“Dude, don’t tell me you never thought about it.”
“She’s my aunt!” I say, a little too loud, and I glance out the window to the back. Nico is outside now, running around beside the fence with our cousins.
“Is she single?” Sammy says.
“Get out.” I point to the door, but Sammy’s sprawled out already, legs spread, the air conditioning blasting because of all the people in the house, and Dad’s going to be pissed if it breaks again.
“I’m just messing,” Sammy says. “You got my brother’s games?”
I squeeze around Sammy’s legs to close the door to the bedroom so I can open the closet—it’s a tiny room—and I pull out the plastic bag full of Xbox discs Sammy brought over one time and left behind, because his brother had their system down at Rutgers and he couldn’t play them.
“Thanks, man,” Sammy says. “He’s throwing a party tonight and the only way I’m invited is to take him the games.”
Sammy doesn’t have an accent, not like his parents, but he doesn’t speak normal—he’s always playing like he’s some kind of rap star who gets all the women instead of a skinny Indian who’s never had a date.
“Wait—your dad’s letting you go to a college party?”
Sammy’s playing with his phone, he’s always playing on his phone, half the time you can’t even talk to him because he’s flipping past porn on his screen.
“Ah hell no, he thinks I’m just visiting, like we’re going to tour the campus library or something. He got no clue.”
The sound of fireworks crack outside my window, out on the lawn next to the house, and I hear children screaming, hyper screaming, Nico by the smoky remains of a firecracker near the fence, where the grass is worn down into dirt. Dad has another one in his hand and lights the flame in the same place, and one of my cousins runs around in a mad circle behind Nico, like she just did thirty-eight hits of Sour Patch Kids and needs her next fix.
“I hope they got weed, though,” Sammy says. “I been shy and tripping all week, you know.”
I shake my head. Sammy smokes a lot of pot, I mean most of my friends do, but I only smoked once in my life and I couldn’t keep it down, I just kept coughing and Trevor kept laughing and Stick held my hand to take the joint away.
“You want to come? My dad’s driving me,” Sammy says.
Another set of firecrackers explodes in a flood of smoke, and the kids launch into an instant game of tag across the lawn. I glance at my desk, where Kakashi’s Story is placeheld by a sock.
“I can’t. No way I can leave the party. And Stick’s supposed to come by later.”
“How is he?” Sammy says. “Is he okay?”
I check my phone again, but there’s still no text. I’m not on the phone constantly like Sammy is, or most people are, I mean it’s still a lot but Stick’s never on social media, so I try to resist and I’m starting to lose my shit that he isn’t texting.
“That stinks about his father. Is he home from the hospital?”
“What?”
Sammy doesn’t look up, he’s just scrolling through screens.
“What do you mean, hospital?”
“Wait—you don’t know?” I shake my head as Sammy puts his phone away. “Dude, his father had a heart attack last night. There was an ambulance and everything.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah my grandfather was out on one of his roundabouts when he saw an ambulance show up. My pops went over and he said they took Mr. Turner to the hospital.”
“Oh my god.”
I reach for my phone and check the five messages I sent to Stick since the kiss to see if they’ve been read. They haven’t.
“You didn’t know?”
“No. I haven’t heard anything from him. I thought he was at work.”
“Shit. Yeah, it’s like really bad maybe.”
“Should I call him?”
“I don’t know, man,” Sammy says. Always helpful.
I let the phone ring on speaker, but it goes right to voice mail and I hear Nico screaming outside the window again, Dad and Uncle Willie by the fence with their drinks, the fiery embers of sparklers smoking on the lawn. I don’t know what’s happening.
“Where did they take him?”
“JFK? I could see if my dad knows.”
Sammy texts and I scroll through Stick’s messages, from before we met in the field to watch the fireworks, before the kiss. I feel a brief jolt of relief that what’s going on with his dad kept him from texting, not our kiss, and it’s wrong, I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help it.
“He won’t reply,” Sammy says. “My dad sucks at texting.” There’s a blast of music from the front of the house, loud booming hip-hop replacing the salsa. “I gotta go anyway, let me ask him.”
“Thanks,” I say and follow him out of the room.
The tent out front is filled to the brim with grilling and eating and a whole lot of drinking, the hip-hop so loud I can’t hear Sammy say goodbye. The neighbors’ lawns are as packed as ours now, and several guys are kicking a soccer ball in the street, the Dominican DJ sweating through his shirt as he switches between songs. I fast walk through the side lawn, past the swirls of screaming children, Dad by the fence with Uncle Willie, who tries to say hi and I wouldn’t ever ignore him but I’m in a rush and Stick needs my help. I’m desperate.
“Mr. Mateo, get your ass back here!” Willie shouts but I round the corner through the fence, pulling my bike out of the shed. According to the mapping app on my phone, there’s a train to Edison that drops you off about three miles from JFK Hospital, so if I can bike to the station then bring it on the train, I can cycle the rest of the way and get there in two hours. Assuming I can take a bike on the train and I have enough cash for a ticket, which I don’t, I don’t know what I’m thinking, I just need to get my bike from the shed and take it to Stick’s, maybe someone there can tell what’s happening.
I jerk the bike through the gate, out onto the lawn, pressing hard on the pedals to guide the tires through the grass behind our neighbors’ houses.
Stick lives in this huge house further up the street, half a dozen bedrooms for over a dozen children, literally, Stick is one of thirteen kids and he always laughs when I bitch about Nico bothering me, he says he never gets time alone.
I struggle up the hill in the stifling heat and spot their family van pull into the driveway. I pick up the pace on the pedals.
The Turner clan piles out, first Stick’s brothers and then a couple sisters then Sherry and Aileen – the oldest – climbing out the front. Stick’s the last to emerge, from the back behind Michaela. I don’t see his father.
I speed up to a sprint despite the hill, the field to the right where we spent last night in the distance and Stick spots me. He looks up and finds me. I start to smile but he drops his head, shaking it back and forth in an exaggerated motion so I stop, heavy on the brakes, a quick flash of pain shooting into my ankle through the shin.
Stick keeps his head low, following the rest of his family down the driveway toward the house and it’s a little too far to be sure, but I think he’s crying. I see him crying. I stand on the bike, hands tight on the brakes, as he walks up the path with his arm around Michaela. The pain is overwhelming.