She saw them hitting me. Saw me slumped like a wimp, short and small, while those bigger boys punched me. Shame curdles in my belly. Blood heats my cheeks. I’m white enough to blush, but too black to blend.
“I said I’m fine.” The words leave my mouth sharp as needles, pricking us both.
“But, Ezra—”
“Kimba, just stop.” I run my hands over my hair, my fingers tangling in the thick, tight curls.
My yarmulke lies on the sidewalk, marred by a dirty sneaker footprint. I bend to pick it up and twirl it like a basketball, watching it spin and spin on my finger in the silence that stretches thick as taffy between Kimba and me. A creaky, familiar song breaks the quiet, and both our heads turn toward the sound. The old ice cream truck comes into view, making its slow way up the street.
There are so many things I could say to Kimba. I want to explain how splintered I feel sometimes—how there’s something always moving inside me, searching for a place to land, to fit, to rest. I want to tell her it’s only ever still when I’m with her—that she’s my best friend in the world, and I’d rather get punched in the stomach every day than move away and not have her anymore. But that’s too many words that don’t even come close to telling her what I feel.
“Ice cream?” I ask instead, keeping my gaze trained on the rickety neon-painted truck wobbling toward us.
I cross my fingers that she won’t ask again if I’m okay because I don’t think she’d know what do with the truth. I don’t know what to do with the truth. I’m not okay sometimes. The familiar tune gets louder and closer.
Finally, she speaks. “Okay, Ezra. Ice cream.”
Chapter Four
Kimba
13 Years Old
“Psssst!”
The hiss comes as a piece of notebook-lined origami lands on my desk. I glance nervously from the little square of paper to the teacher at the front of our class. Mrs. Clay is the toughest teacher in the whole eighth grade. She doesn’t play and I don’t test her. Ezra and I were the only black kids in the gifted classes for the longest time, though I know most don’t think of Ezra as black. They don’t know quite what to make of his blue eyes and rough curls and tanned skin. To me, he’s just my best friend.
At the beginning of this school year, another black girl showed up in class, Mona Greene. I didn’t even know how much I needed that until she came. I always have Ezra, of course, but a girl who looks like me? Has hair like me? Understands this tightrope we walk between school and home, striking the right balance between being black enough and just enough black—I love having that. Mona busses in from a neighboring district through a program the city implemented. She’s great, but she always almost gets me into trouble.
I run a finger over the paper on my desk and glance over my shoulder, catching Mona’s wide eyes. She tilts her head, silently urging me to open the note. I jerk back around and eye Mrs. Clay cautiously. When she turns to the chalkboard to write something about Charles Dickens, I slide one fingernail under a fold in the letter and ease it open as quietly as possible.
Kimba, I think you’re so pretty and smart. Will you go with me to the dance?
Yes
No
Jeremy
The dance is in two weeks, celebrating the end of middle school and sending us off in style to summer and ninth grade. Mona, Ezra and I are all going, but none of us have dates.
I glance back over my shoulder at Mona, and a mischievous grin hangs between her cheeks like a hammock.
“Oh my God,” I mouth to her, my eyes stretched.
“I know,” she mouths back, nodding enthusiastically.
A long arm reaches across the aisle and snatches the note. I gasp, grabbing to take the paper back from Ezra, but he turns his lanky body slightly away from me, grinning and batting away my hands. Mrs. Clay suddenly turns around, probably alerted by the small noises I made. Ezra and I instantly go still and inconspicuous. Her narrowed eyes scan the class row by row, but after a few seconds, she turns back to the chalkboard and resumes the lesson.
Ezra’s grin fades as he reads, melting away by centimeters. A frown squeezes between his brows. He places the paper back onto my desk, slumps in his chair and starts scribbling in the margins of his notebook. The words are in Hebrew so I have no idea what he’s writing, but he presses so hard the pencil dents the paper.
“Ez.” My voice comes out like a hissing cat, low and irritated. “Don’t read my stuff.”
“Since when?” he mumbles, not bothering to look up, his wide mouth sulky. His shoulders are parentheses, bowed, bracketing his body like they’re holding him together. “We’ve never kept secrets from each other. I thought you and Mona were just playing around. I didn’t know it was…”
He glares at the notebook and carves the Hebrew letters onto the paper, a torn black ribbon pinned to his T-shirt over his heart, a Jewish sign of mourning. It’s been a hard month for him. Bubbe died two weeks before Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah. The Sterns went up to New York right away for the funeral, even Ezra’s father who has never really gotten along with Mrs. Stern’s family. When they returned, we attended Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah at the synagogue, and the reception after. I didn’t understand everything that happened, but I knew Ezra worked hard to learn Hebrew and prepare for the ceremony. He excelled, like he does in everything. I researched the best things to give, and found out gifts in increments of eighteen are kind of like good luck, so I gave him eighteen Pixie Stix. Mrs. Stern isn’t usually strict about him keeping Kosher, but leading up to the Bar Mitzvah, he did. Pixie Stix are his favorite.
“Hey,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t answer, but the muscle in his jaw knots.
“Ezra, I—”
“Miss Allen,” Mrs. Clay cuts in, her voice like a snapping turtle. “Since you want to talk so much, you can read the passage.”
What passage?
Crap.
I hate reading out loud. On paper, I can hold my own with any of the kids in our gifted classes, but when I read aloud, the words shuffle in my mouth and strangle my tongue.
“Um, n-n-no, ma’am.” I clamp my lips together and swallow hard, closing my eyes and breathing deeply like my speech therapist suggested. “No, I don’t want t-t-to t-t-talk. I’m sorry. I—”
“It was not a request, Miss Allen.” She leans against the chalkboard, apparently uncaring that she’s probably getting chalk dust all over her beige cardigan. “Read the passage.”
“Um, o-okay.” I gulp my fear down and study the board. “Which one exactly should I—”
“The one we’ve been discussing.” Mrs. Clay huffs a long sigh. “The opening lines of the book, please.”
I glance at the book on my desk, A Tale of Two Cities, and open it to the first page. Thirty pairs of eyes wait on me. The room is so quiet, I hear them breathing, hear my own shallow, panicky breaths. My dry lips will barely part to let the words out. I lick them and try.
“I-i-t was the best of times,” I manage, my voice a croak. “It was the—”
“Louder so we can hear you. And please stand. You know the drill by now.”