“Because of what Mr. Fantana was saying about how scientists tested that little water bear thingy, and they found out it might be the toughest living thing in the world. In the universe maybe. Said it could survive the hottest heat. And the coldest cold. And the pressurest pressure. I mean, they sent it into space—SPACE—and it came back just crawling around like ain’t nothing happen. Just crawling crawling. That’s me all day. With nails intact.” Jasmine huffed on her fingers and pretended to buff the purple-painted tips.
“Yeah, if you believe all that, I guess.”
“Well, if you can believe God made us out of dust—which I believe because you definitely the dustiest person I ever known—then I can believe Mr. Fantana about this water bear. Shoot, we probably be stepping on them every day and don’t even know it.”
TJ looked quick down at the ground, suddenly wondering what lived between the cracks in the concrete. Scratched his arms like maybe the water bears were crawling in the crevices of his dry skin and he didn’t know because he couldn’t see them. Jasmine watched him fidget. Huh. She’d never really witnessed him nervous. TJ wasn’t afraid of boogers, dog poop, eating bugs, or anything like that, but maybe that’s because he could see them. He could smash and smear and disappear them. But it dawned on her that he seemed freaked out dealing with the things that wouldn’t smash or smear. The things already invisible living all around him, and maybe even on him, and there was nothing he could do about it.
They got to TJ’s house. No gate, no fence. A patch of dry grass. The house was small and wooden like it had been built without machines. No bulldozers or anything like that. Just human hands and love and hammers and nails and more love. There was a hole in the screen door that had been there for years. TJ’s foot had done that. He said sometimes his feet get mad and do things like kick or stomp or run. Don’t blame him, he’d say. And Jasmine would laugh because his jokes were always funny even though she knew they were almost never jokes.
They sat on the steps out front, bumped shoulders, and talked more about water bears and boogers and decided that maybe they could be both.
“Water bear boogers?” Jasmine suggested while tying her shoes.
TJ offered a slight adjustment. “How about… water booger bears?”
“Ah, water booger bears.” Jasmine perked up, nodded. “I like that.”
The door opened behind them, the screen screeching a striking impression of TJ’s voice.
“I thought I heard something out here.” It was his (not-so) new mother. His mom of six years, Ms. Macy. She was dressed in her work uniform—navy pants, navy shirt with a name tag, offset by her fuzzy, dingy pink house slippers. She bent down and kissed both Jasmine and TJ on the tops of their heads, the remnants of her day now hovering around them like hard-work halos. “How was school?”
“Fine,” TJ said, smirking, sniffling, scratching.
“Pretty good,” Jasmine confirmed.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Ms. Macy said. They knew what was coming next. “So… what y’all learn today?” Even though Ms. Macy asked this question—the same question—every day, her voice was still so interested.
Jasmine looked at TJ. He looked back at her, a new booger resting in his left nostril. It seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, like boogers often do. He wiped it with the back of his hand and they both chimed in unison, like a Sunday choir.
“Nothing.”
THE LOW CUTS STRIKE AGAIN
ALL I CAN tell you is if you ever see John John Watson, Francy Baskin, Trista Smith, or especially Britton “Bit” Burns—the Low Cuts—better watch your pockets. Those four, they’ll steal anything that jingles, even your hands if you got them tucked and they’re making too much noise. Matter of fact, they’d take the pockets out your pockets if they could. Once they walked into a convenience store, one of the ones with the dish at the front of the counter that says TAKE A PENNY, LEAVE A PENNY and took all the pennies.
Leaving no pennies.
A grab and get gone.
Okay, they didn’t do that just once. They did that all the time. They did it so much that store owners started keeping the dish behind the register and doled out the pennies to short-changed customers individually. Other times, Bit, Francy, John John, and Trista would challenge people to quarter wars, which is when two people stand quarters up on a desk or a table and spin them like spinning tops. Whichever quarter knocks the other quarter over, or lasts the longest, wins. But the rules don’t really matter to this crew. The opponent’s quarter was getting pinched or the opponent was getting punched. And twenty-five cents ain’t worth a swole-up eye.
But the Low Cuts don’t just take to be taking. They don’t steal for fun. Actually, they don’t even like doing it. But they do it because they have to. At least they feel like they have to. Before they named themselves the Low Cuts, they were part of another set that they had no choice but to be down with. The free-lunchers. Sounded much cooler than it was. It didn’t mean they got free lunch because they were special. Or because they were popular and loved so much that the school cafeteria offered them mozzarella sticks and crinkle-cut fries on the house. Instead, what it meant was their parents were tight, hard up, squeezed, strapped. Their folks didn’t have any extra scratch to give for the itch of hunger. No lunch money. And that was true for each of the Low Cuts. Wasn’t something they were proud of, or something they were ashamed of either, even though other kids tried to make them feel a way about it.
“Yo, if I give you my pizza crust every day and you save it up, you’ll have a whole loaf of bread by the end of the school year” was a joke told by a kid named Andrew Knotts, who, after Bit heard it… let’s just say Andrew never cracked those kinds of jokes again.
For the record, Bit, John John, Francy, and Trista weren’t the only free-lunchers, but they were the only free-lunchers with parents who were cancer survivors. They’d been put together in an in-school support group run by the guidance counselor, Ms. Lane. Sitting in a circle passing a tissue box back and forth, talking about how hard it is to watch your parents skinny up, watch their hair thin and fall out, watch their bodies turn disloyal. How scary it was to think about whether or not their mothers and fathers were going to live, and if not, how they were all going to live without them.
What the four of them never talked about was how all the surgeries and treatments were what knocked everything in their lives and their parents’ lives off track financially. It was where all the money went. That wasn’t Ms. Lane’s job, to bring that up. Not part of the kumbaya circles that Bit pretended to be too tough for. And the truth is, they wouldn’t have known any of this if Bit’s mother hadn’t told him all her business. But she did. And Bit told that business to the others. And the others asked their parents if it was true.
“That’s not for you to worry about,” John John’s mother said. Breast Cancer.
“Who told you that?” Francy’s father asked. Prostate Cancer.
“I… We don’t want to lie to you,” Trista’s father explained. Stomach Cancer.
True. True. True.
And it was this, not the cancer but the strain it put on everyone, that formed the Low Cuts. They all cut their hair down to almost bald—a sign of solidarity—and started stealing.