“What… what we doing?” He choked on his words.
“Just playin’ a game,” Marcus said, grabbing Stevie’s shoulder like a baseball to be fastballed at Pia. But Stevie had a curveball in mind. Told Marcus he wouldn’t do anything to her.
“I don’t want you to do nothing to her,” Marcus scowled. “Just take her skateboard. That’s all.”
The boys lined up, became a wall on the sidewalk, and Pia thought about hopping the curb to go around them but knew better than to skate into oncoming traffic. She’d cut it close before. Too scary. So Pia reluctantly put a foot down, dragged her sneaker along the concrete to slow down, then stomped the back of the skateboard, flipping it up into her hand.
“ ’Scuse me,” she said politely to Marcus.
“Excuse you,” he said back, puffing his chest. Pia never looked down. Looked each boy in the face. Each of them looked back, except for one. The new boy, Stevie, looked everywhere else. To the left, to the right, up and down. Anywhere but at her. “Let me borrow your board?” Marcus said. “Just for a second. My man been working on a trick and he wanted to show us.” Marcus nudged Stevie.
“He don’t look like he skate,” Pia said, sizing Stevie up.
“I bet he skate better than you.” Marcus stepped toward her, yanking Stevie with him.
Stevie looked like he was two seconds from vomiting the bones out of his body, leaving him as nothing but a skin suit lying on the sidewalk.
Pia could smell Stevie. A punchy musk, stronger than the perfume in the magazines. He was sweating through his blazer. And before he could answer, Marcus reached for Skitter, grabbed the board, and yanked it. But Pia wouldn’t release it. After a back-and-forth—Pia gripping the board with both hands—Marcus tried a different approach. He let go, and Pia stumbled back but didn’t fall. Balance. But Marcus was right there to do gravity’s work. Shoved her to the ground. The skateboard flew from her hands and skidded into the street, where a car, horn blaring, rolled over it.
“Ohhhh!” The boys howled as the wooden plank split, their stupid excitement splintering Pia’s skin.
Her voice cracked, broken in half.
She got up and ran. Mind racing. Thinking. About Santi.
Stevie chased behind her.
Pia ran faster. Thinking about Santi. How she was pushed off her board by a boy.
Stevie stopped running.
Pia ran home. Thinking about Santi. How the boy was just mad Santi was a better skater than he was.
Pushed her into the street. Thinking about himself.
Oncoming traffic.
Had Stevie known that’s what it would take to be one of Marcus’s boys, he wouldn’t have come yesterday. Or maybe he would have, but he would’ve said something. Would’ve stopped Marcus. Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he stop it? That’s what he asked himself as he walked back down the sidewalk. That’s what he asked himself when he tipped into the street, his hand up timidly as traffic slowed for him, and picked up the cracked halves of the skateboard. He held them like he was holding a broken heart, looked around only to find that Marcus and the boys had left him. Like the suckers they were. Like the sucker he was.
And maybe if Pia had known Stevie had picked up the pieces of her board, maybe if she’d known that he took them home with him, maybe if she’d known that he finally told his mother about Marcus, told her where all the bleach was going, why he had to wash his clothes every day to try to remove the stains and marks and words inked into his uniform, showed her the tie he’d cut off his neck and hid in the bottom of his bag—the one he’d said he’d lost—explained why he hadn’t had an appetite, why his grades were slipping, maybe if Pia had known that he told his mother what he’d just done, what he didn’t do, what he’d just seen, maybe if Pia had known that his mother struggled to hold back a scream, helped him tape the deck back together, punished him, sent him to bed, woke him up early this morning for extra chores, maybe if Pia had known that his mother, after meeting with the principal, pulled Stevie out of school early, drove him to what they guessed was Pia’s school—the only public middle school in the area—sat stuck in traffic lecturing him, paying no attention to the news on the radio (a school bus had fallen from the sky!), made him stand outside the entrance and wait for Pia awkwardly, maybe if Pia had known that Stevie was coming to apologize for his silence, maybe, maybe, maybe, just maybe Pia wouldn’t have left through the back door.
Today.
With Fawn. To walk to the cemetery to visit Santi’s grave and ask her questions, hard questions, about boys.
HOW TO LOOK (BOTH) BOTH WAYS
FATIMA MOSS talks to only one person on her way home from school. And before she talks to that person she keeps a checklist of all the things on her journey that have changed. And all the things that have stayed the same. That one person and their sameness or differentness included.
This is that checklist.
Bell rings for five seconds.
Twenty-eight students (twenty-nine, including me) dash from Ms. Broome’s English class. Difference: Today, Trista Smith and Britton Burns ran faster than everyone. Almost knocked Sam Mosby over.
3. I take off.
The whole school crowds into the hallway.
It’s so noisy I can’t hear myself think.
I stop at my locker to get this notebook, which I keep there where it’s safe. So I can hear myself think.
The combination to my lock is the same.
I get it wrong.
I panic and think someone has switched my lock, which means I may never get my notebook.
I try the combination again and it works.
The combination to my lock is the same.
I grab this notebook, get the books I’ll need for homework, which is usually none because I usually get all my homework done before school is over. Difference: But today I have homework. English. Ms. Broome wants us to imagine ourselves as objects. Any object we want. And write about it.
Doesn’t require a book though.
I head from my locker to the school doors. Between seventy-seven and eighty-four steps, depending on if Ms. Wockley is yelling at anyone in the middle of the hallway. Today she was yelling at Simeon Cross for running down the hall with Kenzi Thompson on his back. Again. (Technically not a difference.) Today it took eighty-one.
Exit the building. The double doors are always open.
Six school buses out front. Two lines of cars for pickup. Mr. Johnson is directing traffic.
Between eighty-six and ninety-four steps to the corner where the crossing guard, Ms. Post, stands.
“Hi, Fatima,” she says. Difference: Today she said, “Hey, Fatima.”
Ms. Post’s son, Canton, sits at the stop sign on the corner holding a broom. With no broomstick. It’s weird. But not weird because he’s always there.
I keep walking straight. Don’t have to cross the street.
I count the signs (already one stop sign), hydrants, and major cracks in the sidewalk. Not all the cracks. That would be too hard. Too many. But the big ones.
Don’t walk too fast. Have to take note of all the houses too. How they look.
They all look the same. They all look like they’re made of graham crackers. They all look like the houses I drew when I was like six. Box with a triangle on top. Except bigger. They all have big windows. I think they all have beige carpet inside. And a front room no one sits in.