The Kindest Lie(21)

The blue-eyed girl gestured with her head. “I think she may be in the stockroom doing inventory. You can go on back.” In Ganton, people seldom met a stranger, and they were trusting almost to a fault. Ruth missed that trust, living in a big city.

Stepping through the doorway into the dark back room, Ruth ran her fingers along the wall searching for a light switch. Nothing. The sharp edges of peeling paint nicked her fingertips. A heater hummed, but there was no other sound.

Something rolled across the floor and bumped up against her boot. A small scream slipped from Ruth’s lips and that’s when she saw a shadow move silently against the lower half of the wall in the darkness.

“Who’s there?” she asked, willing her voice to stay steady.

No answer.

“Lena, are you in here?”

“Lena’s gone.”

The whisper ricocheted off the corner wall. Unsure where the voice came from, she backed up to leave the room and slipped on the wet floor, grabbing the side of a table to steady herself. Suddenly, the yellow light from a single bulb in the ceiling flooded the room.

She looked down to see a thin white boy holding a long light cord. He sat against the wall, his feet propped up on a box. He looked no more than twelve in his thick black-rimmed glasses that were too big for his narrow face. He wore an Indiana University sweatshirt that swallowed him. Patches of brown dirt coated the knees of his jeans, and Ruth noticed the rubber heels of his boots peeling away.

A ceramic jar lay at her feet. Her revelation turned on a giggle switch in the boy and he doubled over from the sheer force of it.

“That was not funny,” she said, her voice squeaking like a bike chain that needed oiling.

“It was an experiment. I was trying to see how fast a cylinder would roll,” he said, gesturing at the slight slant in the linoleum floor, “if there’s no friction to stop it.” He glanced at her boots and rolled his eyes as if she were a child slow to understand.

She knew that smug smile, or at least she knew the type. He probably peed in the neighbors’ flowerpots for sport and in a few years would be smoking weed and car surfing in the school parking lot on weekends. He was pushing her buttons all right, but she evened her tone to let him know his tactics didn’t work on her.

“What’s your name?”

“Midnight.”

Ruth twisted a thread from a loose button on her peacoat and wound it around her finger until it pinched her skin. “Sounds like a time of day to me, not a name.”

The boy’s face was the color of alabaster, a sharp contrast to his dirty dishwater hair. “Fat boys, they call Tiny. Me, I’m Midnight.”

The tenor of his voice hung somewhere between boy and man, a tug-of-war between who he was and who he’d someday become. His small shoulders pulled back and he lifted his head, thrusting his jaw forward as if challenging her to doubt him.

“Well, I’m Ruth. Miss Ruth.” She quickly added the title before her name. This kid needed to learn some respect. She couldn’t be sure he’d heard her. He kept his eyes on the floor and hid the bottom half of his face in the collar of his sweatshirt.

Mama would say a boy like this was feeling himself, and she’d be right. A smart mouth wormed its way into boys, both Black and white, before their voices deepened or they grew peach fuzz. The Black ones wore their defiance like armor, weaponized against the slings and arrows of a world they couldn’t control. But white boys entered the world carrying that arrogance inside them like a birthright.

“Does your mother know you’re here?”

“What’s it to you?”

Midnight threw every word like a grenade, obviously hoping for an explosion or at least a small grease fire. He stuck one finger inside a packet of peanut butter and licked it.

“I could have you arrested for breaking and entering,” Ruth said.

Midnight’s eyes grew wide, then they narrowed again. “Do it. Here’s my phone.”

The peanut butter had turned his teeth brown and gummy. He held up a phone in a white case that had his prints smeared all over it. He was probably a street kid who’d wandered in looking for food and found mischief. Ruth’s son would be about the same age, and she hoped he’d turned out better than this kid.

Next, the boy picked up a pair of scissors and poked his right arm through his sweatshirt.

“Stop that before you hurt yourself.” Ruth snatched the scissors from his hand.

He laughed, holding up his arm as if it weren’t attached to his body. “I didn’t even feel it.”

Bumping his chair against a metal cabinet, Midnight kept his eyes on Ruth, his look daring her to reprimand him or call the cops. She wanted to tell him he’d never amount to anything with an attitude like that, but this kid wasn’t worth a warning he’d never listen to anyway. Besides, small-town cops wouldn’t take too kindly to a Black woman snitching on a little white boy.

“Where’s Lena? The lady working out front said I could find her back here.”

“I don’t know. Guess she’s out.” This Midnight kid seemed perfectly at ease stirring up trouble in Lena’s shop. It was Ruth who was on edge, and unfortunately, she could tell he knew this.

“When will she be back?”

Midnight shrugged, making a popping sound with his finger on the inside of his cheek. His indifference toward her cemented her fear that she knew nothing about how to relate to children.