“Real ladylike,” Nolan says.
Genevieve flips him off. “How about this?”
All the other guys burst into a chorus of “Ooooooooooh!”
I eat the rest of the marshmallow for her and we sit back. My brother is still playing cards with his friends underneath a streetlamp; my mother is trying to socialize over the pounding salsa; some dads are playing horse with beer cans, a trash bin as their basketball net . . . and that Thomas kid is here, lost and looking around.
I unwrap my arm from around Genevieve’s shoulders and run to catch Thomas. “Yo!”
“Stretch, thank God!” Thomas gives me a fist bump. “I couldn’t find you. What’s going on out here, someone’s birthday?”
I point to the shirt, which I guess he didn’t register earlier. “Family Day. It’s an annual celebration for us Leonardo Housing residents. You guys have something like this over at Joey Rosa?”
“Nope. Is it okay that I’m here? I can leave if it’s just a community party.” He looks around with this face that screams, I know I don’t belong.
“You’re chill. Come meet my friends.”
We make our way back to the crew. “Yo, this is Thomas.” Genevieve looks back and forth between us. “And this is my girlfriend, Genevieve.”
“Hey,” Thomas says. “Happy Family Day, everyone.”
They all give halfhearted waves and head nods.
“How do you know each other?” Baby Freddy asks.
“Bumped into him earlier. He just broke up with his girlfriend and I thought some games could cheer him up.”
“Wait.” Deon sits up. “Didn’t I see you outside the gate this afternoon?” He nudges Brendan with his elbow. “This is the dude that sent us to Dead Man’s Corner?”
“That what you call it?” Thomas places a hand over his heart and raises the other. “Guilty, by the way. I gave Stretch here a much-needed assist.”
“Where you from?” Fat-Dave asks.
“Down the block. Joey Rosa’s.”
They all glance at one another. Sure, we’ve had some BS with Joey Rosa kids over the years, always getting into fights whenever they invite themselves over to our block, but I can tell Thomas isn’t like them.
Skinny-Dave doesn’t care about the rivalry. “You know Troy? He still with Veronica?”
“I know him, but I don’t like him,” Thomas answers. “My neighbor Andre was pissed at Troy for some reason and I overheard him asking Veronica what she saw in him and she had no idea what he was talking about.”
“YES!” Skinny-Dave jumps. “I knew that fucker was lying. I should go call her.”
Thomas scratches his head. “I hate to break it to you, but she’s seeing Andre now.” We all laugh at Skinny-Dave who falls back into his seat.
“How’d the rest of the manhunt game go?” he asks me. “You win?”
“I got caught ten minutes later,” I say. I sit back down with Genevieve and hold her hand. She pulls away—and then I see why: she’s holding out her palm as a landing place for a firefly. It’s easy to forget it’s there when it’s not glowing, until all of a sudden it comes back and surprises you; it reminds me of grief.
“Did you know fireflies glow for mating purposes?” Thomas says.
“Nope,” I say. “I mean, I believe you, I just didn’t know that.”
“Imagine if we could glow to attract a mate instead of spraying on cologne that chokes everyone in a fifty-foot radius,” he says, which is weird since I don’t think his cologne smells all that bad.
“Aaron and Genevieve know enough about mating,” Nolan throws out.
Genevieve flips Nolan off, again. “Did you all know fireflies also glow to lure prey? It’s basically the equivalent of a girl who gets you to follow her into an alley with her great ass, and then eats you.”
“What a crazy fun fact.” I wrap my arm around her shoulders in the hopes she’ll never eat my head off in an alley because I never realized girlfriends existed in the same predatory universe as hungry fireflies.
Me-Crazy bullies Baby Freddy into going to Good Food’s to buy another handball since he knocked the other onto the roof earlier during the baseball match. They go back and forth for a while until Thomas reaches into his pocket, pulls out a dollar, and hands it to Me-Crazy. It’s a thank-you to everyone for letting him crash Family Day. Me-Crazy nods, doesn’t thank him, and hands it to Baby Freddy—who sucks his teeth, victorious enough that he didn’t have to buy another ball with his own money, but still enough of a loser that he has to go get it. When he returns from Good Food’s, he bounces the handball over to Me-Crazy.
“Now what?”
“Suicide,” Me-Crazy says in a low growl, which sounds fucking crazy even without the growl, but he’s not actually suggesting we all somehow use this handball to kill ourselves because that would be a) insensitive to me—not that he cares, I guess—and b) impossible.
Genevieve looks up at me as if we’re all some cult run by Me-Crazy.
“It’s a game,” I tell her.
How to Play Suicide: It’s every man for himself. Someone throws a handball against the wall, it bounces back, and if that ball touches the ground, someone else throws it. But if someone catches it, the original thrower has to race to the wall and shout “Suicide!” before anyone has a chance to bean them.
“ . . . and the game goes on until you’re the last one standing,” Brendan explains to Genevieve.
“Sounds barbaric,” she says.
“You can opt out of a beaning,” Baby Freddy says.
He’s right. There’s a rule we reserve for girls and younger kids, where instead of hitting them with the ball you try and throw the ball against the wall before they reach it and eliminate them that way.
“Or you can not play at all,” I offer. I don’t want to see what happens when she’s running to the wall when Me-Crazy is armed.
“I can handle it,” she says.
“You ever play this?” I ask Thomas.
“Been a few years.”
We walk over to the wall under my window. There’s a white residue fogging up one panel because of our shitty air conditioner or something. You can see a couple of my sketchbooks sitting on top of a pile of comics next to my dad’s trophies.
Me-Crazy throws the ball first. It’s possible no one caught it on purpose in case you hit him too hard and he flips out. Nolan throws the ball next and Brendan and Baby Freddy bump into each other trying to catch it while both making contact with the ball. Nolan is safe whereas Brendan and Baby Freddy book it to the wall. I quickly snatch up the ball and bean Baby Freddy.