“I keep telling you, you have to pay attention, sweetheart,” her mother said now. “You have to look both ways and all ways. That even includes, despite what your dad says, down.”
The next day, Fatima looked down the whole time. Studied the ground with such concentration she didn’t notice the clouds forming above her head. The rain came almost at the exact spot where the crack was that had clipped her the day before. Came by the bucketful. Drenched her in seconds. And as the same bus crept by, the same kids smashed their faces to the glass. They laughed and pointed again. Predictable. The boy with the lisp splattered spit on the window, wiped it clean with his sleeve. The boy behind him sat with the notebook up to his face again. No jokes in his eyes.
And the singing lady was there. Came bopping down the street like it wasn’t raining. She was singing, but the rain was louder than her voice. This time she was wearing a tuxedo and a top hat and was carrying a closed umbrella.
She extended it to Fatima. “You play guitar?” she asked.
“Huh?” Fatima was confused. There was no guitar.
“Do. You. Play. The geetar?” she asked again, this time strumming the closed umbrella. And before Fatima could answer, the lady said, “Yeah, you do. You play it. I can always tell. Ha! Benni can always tell!” The lady—Benni—extended the umbrella again. Fatima took it this time, opened it. And Benni said, “Woo! Sounds amazing!” bobbing her head and snapping her fingers to nothing. “It’s your solo! Go, go! Put on a show for the people!” Benni stopped walking, waved, and cheered for Fatima, who played nothing. Just held the umbrella over her head and walked faster.
* * *
“Nothing changes, Fati. At least nothing major,” Fatima’s mother explained that evening over dinner. She worked as some kind of environmental scientist, so everything for her was like this. “If you see clouds, expect rain. If you see cracks, lift your feet. If you see houses, expect them to be the same houses every day, because houses don’t move. They don’t change.”
“Routine lessens risk,” her father chimed in, scarfing his food because he had a flight to catch.
Routine lessens risk. And Fatima was tired of the risky stuff. The tripping. The rain. She needed this walk home to be one she could predict so that she could get there safely. That night she thought about the boy with the notebook. The one on the bus sitting behind the spitty one. She thought about how he hid behind the spiral and lined paper. How it somehow made him feel safer. Less… out there. At least that’s what Fatima thought. So she decided to use a notebook to try to do the same. To write down things in her life so she could pay attention to how they stayed the same and know whenever they changed so that she could be ready for what that change might bring. Her mother did this all the time with her experiments. Always taught her to do this with her science projects over the years.
“In order for us to know how these plants grow in natural sunlight, as opposed to how they grow under the house lights, we have to write down every single constant and every single variable, then record all progress. Every leaf. Every inch. Every day,” she preached, just a year before all this.
So the next day, the moment the bell rang, Fatima’s data collection began. An ongoing list of things that almost never changed. The bell. The hallway. The locker. The lock. The door. The corner. The crossing guard. The houses. The signs.
And the singing lady, Benni, who since then has stayed the same in that she’s changed every. Single. Day.
(cont.) Today Benni’s dressed in a black wig. The hair is straight and falls just to her chin. She has on a sky-blue dress. And combat boots. Difference: She’s singing a song that goes “Runaway child, running wild, better go back hooooome, where you belong.”
Difference: She’s doing dance steps. One looks like she’s shoveling the ground. Like she’s digging.
I speak to her.
She speaks to me. Calls me “Fatima the Dreamer.” Says “Dreamer” like “dream-uh.”
I ask how she’s doing. She says fine. Difference: She tells me she saw a school bus fall from the sky.
She always says stuff like that.
She asks me if anything’s different today.
I tell her about Trista Smith and Britton Burns running out of class faster than usual. And how I have homework. I have to imagine myself as something else, for Ms. Broome’s class. Also, pointed to the roses missing from House No. 8. Thought Benni would pull one from behind her back or from under her wig, which is something Benni would do. She’d probably call it a microphone.
Benni nods. Difference: And started mumbling, “But how you gon’ change the world? How you gon’ change the world?”
Benni walks with me. Difference: Now screaming, “How you gon’ change the world? How you gon’ change the world? How you gon’ change the world?!”
I ignore Benni. I keep counting the houses. Difference: Benni won’t stop. This is not a song.
I keep counting the cracks. Difference: Benni is still screaming as the bus drives by. Screams, “There it is!” But I don’t look. I don’t want to see if anyone is laughing at Benni. At me.
I keep counting the signs. Difference: I can barely hear myself think. Even though the signs have been there every day.
I stop at House No. 15. One block from my house. Usually where Benni leaves me. Difference: Benni runs in front of me. Leans against the stop sign and asks, “Fatima, I’m serious. How you gon’ change the world?”
I look both ways. Difference: Then I think about Ms. Broome’s assignment. What could I be? What do I wish I could become to change the world? I think about telling Benni I might want to be wet cement to fill the cracks in the sidewalk. Not to hide. But to stop someone else from tripping. Or maybe I’d be an umbrella to keep rain from someone’s head. Keep someone dry in a storm. But I don’t say none of that to Benni, because I don’t think either of those things would change the world. So I tell her I don’t know.
I don’t know. I don’t know how to change the world.
Then ask her if she’d maybe let me borrow one of her instruments to play.
CALL OF DUTY
BRYSON WILLS didn’t go to school today. His mother let him stay home, not because of all the pain in his face—the black eye, the busted lip, the swollen jaw, the scrapes—but because she figured it was a good idea to let things cool off. To put some space between him and what happened. To let the situation breathe. Before she left the house she told Bryson a bunch of things—that she loved him and was proud of him, but most importantly, that he shouldn’t play video games all day. Bryson’s father came in his room after his mom and told him the same things, minus the part about video games.
“Love you, Bry,” his dad said, kissing him on the cheek over and over again like he did every morning, until Bryson grunted something that his father translated as, “Love you too.” Then Bryson rolled over, his plush mattress suddenly prickly like a bed of nails against his bruised body.
A few hours later, Bryson was awake, standing, yawning, stretching—all of which felt like he was pulling himself apart. He eased down the hall into the kitchen, microwaved a bowl of oatmeal, poured a glass of apple juice. Then sat in front of the TV, where, even though his mother said not to, he’d planned to play video games. Allllll day. He didn’t want to think about school. Or after school. The walk home. None of it. But he couldn’t help it. The thoughts were there like the smell of coffee that seemed to linger in the house long after it had been brewed.