The Kindest Lie(63)

Midnight pushed the gate open and walked onto the lot. “Are you coming or what?”

“You might not get in trouble. But I will. Remember what happened at the gas station?” Corey kept looking around like he was expecting somebody to leap out from behind an old car.

“What’s this got to do with that stupid Dale thinking somebody wanted to steal his stale Funyuns?”

“You don’t get it.”

“I don’t get why you’re such a scaredy-cat sometimes.”

Corey rolled his eyes. “It stinks out here.” He covered his nose with his arm.

“Guess I’m used to it.” The smell of garbage and toxic fumes hit them whenever a strong wind blew, but everything stunk after that dumpster dive.

For somebody not too excited about coming, Corey was already a few feet away wiping snow off a car, his navy-blue mittens doing double time as snow continued to fall.

“What you got?” Midnight said.

“A muscle car. One of those old Mustangs. Wonder if the engine’s still in there.” Corey grinned like he did when he caught a seventy-five-mile-per-hour fastball.

Midnight checked under the hood. “Nah, it’s been stripped already.”

“Let’s see if we can find some more cool cars,” Corey said, running ahead. “Come over here and look at this one.”

Midnight slowed his pace, a prickly feeling starting in his feet like little needles stabbing them. From a distance he saw Corey brushing snow off a red car with a white stripe down the middle. “Yeah, that’s a Firebird. Definitely a nice muscle car.” He said it the way Daddy would’ve.

“So why are you way over there?”

“Wait. I can’t feel my toes.” The tingling sensation Midnight experienced moments ago had turned to numbness. These boots had lasted him two winters, but now they had holes in the soles.

“Let’s sit in this one for a few minutes to get warm.” Midnight pointed to a Mustang with black leather covering the inside. Nothing warm about it, but it beat being outside in the bitter cold.

Hopping in next to him, Corey unzipped his jacket. He must have been hot while Midnight still couldn’t feel his toes. Then, he put his feet up on the dashboard, his knees up against his chin, and Midnight noticed his eyes were closed. Corey wore brand-new, waterproof Timberlands. Watching Corey like that made him think about what Daddy had said once about the Black temp who’d been hired to replace him when the company had temporary layoffs a few years ago.

“I think Black people have it better than white people,” Midnight said, opening the glove box and rummaging around until he found a straw. The words didn’t sound quite right when he heard them floating in the chilled air of the Mustang.

“That’s just dumb.”

“Makes sense to me. Black people are taking over everything.” He let the straw dangle in the corner of his mouth like Daddy did with his Marlboros.

Why had he ever thought the way Corey walked and talked was cool? Or that anybody wanted hair so stiff it never moved? Even the name Midnight sounded as stupid as Daddy always said it was.

Corey picked up two McDonald’s ketchup packets from the glove box, rubbed them between his hands, and then stuck them in his armpits to warm them. After tearing off the tops of the packets, he squirted both in his mouth at the same time.

“Now that’s dumb,” Midnight said.

“Not as dumb as what you said about Black people.”

“Whatever.”

“We only get one month out of the whole year, just February. And it’s the shortest month.”

“But white people don’t even have our own month.”

“Uh, March, April, May, June, July . . .”

“Oh my God. Check this out.” When Midnight reclined his seat, he saw something that made him forget all about who was taking over the country. A tattered page torn from a magazine poked out from beneath the seat. He pulled it out and held up a picture of two pink breasts.

“Are those really . . . ? They’re huge.” Corey leaned in so close that Midnight could smell the ketchup on his breath.

“I know. Have you ever seen real ones, like, up close before?”

“No. Have you?”

“Yeah. Sometimes, I watch my auntie Glo when she’s in the shower. Hers are really little and weird-looking, kind of like those plastic dropper bottles we use in science class.”

Corey laughed, and they groped under their seats to see if they could find more magazines when they heard a loud ding.

“That’s probably my dad,” Corey said. “He wants to go over my decimal multiplication homework.” He zipped his jacket and pulled his hood over his head, still thumbing through the message on his phone. “And then Mom wants to quiz me on vocabulary words.”

Midnight rolled his eyes. “We’re not even in school right now. It’s Christmas break.”

“I know. They still give me work to do. Not for a grade or anything. When I finish, we still have to decorate the tree.”

The tree. How stupid it had seemed when Corey told him they’d driven forty-five minutes outside of town to buy a Christmas tree. Mom had liked the smell of real trees, but they always found one in Ganton. Pines or firs with soft needles. Daddy didn’t decorate at all anymore, and he couldn’t now if he wanted to, since he stayed in Drew’s apartment. Granny just put up the same fake table tree every year, with the spinning Elvis in a Santa suit on top.