

“I love you.” I put the envelope down, walk over to her, and hug her.

“Siempre,” Lucia says.



* * *




The clouds in the sky are small and dense like babies. I look down at the envelope next to me. I’ve picked it up several times, started to open it, and then dropped it back on the roof. I don’t care, but also I do. It starts to slide down, and I quickly grab it before it falls off. Jo crawls out to join me from her bedroom window.

“You’re not supposed to be up here,” she says.

“I’m not the one who fell off,” I say.

“I didn’t fall,” she says quietly.

“I know,” I say.

She pauses for a little bit.

“Guess I fucked that up.” Her chipped teeth whistle the tiniest bit when she laughs. I look over at her incredulously, but she looks down at the envelope next to me.

“Small envelope,” I say.

“Sometimes good things come in small packages.”

Mrs. Katz waters the plants around their yard while Mr. Katz suns his pecs.

“Home from school?” Mrs. Katz shouts over at Jo as she bends a watering can over some succulents.

“For now.” Jo smiles. It’s not her real one, but they don’t know that.

“Open it,” she says to me. “Your future awaits! Something good’s gotta happen to one of us, at least.”

My future didn’t get in off the wait-list at Stanford. And with the rejection letter goes some version of myself that I had imagined, but there are new versions to imagine. Other schools. I’m in at Occidental, all of the Claremont schools, USC, UCLA, and Cal. Each of them hold other future versions of me. Maybe better versions, even.

Jo frowns, then pats my thigh.

“You’re gonna be okay, Ash,” she says. I’m not sure whether we’re still talking about college.

Still reclining on the lounge chair, Mr. Katz reaches out a hand and runs it up and down Mrs. Katz’s leg while she tends to their plants, sliding his fingers under the edge of her shorts.

“Omigod, they’re such horndogs,” Jo whispers.

“I guess it’s kinda nice that they still love each other that much,” I say.

“Love is good,” Jo murmurs.

“I wanna be good. I wanna be happy. Sometimes it feels like there’s so much that I want,” I tell my sister.

“Me too.” Jo sighs.

“I’m afraid,” I whisper. “Are you afraid?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead she stands up on the roof and stretches her arms out to either side of her like she’s a plane.

“Be careful,” I say, but then I stand up too. She reaches her hand out to mine. I grab it and extend my right arm so that we are, the two of us, planes together. A slight breeze rustles through the trees, pressing against our skin. The sun runs down the length of our wings. The Pacific glitters; everything is a little sun-drenched and desaturated except for our brown fingertips against the blue.

“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” Jo says.

“We don’t got a lot to compare it to,” I say.

We’ve traveled, but not as much as some of my peers, and mostly to places where you could still pronounce the city names. I’ve already decided that when I get older, I’m going to have a passport full of stamps, so many that I’ll have to keep getting new passport pages. Maybe when we’re older and she’s better and I’m whatever it is I turn out to be, we’ll get to see the world together: Paris! Istanbul! Djibouti!

“Doesn’t matter—just look at it. Look!”

Jo inhales it all in, content to be right here, right now. Home.



* * *




(“You better get your little asses off that roof,” my father yells.)





CHAPTER 25


THE NIGHT BEFORE, you will climb into bed with me and will be more talkative than usual, even though all I’ll want to do is sleep.

“Ash?” you’ll say.

“What?” I’ll say.

“I’m sorry I’m not better,” you’ll say. “You deserve better.”

“Better than what?” I’ll say.

You’ll scoot in closer so that your breath is hot on my face, and I’ll be able to smell the night’s Thai food from your favorite restaurant, sweet like curry but sour from the hours.

“You didn’t brush your teeth,” I’ll say, and you’ll open your mouth, blow on my face, and laugh.

“Tell me everything I don’t know about you,” you’ll say.

I won’t know what to tell you, how to give you all the things in my head. Somehow it’s easier to tell these things to people who aren’t blood, to share pieces of yourself with people who have no pieces of you in them.