It was 4:03.
So they ran.
All four of them broke out down the street, sprinting, screaming for the ice-cream truck to stop. Halfway down the block, it finally did. The Low Cuts ran up to the truck, slapping their hands on the side of it. The driver yanked the window open.
“Almost missed me,” the ice-cream man said. He looked more like somebody’s big brother than an ice-cream man. “What can I get for y’all?”
“Four vanilla soft serves,” Bit ordered.
“Cup or cone?”
“Cup.”
“Sprinkles?”
Francy, John John, and Trista looked to Bit.
“Hmmm, sure,” Bit said.
“On all four?”
“Yep.” Bit didn’t ask anyone else. And no one contested.
The ice-cream man handed cup after cup through the window, rainbow sprinkles all over them. Bit passed them down so that each of the Low Cuts had one, then handed the ice-cream man the nine dollars.
“It’s only eight,” the ice-cream man said.
“A dollar for you,” Bit replied. “Thanks for stopping.”
As the ice-cream truck pulled off, John John, Trista, Francy, and Bit walked a few houses down, until they got to a small house they’d all been to before. That Trista and Francy always called cute, John John never called nothing, and Bit called home. Bit pulled his key out of his pocket, unlocked the door.
“Ma!” he yelled. “You dressed?”
Seconds later, Bit’s mother, Ms. Burns, came from the back and was greeted by all of them—the Low Cuts—holding cups of fresh ice cream. Not one swirl licked. Not one spoonful missing. Ms. Burns looked at them, her face both cloudy and sunny, her skin absent of her normal brown.
Bit’s mom had relapsed.
The cancer had come back, but the doctors were optimistic she could beat it again.
“Hey. What’s going on? How was school?” Bit’s mother asked, kissing him on the forehead. But he shrugged off the question.
“How was your first day back on chemo?”
“Oh, it was… you know. It was chemo. I’m okay.” But she sounded exhausted and rubbed her stomach. “A little queasy.”
“I figured you would be. So, we got you a bunch of ice cream.” Bit waved his arm like a game show host showing off the four cups. “Vanilla,” he said. The other Low Cuts watched Bit the hustler, Bit who could turn ninety cents into nine bucks—into ice cream—turn into a son. A son who was scared. A son who loved his mom.
And she smiled, her shiny eyes jumping from face to face, bald head to bald head, friend to friend.
“With sprinkles.”
SKITTER HITTER
MAYBE IF Pia Foster had known yesterday, when the bell rang and she ran to her locker, grabbed her skateboard, and started kicking down the hall of Latimer Middle School—the wheels rolling and scratching over the floor sounding like the chugga-chugga of a small train—that the journey home would be different, she wouldn’t have been in such a hurry. Maybe she wouldn’t have ignored her classmates moving out of the way, sucking their teeth all annoyed by her decision to dart through the crowd as if riding on an arrow no one wanted to be struck by, shot from a get out of school bow no one could see. Maybe she would’ve excused herself. Apologized for almost clipping ankles or running over toes. Maybe she would’ve walked. For once. Maybe even stayed after and talked to Fawn Samms, the only other skater she knew. The only other skater who was a girl. The only other skater she respected. Maybe Pia would’ve tightened wheels with her. Talked about deck art, stickers, sneakers. Maybe practiced tricks in the parking lot after all the buses were gone. Heel flips. Kick flips. Maybe watched videos on their phones. Videos of Santi hitting ollies in a dress and pumps. Maybe Pia would’ve even told Fawn about her. About Santi. About what happened to her. Fawn would’ve listened. Might not have said nothing because Fawn don’t talk much either. But she would’ve listened, for sure. Heard her. Maybe Pia would’ve done all this. Or maybe not. Maybe if she wasn’t so soft-spoken. But she was and the skateboard, like so many skaters’, was her voice at its loudest saying, Get out the way or pay!
She named her board Skitter. And called it “she.”
* * *
Maybe if Stevie Munson had known yesterday the skateboard’s name was Skitter, he would’ve said something. Maybe if he’d known Pia’s name was Pia. If he’d known she had a big sister named Santi. Maybe if he’d just known those things, he would’ve done something. Something different. Something at all.
The bell rang at Brookshire Boys Academy, and an ocean of testosteronies crashed into the hallway, green ties swinging like polyester tails coming from their throats. Matching pants and blazers. White dress shirts with soggy collars from all the neck sweat and faded red splotches on their chests from the ketchup that missed their mouths. But Stevie’s shirt was stained from lots of things: food, sweat, Magic Marker… Marcus.
Marcus Bradford was a box-faced baseball player who wrote stuff on the back of Stevie’s shirt almost every day. Stevie was a sweater, so he always took his blazer off in class to avoid becoming a washcloth—something to wring out. But the oxford button-downs he wore underneath the blazer were all two sizes too big because his mom couldn’t afford to buy new ones every year. School was already expensive enough, so the uniform, he’d have to grow into. “Everything will fit eventually,” his mother would say, but the fabric was always so blousy and poofed away from Stevie’s body in a way that made it impossible to feel Marcus’s pens and markers gliding across the cotton. So Marcus used Stevie’s shirts like locker room walls, for jagged graffiti and curse words.
And maybe if yesterday Pia had known his name—Stevie—maybe if she had shaken his hand and said, My name is, and he’d said, My name is, she could’ve read his face. Read his fear. Maybe he could’ve read hers. Or maybe not. Either way, Pia would’ve taken her house key from around her neck and clutched it with the teeth jutting between her fingers. A fist-knife. Just in case.
Maybe Stevie wouldn’t have been there at all yesterday, with Marcus and the boys, if he hadn’t tried to figure out a way to get them to leave him, and his shirt, alone. Telling wasn’t an option. Snitches get stitches and sometimes ditches. That’s what Marcus said the other day when Stevie found out Marcus had drawn a green penis on the back of his shirt. Greenis written underneath. Maybe Stevie wouldn’t have even been there with them if his mother hadn’t asked him what he was doing with all the bleach. Why was he using so much of it?
“Not that I’m not glad you’re washing your own clothes, but detergent and bleach ain’t free,” she’d say. And what Stevie couldn’t say was, I’m sorry, but there’s a boy in my school drawing on my clothes, because then his mother would say, I don’t send you to private school for boys to draw private parts on your private uniform that you still have to grow into, and Do I need to call the principal? and Stevie didn’t want to hear none of that. Stitches, remember? Maybe even ditches. Besides, Mr. Brock, the principal, already knew. He’d seen the pictures and words and all he ever said was, Boys will be boys.